No, really, that's not the point.

[jlh]

Lesson learned: never put anything that isn't about race in a race entry.

I mostly try to turn rage and resentment into action, because to be honest I'm not very good at being angry. A post by a man about sexism in comics was put up on metafandom late last week and when I read it I thought it was the most amazing statement of male privilege I'd seen in a good while. I encourage you to read it, though it's a bit long. One thing the poster suggests is that the women who are upset about sexism in comics need to stop making emotional appeals and be more rational (don't you love that?) and not threaten his freedom of speech.

If you get where I'm going here, you get a gold star. I've seen two complaints about the d_d mess: that the request to drop "miscegenation" violated freedom of speech, and that if witchqueen had only been nicer then the d_d writers and mods that she emailed would have taken her more seriously.

On the first: She was asking for a word to match the definition that was being used. She didn't say that people shouldn't write about interracial sex as a kink. As I've said, it might have been interesting to get fic that actually grappled with the word miscegenation in the context of the wizarding world. No one is saying you can't have your hot witch on centaur hot lovin'. Hell, I write an interracial couple myself. I'm not even seeing the suppression of speech, only the request that the speech be used correctly. So seriously, stay away from me with your freedom of speech bullshit.

Let me put it this way: You can call me the "n-word" all you want, as long as you understand that I won't like it, and that I might want to kick you in the teeth. But I'm not looking for a law or a speech policy to keep you from saying it. You can use the word miscegenation, too—I use it in my class—but you must know what it means.

Okay, the part about the tone. It's been my policy on this journal to never criticize how someone decides to defend themselves against discrimination. It isn't my job to be nice and understanding if you are being racist or sexist or homophobic. The racist or sexist or homophobic speech has already, by its very nature, lowered the tone of the dialog. Now, I can choose to rise above that, but I can also choose to call you on your shit without being particularly nice about it.

I usually do choose to rise above that, because I have a lot of non-PoC folks in my life whom I adore, and also because as I said above, I don't like walking around being angry all the time. Now, if calling you on your shit makes you feel bad, that isn't because I was mean, but because you're embarrassed and maybe a little ashamed, and that makes you defensive, and how dare I call you on your white privilege. To which I reply, too bad. If I have to live with this shit, so do you.

Which is all to say, if you go back and read witchqueen's original email in the cold light of day, you'll see that it isn't bitchy, or angry in tone. It's just firm and serious and not full of the sort of "if it isn't a bother" language that we expect from women. I was most impressed with bethbethbeth's realization that if the issue had been sexism, she wouldn't have been worried about zvi's anger or tone.

Feminists who came before us have done a lot of work to reclaim female anger and empowerment, such that now we say "bitch" like it's a good thing, and I think that's fantastic. Even if it isn't my preferred method of discourse, I want it to exist. But angry black folks are still scary within our culture, even though they don't have the power, either. Let's try to reclaim that ground, too.