6:09am July 6, 2014

On marginalization and being a jerk

amorpha-system:

(Note: “Being a jerk” here refers to *really* being a jerk, not jumping to accuse people who have trouble understandng the social expectations of a community of “blaming it on their autism” or whatever.)

I really loathe the line of thinking that goes “You cannot question it if someone from an oppressed group criticizes you. If they say you are being prejudiced or *ist, then you are being *ist.”

I’m sure there are lots of people who will immediately jump to conclusions about why one would write a thing like this, and have so much animosity towards the idea. Most of them are probably wrong.

The reason we hate the idea is because we have been jerks in the past, and we loathe the idea that we should get a free pass for being jerks simply because we’re members of several oppressed groups, that our oppressed status instantly makes any mean, rude, insulting comments we may have made to anyone outside of those groups a-okay.

“I NEED TO HAVE MY FEELINGS” was an all-too-common line used by a number of people who abused us in the past. It’s kind of curious how “feelings” are unacceptable if someone feels attacked, but “feelings” suddenly become completely above reproach if those feelings involve flinging rage, insults and verbal abuse towards as many people as you can find. It’s not just above reproach, it’s glorified. Rage is practically a religion in some parts of the SJ community, and if you happen to say that rage is not the immediate reaction you have to every instance of oppression, or that you find stuff like “die cishet scum” to be incredibly noxious and destructive to intercommunity dialogue— well, you’re considered suspect *at best.* Someone not wholeheartedly embracing “die cishet scum”? They’re probably A CISHET INFILTRATOR IN OUR COMMUNITY!

There are a lot of people whom we slipped out of communication with long ago, and sometimes we still obsess over the idea of tracking them down and telling them “I’m sorry for that thing I said to you in 2005. It was rude, assholeish, and uncalled for.”

There were a lot of jerkish things we said, in the past, that had entirely to do with our own selfishness, our own hangups, our own unwillingness to admit that abuse had affected us. The idea that we should be let off the hook for being a jerk because “you’re oppressed, and oppressed people are always right! It was a legitimate expression of your anger at being oppressed!” just… fills us with rage and makes us want to shake people, except we worry they would just stare blankly at us like they were begging for more “correction.” (At which point we kind of think that the people who are very deeply invested in “being corrected” may have some kind of serious masochism thing going on.) We acted like jerks to people. WE get to decide whether it was right or wrong. If you say “it was always right because you were oppressed,” then you are, ironically, oppressing *us* in a way by taking the power to decide away from us and giving it to yourself. Let us decide if we were jerks and should apologize for it.

I can’t name a lot of things off the top of my head right now. I remember we could be very underhandedly snarky to people who seemed like they were into what we called “survivorfluffy stuff.” Some of it was also encouraged by friends who thought taking underhanded jabs at people was hilarious, but even so, it was still our responsibility. I remember we got into a few fights with people who said they had bipolar disorder and mentioned a bunch of things we also experienced, and then they’d suggest we should get evaluated for bipolar disorder if we said we experienced them too. The truth is, we have had some very extreme mood shifts in the past that made our life hell at times, and we did consider trying mood stabilizers at various points just to make it all stop. But after reading about the side effects many people described, we decided that using them would take a lot of what what was “us” away from us, and did a sort of cost-benefit analysis and decided there had to be some other way. We did eventually get lucky in that we found something which took the edge off the worst of our mood swings, that wasn’t a mood stabilizer. But we’re… considerably more charitable now towards people who do that cost-benefit analysis and decide that the benefits outweigh the negative effects.

…Anyway, general gist of all this: Don’t tell us that we can’t be wrong, can’t be a jerk, or are always right if we say someone is oppressing us. We can be as wrong as anyone. I can’t stand being *encouraged* to abdicate responsibility for treating people like crap, and if this is “justice,” it’s a “justice” I won’t be part of.

-julian

This is very true, and very well put (even if the use of the imperial we is a bit odd).

Being an ass cannot end assinine behavior; it only makes there be one more ass in the house.