as small as a world and as large as alone

8:17am July 16, 2014

noahpoststhings:

youneedacat:

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.

Yo, the exact same thing can be said of basically every community on tumblr, and tbh…like…are you trans? Are you involved with trans activism and stuff? This was pretty rude to just….focus on trans people and blanket statement (esp when the reality of the matter is that the community is massively fragmented and consists of basically several mini-communities). Like I don’t want to assume you meant it rudely, but this feels kinda rude, esp if you are a cis person (idk if you are) because your words will carry an extra kind of klout and might have unintended knock on effects (which is part of why oppressed groups tend to ask allies to be careful/avoid blanket statements/judgements about them, even if meant as genuinely and well intentioned as possible they’re still very easy to turn against folk). Also, I have met a huge variety of trans folk on and odd the internet and most of those I’ve met on the internet have been a lot more accepting, and most of those off have been a lot more weird/define it as a single thing? Tumblr people just tend to have more language to talk about stuff because, well, it’s a place people go to look at stuff and to talk.

Yes, I’m genderless, and I’ve had over ten years of involvement in online and offline trans communities.  I singled it out because this is what I’m experiencing right now and I refuse to apologize for that.  I’m glad you’ve had a good experience on tumblr.  Your experiences probably fit the tumblr party lines fairly well, so you probably haven’t encountered the backlash that can happen when your experiences bounce up wrong against the ideology of the tumblr echo chambers.  Mine don’t, and neither do a lot of people’s I’ve met in the offline world.  I tend to see more variation offline among regular people, and less attempts to force everyone to experience everything in One Single Way Or Else.   Not that the offline communities were perfect, but at least people could say things like “I used to be female and now I’m male” without offending someone who wants every single trans man to feel that they’ve never had a shred of femaleness, just as an example.  Or without being patronized and treated like a stupid person who has to be brought up to speed on all the latest language and ideology for their own good.  Yes, this happens with a lot of other communities.  Rest assured I spend plenty of time singling those communities out as well.

But your reaction is part of the problem.  According to you, it’s a bad thing for me to even mention the trans community, because that makes it look bad.  (I think, when it looks bad, it makes itself look bad, but that’s just me.)  This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to talk about a problem only to have someone attempt to tell me that either talking about the problem is bad, or that the way I talk about the problem isn’t appropriate, or something else along those lines.  (The worst are the ones who actually sit there and try to dismantle your ability to talk about it at all – “there’s no academic jargon here, just people talking about our lives, don’t call it jargon”, is something cognitively disabled people hear a lot when we complain about the inaccessibility of common conversations on tumblr due to academic jargon.  At one point I had to make a list of the academic jargon I saw, just to prove it was real.  And the whole point of saying there was no jargon, was to make it impossible to talk about the problem in the first place.)  

I’m glad you’ve had a better experience on tumblr than offline.  That hasn’t been my experience or the experience of most of my trans friends.  I’ve also run into similar problems in other tumblr communities.  And I do write about those.  But given that right then I was reading something that made me think about the trans community, I wrote about that.  And I refuse to apologize for writing about what I’m thinking about.  If the trans community on tumblr is so good, then one post by me won’t make any difference (it won’t make much difference even if it’s not so good).  And also I’m autistic, we (usually) tend to find it easier to talk in specific instances than vague generalities, and I also refuse to force my mind to talk in vague generalized abstractions just so people will be more comfortable.  (Speaking of which, I just wrote a much longer post critiquing elements of the autistic community than anything I’ve ever written about the trans community.  So much for singling out trans people.)

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