as small as a world and as large as alone

2:24pm July 14, 2014

madeofpatterns:

youneedacat:

in-alptraum-verloren:

So, listening to my morning radio program, one of the hosts made a really insightful remark:

“If you’re going to have a discussion, you must be willing to let people be wrong.”

Now, I like the spirit of this line, even if I don’t agree with the words (mostly because there are some discussions where both sides can be right, or even both sides can be wrong).  You have to be willing to let people say things you don’t agree with if you want to discuss something, you have to be willing to let people say things that might offend you.

Otherwise all you do is rehash the same points time and again, and you’re stuck in the echo chamber once again.

This is a huge part of what’s wrong with a lot of discussions on tumblr.  People aren’t allowed to be wrong.  And what’s wrong and right is determined in a really screwed-up way to begin with — so that people can be completely wrong about something, and yet be considered “right” by everyone who “matters”.  And someone can be right but be considered “wrong”.

I’ve been meaning to write about some things related to this, but it’s hard to even get the words out because there’s so much bullshit in the way.

I’ve been trying too. It’s hard.

I’ve been reading an anthology by trans people and it’s brought home how much the tumblr trans community is not representative and tries to control – really hard – people’s identities and the way people talk about those identities, because it’s got everyone convinced that if anyone has certain experiences then those experiences will somehow negate the experiences of other trans people.  Instead of there just being a diversity of experiences.  What I’ve seen in the book is absolutely the way trans people I talk to in the offline world talk about themselves – incredibly varied and diverse and not really offended by each other’s diversity.  But on here it’s like the moment you make a really simple statement about yourself, you can get jumped on by people who are almost primed to assume the worst about what you mean by it.  Like they want you to fuck up.  And they want a uniformity of trans experience that will never, never exist no matter how hard they try to duct tape everyone’s mouths shut.

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