Hmph
I have lots of things to say that are by turns hilarious and insightful, but I am in the throes of depression and my computer is broken and there aren’t enough hours in the day. Also, I’m trying to not give in to any feelings of obligations to my three readers. So silence for now…
Questions and Discussions
Hi! I’ve put out some inquiries as to whether there would be interest & participation in a certain thread idea, and some have said yes! So here it is:
This is a thread to ask and answer questions about anti-sexist/progressive/radical thought/language/practice/theory/conflict/manners/whatever! Questions are welcome from two standpoints: a standpoint of not having figured out the reasoning behind something yet, and a standpoint of not yet willing to embrace the reasoning.
This is going to be a little tricky of a thread, I think, so I have written up some guidelines:
EVERYONE:
-Keep in mind that the goal of an argument is not to be right, nor is it to be the person who budges least from their original position.
-This is not a thread for tempers to flare. There are plenty of other ranty spaces in the progressive blogosphere. Be nice to each other. Go light on the snark. If you don’t think you can do that, that’s fine; you needn’t participate. If you thought you could manage this but find you’re getting very angry, take a break.
-Do not treat this space as one in which askers are only there to learn and responders are only there to educate. First, I expect askers to do actual work and really think about responses. Second, responders do not necessarily have responses that will work for everyone. I expect responders to not treat askers as people who need to be enlightened or corrected.
ASKERS:
-Ask either because there’s something you can’t figure out, or because you’re not sure you’re willing to agree with the reasoning you’ve heard.
-Your questions should ideally be above basic level (“why does fighting against sexism matter” or “why is intersectionality important”). You should also have already put some work (research or discussion) into your question.
-Please don’t use this space as a platform to have a rant about how some aspect of the blogosphere/movement is totally wrong. It’s okay to express why you’re not willing to agree with some progressive theory, but do NOT ask a question when your mind is already made up as to the answer. Only ask if you feel as though your mind may be changed.
-If I suspect you are using these special niceness-enforced guidelines to troll, to abuse other commenters or otherwise deliberately try to make them feel unsafe, I will not allow you to continue to discuss anything here. That judgement is mine and mine alone.
RESPONDERS:
-Only engage with questions you feel up to discussing. Since this space is specifically for mutual education and discussion, it is probably not going to be appropriate for you to tell an asker to go educate themselves. (Unless they’re asking easily googleable things, like acronyms.)
-On a related note, it would probably be unwise to engage with questions where you feel that if, by the end of the discussion, the asker does not share your viewpoint, they are your enemy. This may be a valid way of looking at things, but it is not conducive to the kind of discussion I want to see.
-No asker is required to agree with you or acquiesce to your reasoning, and certainly not right away (within the timeframe of this discussion.)
–
This is just a guess about which guidelines will work. They might need tweaking, or a complete overhaul–we’ll see as the discussion unfolds!
“Sub men squick, disgust me”
I have a lovely progressive friend who’s a sub woman, and the other day she told me that submissive men squick her. Now my connotations with that word go beyond turn-off. A short discussion about the meaning of the word ensued, and she clarified that she meant disgusted and repulsed. I was rather appalled and suggested this might be internalized sexism.
She acknowledged this possibility but didn’t seem to understand why I was reacting so negatively. I compared it to a statement that gay men repulsed her, or that the thought of old people having sex was disgusting to her, but I could not articulate precisely why that type of sentiment was appalling to me.
She became upset and said that she didn’t know what she was supposed to about it, and that she felt how she felt. She emphasized that she believed sub men should have the same rights as anybody else and that she didn’t go around being rude to sub men. The conversation ended and we moved on. Let me also note that this exchange took place somewhere designated as a safe space.
So! This is a request for input. Appalling or not appalling? Violation of a safe space? If I’m correct, how would you explain exactly what is wrong, or answer her question of what she is meant to do about it? If her conduct is fine, exactly what am I missing?
#teaspoons business: Handling Missteps edition
#Teaspoons is meant to be a safe space. Safe spaces are in conflict with larger cultural messages about what is and is not acceptable. I expect mistakes, oversights, sullenness (“I don’t want to have to remember to watch my language”), angry lashings-out, and general incompliance from people, from time to time. My job, and Executive Assistant Moderator Calandra/Megatriorchis/Mega’s job, and to a lesser extent every chan member’s job, is to remind people when their behavior is inappropriate.
Recently, the issue was raised–whether my practice of issuing these reminders in public was good policy, or whether it shouldn’t be taken to private msg. It turns out that, just as at least one person feels more attacked by a private message, at least one person feels more attacked by a public notice.
So I asked around, interviewing a round dozen members of the channel (hereafter MsotC) to ask for their opinions. (If you count the original complainant and myself.) I believe I now have a feel for the consensus of opinion in the channel, and, so that everyone is on the same page and knows the procedure they are consenting to by entering the chan, I am writing this addendum to the channel rules & guidelines.
Mild-to-moderate violations of the channel rules will continue to be handled publicly, at the time they occur or at the time they come to my notice. (Or to the notice of another MotC who feels comfortable issuing a reminder of the rules, particularly Mega.)
Bogus Argument Tactics #2: Picking Favorites
Welcome to the second installment of my Bogus Argument Tactics series! I have like three of these stored up, I’m trying to space them out. There’s a lot of bogusness going on in the world, you see! Today we will be discussing the bogus tactic of PICKING FAVORITES. Allow me to elaborate.
Let’s say you find yourself in an argument. What’s more, you find yourself in the position of arguing against two or more people who are holding the same position. (You might have someone arguing alongside you, sharing your position, but more likely, you are in the minority.)
After antagonizing, intentionally or not, some or all of your opponents, you single out one of of them. You tell them that they are making sense. You thank them for being reasonable. The comparison may be implicit or explicit, but the contrast is clear either way: the other people arguing that position are being way too rude/strident/off-topic/unclear. Often, you cease to engage with these unfavorites, or engage as little as possible. Sometimes you continue to talk with them, but the key element is that you repeatedly state or imply that there are only two people being reasonable: yourself, and the person you have chosen.
I should note that in the most charitable scenario, this is a reaction against being piled upon. For this reason I really urge people who find themselves in the majority position to reconsider saying anything at all. Are you sure what you’re going to say hasn’t already been said? If you wish to express your support for the people you agree with, it would be wiser to contact them privately instead. It rarely accomplishes anything to make your opponent feel surrounded and anxious. Pile-ons devolve swiftly.
That said, this is a nasty little tactic. I’ve seen it a lot in discussions about privilege, but it can happen any time the person picking favorites has just got their ignorance or foolishness all over a discussion. The person picking favorites will inevitably not only anger the unfavorites–who likes being told that they’re not worth engaging with?–but also make the favorite uncomfortable. They have been put in the position of having to choose whether to use the favor given them to engage with their opponent, in the hope of changing the opponent’s mind–which feels a lot like abandoning their allies*, which is exactly the desired result of this tactic–or to withdraw, or perhaps try to advocate for their allies.
*I use “ally” here not in the usual progressive sense of “one who does not live a certain oppression, but fights against it in solidarity with those who do,” but in the sense of one who is on the same side as another in an argument/shares the same opponent.
It’s also nasty because the one using the tactic is, essentially, attempting to assert control over all the participants in the argument. They have positioned themselves as the arbiters of acceptable discourse (this can be reasonable if it is specifically their space, but the people using this tactic rarely cite rules or policies, let alone explain what the unfavorites are doing wrong.) The tactic is implicitly premised on the idea that one must submit to another in order to have their ideas considered. It’s gross.
Finally, the reward the favorite gets is, generally, little more than a pat on the head. I have only very rarely seen one who uses this tactic actually concede the main point–which, significantly, is usually “you are behaving oppressively”–it only looks like they are making concessions because they continue to compliment the favorite on their rationality and manner. Often, the person using the tactic will apologize for the way they said something the favorite has criticized, and rephrase it without really addresing the favorite’s concerns.
As with most bogus argument tactics, the best way to combat this one is to clearly describe how they are using the tactic and that it is bogus. Assert that you will not be artificially divided by your opponent.
Happy arguing!
It recently came to my attention
as I was editing my facebook profile for the first time in, oh, eighteen months (it was time) that it’s been a lot easier for me to diversify my music collection than it has to diversify my movies or books. (Television has been in between.) Most movies I love are very much about white US guys (and sometimes white US women), and while I’ve managed to find music I like from a few different countries (Ida Maria, Archie Roach, Yoshida Brothers), virtually every book I’ve ever read has been USian or British, with a dash of French.
For me, diversity in my media can’t really have an ethics about it because I do not have enough money to buy anything, so it’s not as though I’m supporting marginalized artists.
It’s more…it’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve even begun to understand what US centrism is, and it’s been less time than that since I figured out how incredibly deficient my education has been in exposing me to a variety of voices and perspectives. Every country has pride in itself and exaggerates its importance a little, but hanging out with progressives has made me realize just how little I know about world history and values, about comparative theology, about the history of ideas, about wars and peace across the world. About world art. Heck, I barely know anything about my own history. (How can you say you understand your language until you’ve learned a second one?)
It makes me really unhappy to discover how ignorant I am. In fact, it makes me feel not a little betrayed by my school system. Do you know what we learned about Latin America? Two days on the Monroe Doctrine and the Panama Canal. Do you know what we learned about Africa? The origins of humanity, ancient Egypt, and South African apartheid. Do you know what we learned about Australia? Nothing! Do you know what we learned about China? Ancient China, foot binding, invasion by Japan, cultural revolution, one-child policy, currently making our stuff. Do you know what we learned about Eastern Europe? Taken over by Hitler. Do you know what we learned about the Middle East? Oil, Israel, and hijabs. Do you know what we learned about our own First Nation people? First they were happy, then they were genocided, now they are silent. Scandinavia, Korea, Laos, Thailand, Haiti, the Caribbean–nothing! What sort of government does Greece have today? Egypt? I don’t know! The world narrows to Western Europe when the Middle Ages begin. Wikipedia is great for looking up the answer to any one of my factual questions about a country, but it sucks at imparting the big picture. School should have done that for me. It didn’t.
It makes me feel better, in a small way, to seek out art that tells stories I didn’t learn in school. First, it makes me less astoundingly ignorant, one story at a time. Second, it soothes me the same way it soothes me to watch a movie with lots of women in it (one reason I like Doctor Who so much.) It’s cool water on my hot, irritated skin. In this sense, seeking out diversity in my media is a spiritual exercise for this atheist.
I’m aware that sometimes my desperation for a diversity of voices can manifest itself as “some foreigner, any foreigner!” and I’m not naive enough to think I’m doing anyone any favors here. I’m not displaying any virtue here. It’s only something I want to do for myself, to try to repair the damage that was done to me as a child.
It’s just really hard to do that for books, apparently. Maybe books are just a quieter industry. It’s a daunting task for someone who’s as US-surrounded as I am, to look for books from other countries besides the UK or Canada. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
…Anybody got suggestions for fantasy (or something else that’s awesome) written by non-US/Canada/Brit authors?
Poetry
Here is the second installment in my intermittent poetry series. I’ve been putting it off and putting it off because I wanted to do a video, see, one of the ones from Def Slam, but I sort of had technical difficulties and sort of didn’t have the energy and blah blah blah. Well, screw that! I’m not waiting until I have it just the way I want it.
Today’s poem is Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. Now Mary Oliver was influenced by our last featured poet, Edna St Vincent Millay.
I suppose someone who lived in a tropical or desert climate might not be able to identify with her trees, prairies, mountains, rivers and rain, but as a Seattleite…well.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Waitaminute
Waitaminute. I have a suspicion. This is my suspicion: (cow’s) milk isn’t actually as vital of a food as we’ve been led to believe, and the dairy industry has something to do with it.
(I apologize if this is something that even baby progressives are supposed to know, but I just realized my suspicion on my own. I’m not so educated on the history of food corporations as I ought to be!)
Affirmation that I’m right, information that I’m wrong, and links to back it up all welcome in comments. (Also if you have a waitaminute of your own, do share.)
Local teen pregnancy
My little sister and brother still go to the high school I graduated from, so I keep in touch with events there. Recently there was a controversy around the school paper (we never seem to get through a year without a censorship controversy), and I asked my little sister for the article in question. It was edited, and partly written, by this really great kid who once choreographed a dance for me and my siblings. He’s so amazing, and I think he’s written an amazing article. Four stories of teenage pregnancies; in three, the mother and the father chose to have the baby and keep it; in one, the mother decided to abort.
What I love about it is how real the stories are. It doesn’t judge anyone involved, not the one who chooses to abort, nor the ones who choose to parent. I think as feminists, one might be on hyper-alert looking for a negative portrayal of abortion, but in my experience it’s equally common, and equally frustrating, to see a string of negative portrayals of teenage parenting. Often the negativity is rooted in classism. But this article doesn’t judge, not good or bad. It’s just eight kids telling their stories. It’s real.
I have asked permission to reprint it here, to share it with you all, and that’s been granted. He says to note that this is not the version that went to print, it’s a little different. (I think some of it was censored in the final printing.)
I’ve edited it to remove last names and the name of the school.
I think you’ll enjoy this. : )
I broke down and have built a Twitter feed. I will probably be active on Twitter from now on. Here is me. I am WomanofLaMancha. Feel free to follow me.
I also have a request for people who have Twitter accounts. Can you support Scarleteen for a Shorty award for education? All you have to do is make a tweet.
Scarleteen, run by the flooringly amazing Heather Corinna, is a feminist sex ed website that has helped millions of young people from all over the world, for eleven years. If you haven’t seen the website, take a look and be amazed.
The Shorty awards are Twitter-based awards, the finalists determined entirely by popular vote and the winner by partly popular vote and partly panel decision, on a variety of topics such as advertising, education, health, and science. Some of the awards are sponsored, and winning the award is almost certain to result in some money for the winner. Scarleteen deserves that money.
The current winner for education is Eliseo Soriano, a Philippino televangelist who is also a rapist. Seriously.
So what do you say? Go vote for Scarleteen. It only takes one tweet.
