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7:43pm August 6, 2012

➸ Musings of Ade: and also

youneedacat:

josiahd:

It is possible for someone who is * to think something is *ist and be wrong.

Which means that someone who is told by a * that something they’re doing is *ist has the evaluate whether it’s true and act accordingly.

It does *not* mean that they should uncritically…

I am not cognitively up to par at the moment. So I may not be able to articulate what I mean.

But I don’t think it’s just a problem between the definition of *ism as active hatred and the definition of *ism as harmful, with people with privilege choosing the first definition and people without choosing the second. I know that’s a simplified way to say it but as I said I’m not able to go in depth as much as I want.

The reason I don’t think so is because I’d already taken that distinction into account when I started discussing this. So for me at least it seems to be a different problem. As in a problem coming from a completely different direction.

I really honestly mean that the whole system where any person subject to an oppression gets to decide what is and isn’t *ist, and any person with privilege in that area shouldn’t argue, is broken on some level I can’t articulate very well. And that goes for either of the two definitions of *ism out there, which is one reason I’m pretty sure that’s not the problem at all. It’s certainly a source of confusion between people with and without a particular area of privilege, but it’s not the source of the problem here.

I think the problem is that this belief presumes that either oppressed people have perfect insight, or that we have insight so good so much of the time, especially compared to privileged people, that it’s better to just assume we know what we are talking about.

Problem is we don’t.

Some kinds of privileged people would argue that we don’t because we are acting from an idea of *ism different from flagrant hatred. And they would be mostly wrong. And that’s not the problem on trying to talk about.

I’m trying to talk about the fact that oppressed people are way too fallible in way too many directions for this strategy (“we are right when we say something is *ist, listen to us because we live with this oppression and know it very well”) to work. Regardless of what definition of *ism you’re working from. It’s too bad because I can see why this way of doing things was necessary in the first place.

Sorry for talking in circles. Even after sleep I feel sleep deprived.