 On differences in oppression, derailment, and the hierarchies of hurt
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Apr. 5th, 2009 @ 03:38 pm 
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... deep breath ...
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Right. What follows is going to look very much like a slam. However, I want you to know that it is not a slam of you. I am taking a dim view of several things today, and I take a dim view of some of the things you have just said, but I am not questioning you, your worthiness, your motivations, or your intelligence. I am going to get about as far as asking you a rhetorical question, which I hope will not give more offence than is warranted in a robust, but essentially courteous conversation about politics. That having been said, I now apologise in advance for the vigour of the comments which follow (this comment is prefatory -- they have, of course, already been typed and I'm not in a self-censorious mood). "The thing is, being able to say, "Oh, this endless wrangling about minority issues is so tiresome..." is a majority/privileged perspective. You can find it tiresome and not have to care because as a white, heterosexual, socially-and-economically-advantaged-by-circumstances-of-birth male ..." Explaining this to me is an insult to my intelligence. Not only have I been acutely aware of my personal social privilege for a very long time, I haven't had a conversation on any of these topics recently without someone involved (regardless of their relative privilege -- I've had this from people coming from positions of at least comparable social advantage, in context) taking it upon themselves to grab me by the ears and jam their mental model of me down my throat. Sometimes, they think all kinds of erroneous things about me. But you can rest assured that in general when I think about myself, I suspect if anything I tend to accord myself a position of greater relative privilege and advantage than I deserve. That pivot given up -- the acknowledgement of my educated, young, white middle-class heterosexual masculinity -- is treated as a place to grip on me, to define me and my utterances, by some people who like to participate in conversations like these, but it's not an infinitely long lever under the mass of reality. Whoever I am, there's still an outside chance I can speak the truth or the closest facsimile of the truth we've got. I haven't looked into the Bear debacle since the first few days -- when I spent about eight hours in all wading through the gutter of its comment threads -- but if it is anything resembling what it once was, I seriously doubt it's doing much good to anyone. Simply because I'm a middle class white male doesn't mean my reasoning is invalid. Simply because the debate continues doesn't mean I should invest time in returning to reacquaint myself with its evolution. Simply because it is about race, about privilege, and because all our societies have problems around race and privilege, and because discussing problems might help, and because doing things that might help fix problems is important, doesn't mean this discussion is important or does help (or has already helped, as surely we should assess given the length of time it's been going on now).
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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It's not that I think you're stupid, and it's not like I didn't think you were aware of your privilege, it's that I think that awareness of it doesn't mean it can't affect your attitudes in ways of which you might not really be aware. Discussions like this matter even if nothing major comes out of it, because for people who are customarily silenced, for whatever reason, it can be a wonderful thing just to speak, and be heard, by anyone at all.
Feeling silenced and unable to speak about things that cause you unhappiness can be miserable and pernicious. Ask Chas some time about what it took to get me to admit I didn't like the way Jen was giving me peas with my dinner - not the peas, and not the dinner, just the way they were presented together so the peas were in with my other food that was making me very sad - the most trivial thing imaginable, but it was many months of me eating food I was really not enjoying, because my background had led me to feel like I wasn't allowed to complain about my food.
Discussing the problem, in itself, helps fix one of the many problems, the problem of feeling unable to speak about things. Some of my emotional problems I've discussed more than once, even more than once with the same people; an individual discussion could seem tiresome, repetitive, and unhelpful, since it doesn't immediately fix what's wrong with me. Certain people can't deal with that, after a while, and so bow out of taking part for a while, which is okay. However, talking about it is what gradually fixes me, and the process is still important.
I pointed out your privilege because I don't think you're realising how much it hurts to be denied a voice, and how important just speaking can be, because, though it doesn't define you, your privilege Yahtzee means that persistent voicelessness just isn't something you're likely to encounter. Calling this kind of discussion "internet wank over minority politics" is exactly the kind of attitude that can be so hurtful.
As for dismissing the entire debate on the basis of its early stages - well, that's the Scalzi error (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/08/to-the-pathetic-toad-of-a-person-trying-to-use-my-site-to-settle-a-livejournal-score/), and even Scalzi - who's a braying ass of the highest order a lot of the time, in my view - managed to recover (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/11/walking-myself-back/) from that one.
And even if you disregard the above, which I hope you don't, because I think that it's important to acknowledge how important just speaking and being heard and recognised is to people often denied that - genuinely good things (http://popelizbet.livejournal.com/60703.html) have, in fact, come out of this.
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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"Discussions like this matter even if nothing major comes out of it, because for people who are customarily silenced, for whatever reason, it can be a wonderful thing just to speak, and be heard, by anyone at all." Absolutely. However, the prominent speakers in the RaceFail discussion are, within that community of discussion, more or less the opposite of silenced voices. Is it really a "talking cure" for them? As for the Scalzi Error (is that community terminology?), you could say that I resemble him in my feelings -- perhaps right down to the "braying ass" bit. His words, "complete waste of time", I think I've already used. In his recovery / backdown post, it's not as if he walks away from that assessment: "The discussion was a big fat mess, and I still wish it had been better all the way around." I agree with this remark, based on what I have read. And I did at one point spend over a day sitting on LJ reading the arguments, when I was off work after we returned to Perth. Now I feel rather like someone who's put down an absolutely terrible novel after the first two hundred pages, said to a few people "Man that book was crap! I couldn't even bring myself to finish it!", only to be told that I'm jumping the gun because the last couple of chapters were honestly quite brilliantly executed.
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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Heh, Scalzi Error isn't community terminology, that I'm aware of, just my own. The thing is, you can wish that the discussion had gone better - I think everyone does, because an awful lot of it was frustrating battles to keep the white editors and writers (and their spouses) from derailing the conversation, and a lot of it ended up being about derailment and the silencing of disparate viewpoints, instead of being about the ways of representation in fiction. Most of the prominent speakers in the RaceFail discussion aren't "the opposite of silenced voices"; the community was the broader area of sf/f print fandom, including involvement of professional writers, and the degree to which non-white people are unrepresented in that community is no more apparent than in the way that some major participants (K. Cramer being the worst for this, I think, but by no means the only one) declared that most of the non-white participants didn't exist. They flat-out said that the many, many people involved, people speaking out about their experiences, about feeling invisible and alienated, were just sockpuppets of white trolls. And it did bring about some talking cure, in some areas. A lot of people became aware of the whitewashed nature of sf/f, including data points like the fact that books with Asian heroes won't get published because they "won't sell"; a lot of people got a lot of relief from realising their experiences were shared, and it brought about an active conceptual shift for some writers and even at least one publisher to make a point of trying to be inclusive. Even the new existence of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif) verb_noire, a small press that's starting up with the deliberate goal of publishing work that features non-white, non-straight heroes, gives people hope and encouragement and joy and validation. (Note: They'll accept work from anyone - but their subject matter is specific.) I think a better analogy might perhaps be an anthology, or a book series. I hesitate to suggest it's more like tossing aside Lord of the Rings because you found the opening section in the Shire boring, because the whole Sam and Frodo Trek Through Mordor plotline is lethally dull, but then again, there was a lot of crap later that just sucked, so maybe the analogy holds. Hopefully, so will the part where it goes on to spawn a massive, overall-positive shift in the nature of the genre.
| From: | (Anonymous) |
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April 6th, 2009 05:42 am (UTC) |
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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Well, since I'm already here...
I'd say that ataxi's analogy is more like if someone who dislikes Lord of the Rings decides that everyone who does like the book must be an idiot. Because if he doesn't find it interesting, it must be a bad book.
Then again, I think that the only way to deal with racism (or sexism, or homophobia) is to talk about it. As loudly and as frequently as possible. Just because you (general you, of course) may not want to hear someone say, "I'm angry," doesn't mean that it shouldn't be said, or that the act of saying it has no value.
-Amanda (who, sadly, has a lot more to say)
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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*laughs for reasons you cannot know*
I love him dearly, but he is fully capable of declaring that a book he dislikes is crap even if other people like it, and saying, as an act of rhetorical hyperbole, that anyone who does like it is an idiot.
Then again, I'm capable of the same thing, and may have gone to further rhetorical extremes against The da Vinci Code. But - and the analogy still stands - making that statement in the company of friends doesn't necessarily mean total sincerity. That doesn't mean someone nearby won't be offended by it or that they'd be wrong to be offended, even though he and his intended audience would know he was kidding... analogies can be fun.
(Also, seriously, this LJ is a wildlife sanctuary for teal deer. Say as much as you want.)
| From: | (Anonymous) |
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April 6th, 2009 06:16 am (UTC) |
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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You're his friend so obviously you know him better than I do, but this didn't sound like rhetorical hyperbole to me.
There's a difference between saying, "How could anyone like Lord of the Rings? Nothing happens for the first two hundred pages," and "How could anyone like Lord of the Rings? Obviously they're too stupid to understand what good writing is." The first example is about the book, while the second is about the readers. Most of Ataxi's comments have been focused on the people involved in Racefail, usually on their negative motives, rather than on its actual content. As a general rule, I don't like sweeping generalizations, especially when they're used to dismiss a huge, months long series of discussions.
- Amanda (this has been fun, but I'm going to bed now)
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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Indeed, but it's still rhetorical hyperbole, it's just a lot more hyperbolic and a lot less well-considered. As he's now realised and acknowledged, his sentiments were ill-considered.
This is the line one has to tread, and Certain People (hi, Elizabeth Bear) didn't even realise was there: it's possible to love your friends, and defend their basic good nature to others, and, in spaces you control, guard rigidly the terms in which people confront them about sub-optimal behaviour, without defending or endorsing the behaviour itself.
There was a strong thread of cliquish behaviour from the EBear And Friends side of RaceFail in which any criticism, on any basis, of any one of their in-group was savagely retaliated against. This causes issues.
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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To be honest I don't think I have yet gotten around to backing off as far as I probably should. Oh well.
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| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) alias_sqbr |
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April 6th, 2009 06:48 am (UTC) |
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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Right. What follows is going to look very much like a slam. However, I want you to know that it is not a slam of you. I am taking a dim view of several things today, and I take a dim view of some of the things you have just said, but I am not questioning you, your worthiness, your motivations, or your intelligence. I am going to get about as far as asking you a rhetorical question, which I hope will not give more offence than is warranted in a robust, but essentially courteous conversation about politics. That having been said, I now apologise in advance for the vigour of the comments which follow (this comment is prefatory -- they have, of course, already been typed and I'm not in a self-censorious mood).
Is that..a disclaimer? :D
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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Yeah, I know. But look, it needed one didn't it? But fair play, I'm beginning to understand why you're so nice about these things now!
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| From: | alias_sqbr |
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April 7th, 2009 06:49 am (UTC) |
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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Excuse me, I need to take a moment to be unbearably smug.
HA! I was right all along! See, people should just listen to me to start with! WHEN WILL YOU ALL LEARN?!
*cough*
But yes, with stuff like this where feelings are high and so many people are arguing in bad faith etc you really can't assume people will figure out what you mean and give the benefit of the doubt.
Of course that doesn't mean that long disclaimered tl;dr is always a good alternative, but the concept of sometimes not saying anything at all is rather against my nature and I'm still working on it :)
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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Well, it seems to me one has a few alternatives. Two of them are to be nice, polite and somewhat tentative (according to your fashion), and to simply be unbearably correct and defensible about everything (in which case it doesn't matter so much if one is nice). And there's the spectrum in between, and there's many other factors. But when is neither nice, nor particularly right (as in my case yesterday), there's a blood in the water effect.
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| From: | alias_sqbr |
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April 7th, 2009 11:03 am (UTC) |
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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simply be unbearably correct and defensible about everything
Nice work if you can get it :D
But that's the thing: even if you're correct you also have to be unambiguous, because if there's another interpretation of your words which is incorrect (or racist or whatever) people will often interpret you (or at least me :/) that way, and if they don't know you (and your tendency to be almost-but-not-quite always right :)) it's entirely reasonable for them to do so.
Of course unambiguous is not necessarily the same as nice.
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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*laughs*
I'd say you win the internet, but I suspect you only win that fraction of the internet that reads both of our journals closely. ;)
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| From: | alias_sqbr |
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April 7th, 2009 11:02 am (UTC) |
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Re: ... deep breath ...
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I shall keep this small section of internet tubing as a momento for always :)
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