as small as a world and as large as alone, lichgem: youneedacat: lichgem: It is...

5:39pm September 5, 2014

youneedacat:

lichgem:

It is actually really fucking necessary to examine how concepts and ideas are being applied in your communities

And to not conflate every single criticism as being an attempt to overthrow core issues like the fact privilege exists

I am so tired of people responding to any kind of dissent or analysis with 101-type bullshit as if the people making the criticisms just need to be educated and then they’ll understand that every single instance of people using the concept of privilege is completely right and valid, no matter what

There is a context behind that comic, it’s not just run-of-the-mill anti-SJ stuff, and people are going to act like the creator is just trying to find a sneaky way to get out of acknowledging their privilege

People have set up the argument so that any time you try to say “but I do face oppression” they always think that statement is supposed to negate “I do have privilege,” so that there’s literally nothing you can actually say about your life or your struggles without having it warped into “I refuse to acknowledge my privilege”

If fighting oppression was all about acknowledging privilege when would we have time to identify concrete needs? When would we have time to get together and find solidarity in our experiences? People are allowed to talk about their own oppression without being constantly jumped on about their privilege. Not every conversation has to cover every single point at all times or else it’s “privilege-denying.”

I don’t know the exact context you’re talking about (like what comic), but I’ve seen all this before too.

I’ve also been accused of being anti-SJ. I’m not anti-SJ. I’m just not SJ. There’s a huge difference.

Anti-SJ people are by and large two kinds of people:

1. People who don’t want to acknowledge their own privilege, and so engage in everything from pseudo-intellectual wankery to stupid jokes to try to undermine everything “SJ”. (And to them, even genuine social justice stuff is “SJ”. Anything dealing with oppression is “SJ”.)

2. People who are really SJ, became disillusioned with the SJ community, but didn’t lose the bad tendencies of SJ. So they turn around and use all their worst SJ traits on the SJ community itself. Or as a friend put it, it’s like there’s this monster (SJ) that keeps looking for more and more things to devour. And after awhile there’s nothing more to devour. So it turns around (becomes “anti-SJ”) and devours itself (attacks the “SJ community”).

Then, there’s a small number of people who’ve joined the anti-SJ community because they really are thoughtful and disturbed by what they see happening in the SJ community, but haven’t yet seen that the anti-SJ community is just the flipside of the SJ community, nothing better, no less destructive. Just as there is an equally small minority of people in the SJ community who are not themselves behaving destructively, but haven’t yet worked out how destructive the SJ community is, and how it’s basically social justice with the ocial and ustice removed. I think those two small minorities would actually get along really really well if brought together outside either community.

For more fun, both the SJ and anti-SJ community will insist that their own community doesn’t exist but the other community does. ”There’s no such thing as the SJ community, that’s just what anti-SJ people say.” “There’s no such thing as the anti-SJ community, that’s just what SJ people say.” This makes it impossible to talk about the problem, by denying the existence of the communities the problems are taking place in.

Sorry, all that is just background information.

I really don’t like the impossibility of talking about any of this without being accused of being anti-SJ. It’s like you’re not allowed to say “I’m neither.” You’re not allowed to say “I’m not SJ and I’m not anti-SJ, I’m just me.” You have to be one or the other. And if you’re not one, you must be the other. Have to be. Especially if you criticize one. (They conveniently ignore if you criticize both.)

I honestly think the SJ community is dangerous. Incredibly, incredibly dangerous. Because it’s the kind of community that is always looking for more and more people and things to denounce. Which seems on the surface like this annoying but benign Internet thing, but imagine if they ever got actual power. They’d start off by denouncing the people who were doing actual wrong. Then they’d denounce people who supported the people who were doing actual wrong. Then they’d denounce people closer and closer to their own inner circle until there were fewer and fewer people left. History has seen this play out over and over again, and the SJ community fits the bill exactly. I do not want to be around anywhere where they gain actual power.

And don’t anyone dare tell me I don’t care about social justice, that I’m just too privileged to understand, or any of that bullshit. I believe as I do because I care too much, not because I care too little. And I know that the SJ community has the capacity to become incredibly oppressive if it ever gained real political power.

As for the anti-SJ community, that’s mostly bullshit too, and nothing I want anything to do with. Half of it is just SJ turned in on itself, and the other half is privileged people trying to deny their privilege by ridiculing SJ.

But there’s also. This huge amount of other people. In fact, the majority of people on this planet. Including the majority of people concerned with actual, real life, social justice. Who are not SJ. And who are not anti-SJ. We’re just people who give a shit about the world and are trying to do something about it. And that’s where you will find me, and most of my friends, always. Because there’s a big wide world outside the echo chambers.

Before I started following you, I don’t think I ever saw people talking like you do: Where the point of the conversation is to share an experience, and to explore it, and to listen to other people who had similar experiences, or the ways theirs have been different. And it’s about communication and treating people like people.

Ideally, that was what the rule “if you don’t experience that oppression, you have to listen” was created for, to get people to realize that there are important things they can’t possibly know about the world without listening to the people who live it. But that just got turned into a weapon, and people started going, “No, YOU sit down and shut up.”

And in the beginning that rule was actually really helpful to me. Because it did for me what it was supposed to do- it got me to stop trying to fit everything other people were going through into my own limited frame of reference, because it made me realize just HOW limited that frame of reference was. And I’d hear people say things and go, holy shit, I had no idea that happened, much less that it was so common.

But then somewhere along the way I stopped being able to think or feel or engage with anything I was reading, and just started automatically reblogging things, and walking on eggshells all the time.

I don’t know if this is true for other people, but there are things that happen in my head that completely block off my ability to feel. Being terrified of making mistakes left no room for any real sympathy or compassion for other people- mostly it just made me focus on myself, on my guilt, on how hard I was trying not to step on any toes. And then people would say ‘guilt is not a useful reaction,’ but with my ability to think and feel freely cut off, it was the only possible reaction I had left. And I think it’s really insidious, the sheer amount of emotional demands that are placed on people. Don’t feel this, feel THIS. Follow these instructions but don’t have any of the normal human reactions you would have, don’t try to work through things or process them, don’t feel, just DO.

So, for a long stretch of time, my engagement with social justice was uncritically hitting reblog a lot, and repeating the same arguments by rote and yelling needlessly about everything I saw or read.