I would like to examine a matter raised in the derail of the “where are the women political bloggers?” thread – that despite the care that every commentor there took to refer to behaviour rather than persons – that the phrase used (“going native”) has a history as a racial slur, that a pattern of centring White experience with regard to the usage of that phrase was emerging – no matter how much care was taken to NOT claim/accuse that this usage/pattern makes the person using it consciously racist, the simple fact that race was being discussed and behaviours surrounding it criticised was used to make claims/accusations that the criticism implied that the person displaying the criticised behaviour is “a racist”, and the reaction to that is one of outrage.
Is there anyone reading along here who knows enough feminist theory to grok the concept of unexamined privilege who doesn’t believe in unconscious/subconscious sexism? Surely we all know by now that many if not most of the most insidious and difficult to change sexist behaviours are those that operate as unexamined habits rather than conscious choices.
Feminists don’t believe that every single instance of sexist behaviour that demeans the dignity of women, whether exhibited by a man or a woman, is coming from a conscious decision to display sexism in that instant – it’s much more likely to be a case of Business As Usual and the unthinking repetition of behaviours that have been conditioned into us since childhood (by people who never examined why certain phrases/expectations existed either). It’s what the phrase “casual sexism” was coined to describe – the use of traditional phrases and tropes that perpetuate rigid gender role expectations without examination of the meaning/effect of those phrases/tropes.
e.g. the tradition of men paying for shared meals and entertainments on a date reinforces the societal expectation that women are dependent upon men because they own fewer material resources, but most men and women who follow the tradition don’t consciously think of it that way, and there is often outrage when feminists point out that it’s not just done as a way for men to impress women, that the trope has a double message regarding who is the active and who is the passive person (or regarding who is forthright and who is manipulative, or regarding who is generous and who is greedy) in the scenario. The men and women playing into the men-pay tradition are not being consciously sexist, but it’s behaviour that reinforces sexist assumptions nonetheless.
So, if you think that any of us are immune from unconscious racism I suggest that you would be very wrong – we’ve all been swimming in the toxic soup of assumptions and common turns of phrase within which systemic hierarchical prejudices are embedded all our lives.
Being called out for displaying a racially/sexually denigrating behaviour is not (or at least not necessarily) an accusation that one is thereby “a racist” or “a sexist” – it is a special form of reality check, the privilege check. Checking one’s own unexamined privileges as a result is an opportunity for self-awareness, an opportunity to become a better ally, an opportunity for self-growth.
By all means be embarrassed that you didn’t previously realise that what you did/said reinforced toxic social systems, especially ones that you are consciously endeavouring to dismantle. But try to keep hold of that embarrassment long enough to change, try not to give in to the temptation of shoving the sense of embarrassment away in favour of being outraged at the idea that you too can be an unthinking prejudice-reinforcing arse sometimes.
The response to being informed that one has reinforced a prejudice should not be “but I’m a good person” – criticising a behaviour is not a claim that you are not a good person, so how is that really relevant? A productive response would be more like “wow, I never noticed that one before, thanks for calling it” or “that one was a deeply buried one, sorry I never thought about it before”. If you want to argue that the behaviour doesn’t really reinforce prejudices that’s also a valid response, but that too has nothing to do with whether you are “a good person” or not. Deflecting the discussion of behaviour onto whether you are or are not a person of goodwill is of course a very natural and mostly unexamined temptation, but it demonstrates a failure to engage with the criticism of the actual behaviour that was called out.
Sticking just to the facts of a criticism of behaviour instead of deflecting it to personalities/character is the ethical response to a privilege check. Of course, nobody ever claimed that behaving ethically is necessarily easy.
Further reading:
Peggy McIntosh: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Andrea Rubenstein (tekanji): “Check my what?” On privilege and what we can do about it
Similar Posts:
- The privilege in your pocket: a manifesto by Guest Hoyden
- White privilege and the centring of white people in discussions of race and racism: a spinoff thread by Lauredhel
- Sexual assault perp Kyle Payne is asking for it – feel free to respond by Lauredhel
- In a nutshell by tigtog
- Quickhit: Sexist men get paid more by tigtog
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← Previous Comments
Sue @ 49, I think I know what you mean (with the balance and getting it right). For me it feels less that some approaches are wrong/right and more about using different responses as they feel appropriate. For the most part my interactions with my son’s school in the five years since have been cordial, and mutually helpful – I have no wish to be in confrontations with school staff but am also aware that in the particular scenario I found myself in all those years ago it was necessary and productive (the result was that the school instigated a series of measures to assist kids w ASD to have safe spaces for time-out from the playground, developed visual cues and behavioural management systems and obtained more extensive training…and that they were aware that bullying me as they had previously was not going to work). But yes there have been ’shit swallowing for the greater good’ instances.
That’s a good example, Mindy of where I think the problems are coming from.
Without getting into the specifics of the lame thing, or the going native thing (I missed the former conversation), I think this is where the disagreement lies. With possum’s comment I saw him basically saying that he didn’t agree that the term was offensive anymore/in the way he used it/&c, but that out of respect for Hoyden being your space he apologised for using a term you found offensive and said he wouldn’t do it again.
The response to that could have gone two ways. Everyone could have left it alone and understood that it’s not up to you to change people’s minds. You can ask them to think about their point of view, and you can insist they don’t use the term here, but that’s it. Anything more is policing people’s behaviour in the sense that you want to insist that everyone follow your orders wherever they go, whether they agree with your interpretation or not.
The pile-on was in acting as though because he didn’t agree with your interpretation he was a terrible person, rather than acknowledging that intelligent and decent people can disagree about words and phrases and that Possum doesn’t have to apologise for using a phrase he doesn’t believe is problematic. He apologised for offending which was the right thing to do, and should have been accepted in that spirit. You find it offensive and he respected that in your space, but expecting him to apologise for something else that he didn’t believe was wrong is where dogmatism and bullying comes in.
It doesn’t matter which side one falls on in the debate about “lame” or “going native”. What matters is in accepting that there’s room for disagreement and having enough humility to recognise that other people think differently to you and it doesn’t make them bad, and doesn’t necessarily make them wrong. The person who’s wrong could be you.
Ok, I can see where you are coming from. Part of the problem is also what is perceived to be an apology. I, for example, don’t see someone saying “I’m sorry if I offended you” as being an apology if I’ve just told you that you did offend me. I expect you to say sorry without qualifications. By putting qualifications on an apology what you are saying to me is “you say you are offended, but I don’t really believe that you could/should be” and to then say “I know someone and they aren’t offended” is really the topping on the cake.
For example – Hexy, as an Aboriginal woman, was offended by the language used but no apology was offered. It doesn’t matter how many relatives you have who are Aboriginal who aren’t offended, if you have offended someone it’s up to you to apologise unconditionally which didn’t happen here. You can’t claim family dynamics make you immune from offending anyone outside your family. It was simply bad manners.
I understand that not everyone uses/accepts my understanding of what constitutes an apology, but I think it is a fairly assumed position here that that is what an apology entails.
Sure, but when we’re talking about a guy who didn’t understand the female/woman, adjective/noun thing, then surely it’s also important to look to the spirit of the comment rather than the words. He clearly meant that he didn’t mean to offend anyone and wouldn’t use the phrase at Hoyden ever again because he didn’t want to offend a second time.
But he didn’t read the comments! He continually justified his position instead of reading, pondering and apologising. It was made clear to him on a number of occassions why what he said was offensive here and why he should apologise unconditionally and he didn’t get it. It’s not up to us to educate him, or hold his hand and explain things simply.
Anna@45
I’m guessing part of your emphasis on the women expressing concerns here being feminists is related to the link Lauredhel posted, but it’s something I did see in the earlier thread as well, and I do have some concerns with it.
I don’t know precisely the instances Fine, Laura or yourself are referring to when they talk about feeling unsafe and shut down here. But there seems to at least be some idea that some of these instances have related to displays of privilege that aren’t on the men/women oppression axis; and I’ve seen some of threads which may or may not be part of the history of this*. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to realise that the CR threads were a reference point, and in that context at least, I think there’s something quite problematic about making the focus “but these are other feminists”, because it glosses over that these are also white, TAB feminists in discussions about race and disability. I’m happy to be corrected if that’s not what you intended to imply.
Also, w/r/t the Possum conversation, you’re once again eliding the power dynamic. That someone “doesn’t believe X is offensive anymore” sounds innocuous enough, but when that person is in a societal position that has historically used X as an offensive weapon, acting as though their simple belief is on par with that of those it has been used against (and before we get another ‘indigenous friend’, conversation, I would direct folks to hexy’s comment on that thread before they put their foot in things). Which is precisely my issue with your charactisation of the CR thread and your glaring false dichotomy w/r/t “hearing PWD” v. “not challenging their ideas”, which I addressed in the previous thread also.
All three of these things suggest to me that this issue of the power dynamic/differential is where the stumbling block is.
And to be perfectly blunt, the freedom with which you and Laura are flinging words like ‘tyranny’, ‘taking the role of the oppressor’, ‘dogmatism’ and ‘bullying’ in reference to people who in many cases are in positions in which you are the privileged party is making me feel like I shouldn’t be talking. Obviously they’re not personally directed, but that’s the impact on me, if that’s important. Not quite to point of me actually shutting up, but enough that this window has been open for about 3 hours now.
Laura – thank you for the clarification, and I’m sorry to have so failed to impress you, but would it not be worth considering that using a word as charged as tyrant is perhaps not as careful as all that? Also, see above.
*incidentally, FP@46 I agree that specific incidents may be useful. Whilst I can understand there may be some apprehension about dredging up old arguments, there really does seem to be a whole lot of nebulous history that’s being left unsaid and I’m not sure leaving it so is useful to achieving some kind of understanding of the problem being raised in order to address it.
Actually, I think we were using words like tyranny and dogmatism in the (false, it seems) knowledge that people would read them within the meaning of the comments we made rather than taking them out and running around with them outside of their careful contexts.
This really isn’t about power dynamics. Laura, Fine and I don’t need to be educated on power, oppression and privilege. That’s the point of me saying that we are feminists. Not as a plea to leave us alone because we’re good, but as a plea to not assume we are idiots and instead realise that we are all doing advanced patriarchy blaming, as Twisty Faster would say.
For the last time, I don’t care about anti-whoevers not feeling welcome here. What I am trying to argue is that when you force out people who agree on the broader issues but don’t feel comfortable debating the finer details with you, then how do you test your ideas? If they’re good ideas they should be able to withstand the critiques of people in the same movement. If they can’t even do that, then there’s no chance of them taking hold in the rest of society. So when fellow feminists say this is a problem, you don’t have to agree, but you may want to at least try and process what we’re saying.
I don’t feel like you are processing what I’m saying. I don’t feel that you have responded to my points about inappropriate language on a disability friendly blog, and non-apologies and not giving free passes to hapless men just because they are hapless men. If they aren’t called on their unexamined privilege how are they ever going to become un-hapless? I feel sometimes that you ask and expect us to do things that you don’t do yourself.
I think you’ve really failed to hear jennifer here:
The ‘feminist movement’ has historically (and currently) done very, very poorly at dealing with intersections of disability and race (and other axes). I’ve heard an enormous number of immensely bigoted things said by TAB feminists about people with disabilities. Saying “I’m a feminist, we’re in the same movement” when we’re actually talking about race and disability is unconvincing at best, and dismissive of that point.
Self-identifying as a feminist doesn’t automatically give you ally cred with PWD or Indigenous people or people of colour or non-white people (I know terminology is problematic here) – far from it, in fact. When I’m talking about disability I do not consider myself to be “in the same movement” as able-bodied feminists. If they wish to put their money where their mouth is as allies to the disability rights movement, I’m all for that, but we’re not just automatically “in the same movement” because they’re feminists.
I feel like I’ve just said the same thing five times over. Probably a sign of the frustration I’m feeling here at the level of Not Getting It. I’m hoping that one wording, at least, sticks. If not, then I really think we’re at the “agree to disagree” point.
Yes, we are at the agree to disagree point, and I will now make good on my earlier promise to leave you all to get on with doing whatever it is you’re doing here. I simply don’t have time or the mental energy for discussions that wind up, once again, hinting none too delicately that I’m not a good enough feminist or indeed not really a feminist at all. I have nothing but contempt for those hints, and I assure you they don’t wound me in the least, despite all your diligent efforts. I am also going to stop reading this blog as well as commenting on it. Goodbye.
I think I’m also getting to the point where I’m not interested in doing this anymore, but just on this point, what I’m saying is that I agree that it’s not OK to use inappropriate language on a disability-friendly blog and I agree that you can and should call people on it. I don’t agree that you can call it a non-apology when someone is unconvinced by your attempts to persuade them to dislike a particular term but still are respectful enough of your feelings to apologise for hurting you and promise not to do it again in your space. I’m hearing you (or listening or whatever the correct term is lest I offend on that point again) I just disagree.
And I’ve already explained a. what I meant when I tried to remind you that we’re all feminists, and b. that I don’t need 101 feminist history lessons or explanations of the concepts you all are using. Since my comment is still there for the reading I won’t bother repeating my point.
Laura, it’s a shame that you’re probably not reading this, because I think you’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to see hints that just aren’t there as I read this thread.
If all you can see is scorn for your feminism here, then nothing we can ever say will convince you otherwise. All I can do is say that is certainly not what I feel for your feminism at all, and I will continue to miss your contributions. Challenging certain statements made, particularly challenging them on the basis of language usage, is not the same as challenging one’s entire character, but you have repeatedly inferred such criticisms from being challenged here.
If anyone wonders what made me stop contributing as much to LP as I used to, by the way, at least part of it was the way I felt misjudged and misrepresented by you on the thread last year when you announced that you were going to stop commenting here. It’s difficult to co-blog with someone who judges one so harshly. [ETA: I have been reminded by email that Laura stopped blogging at LP long before the Beauty Culture Thread of Doom, that just wasn't my perception at the time. My mistake. As I said, only part of my general feeling of largely meh about LP since the last US election anyway.]
@Anna Winter
I don’t care whether he is persuaded now to dislike the term or not. I don’t think anyone else here is making that the issue with his apology either. He doesn’t have to be persuaded, and none of the non-acceptance of the apology he offered was based on whether or not he agreed that the term was inherently offensive. It was all about the conditional formulation of the apology.
I’ve been bagging on politicians and other public figures using the conditional IF/MAY non-apology formulation for a couple of years now. Why would I not challenge anyone who used such a non-apology formulation on this blog? Sure, PC probably used that formulation unthinkingly because it’s a staple earworm in his media consumption, but he’s doing an awful lot of unthinking around this issue for a generally thinky-thoughts kind of chap – the sympathy starts to be strained after a while.
FP said -”It might perhaps go better if the instances in which people have felt unwelcomed to debate were specifically mentioned? That way we could see what the responses were that apparently shut down debate?”
Are you asking that people show you proof that they really did feel shut down or otherised?
@ Linda Radfem:
Not proof. FP was asking for examples.
It is difficult to deal with general accusations without specific examples.
With you, for example, I know that I definitely did shut you down in a recent thread. The manner in which I did that was not a specially mature reaction on my part to reading some of the contents of your blog that reference HaT, and deciding that I could no longer consider you to be a good-faith poster here.
So, yes, I did do that to you and it was not perfect behaviour. It was rooted in personal antipathy. I still feel that you are a not a good-faith poster here, but that doesn’t mean that you will never have something worthwhile to add to a discussion, and I will in future treat your comments in a more mature fashion.
I’ve just been re-reading the thread, and I missed this first time through.
@Fine:
Perhaps WP is as interested in writing for the lurkers who are reading along as she is in responding to you, Fine. Perhaps the effort at education is not aimed at you, personally, at all.
I don’t always write with particular consideration for the lurkers when I make comments, but I often do. That was part of the way I first learnt to make contributions to online discussions on USENet. The ratio of lurkers to commentors on Hoyden is about 100 to 1, and it’s fairly obvious that only those who feel fairly confident with feminist theory tend to actually make comments here, especially in discussions such as this one.
So why not throw in a few extra details in one’s comment that allow lurkers with less familiarity with the topic to follow along and perhaps inspire them to do some further reading elsewhere as well?
I have managed to agree with nearly everything that Anna, Laura, Lauredhel and WP have said and I hope that that means that there is no essential opposition between the various principles but that everyone differs in how that think they have been/should be applied.
Isn’t what Anna has been saying to do with the idea that identity politics can get bogged down in enforcing the moral or correct codes of behaviour and that that can often stand in the way of persuading people and of building alliances across a really broad spectrum of opinion within the feminist movement? Because I think that that is really valid and watching the body politic continually shredding itself is really disturbing to me.
Comment wobbles. Ist sentence should end “how they think they have been/should be applied”.
@su,
I like your interpretation/paraphrase of Anna Winter’s argument, and in principle I agree with it.
The counterweight is that marginalised voices are told all the time to stop enforcing moral/correct codes of behaviour ‘for the benefit of the movement” , and this also stands in the way of persuading people and building alliances across a really broad spectrum of opinion within progressive politics generally, not just the feminist movement. That’s one of the reasons why there is a womanist movement that fights for women’s rights separately from the feminist movement. That’s why there is a trans rights movement organising separately from the broader queer politics movement.
There is a balance to be struck. I’m sure that we don’t always get it right. But I’m not entirely convinced that by being sticklers against marginalising language no matter who uses it that we are being entirely wrong, either. When someone finds being challenged on the usage of marginalising language to be a culture shock, I think that is a good thing.
The issue of sarcasm & mockery is separate, and I must admit to some ambivalence here. Some situations deserve mockery, and sarcasm is sometimes appropriate, but certainly they are tools that can be overused. What is not necessarily intended as gloating (rather as a form of defusing tension, usually) is being perceived (or at least represented) as gloating, and that’s not useful.
However, as a comedy nerd, I am terribly loath to forgo such useful satirical tools entirely – I truly believe that sarcasm and mockery can educate onlookers even if they don’t necessarily educate the targets, especially through absurd juxtapositions that shake people’s preconceptions about. Given the ratio of lurkers to commentors, playing to the crowd and not just the other players is part and parcel of the medium. I also repeat Lauredhel’s point that the images posted in the Crikey thread o’ doom mocked behaviours rather than persons – I do think that’s a very important distinction.
Personally, I think sarcasm and/or mockery of those behaviours, while often upsetting to the people who have performed them, serve to reinforce that they’re unacceptable in this space -to both the person who performed them, and to the people hurt by them -in a way that ten pages of patient explanation doesn’t. So I agree that it serves to diffuse the situation, but only for the people being hurt by bad behaviour. Personally, I’m fine with that, because I think it’s the line difference between having a 101 space and safe space.
Tigtog @19
I was trying not to talk about specifics to do with how HAT works because noone gets it right all the time and I have always found the place congenial.
I get what you are saying about marginalized voices continually being told not to police others, I think the idea that they should swallow the merde in order to engage in realpolitik has been referred to as requiring a “sacrificial logic of subjectivity” and I agree that that is unacceptable. But then I think Anna also agrees that is unacceptable, she has said so.
Once again we seem to be at a point where we know there is a nuanced position between shutting up ourselves and shutting others down but for whatever reason, the centre does not hold and we are talking about that dichotomy of be silent/silence others. One way of breaking that down is to remind people, as you have done, that acknowledging a mistake does not mean there is a permanent stain on your character, but I reverse the logic and say you can also create a kind of holding space that allows people to continue to believe that they are good while they are in the process of changing, to understand that we are all involved in the process of transforming and that that can be a messy process. I ask myself why I have felt the need to slink off when I have had some self-examination to do. Perhaps that is completely appropriate, I am not sure. Please understand I am not saying that Hoyden should necessarily change, I am just talking generally.
I am of a psychological, not philosophical bent and I see simple personality clashes all over these disputes, including by the way, in my own participation. For myself I worry that if I argue beyond a certain point I can let personal animus damage not merely my own peace of mind but by association the very principles I would like others to consider.
I suppose the other thing is that it is relatively easy to learn to use appropriate language and so never cause offence, but that can actually mask attitudes that should be interrogated. I ask myself how an organization can be discriminatory while each member of that organisation, interviewed separately, seems to be very aware of the problems of prejudice. I don’t believe the answer is simply that they are being insincere, I think there are more subtle processes involved.
@minna,
That’s a neat summation. I do my Feminism 101 over at the Feminism 101 blog. I’m willing to do patient explanation here up to a point, but only up to a point. This is a personal blog, for discussing all sorts of things included full on rantage, and if someone wants to be treated as a 101-er then they are most welcome to ask a question over at FF101.
@su,
As usual, perspicacious and penetrating. Your points raise some good questions. I need to think about my answers.
Just for clarification,
I agree entirely. I see that what I wrote could be read as implying otherwise, and that was absolutely not my intent. Apologies for any confusion due to my lack of clarity.
I have something new(ish? maybe?) to contribute here. I’d left this thread alone because to respond, I felt I would have to respond to Fine’s request that I offer examples of when Laura and she had been called out on their privilege. I am not interested in rehashing ancient history, particularly, and I’m resistant to being backed into a corner (as I felt, with that request) of simply accusing people of refusing to acknowledge their privilege again. Especially given that this thread did not originate there.
And so, to Su’s point, I don’t disagree with your reading of AW’s argument, at some level; and yeah, I think that broad alliances are important, but I think that the grounds of those alliances are political too. The problem is again the question of who does the educating, and how, and how particular political gestures here are seen as simple ‘inversions’ of hierarchies. First of all, I disagree with the idea that ‘inversions’ of hiearchies simply maintain those hierarchies; but then, I’m a deconstructionist, so I would think that. In fact, I tend to think that dealing with hierarchies without some level of conscious and deliberate inversion will tend to leave the hierarchies in place, simply because what’s privileged is unconsciously invested in as more rational, as more objective, as more commonsensical, as ‘just the way it is’. Obviously, that’s still a live debate, but it’s ludicrous to think that the small counter offered here in this blog to the dominant logic of the world will risk an over-representation of marginalised voices. This is all kinda theoretical, so I guess an example would be useful: Lauredhel’s description of her encounter with the man blocking the curb cut centres the experience of someone with a disability, giving voice to something that is too often left unheard (because all we’d usually hear is about the annoying woman who made him move his truck when it was only there for JUST A SECOND and, well, you get the idea). It demonstrates the violence – sometimes latent, often not – towards those with disabilities. It might prompt people to think more carefully about how and where they park, or about accessibility more generally. But it is hardly going to result in no one being able to park anywhere for fear they might block the path of someone with a disability. In this sense, the inversion enacted here is significant, and always situated in the context of ableism, and so it’s never simply reenacting a hierarchy, but rather deconstructing it: helping everyone to see how ableism has shaped TAB’s presumptions about the world being made for them, and the problems this produces for those with disabilities.
My point, I guess, is that there seems to be an undercurrent of resistance to acknowledging that privilege shapes how conversations happen: it’s privilege that constructs the ’shared ground’, the ‘common sense’. I’ve noticed this in conversation with conservative friends: I have, in the past, explained and explored my own position as a way of trying to convince them. And they wound up asking me questions, until I was justifying and justifying and justifying while they didn’t shift anything except the goal posts. Eventually, I spotted this dynamic, and refused to play it that way. I presented my perspective as if it were common sense; as if it were the obvious and generally acknowledged truth. The other person is then left to answer questions about why they don’t believe it’s true, usually growing more and more defensive as they realise that their own position is not unassailable. This demonstrates, I think, how significant a shift it is to centre marginalised voices. It shifts the burden of proof in such a way as to force the privileged position to rethink itself instead of having the marginalised position do that work. And it draws attention to how pervasive the effects of privilege are in constructing ‘common sense truths’.
All of that said, I think it’s probably pretty clear from the way that I comment that, yes, as tigtog says, I write for more than the individual person I’m allegedly responding to, and I’m not overly interested in jeering or mockery. I don’t doubt that sometimes I come across that way; and yeah, sometimes I use snark. But part of why I tend towards the annoyingly pedagogical is that I know that I’m massively, massively privileged. I’m white, I’m TAB, I’m cis, I’m (not uncomplicatedly) middle-class, and I’m stupidly heavily educated. For the most part, then, I’m not the person who is personally under attack in casual racism, or in easy ableism (sexism and homophobia’s another question, obviously, but let’s just go with this for now). I’m not the person whose life is threatened, in some way, on a regular basis, and thus sees, accurately, the deathliness in the small ’slips’ of those who are privileged. I’m the one who does the ’small slips’, but I’m also the one who tries to pay attention to where those ’slips’ happen, and who knows that they’re my responsibility. I have a tendency to be angry on others’ behalves, but it’s an anger that plays through in articulate explanation, most of the time, partly because I probably once was the person ’slipping up’. Asking myself ‘why is this person angry with me, rather than simply disagreeing?’ forced me to acknowledge that these questions which for me might be one step removed, are right up in the faces of some people, and they have every fucking right to be absolutely livid with the world, not least because ‘common sense’ denies they have any right to be angry. And yes, I’m an educator, so my backing-up of those who are marginalised (when I do it, which given that I’m not going to play translator to the marginalised so that the privileged never need to learn to think or engage with difference, isn’t necessarily that often) tends to be, like I said, annoyingly pedagogical. That is, I think that what Anna Winters is saying doesn’t happen in this context often actually does: there often is someone willing to explain why a particular turn of phrase is problematic, or a particular perspective. But even if there’s not, a whole bunch of people acting like it is entirely, ludicrously offensive to behave in a way that a privileged person (in this case, a white man) considers inoffensive can act as a prompt to him asking why, exactly, this group of people take that truth to be self-evident, over and above his truth, and in such a way that they think it’s beyond the requirement for justification or explanation. It lets him do the work of sorting out why, of asking how other people’s experiences could be so different from his own. And pedagogically, that’s even better than slow and careful explanation, because it’s his own thought processes so he’s learning, not just arguing, and politically, it’s important because it doesn’t allow ‘common sense’ its usual privilege of being unquestioned… So yes, I see a place for explanation and careful exploration, but here I see it as occurring within a delimited context that already centres marginal voices, rather than as an attempt to achieve that context. And, once again, apologies for going on, and on, and on, and on! :-)
Argh, forgot to refresh page after an overnight break. Apologies all, I think most of my points may have been made!
I think I may have misunderstood the expression “inversion of the hierarchies” because I absolutely agree with the interpretation you have given . I suppose I was thinking it was referring to the situation where bullying tactics that are usually deployed against the oppressed are turned around and used against someone in a dominant group who is momentarily outnumbered. Not that there would not be some worthwhile purpose to doing that at times but it risks solidifying the notion that when one has some power, however transitory, one should use it to humiliate and subjugate the less powerful. Not saying that that was done to Possum, I don’t feel able to comment on that thread because I suspect my reactions to it are entirely due to my personal foibles/sore points.
Don’t worry su, I suspect there are more than a few of us in the same boat.
“It is difficult to deal with general accusations without specific examples. ”
Not accusations so much as people stating what their experience has been here – their truth if you like. I wasn’t going to refer to your recent response – I was going to add something more helpful, if FP was asking a serious question. Seeing you responded to it I’ll assume she was.
When I first began delurking here I was mostly either ignored or snarked. I think talking about specific examples could be risky but I will give just one. It was some time ago after the federal gov announced the lap-top scheme for high school kids. I tried to explain why the idea might be appealing from the perspective of a ‘welfare’ mum who is painfully aware of not being able to give her kids a lot of the stuff that their peers have, and worrying that they are often disadvantaged because of it, despite being bright kids.
In response, someone snarked at me “taught highschool lately??”
Shut down, snarked, whatever you want to call it, it might seem trivial but it’s othering to read that kind of response when you’re among strangers many of whom seem to be well-educated middle class professionals, and it’s hard to participate when you’re constantly reminded of your otherness. I also have Aspergers, something I made a point of mentioning very soon after delurking. There have been loads more similar experiences here to the one I just mentioned which no doubt have informed some of my more recent posts, which I agree have been what you would call bad faith but what have also sometimes just been a snarky privilege call which I’m now reading is apparently ok to do (news to me).
I don’t like it being put about that I’ve always been a ‘bad faith poster’ because this has been a process and it’s not a fair characterisation of my input.
Now I’ll be out of your hair.
Mmm, okay… I guess the question is, then, what counts as bullying? Because I first of all don’t think there’s an objective definition, and in relation to that, I have a sneaking suspicion that the kinds of things that count as bullying in relation to those who are privileged are far broader than in relation to those who aren’t? And I don’t mean that this is deliberate: I think that those who are privileged tend to be able to make others behave well towards them, in some way, and the occasions upon which they have to do that are fairly few. I mean, for example, when we were together, I agreed to put my ex’s purchase of a fridge on my credit card (temporarily, long story). It was simply accepted at the store. He was extremely taken aback, because, being visibly non-white, he was accustomed to having to provide i.d., and have someone nip out the back to call the bank. If that had happened to me, I probably would have reacted pretty poorly. Those who aren’t privileged just can’t make others behave better towards them, a lot of the time. In this sense, they’re familiar with it, and many develop what’s been called ‘defenses against misrecognition,’ that is, ways of dealing with bullying which tend to often be ’swallowing shit’, but sometimes are angry or sarcastic or whatever. The hypothesis I guess I’m making is that those who are privileged aren’t used to being called into question in whatever way, and so tend to have a lower threshold to that stuff? Which can often mean there’s a tumbling-together of ‘bullying’ and what I see as pointed, snarky engagement, which is designed to force recognition of privilege. And I think it’s important not to unbind this from the pointing out of privilege and racism that happened on the other thread: Possum reacted defensively, and dug himself in nice and deep, and so others mocked his inability to deal with being called out in a decent fashion. That isn’t designed to *humiliate* him or subjugate him, I think, but rather to shame him according to his own principles/those shared by a peer group he’s participating in, in an effort to get him to think more carefully about how he does it next time. I get that some people thought that was uncool, but actually, I’m not sure it’s bullying at all? (For the record, I’m not saying bullying is okay; I just also tend not to think of bullying as the sole point at which behaviour becomes uncool, y’know?)
If this stuck in your head particularly as an exemplar, maybe a re-read could help? What you describe above is not what happened. I get that it might be what you remember having happened – that can happen to anyone.
Yes, I agree with that.
And (note to self)sometimes it is simply not possible to hold together people when there is a fundamental disagreement or misalignment of perspective and I should accept that. Another of my foibles exposed there. I did not mean to prolong the argument in an unhelpful way.
@ Linda Radfem
For the record, even though you’ve said that you’re out of here: most important part first -
I agree and I did not intend any such implication. That’s why I used the phrase “no longer”. I’m sorry that I didn’t make myself clearer.
You’re not the only person here with ASD, by the way. I’m undiagnosed, but it runs through my family like a river and I’m very familiar with it. I don’t always make the most appropriate social response, although as I’ve got older I’ve got better at faking it. So for me, you being an Aspie wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy. I sort of assumed that you were aware that my family was on the spectrum and that that was why you mentioned it, although I haven’t written about it as much since my son asked me to not blog about his life experiences, so I guess that you didn’t necessarily know. That is however why I have a particular bee in my bonnet with the “vaccinations cause autism” kooks for their misinformation that means so many autistic kids are essentially tortured with painful treatments that won’t do any good instead of getting the early intervention cognitive behavioural therapy that will help them to navigate society more effectively. I didn’t mean to particularly ignore your Aspieness, it just didn’t strike me as all that important because I thought you knew my own ASD connection. I see that this made you feel bad, but it certainly wasn’t deliberate.
As to the thread about school laptops: your comment was #7 – Beppie engaged you respectfully at #9, then the thread went on, then Purrdence made the remark to which you object at #16. Your comment #19 closed the thread, probably because you made a very good point that nobody could add anything to. Lots of threads end with a strong comment that nobody adds to.
As a general statement: comments being “ignored”? I am sad to hear that you feel bad about this, but I have whole blog posts that get ignored. I don’t take it as a slight, I just figure that what I wrote didn’t catch the imagination of the commentors. That’s just what happens sometimes.
I see you won’t be enlightened, Lauredhel. I wish I hadn’t bothered now.
Oh, Su, I didn’t see this as unhelpful, not at all! And I think we’ve moved into discussion rather than argument? I don’t think it was unhelpful to dwell with these questions a little more. I think that there are really fundamental differences in political commitments here (I’d characterise them as something like liberal feminism vs intersectional feminism, or something?) which play through in different understandings of the engagement in the threads in question and different political priorities.
And I meant to refer to your earlier discussion of dealing with your son’s school. I’m sorry it’s been so rough. I wanted to say, though, that your refusal to be bullied into part-time school won’t necessarily change anyone’s perspective, but it certainly plants a seed. It might take time, but I suspect there will be some kind of shift. But in the meantime, I hate that you have to work so hard to be heard, and with so little support. I hope this battle earns you a reprieve.
Linda, your post crossed with mine and Lauredhel posted hers while I was composing mine.
I have to agree that your description of the thread simply does not match my reading of it, as I describe above.
You were engaged with respectfully on that thread by Beppie.
Purrdence highlighted just one phrase of your comment and responded to it. You felt that her response was mocking. Did you see that she put “;p” after it? Which is meant to signal playfulness? Are you at all open to the interpretation that she did not mean to mock you?
Ah Good! Sometimes I need to check, make sure I’m not overstepping a mark (I can be a bit blind to these at times) and inadvertantly making people uncomfortable.
Thanks for your support WP. The part-time stuff was a few years back, it is just the high school bully boy thing we have a problem with now, and the unconscious gaslighting of him (do you think he misinterpreted, is he hallucinating [FFS!] etc etc).
Of course, tig tog, but this is why I hesitated to post an example, because I knew it would be pulled apart and dismissed as irrelevant. I explained my experience to be told that no I couldn’t have experienced it that way. Instead of going through people’s posts with a fine-toothed comb and rationalising experience long after the fact, just so you can *not* take them seriously, try listening.
I now know why some others have given up trying to get this across.
Laters.
@ Linda,
You know where I talked above about how I, as an ASDie, sometimes miss the mark socially? You didn’t respond to it at all (
rathervery hurtful, actually) but you did presumably read it. So, as a fellow autistic and mother of two autistic children, I say to you in full sympathy, and sitting here crying for both you and for me (remembering similar misunderstandings of my own): you are stuck in concrete thinking on this. This is a difference of opinion – not a campaign against you.Nobody is saying that you didn’t experience it the way that you say that you did. You obviously felt mocked, and that’s a terrible thing to feel. But nobody else knew that you were feeling mocked, because they genuinely didn’t and still don’t see Purrdence’s comment in the same way.
We weren’t ignoring someone mocking you, we didn’t see any mockery. So your choice is either to believe that people can genuinely see the same interaction differently, or persist in this concrete thinking that because you see it that way so must we all have and now we are just pretending.
Do you really think that we are just pretending about this?
P.S. I do now understand your resentment of us more fully than I did before. I’m genuinely sorry that I missed the signs that you were feeling so excluded. I just thought that you were a bit of a prickly person, and I felt I was doing you a favour in not challenging your prickliness. You probably read that as just more ignoring of you. That’s not how it was meant.
Coming in very late with a very general comment:
First, I’ve never been in an environment where people feel passionately about something where I haven’t felt alienated and excluded at some point. Like su, I tend to come from a psych perspective, and it seems to come with the passionate territory. No doubt I’ve contributed to it as many times as I’ve been affected by it.
Second, that conversation about what successfully educates people probably accounts for 90% of those occasions where I have felt alienated. Everyone, I guess, learns under their own conditions. Lauredhel described memorable learning experiences for her, and it makes sense that she uses similar approaches when engaging with others. I learn best in a logical, dispassionate discussion. I try to dissect the problem and remove the emotion. That then, is also how I try to engage and teach others. This thread has shown me a great deal about the different ways people respond to a challenge to their world views. Not least that many people find the removal of emotion insulting and disempowering. I already knew that, but I think I understand it better now.
Now I shall go away and try to work out what practical response I can have to this. Thank you all for the insight.
I’ve written and deleted this comment approximately 862 times tonight, so I thought that I had better just bloody well say it.
su@21
I ask myself why I have felt the need to slink off when I have had some self-examination to do. Perhaps that is completely appropriate, I am not sure.
Interestingly, this is exactly what I do too, and I operate from a very analytic perspective (you can tell that by the way I have stood back from my own behaviour and said, “Interestingly” as ‘though I am some laboratory specimen). I think it is a very good thing to do (of course, I would say that, because I do it too), not just because of the breathing space and down time, but because it allows time to process the thoughts and emotions. When I’ve been hurt on-line, even when it’s an instance where I’m the person who has stuffed up and I have rightfully been rebuked, I need that time out.
Being scolded hurts, even when it’s justified. Maybe especially when it’s justified, because that’s when I end up examining myself, and finding myself lacking. It’s hard work, and it takes a certain amount of moral courage to face up to it. I prefer to do all that in private, off-line, and very, very quietly.
(Actually, as it turns out, I’ve deleted the second half of this comment yet again, but I’m going to post the first half right now.)
By the way, I just want to clarify something. I’m dealing with Linda’s claims in a fair amount of detail because she is describing a pattern of feeling ignored and unwelcome on a personal level as a newcomer to this blog since sometime last year. While her recent statements on Hoyden and her own blog made me resentful towards her, I also see how her own resentment grew from what I see as a series of personal misunderstandings, although she may still see them as something more systematic. I do very much regret the misunderstandings.
I see this as a very separate issue from the criticisms of our style of argument levelled by Fine, Laura and Anna Winter, who are people who have commented here for years and whom I have engaged with elsewhere in the blogosphere for years. The challenges that have made them uncomfortable here have been on particular ideological differences, not personal misunderstandings (although there have certainly been some miscommunications).
Perhaps they are more related than I am seeing. But I don’t think so.
I do think that being consistent on not tolerating marginalising language no matter who uses it is an important ethical stance. While I understand and appreciate the force of the argument that larger political purposes require a gentle handling of not-fully-aligned fellow travellers, I simply cannot swallow my personal ethics in that way, and I wouldn’t want anybody else to swallow their own ethics from some sense of a larger alliance with me. This is not a claim that my ethics are necessarily superior, because the larger goals are very very important, and if my personal ethics truly do impede them then that makes my stance an obstacle rather than a contribution. It’s my own personal sticking point, sure, but it’s not just that.
I’m not fully persuaded of the accuracy of the claim that going the gently gently route on not-fully-aligned allies has ever historically been the best way forward in terms of persuasion that leads to social change. My own reading of history is that social change usually comes through radicals challenging the status quo hard and setting novel precedents thereby that later (and not without backlash) become the basis for a new social understanding. Our society progresses in a series of PushMePullYou quantum leaps.
Our commitment to challenging marginalising language here no matter who uses it is a radical political commitment. It’s not a particularly large challenge to the status quo, way over here in this little piece of the blogosphere, but it is held very seriously. Some people might find us to be just language wonks who have a bee in our bonnets about a side issue, but to me language usage is a crucial part of politics. If it wasn’t, why would the reactionaries find the very concept of Politically Correct speech to be so very very threatening?
@shonias,
This rings so very true. Well said.
@tigtog
Some people might find us to be just language wonks who have a bee in our bonnets about a side issue, but to me language usage is a crucial part of politics. If it wasn’t, why would the reactionaries find the very concept of Politically Correct speech to be so very very threatening?
I don’t agree with all of your positions on language, but I don’t think you are language wonks and my disagreement is based on the best way to handle the damage done by marginalising language, not because I think it doesn’t matter. I think it is also very clear what the stance is here and I try very hard to respect it. It can feel daunting, but I don’t think that is a reason for you guys to change your policy. It’s my problem, not yours.
However, I suspect at least part of the reason why people find it threatening is that it can feel infantalising. If you’ve never engaged in real thought on the effects on language, it can pretty easily feel like you are in year 1 again and your grammar is being corrected. I doubt it always comes from an interest in perpetuating the marginalisation. Which isn’t to say that isn’t the effect – just my psych bias showing again.
I was speculating the other day about how “autistic” has entered the language as an adjective for socially clueless behaviour. I practically chew my own arm off when I hear that usage because it is a) a negative descriptor and thus reinforcing an ableist perception and b) reinforces a perception that is factually inaccurate anyway in that it is seen as people simply not perceiving social or emotional content when in fact my own experience with my elder son is that although he misses some emotional cues at other times he is hypersensitive to social/emotional content and his responses are not inappropriate in kind but in degree.
But although I hate the way that “autistic” is used to described the behaviour of NT’s, I was wondering whether its sudden appearance in casual speech or writing is part of a process in which the culture and the language are gradually incorporating knowledge and understanding of people who are neurodiverse (an imperfect understanding obviously but then all understanding is in a state of imperfection, and being continually being refined). So I was thinking that rather than simply saying that that usage is inappropriate, I may need to be more patient, perhaps talk about how it is inaccurate and perhaps talk about the complexity of how actual people with autism respond in diverse ways to social and emotional concepts that they are not all the same and that it isn’t simply a case of being “blind” to all social cues. Maybe the inappropriateness is an opportunity.
My response to this word would then be quite different to “retard”, “moron” etc.
@su
I also read it as ultimately a good sign -people are becoming more familiar with, and accepting of, the concept of ASD, and so more accepting of the differences that come with it.
I’ve mostly been exposed to people using aspergers specifically rather than autism as the catch-all for any social awkwardness, and I also try to take the time to educate people on what it actually means. :3 I’d personally never heard of aspergers and had only the vaguest idea what autism was until it starting being diagnosed left, right and centre through both sides of my family about 12 years ago.
(Though on the other hand, I tend to be very careful about who I tell about my own social issues, because I find people ‘make allowances’; which, while coming from a good place and intended as a kindness, ultimately makes it harder for me to learn. :/)
It’s good to know I’m not way off base, Minna. That is such a good point about “making allowances”. In fact that is a perfect example of how society can disable people by lowering expectations and assuming that an impairment is a fixed and stable characteristic.
I can remember the very first time I encountered “autistic” as a general descriptor, it was in Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I didn’t fire off angry letters or anything, nor did it spoil my enjoyment of the book, it just niggled then, and does each time I see it.
The conversation between Su and tigtog upthread have helped me clarify what exactly I’m trying to argue, so thanks for that.
This is a very short summation of my points that will obviously miss a lot of nuance. But for those of you who really have tried to understand where I’m coming from I think you should find most of your questions answered in older comments, and there’s the added bonus of providing those who just want to think I’m ridiculous that there’ll be plenty of opportunity for you to misread what I’m about to write. So win/win, really.
Firstly I’m agreeing with Laura that if we are going to criticise certain types of behaviours in others (and rightly so) then it’s really not good enough to employ them ourselves. If we want to change the culture it’s no good saying that we can still do these things when we’re in whatever oppressed group is the focus of the debate.
And on a somewhat related point, perhaps the possum thread may be a useful thing to think about the next time you see a thread on LP or elsewhere that feels like a pile-on and realise that maybe what happened there is also just lots of people with the same opinion not realising that when more than two express it in sequence it feels that way even when it isn’t orchestrated that way. So perhaps a little more understanding that the people who do it to you aren’t necessarily acting in bad faith, and also a little more understanding that just because it isn’t what you intended, doesn’t mean the person being criticised by ten people in a row starts feeling attacked rather than debated with.
Secondly my main purpose in this thread was to try and explain that the advanced patriarchy blaming needs to work both ways. I get that Hoyden isn’t a 101 space and that’s what many of us find so frustrating. Because we come here knowing that, yet when we disagree with certain points the debate switches to 101 in response to us. So rather than assuming that I understand the privilege concept and have thought quite a lot about the conclusion I’ve come to within that framework and disagree on how to apply it, the kneejerk assumption always seems to be that I haven’t “checked” my privilege. That probably should be the assumption on a 101 blog, but if you’re going to move beyond that you have to change what your assumptions are in regards to the commenters there as well.
Which was, to drag up old wounds but to make things nice and specific, was my beef with what happened in the Rossiter threads. The Hoydens have known me for long enough that to know that I understand the issues involved, so to have my words interpreted as someone who has never even come across disability activism was insulting. And to characterise a thread in which most (although granted not all) of the comments were along the lines of “I agree with what Lauredhel says, but I also agree that what Anna wrote was not incompatible”. That it’s characterised by many here as an example of a bad thread suggests that advanced blaming only applies to those who agree with the Hoyden line rather than as a place in which there are still plenty of disagreements from people who agree on the basics of one’s need to check privilege and examine the circumstances under which we all make choices.
And again on a somewhat related note, one of the benefits of having people use handles and gravatars is so that when we respond to someone we don’t have to take their comments at face value and rather we can genuinely discuss things with them as friends, where we all know the shorthand and the in-jokes and can enjoy the snark together. As tigtog said above, some of us have years of history together, so surely we should use that when we interpret each other’s meanings. If everyone had done so I would never have had to keep repeating that I don’t have a problem with snark or impoliteness. As always, context is everything, so while it may have been easier to assume I was saying don’t snark, it didn’t help anyone understand what I was actually saying.
So yeah, this is my short comment. Clearly twitter has been good for me ;)
I apologise for the 101ing Anna W.
Thanks Mindy, but it really isn’t necessary. I know it wasn’t/isn’t intentional by anyone here and I didn’t take it personally. And I also know that I’m probably guilty of it too.
@ Anna Winter
I can see how that would be frustrating. I haven’t consciously been doing it, and I will certainly watch out for the tendency, because I can see how it would come across as condescending, and it certainly doesn’t further debate.
ETA – One small caveat though: I don’t necessarily agree that a “check your privilege” challenge is necessarily moving the conversation to a 101 level. I’m very much of the opinion that 202s, 303s and PhDs in advanced blaming still fuck up on the minutiae of unexamined privilege even when they’ve got most of the big things covered. I know I do, still. I’m better at catching myself at it before anything revolting actually slips out, but yucky things still lurk in my subconscious and other recesses.
Mm. I’ll agree with what tigtog said, and add this: Instead of knee-jerk assuming that I’ve never heard or considered the tone argument before, perhaps you could consider that I have seen and heard it many many times in a wide variety of contexts, have thought about it deeply, participated in a lot of discussions about it, and disagree with you on how to apply it?
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