magistrate: The arc of the Earth in dark space. (Default)
Grah, I'm angry today.

I'm angry because insurance companies consider domestic violence a pre-existing condition (and thus ground for exclusion from coverage), I'm angry because privilege is invisible and people have to lie with bigotry from people they like and love.

I'm angry because a popular show I didn't particularly care about sucks balls when it comes to racial issues and a popular show I actually enjoy is unconsciously knee-deep in racial and gender issues.

I'm angry because calling a good female athlete "secretly a man" or a transsexual or a hermaphrodite is perfectly acceptable and grounds for humiliating them or ruining their careers.

I'm angry because we live in a broken society, and the people with the most power and perhaps the most responsibilty to change that society don't see any need to change it.

But most of all, I'm angry because I don't feel able to transmute that anger into something productive, something reformative. I need to teach myself how to write again, without worrying overmuch about the end product before I get to the end. I need to learn how to harness rage in a way which retains its power and gives it direction.

I need to learn how to sing for our lives.
magistrate: The arc of the Earth in dark space. (Default)
Occasionally, people – people I know, like and respect, which makes this sting all the more – will assert something along the lines of "Because I'm a member of $x_marginalized_group, I know how members of $y_marginalized_group feel." Or perhaps "I've been discriminated against. I know what $person_of_different_group feels." Or sometimes, "Discrimination is discrimination," with the implications that varieties within discrimination are impossible or negligible.

This is a very nice statement of commonalities and how all people should be able to respect and acknowledge the experiences of all other people, I'm sure.

But I disagree.

Prejudice, advantage, discrimination – these things are like any other aspect of human interaction (fraternity, estrangement, cohabitation, love) in that no one's experiences define the experiences of others. There are similarities, certainly, but just as certainly, there are differences.

Perhaps the best way to show this is through examples. I've written up some, though bear in mind that the sets of privilege and disadvantage I'm using here are limited to a few illustrative sets – isn't meant to be an exhaustive examination of all ways in which people experience different sorts of privilege. It's only a very brief look at the way in which different parts of society treats different people differently.

For example:

If a homosexual cisgendered person walks into a public restroom, they will not have to worry about being asked to prove that they belong to the sex that bathroom is reserved for. The same cannot be said of trans persons.

If a straight person of color finds a friend/lover/sweetheart he wishes to marry, he will not be told that such a marriage is an abomination against God or that it will tear apart the society he is a part of; he will not be legally denied the right to marry that person. The same cannot be said for same-sex couples.

If a white transperson is pulled over by police in America or is in a car pulled over by police, he will not have the police officer question whether or not he can speak English. The same cannot be said for people of color.

If a cisgendered homosexual goes to get a driver's license or passport, he or she will not have to put up a legal battle to have basic demographic information such as his or her sex reflected accurately on the document. This cannot be said of transpeople.

And two more, phrased in a different way:

The gay man from an economically secure family who serves in the military and must conceal, every day and night, his sexual identity has no inherent insight into the struggles of the straight woman who lies awake at night, stressed and desperate under the knowledge that she has no idea how to secure food for herself and her children the next day.

The caucasian woman who must endure a workplace in which her co-workers look at her as a sexual object is not experiencing the same thing as the man of Middle-Eastern descent who fears being profiled and questioned any time he has to take a commercial flight.

Disadvantage is not homogenous. Discrimination is not uniform. There is no "one size fits all" experience of discrimination or disadvantage. Circumstance is so immensely important that even two people who exhibit similar sets of privilege and disadvantage may not experience discrimination in the same way – the experiences of two people of color, or two women, or two transgendered people, or two anyone cannot be considered interchangeable. A woman who is physically molested and a woman who has been constantly passed over for promotions due to her sex have not experienced the same forms of discrimination and prejudice, even when both experiences can be termed sexism.

This is not meant to devalue anyone's experiences. In, I think, the vast majority of cases, a struggle to find out who's suffered "more" in a discussion of privilege and disadvantage only sideswipes the real issue. Rather I think that in a discussion of privilege and disadvantage, parties should listen when someone says that they have experienced a certain thing in a certain way. People should listen and accord respect to what a person is trying to express, and to the distinction they felt was important enough to raise. People should never try to define another's experiences by what they themselves have experienced; nor should they assume that being a victim of one sort of prejudice makes anyone an authority on another.

Gay issues are not trans issues are not sex issues are not race issues; homophobia is not transphobia is not sexism is not racism. They have some common roots, expressions, and effects, but like apples and oranges – both fruits, of course – they are not the same.
magistrate: The arc of the Earth in dark space. (Default)
There's something I see a lot in discussion of race, of gender, of any sort of marginalized group, really – someone who isn't part of that group will come up to someone who is and say "Wow, I didn't know. Could you tell me more?" And the person they're asking will say "No."

And then it usually explodes.

I want to write out exactly what I see as going on in that situation, to the extent that I know it, to tell people why they're getting that "No." – and this is a lesson I had to learn after looking at posts by people who refused, and thinking Well, that's unreasonable, isn't it?, and really sitting down to try to understand why that refusal was happening. Why someone who was a victim of ignorance would refuse to educate others.

Yes, it's counter-intuitive. But it's not unreasonable. Here's, to the best of my current understanding, why:

Educating others is an arduous and often thankless job, especially when you're educating someone who may be skeptical of your point of view, especially when it's topic which affects you deeply, personally, and emotionally. If you ask someone to put in the time and energy to educate you, whether or not (but especially if) you've given any indication that you might not agree with what they're trying to explain, whether or not (but especially if) it's a topic which is significant and personal to them they are not obligated to educate you.

On an issue like race, or sexuality, or gender, reams and reams of information have already been written. A little digging, at a decent library or on the internet, will give you a wealth of information on the topic – usually written by those who do sincerely want to educate others. By preferring not to sit down and discuss issues, people are not denying others access to that information. They're saying that they personally can't, won't, or don't want to teach it.

No, oppressed and marginalized people are not morally obligated to educate their oppressors or the mainstream. In fact, the constant need to defend oneself or one's lifestyles is a symptom of oppression and marginalization.

I personally don't find it offensive when people ask me to educate them. I may not always have the time, energy, or inclination to do so, and I may scoff at the notion that I am capable of speaking or qualified to speak as though I represented my entire demographic, but I generally assume (unless they indicate hostility or skepticism) that they're asking in good faith. This doesn't mean that I will always step up to educate them – as said before, it takes a lot of time and energy, especially emotional energy. And while I'd try to turn away people I didn't want to educate myself kindly, hopefully with a few edifying links or directions on where to turn, were I in an emotional state, I can't guarantee how that would come out. It might come out in a very hostile way – and if it ever does, I apologize.

The hostility. Not the refusal to educate. Because while I think that basic civility is a right of people in dialogue, having someone personally educate you is not. It is a privilege – yes, I said the P-word – and should never be demanded of anyone.

But, I hear someone say, people need to be educated, and if the marginalized and oppressed don't do it, who will? Excellent question.

The problem here is that people think the marginalized and oppressed can be tokenized down into the particular marginalized or oppressed person they happen to be talking to. People do educate on this. People write, people manage campaigns. People take social and civic action. Yes, people both from and outside of the marginalized and oppressed groups take it upon themselves to educate others and to work for equality and justice.

This doesn't mean that they, or other members of their community, have to work on the schedule of anyone who asks, or for anyone who asks, or because anyone asked. In the same way that you can't just grab an unemployed person off the streets and say "You, write a letter to your congressman about the economy – well, come on, hurry up; it's your responsibility!", in the same way you can't tell a victim of police brutality or even racial profiling "You, here's a pen and paper, write a letter to the editor of the local paper because the public has to know!", you should be aware that people have their own lives to live and their own concerns and their own apprehensions and hangups about stepping into that role and are not obligated to perform any civic duty to fulfill your sense of moral propriety.

And even asking that question reveals another one: why should it rest on the backs of the marginalized and oppressed? Pragmatically, yes, it usually does, but if you're asking the question, that indicates that you both come from a position of privilege and recognize that there's a problem that needs solving. Kudos to you, and that's a genuine kudos; you're ahead of a lot of people. The next step is to educate yourself.

You can do it. It's not even that difficult. It's the information age.

Educating yourself is likely to give you a much more solid grounding in the state of things, anyway, unless the person you're talking to is heavily involved in social action or has a degree in the subject you're asking about. People are great for personal touches and idiosyncratic experiences, but if you're coming in as someone who knows nothing and wants to learn, you might want more than personal touches and idiosyncratic experiences anyway.

I'd like to say here that I personally don't think there's anything inherently offensive about asking someone else for their opinions or for the basics, so long as you respect them and their right, if they choose so, not to tell you. I have to amend a caveat, though: in saying this I am very much not interested in being used as anyone's marginalized friend in an argument such as "oh, well, [personal profile] magistrate says se doesn't see anything offensive about it." Do not tokenize me. My opinions are what I think, not what every person in my situation thinks or should be expected to think. If you ask someone and they're offended by it, apologize and don't ask any more. If they rip you apart for asking and apologizing, maybe that's not someone you want to talk to about this subject. It happens.

Disclosure. I am a member of marginalized groups. I'm biracial, asexual, non-cisgendered. I am also a member of privileged groups. I'm college-educated, American, able-bodied. Most people are combinations of privileged and non-privileged – this discussion, as with most discussions of privilege, applies to people acting on both sides, and should be considered in this light.

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