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.

Comments

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

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.

God, seriously.

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.

YES. I have a muddled and vaguely incoherent list of things I wanted to say r.e. the d_d thing, and that's one of them.

I mean, you know, I can totally understand that reaction: my knee-jerk reaction to being called on anything which leaves me embarassed by my own actions is frequently to get defensive. It's not a good thing, and maybe one day I'll figure out how to take a breath and think before trying to shout people down. But thanks to many clashes of that sort with my mother as a kid, and with my husband since I got married, at least I do know how to come back and say "I was wrong, I wasn't thinking about what I was saying, and I am sorry for hurting you and then yelling at you for being hurt."

It's not much, but on the other hand, it's better, in my opinion, than clinging so hard to pride that I stay entrenched in wrong ideas and misunderstandings. I just...these people who get their hackles up about being called on their shit, and then refuse to back down when it's pretty obvious they were in the wrong - gah. People, it's OKAY to admit you were a fuckwad and then apologize for it; so long as you don't turn right around and be a fuckwad again, thus proving you didn't mean the apology, admitting you were wrong does not make you a lesser person at all.

On the other hand, if someone wants to tear you a new one for doing or saying something hurtful and offensive? Suck it up. Aggressive reactions are what happen when people are stung, whether physically, psychologically or emotionally, and it's certainly not up to them to apologize for such a natural reaction.

[meezergal.livejournal.com]

The man who wrote about sexism--I can't describe how I feel about him. For one thing, I'm actually physically nauseated, right now. I couldn't read the rape thing, as someone who was molested as a teen.

What an asshole. And that's stating it mildly.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Well, he is? But I didn't put the link in to talk about him or about sexism in comics, which is a subject I don't know a ton about, to be honest. I put it in so people could see that getting angry about the tone of a protest is a signifier of privilege, something that for many women who are not PoC can be more easily seen with a man talking about women than with someone of racial privilege talking about a PoC.

Can you see that parallel? Because that was what I was getting to, was the race angle of that. And while I understand that you are very upset wtih this guy, and I think he's a huge jerk, the post itself was about race so I sort of want to focus the conversation on that. No disrespect meant, though! But hopefully by seeing what an asshole that guy is you can see why saying that someone talking about racism should be "nice" is the same exact thing. That is, if you hadn't already understood that, which you may well have.

Thanks for commenting!

[wednesdayschild.livejournal.com]

I thought that witchqueen's email was very polite, and did not understand the daily_deviant mods' response at all.

I will be honest: I had no idea before this of the actual connotations of 'miscegenation'--I had barely encountered the word at all previously, and just assumed it was the 'scientific' version of 'interracial', if you see what I mean. I was horrified when I discovered the connotations, because, wow. It's mind-blowing in a purely bad way. That people thought like that--or sometimes, STILL think like that--is shocking and unfathomable. I completely understand why witchqueen wrote to the mods of daily_deviant.

I also don't think that 'freedom of speech' means what these people complaining seem to think it means.

It can be hard to come to terms with the fact that you have privilege--I know that. It is difficult to look at yourself and think, 'Yes, I got this, or this happened, because of something that is not a virtue but an incidental fact.' I also think it can be harder to accept privilege related to race, because if you accept that you have white privilege, surely that means that you're being accused of racism, and of course you aren't racist! You have black or asian friends! How dare you be accused like that?

But it's not an accusation: it is a fact. I have privilege of several types, and being confronted with new types of privilege (most recently, 'old boys network'-style things while working in Cambridge) has made it easier to recognise the other forms of privilege that I have. Being white, middle-class and Cambridge-educated does not make me a bad person--but it does make me privileged. It's not nice to realise you get opportunities that other people will never get for things that have nothing to do with their personality or skills or knowledge. Of course it should make you uncomfortable. It does make me uncomfortable. But surely that's necessary, to make sure that I don't perpetuate the problem? Better that I am embarrassed and ashamed than that I get defensive and ignore it--or even make it worse. So it's uncomfortable for me, but that's MY problem, not YOUR problem. And, please, if I am an idiot about race at all, point it out to me, and let me know, because I hate to think that my ignorance might hurt my friends.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It seems like it should be obvious, and yet it never is. First, the whole "you're censoring me" when a person says any version of "you need to understand what you're saying and what's being heard."

In discussions on this subject I've read in fandom--and also on things like in the post you linked to--you can really see *why* people would get frustrated and angry--though again, that doesn't mean that any time somebody is firm they're being angry and so lets focus on that. It's really hard to get through a complacency. I mean, how many times have people basically suggested that the only reason race is a problem is because some PoC has brought it into the conversation at all and if, as Stephen Colbert says, they would just stop talking about it it would go away. There's a lot of people often telling others that something is "their problem" just because the other person doesn't much care. Either by saying they're creating a problem where there is none, or by suggesting that the way to make something like racism end is to just decide not to let people make you feel discriminated against.

If you've got two people, and one of them wants to talk about and deal with an issue, and the other person just doesn't, that doesn't make the first person a trouble-maker.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I feel the same when a good friend calls me on some moment of heterosexism! Or the other day I was reading an excellent post that I must link to about life in a wheelchair and the things you have to think about that I don't because I'm able-bodied, and you know, that sobered me right up. It's a total natural reaction.

However, we are also not six years old, and we can try to bite back our first reactions to things, hello. I certainly try, at least. I don't always get there, but I try!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean, I definitely have privilege from going to Harvard-Radcliffe, and from being able-bodied, and even from being relatively attractive, and also of course from mostly identifying as straight. I can't think of many who don't have privilege somewhere along the line. In fact, one of the reasons there's an ongoing misogyny problem in the black community is that black men want to take advantage of one of the few privileges they do have.

I have never ever seen you be an idiot and if I ever did I would be totally nice because you are not, like, a careless person, which is really where it all comes from I think.

Anyway, everyone gets defensive! I get defensive when people call me on education or able bodied or other things. And then I take a deep breath and a step back and get calm and then I can see what's going on. So don't feel badly for that, because that's normal. It's the acting on it—I mean, we're not six—that gets people into trouble.

Thanks SO MUCH for commenting!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

If you've got two people, and one of them wants to talk about and deal with an issue, and the other person just doesn't, that doesn't make the first person a trouble-maker

So. Very. True.

Well, and clearly that it is only black folk's responsibility to end racism because only they are affected by it, both sides of which aren't true at all. And a lot of the conversation around zvi's language noted that when you do say something nicely you're often ignored.

[elements.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm glad I was mostly offline for three weeks and missed this wank. Just reading the aftershocks is getting my blood boiling.