11:29am August 7, 2013

➸ Trying to find the right words: warlocksexalways: Trying to find the right words: analyzing privilege...

warlocksexalways:

Trying to find the right words: analyzing privilege misses the point sometimes

youneedacat:

josiahd:

because I think the important thing is that people should be treated like people.

And there’s all kinds of common ways women get treated horribly.

And all…

There’s something else I didn’t have the space to write about, but it’s possibly one of the worst things that goes along with this line of thinking.

It’s where somehow… not sure how it works… but it seems to encourage people to splinter into tinier and tinier groups. And to not work together as much with people who don’t get their oppression in the very intimate way that only people with that oppression get it. Which results in ever smaller categories.

And sometimes instead of doing what they’re intended to do, calls for “intersectionality” make that worse, not better. Because now it’s not just that only lesbians can understand what I go through, it’s disabled white nongendered poor/mixed class bio female nearly middle aged non-Christian lesbians. I mean that’s an exaggeration, but I see that happening all the time. I talked to an autistic guy who said he was only comfortable around working class autistic people (and could somehow tell who they were just by interacting with them). And somehow instead of just trying to understand how different kinds connect together, it becomes “sticking to an ever narrower definition of my kind because nobody else gets it like we do”.

I actually see a weird connection here to an earlier post I made. About little confusing activism (activities that make change) with activities that make you feel good and feel as I’d you’re changing something.

So one thing that happens is venting becomes activism even in situations where it’s counterproductive. And then dividing up into tinier and tinier groups becomes activism because it’s comfortable, even when it’s counterproductive.

And it just hit me… I have a friend who lived through COINTELPRO, and she said those two things entered activist communities at the time:

1. The idea that activists are always angry and that venting your rage at people is the same thing as “being an activist”.

2. The splintering of activist communities into smaller and smaller groups, that distrusted one another.

Which makes me wonder whether COINTELPRO accomplished this by playing on what is comfortable for people. Getting people to do what feels comfortable and easy rather than what is effective.

And I strongly suspect that misuses of the “privilege/oppression” tool, played into that really intensely. Overusing that concept makes it easy to stick to your own oppressed group or better yet combination of groups, and mistrusting outsiders so much that you stay in that group, isolated and less effective.

And it’s not that the mistrust isn’t earned. It’s that relying so much on that mistrust to guide your decisions, destroys your effectiveness. And to me a lot of what is right and wrong here, is about what works. And I don’t think splintering into ever smaller identity groups and substituting venting for real activism… that doesn’t work for oppressed people, it’s not effective. The only people that helps are those with all the power already. It does their job for them.

Doing things that actually work is less comfortable. And it also goes against the grain of everything activists have been taught to be by a government that wanted to render us ineffective.

And I feel like I shouldn’t need a disclaimer. But I’m not saying privilege isn’t real. I’m not saying anger is always wrong. I’m not saying analyzing how different oppression connect is wrong. I’m saying all these things are being dealt with in wrong (ineffective) ways, that all play into the hands of those with the power. And that from the stories I’ve heard, this may be fully intentional on the part of those with power.

Notes: