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A curious parallel
Despite disapproval from certain quarters, I've been somewhat keeping up with that which is called RaceFail '09. (JFGI.)
I've not written about in my journal yet, and I'm not sure I'll ever write a comprehensive post about my thoughts on it, if only because I should be spending that time keeping up with uni work. If it gets on top of me, it will crush me.
Anyway, the thing is this: at the end of the 18th century, radical movements for social and political change changed from being the hobbyhorse of a few wealthy intellectuals (yes, I'm guilty of gross reductionism, shh) to the product of widespread working-class involvement, thought, activism, argument. The lower orders, as they were known, began speaking up, demanding representation, demanding rights.
This was a problem, and was met with repression, where the previous advocates of universal suffrage and suchlike had been tolerated calmly. The old advocates were eccentric aristocrats. The new radicals were workers. Lower-class, absent all the privileges held by the wealthy and titled.
The lower orders talking about politics, reading "The Rights of Man" and trying to claim they deserved respect and all that stuff? Arrogant presumption.
I think there's still something like that today, with some people's reactions to minorities advocating for themselves; while people might think they believe that disabled people should be accommodated equally with he abled, that homosexuals deserve the same rights in their loves as heterosexuals, that people who aren't white should be placed on an equal footing with people who are (including recognising that centuries of oppression have left their mark, and merely removing active barriers is not enough to put them, as a population, on that equal footing, because someone born in poverty to illiterate, alcoholic parents is not in a position of equality to someone born in better circumstances, and while it is not a firm rule for individuals of any race where they will fall on the socio-economic spectrum, on balance of population majorities, some groups are currently at a disadvantage that needs to be remedied)...
Pause here because that sentence got away from me a little, and I have a lot of reading to do and haven't time to edit it properly.
Yes. While they think they believe all that stuff, and probably sincerely do, some people seem to find it something of an affront when members of that minority group express their own opinions, voice their own experiences, insist on the respect which in theory most of us agree they deserve but only some of us notice they don't get. The idea being that "we" know whats best for "them"; it's probably an intellectual (as grouping) bias, in that intellectuals tend towards believing that We're Right.
And it can feel like a terrible shock, I guess, when you think you're being ever so kind and wonderful, and discover that actually, no, the person doesn't want your help, exactly, they want independent equality.
The thing is that that attitude is condescending. Like a wealthy landowner condescending to talk to his gardener; it's understood that it is an act of kindness and charity for the master merely to acknowledge that the servant is human, with experiences beyond his role as The Gardener. For the gardener to initiate the conversation would be presumption.
The unprivileged demanding equal status with the privilege is presumption almost by definition; it is denying that the unprivileged person should just "know their place", demanding that their place be moved, presuming equality to be their right.
I don't have a point to this, really; I just noticed the parallel between a number of people involved in RaceFail and the behaviour of people 220 years ago.
There is nothing new under the sun.
I've not written about in my journal yet, and I'm not sure I'll ever write a comprehensive post about my thoughts on it, if only because I should be spending that time keeping up with uni work. If it gets on top of me, it will crush me.
Anyway, the thing is this: at the end of the 18th century, radical movements for social and political change changed from being the hobbyhorse of a few wealthy intellectuals (yes, I'm guilty of gross reductionism, shh) to the product of widespread working-class involvement, thought, activism, argument. The lower orders, as they were known, began speaking up, demanding representation, demanding rights.
This was a problem, and was met with repression, where the previous advocates of universal suffrage and suchlike had been tolerated calmly. The old advocates were eccentric aristocrats. The new radicals were workers. Lower-class, absent all the privileges held by the wealthy and titled.
The lower orders talking about politics, reading "The Rights of Man" and trying to claim they deserved respect and all that stuff? Arrogant presumption.
I think there's still something like that today, with some people's reactions to minorities advocating for themselves; while people might think they believe that disabled people should be accommodated equally with he abled, that homosexuals deserve the same rights in their loves as heterosexuals, that people who aren't white should be placed on an equal footing with people who are (including recognising that centuries of oppression have left their mark, and merely removing active barriers is not enough to put them, as a population, on that equal footing, because someone born in poverty to illiterate, alcoholic parents is not in a position of equality to someone born in better circumstances, and while it is not a firm rule for individuals of any race where they will fall on the socio-economic spectrum, on balance of population majorities, some groups are currently at a disadvantage that needs to be remedied)...
Pause here because that sentence got away from me a little, and I have a lot of reading to do and haven't time to edit it properly.
Yes. While they think they believe all that stuff, and probably sincerely do, some people seem to find it something of an affront when members of that minority group express their own opinions, voice their own experiences, insist on the respect which in theory most of us agree they deserve but only some of us notice they don't get. The idea being that "we" know whats best for "them"; it's probably an intellectual (as grouping) bias, in that intellectuals tend towards believing that We're Right.
And it can feel like a terrible shock, I guess, when you think you're being ever so kind and wonderful, and discover that actually, no, the person doesn't want your help, exactly, they want independent equality.
The thing is that that attitude is condescending. Like a wealthy landowner condescending to talk to his gardener; it's understood that it is an act of kindness and charity for the master merely to acknowledge that the servant is human, with experiences beyond his role as The Gardener. For the gardener to initiate the conversation would be presumption.
The unprivileged demanding equal status with the privilege is presumption almost by definition; it is denying that the unprivileged person should just "know their place", demanding that their place be moved, presuming equality to be their right.
I don't have a point to this, really; I just noticed the parallel between a number of people involved in RaceFail and the behaviour of people 220 years ago.
There is nothing new under the sun.
no subject
:more iconlove:
Not to get too academic about this, but if people are trying to play the "it's literary criticism, not a discussion about race" card, then I will smack them in the face with an existentialist salmon: the author has been dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author) for over forty years now. Writers and editors get no bonus Credibility Points. None.
no subject
I remember the criticism course I took in college; not once, for some reason, did we discuss sucking the virtual cock of the people we were criticizing. They must have been Doing It Wrong.
no subject
Literary criticism should more or less ignore the author as an entity. Taking the author into account is just not relevant; personal abuse is also not relevant, which is why at the beginning of all this, appropriately, no-one was saying that the authors in question were Bad People, just that there was some unquestioned assumptions in their work that were problematic.
no subject
Yes, exactly. I was saying back in my own journal-- and, IIRC, have said elsewhere, it's like these people have never been criticized before, which just makes no sense at all, except perhaps critics are gentler in genre fiction? I used to read The New York Times Book Review every weekend, and Avalon's Willow was the gentlest brush of reprimand compared to that.
no subject
I've tended to use icons which were either appropriate-by-keyword (a lot of mine don't feature people/characters at all, and my favourite for discussions that are about ethics and art is probably this one), but when going to default, I've tended towards Goku or Tendou, because they're a) relatively neutral b) awesome. Whereas my default icon, which is a pair of sock-clad toddler feet, which is as race-neutral as you can get, I think, except the text is "socks to be you" which isn't quiiiite the message I'm trying to convey here.
(I'm pretty confident that my adoration of certain manga and Japanese kids' shows qualifies as cultural appreciation, not appropriation, so I'm relaxed about this. It's not that I think Mizushima Hiro, the actor who plays Tendou in Kamen Rider Kabuto, is hot like a thousand fiery suns because he's Japanese, it's because, no really, hot like a thousand fiery suns. Mei-chan no Shitsuji, with all its cracktasticness here and there, justifies its existence merely by the blatant fanservice that is Mizushima Hiro on his knees, in the rain, in formalwear, declaring his devotion. Swoon.)
(Also, watching shows where every single character and actor is Japanese is a wonderful way to have a respite from having to be bothered about race implications in casting.)
Ahem, yes. You're very right - there's something very odd with these reactions. It's true reviews tend to be less vicious in genre fiction, in my experience, because it's an insular and geek-fallacy-ridden (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html) environment, but seriously, if you can't take genuine - and, at least at first, constructive - criticism, you shouldn't be writing in public. Suck it up.
no subject
Yeah, most of my icons are people and/or expressions. And Tendou is very pretty indeed.
(I really do have to watch Kamen Rider, don't I. Hong Kong action movies are, in my experience, the absolute most fun in terms of diverse casting.)
I've heard people say 'but being accused of racism is terrible!' and yeah, it is, but dude, I've read and heard so much worse! There may be a correlation between writers of fanfiction and people who've acted sanely in this...hmmmmm.