Paradoxical

So, this was my first week in the new job without anyone there to show me the ropes. Somehow, I managed to get (nearly) all of my tasks done, without destroying anything or injuring anyone. High five!

Came home pretty tired, so instead of cooking dinner, went to the beach with the S.O. and ate fish & chips while watching the sunset.   Have I mentioned how much I love summer?  Long evenings spent outside... blissful!

I got the job.  O_O

In other news, my friend just had a baby.  WHAT A GOOD DAY!

Photo taken in daytime, obv., so no lights are visible - but there are 500 bulbs on it!  Red & gold for a summer solstice-y feel.

Coffee and consent

From Until Someone Wakes Up, a play written by Hamline University professor Carolyn Levy and a group of Macalester College students:

Waiter: Would you like some coffee?
Woman: Yes, please.
Waiter: Just say when. (Starts to pour.)
Woman: There. (He keeps pouring.) That's fine. (He pours.) Stop! (She grabs the pot; there is coffee everywhere.)
Waiter: Yes, ma'am.
Woman: Well, why didn't you stop pouring?
Waiter: Oh, I wasn't sure you meant it.
Woman: Look, of course I meant it! I have coffee all over my lap! You nearly burned me!
Waiter: Forgive me, ma'am, but you certainly looked thirsty. I thought you wanted more.
Woman: But -
Waiter: And you must admit, you did let me start to pour.

"This, then, is the terrible bargain we have regretfully struck: Men are allowed the easy comfort of their unexamined privilege, but my regard will always be shot through with a steely, anxious bolt of caution." --Melissa @ Shakesville

Dear S.O.,

Read this please.

Love,
MJ.

"I hope those men will hear me when I say, again, I do not hate you. I mistrust you. You can tell yourselves that's a problem with me, some inherent flaw, some evidence that I am fucked up and broken and weird; you can choose to believe that the women in your lives are nothing like me.

Or you can be vigilant, can make yourselves trustworthy. Every day.

Just in case they're more like me than you think." --Melissa @ Shakesville

Dear K,

Following our chat the other night about the reversed list of sexual assault prevention tips, please read the following snippet from another feminist:

We often see articles telling women that they need to be careful to not drink too heavily, or wear anything too revealing, or go out too late at night, otherwise they risk being raped. We hear people saying that abused women are to blame because they don’t leave. We see articles telling women that they can’t “have it all,” and must “choose” between a career and parenting. We hear that women need to “grow a thicker skin,” “toughen up” and “be one of the boys” to get ahead in the workplace.

Of course feminists realize that, actually, men need to stop raping and abusing women, job opportunities need to be more accommodating to parents and men need to become more involved in parenting roles, and employers need to stop condoning sexual harassment and start treating women as equal workers. But sadly, our mainstream media and culture don’t see that. And we’ve all bemoaned how frustrating that can be.

What all of these examples have in common is that they assume women are the problem. They assume that we need to adapt to the patriarchal structure, rather than admitting that the structure itself needs to evolve (hell, be removed) in order to create any opportunity for true equality. They say that sure, society will accept women as equals . . . as long as they sufficiently and quietly adapt to a system that was deliberately designed to exclude them.

I posted:
Saying "your privileged ass is showing" isn't calling someone out on their privilege in a way that will be useful. It's using a specific term as an insult to antagonise, rather than educate. If, instead, we said something like "When you said this, did you realise how it sounds to people who disagree with your stance? Too often we see that used as a defense of this form of oppression, by people of this privilege. Have you asked yourself whether your privilege is affecting your understanding of this issue?" etc.

If you want people to see that their privilege is affecting their judgement, then it's much more effective to show them how. I also think this is especially important when the people you see as acting from privilege are also identifying as part of the oppressed community.

I understand righteous anger, and I think it's a great tool for fighting oppression (apathy helps no-one!). However, I think it's important to use that anger in a constructive way, if you really want to make effect some change. If you just wanna vent, that's a whole 'nother thing. And that's what private journals are for, versus communities.

I still believe that oppression is best fought with education. Maybe that is part of my privilege as a middle-class Pakeha. YMMV.

And got called on it.  Fuckity fuck fuck, how did I not see this?  I was honestly trying to avoid the 'tone argument' bullshit, wherein someone basically says to the oppressed, "You'd get a better response if you were nicer."  FUCK.  I hate that shit myself.  There's few things worse, when you're angry at oppression, than someone derailing it by talking about your attitude.  And then I go and do it myself.

NOTE TO SELF:  MJ, if you see oppressed people in an anti-oppression community "being rude" to those they see as privileged, SHUT THE HELL UP.  Even if you are one of the oppressed.  Especially if you are one of the privileged.  It's not rudeness.  It's the passion that comes from honesty.

I'd apologise to the community concerned, but I know that it's my issue, not theirs.

Can heterosexual authors write excellent stories about LGBTQ people?

Possibly, but I imagine that it would be pretty damn difficult to ignore one's cis-privilege enough to be able to fully understand what queer people go through, in order to do it from a queer perspective that reads as authentic!

"I would love to hear someone say a gay writer has no business writing a straight character or women have no business writing a male character."

You're right. Minorities often can write from the perspective of the majority. You know why? Because the minority is surrounded by that majority perspective every single day. The minority often has to struggle against discrimination from that majority. The minority gets a good look at just how that majority works. And often, the minority learns this so that they can "fit in".

How often do you think that works in reverse?

I don't doubt that there are straight writers who can nail the experience of being queer.¹ I just think that when you've got actual queer authors doing the same thing, which source should you go to first? The observer or the participant (so to speak)? And so, when you're searching for excellence in the field of queer lit, it makes sense to look at the work of queer authors. Doesn't it?

I get that in the case of the Lambda Literary Awards, one of the biggest objections is that the guidelines changed - and that stirred up some serious questions and issues for people. But honestly, some of that seems to be "borrowing trouble" and maybe peeps need to take a step back to relax & look at it again.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I am a bisexual "woman" who has the luxury of being identified as straight due to my current long term relationship with a straight man.  I don't hide my bisexuality, and if it comes up in conversation I confirm it, but that has rarely happened.)

1. I know that experiences of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer etc all differ, but I think they certainly have something in common that a person with only the experience of being heterosexual in a heteronormative society lacks.

Today I am grateful for this excerpt from dolphin__girl's post, "A Moment of Contemplation":

Yelling Class began with one of those circle games, where you write in circles on a page aspects of you that define who you are. Mine were things like "female", "teacher", "writer", "geek", "fat". When everyone began to read theirs out, interesting trends emerged. Almost none of the white students included "white" in their circles. All most all of the black students included "black."

What I can see, looking back on that circle game after graduation, was that most people included in their circles things about themselves for which they had, at some point, been the victims of abuse. "Fat" and "geek" were mine. Others from the white students included "Jewish", "gay", "[immigrant background]". It should have been telling that "black" appeared on so many of the black students' pages. But it took me a while.

At the beginning of Yelling Class, I also prided myself on all the work I had done to make myself "colourblind". It was in Yelling Class that I learned how incredibly racist that was.

One of the best vocalizations of how awful the term "colourblind" really is came back to the circle game, and how many of the students listed black (or Korean, or whatever they happened to be) as ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL, DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF WHO THEY ARE AS A PERSON. When you try to be colourblind, you are actually discounting an entire aspect of who a person is. For white people, who almost unanimously did not list their colour as a defining characteristic of who they are, this doesn't appear to be a big deal. But for someone who DOES, you are essentially saying "I dismiss this entire part of you that is integral to your personality and part of your definition of who you are as unimportant and of no concern to me."