i know this is not gonna sit well with people, but i honestly don’t think white people can and should ever make satires about race. it’s not that you’re making bad satire (well, it is actually), but it’s also that you think you can make satires about something which doesn’t actually affect you and where you actually have power.
satire is about resisting power and the status quo and being clever about society in a way where you’re actually criticizing in a socially meaningful way. and if you benefit from that system and are the status quo just in terms of your identity, you can’t successfully satirize that, and you have a social responsibility not to try.
as a straight person, i can’t satirize homophobia. i just can’t. i benefit from the system that privileges heterosexual identity, and i can’t honestly and faithfully speak to what it’s like to be LGBTQ.
that’s why all the blackface and the ridiculousness tina fey does on 30 rock is an issue. it’s satire written by white people and largely for white people but about experiences that white people don’t go through. it’s white people laughing to each other about how bad poc have it. it doesn’t accomplish anything except privileging white people’s thoughts and perceptions all over again and making the lived experiences of poc something white people can just have a private laugh about while we have actual funny brilliant amazing people of color whose racial commentary never gets heard or appreciated.
I’ll be brief.
We want to understand. We want equality. So you need to stop being such a raging fucking asshole whenever we try and talk about the subject. We’re going to get it wrong at first and you need to understand this because your ridiculously aggressive knee-jerk reactions to every little mistake we make is making us too scared to even bring it up.
Calm the fuck down. We’re trying.
- a man
Translation: I just wanna insult you by calling you irrational and angry while simultaneously playing the victim
Shut the fuck up
Dear Man,
This post was originally signed off, “Thomas Ridgewell (a man, trying to understand)”. So:
Dear Thomas Ridgewell who is trying to understand,
Thank you for being brief.
Maybe it takes a man to tell you this, because of the very reason I’m about to go over with you.
(And if you are really trying to understand, then you’ll listen to me, because it really is a basic concept.)
The onus is on you, Thomas Ridgewell, who is trying to understand.
You and me are agents of the patriarchy, which is a department - if you like - of the kyriarchy, whose business it is to keep ‘the other’ down.
It is not the job of someone who is oppressed to support us on our quest to understand, or to educate us, or listen to us, or even to be polite to us.
They owe us no favors, they are not beholden to us in any way.
If they’re angry it’s because they’re oppressed. And us men, however unwittingly, are agents of their oppression.
To be a good ally, we have to know our place. Because the people we represent have been deciding others’ places for a long time.
Your post has tone policing written all over it.
From a cisman’s point of view, there is no such thing as a feminist who is too angry. There’s no feminist who ruins it for the rest, as far as you’re concerned, it’s not your place to judge. And it’s definitely not your place to say it.
If you want to understand, try to understand.
You’re too scared to bring up feminism?
There are women who are scared to go into a club, or walk home at night, or leave the house because they get catcalled or grabbed or worse. There are women who are made to feel like everything was their mistake, because they shouldn’t have been out that late, or should have dressed less provocatively. And your feelings are hurt because sometimes you’re scared to bring it up.
There’s nothing tackier than two privileged men talking about feminism, so I’ll stop, and I’ll take this down if any feminist objects to it. I guess your post just rubbed me the wrong way.
Fuck men who think they can wade into feminism with their rights intact.
Yours sincerely,
Another man who is trying to understand.
Exactly.
Imagine a wall full of circular holes, that circles can keep walking in and out of with no difficulty.
Now imagine that the triangles manage to get the resources together, after years of not being able to fit through the circle’s holes, to drill a single triangle space into the wall.
Now imagine that the circle — who previously supported the triangle’s efforts because they are well-rounded (har) and value equality — comes along and sees the construction project. But instead of being happy, they get angry.
“Well, I won’t be able to fit through your hole!!!!” the circle cries.
“I helped you get the drill!!!!” the circle shrieks.
“Make it fit me too!!!!” the circle demands.
The triangles, barely holding it together enough to get a triangle hole together, stare at the circle in confusion.
“You have all the holes you need,” the triangles explain. “This is for us. You don’t need to fit through our hole, too.”
“YOU’RE BEING UNEQUAL AND HURTING MY FEELINGS!” the circle wails. “I DON’T SUPPORT YOUR HOLE IF IT DOESN’T FIT ME TOO. GIVE ME MY DRILL BACK.”
“It’s not your drill, it’s our drill. You helped us get it, because you said you cared.”
“I ONLY CARED WHEN I THOUGHT YOU’D MAKE A HOLE EVERYONE COULD FIT THROUGH. YOU’RE PERPETUATING INEQUALITY!!!”
“Why is it up to us, the small group that has never been able to fit through the wall at all, to make a hole everyone can use? Why isn’t it up to you, the people who have been able to cross back and forth at will for years? We just want to see the other side; why are you yelling at us?”
“I DIDN’T ASK TO BE BORN A CIRCLE, OMG. I’VE HAD TO WORK HARD ALL MY LIFE TOO. YOU’RE JUST BEING BIGOTED AGAINST ME BECAUSE OF SOMETHING I CAN’T CONTROL, JUST LIKE EVERYONE IS AGAINST YOU.”
“You are interfering with our project and asking us to comfort you while we’re trying to make progress. Please leave.”
“I’m going to tell everyone about this,” the circle warns. “Nobody will support you now.”
“Apparently nobody ever did,” the triangles sigh, getting back to work.
even better commentary.
Commentary is all kinds of gospel.
Wow, this is the most astute thing ever.
(Source: charliebink)
Over and over, we are subjected to men defending having murdered someone by saying they felt threatened, as though merely feeling afraid is the same thing as being in actual danger. Those are not the same things. And the conflation of the two is the inevitable result of privilege, which does not teach most men, especially most white, cis, straight men, how to sit with fear.
To have so little experience with actually being in danger that one cannot discern the difference between feeling afraid and being in clear and present danger is a luxury that most marginalized people do not have.
"(Source: shakesville.com)
Male privilege may be more obvious in other cultures, but in so-called Western culture it’s still ubiquitous. In fact, it’s so ubiquitous that it’s invisible. It is so pervasive as to be normalized, and so normalized as to be visible only in its absence. The vast, vast majority of institutions, spaces, and subcultures privilege male interests, but because male is the default in this culture, such interests are very often considered ungendered. As a result, we only notice when something privileges female interests.
In response to the complaint of white writers about writing about people of color: “Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t,” I want to say: absolutely.
It’s absolutely true. You’re damned either way. If you don’t do it, you’re a racist. Yes, you are. Race and racism exist in this society, and if you ignore them, you’re expressing a racial privilege that you don’t, morally, have any right to. That’s a subtle form of racism.
If you do do it and get it “wrong”, you’ll get reamed, and rightfully so. It’s presumptuous of you to think that you have the right to represent a culture you don’t belong to if you can’t be bothered to properly examine and accurately portray that culture.
Further, if you do it and get it “right”, or rather, don’t get it wrong, you’ll still get reamed by members of that culture you’ve represented who rightfully resent a white writer’s success representing their culture. After all, every American ethnic minority has its writers: good and bad. The good writers are mostly ignored. Inevitably, some white writer will come along and do a bang-up job portraying that culture and will get—in one book, in one section of a book—more attention than the poc writer got over the course of three or five or ten books.
You’re a white writer trying to do the right thing, but no matter what you do, it’s wrong. And that’s so unfair to you, isn’t it?
Welcome to a tiny taste of what it’s like to be a person of color.
Oh, and quit complaining.
"
I just want to put it out there that I am perfectly willing to sever any and all friendships with people who vote third party tomorrow
It should go without saying that I’ve never become intimately close with a republican.
But I’m so over the third parties and those who feel the need to vote for them. And this is a huge turn around for me since 2008, when I proudly cast my vote for Cynthia McKinney. But if my defense, I was 21, at the height of my youthful radicalism, roommates with a guy who’d been arrested by the secret service for mooning karl rove, and living in California, which I *knew* wasn’t going republican (although that was also the year prop 8 passed, so…fuck).
Let me explain. The number one reason I hear people talking about how they’re going to vote third party, and this was the reason I gave back in the day, was that I couldn’t, in good conscience, vote Democratic because they were still warmongering capitalists who protect big business and yadda yadda yadda. And yeah, some real sketchy shit has gone down during the Obama administration. I’m not going to pretend that my beliefs line up with his perfectly or that he’s left enough for my liking. But I’ve gotten the fuck over myself and given up on this bullshit idealist belief that a person’s vote is an extension of their conscience, that there is some sort of moral or ethical imperative that dictates that the lever you pull at the election booth has to be the candidate who most closely reflects your politics, that voting for a major party is the same thing as an explicit endorsement of warfare and imperialism.
Voting third party because you *just can’t* vote Democratic isn’t righteous, it’s selfish. Because while Democrats and Republicans may look very similar on a lot of the larger issues when you zoom out and look at them on the political spectrum, when you stop talking about political philosophy and look at how policies are going to manifest themselves in real life, especially domestically, then yeah, there is a big fucking difference. There is no shame at being realistic, at voting for a less than “ideal” candidate, or even a candidate who you disagree with on some issues, when the alternative is MITT FUCKING ROMNEY. If I hear one more smug over-educated white dude talk about “the lesser of two evils,” I’m going to sound him with the curved end of a wire hanger.
Voting third party as a leftist is an exercise in privilege, where you put your precious little conscious and intellectual self-importance over the realities of those who are most directly affected by the programs the republicans want to cut and the policies they want to change.
And that is all I will say about the election.
Slow clap. Well put. Reblogging to keep you all thinking.
Since this recently submitted question is so fresh and innovative, I’ve decided to give it a little bit of my time.
(Among others) Why you cannot “appreciate” my culture:
- When white people take it, they take the aspects of it that they like. These are the aspects people were mocked and hurt for sporting - but when white people choose to adopt this, it becomes correct to do, and “cool.’ This is suggesting that the opinion of a white person on the culture is somehow better than that of the original member of the culture. This upholds white supremacy.
- White people do not fully appreciate the culture, ever. They only take the aspects they like. As a result of this, the nuances of the culture is lost, resulting in erasure of the culture. This is particularly problematic for cultures with rapidly diminishing amounts of people.
- White people do not adopt the culture right, but frequently adopt a version that they see. This is not what the culture really is and propagates racist stereotypes. It frequently tells the story of a blatantly false caricature.
- In adopting the aspects of the culture that you want, the depiction of the culture is frequently sexualized.
- Simultaneously, when you take a part of the culture for your own, it erases the lived experiences of the group that upholds a custom and the struggles and hardship that the group went through. Thus, it diminishes the history of the group and causes for further erasure of experiences.
- When customs translate into a Western context, very frequently a price tag is put on them - or they are commodified. This is a problem especially for spiritual practices that hold deep significance for those who practice it, and is blatantly disrespectful to these communities.
What is the collective factor that is wrong with this all? When you appropriate culture, you are treating the holder of the culture less important than your whim to use it. You are treating people of color and people who come from a non-Western cultural context as less than human.
(note that I am using West as an indication of the cultural unit of the West and Western Thought, not as the geographical region.)
So why can’t we be brothers and sisters?!
- Slavery.
- Colonization.
- Ethnic cleansing.
- Genocide.
- Systemic Oppression.
- Erasure of our role in history and our presence in the world today.
- …but really, this list is endless. For more, check this out. And this. And any of the rest of the White History Month posts.
*OK BUT THAT WAS A LONG TIME AGO!
No. Because we still face the effects of this and you’re still not listening. We can engage in universal siblinghood when we don’t feel like we’re less legitimate people because of the colors of our skins and the *mystical* practices we engage in.
You wouldn’t discriminate someone born with a penis for dressing like a “girl” in any sense.
I couldn’t discriminate against white people who were appropriating culture even if I wanted to. You wanna know why? White people have privilege. We don’t have any rights except in our own spaces, sometimes not even then.
And as for the rest of that sentence? No, it’s not the same thing. There is no inherent insult in cross dressing. There is extreme inherent insult in cultural appropriation and it would be wise to see the difference. Do not appropriate the struggles of other groups of peoples to prove your point and dehumanize them.
But other people steal white culture all the time!!
Let’s start at the very beginning.
Not all people are equal. White people have privilege.
And when ‘we steal your culture,’ that’s actually not what we’re doing. Let’s have some examples, specifically about clothes, but also about pretty much anything else I can think of.
- We’re trying to adjust to a world where whiteness is the norm. Because white people are able to tell the world what is ‘normal’ and they have defined, say, tshirts and jeans from Hollister as ‘normal.’ We wear it to be normal, not to appropriate ‘white culture.’
- We wear it because colonialism and other movements that caused for white people to rule us forced us to adhere to their standards for many generations. We wear it because we’ve been systematically forced to.
- We wear it because we think it’s pretty - we wear it because the standards of beauty today are white.
- We wear it because we will be harassed by white people and told to go home if we don’t. It doesn’t matter if it is our home. The only way to be American or of the West is to dress in accordance to Western culture.
- We wear it because we will be harassed by our own people if we don’t. We wear it to not be the worst kind of person there is - a FOB. We wear it because of our own internalized whiteness, internalized after many many centuries of it being forced onto us.
So to end this, nah, I’m not the racist one.
-NSC
There are a lot of things in life that are bad or unfair. Some of these things are physically natural - earthquakes, say. A lot of these things are social. Social bad things are not ‘just the way things are’. They are systems, they came into being from people. Oftentimes from people who wanted to benefit at the expense of other people.
These social bad things exist - this is true - and sometimes you have to deal with them - this is also true. But that is not the same thing as accepting them yourself, as saying ‘well, that’s just the way things are’. No, it’s not. Things can be different. They should be different. Saying ‘that’s just the way things are’ means that the fact that they were created, that they could, in fact, not be that way, is ignored, and also means that the people who benefit off of them, benefit off of other people being hurt, get completely away with it.
And, the urge toward saying ‘well, that’s just the way things are’ makes perfect sense. The fact that things are genuinely bad, that there’s all this goodness we’re not getting, and that much of this will not change, at least not any time soon, that it’s just going to continue - that’s not a nice feeling, that’s not a nice thing to live with. It’s nicer to not have that feeling, and that’s what acceptance like that does.
But acceptance like that also means losing the potential for any kind of change, means becoming a part of perpetuating the bad things, of hurting yet more people with them.
And that a far worse thing, I think.
(I’m writing this now because I just had an argument with someone about it, where they kept arguing the ‘that’s just the way things are, you have to accept it’ side. And, in the end, they said “I used to think like you do. But then I changed”. And that scares me, so much. So I wanted to write this (though I don’t think I did a very good job), because even though I know that if I change, it probably won’t matter, I’ll just think ‘oh, I was young and naive’, right now it makes me feel better to write it. And I guess all I can do is try my best to remember, and hope that I can. And keep arguing, and keep trying. Please may it be enough).
THIS. SO MUCH. I can’t begin to tell you how frothing mad I get when people say this. I swear, I’m going to overhear it one day in some random stranger’s conversation and I’m going to jump up and scream at them “THIS IS ONLY THE WAY THINGS ARE BECAUSE YOU’RE A PRIVILEGED DOUCEHBAG WHO DOESN’T CARE ENOUGH ABOUT YOUR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS TO GET OFF YOUR ASS AND DO ANYTHING TO HELP THEM, AND YOU ONLY TELL YOURSELF THAT THINGS ARE THIS WAY AND ALWAYS WILL BE THIS WAY IN ORDER TO AVOID THE CRUSHING EXISTENTIAL CRISIS THAT ACKNOWLEDGING WHAT A SHITTY AND WORTHLESS HUMAN BEING YOU ARE WOULD CAUSE, YOU SLIMY COWARD” and then knock their coffee off the table and kick them in the shins.
Or, in the words of Mark Vorkosigan, “Everybody makes that same damned argument. ‘I can’t do it all, so I’m not going to do any.’ And they don’t. And it goes on, and on.”
I think this is the most concise summary of privilege I’ve seen yet
But thin people are discriminated against, too.
For rebloggable purposes, here is a copy of a response I made to the ask comment:
“I’m naturally underweight and most likely have gotten as much shit as you have about you being overweight.”
I’m sorry that happened to you (though I’m afraid you don’t know the kind of shit I get on a daily basis, both directly and indirectly). It doesn’t mean, however, that you don’t have thin privilege. I suggest you read through the/privilege tag.
To clarify for my readers, when you have thin privilege it doesn’t mean that your individual experience of being thin is necessarily positive, or that you haven’t been called names or discriminated against. It also doesn’t mean that every single fat person feels stigma as keenly as another. Some fat people might have grown up with supportive families in supportive environments and never encountered the kinds of fat stigma other people encounter.
Thin privilege is a social phenomenon that exists as a function of fat stigma, and it exists regardless of someone’s personal experience being thin or fat. Fat stigma is real, pervasive, and forceful. It invades entertainment, science, news reporting, advertising, sports, business, family planning (like adoption and fertility treatments and being called an abusive parent by virtue of you or your child being fat), education, dating/love/sex/marriage, fiction, travel, academia…. and on and on and on.
Stigma and privilege exist regardless of whether we, personally, experience them. And though I’m sorry you’ve gotten shit for your weight — that’s wrong, and contemptible — it doesn’t obviate thin privilege or fat stigma.
One of my good friends told me that he disagreed with a lot of the things on my blog
Which is totally understandable, since not everybody will agree with people on everything
But then he proceeded to tell me how my supposed disdain for white people made him, a cis white heterosexual man, feel uncomfortable and targeted. He then told me that it made him feel like I was lumping him into a whole large group of bigots and that he knows he isn’t like that.
Much as I love you, much as your friendship is important to me… the issues I discuss are not intended to be something palatable for you. You may experience discrimination by coming from a city rampant with people of color, but you do not know the oppression of racism because institutions are tailored to your interests and for your benefit. You highly benefit from male privilege. Your sexuality is the “norm”.
Don’t come to me telling me that I make you feel like a bigot. This isn’t about your feelings. This about institutionalized oppression, this is about issues that you quite frankly won’t have to face. You may witness it, but you don’t experience it firsthand.
No, I don’t hate you for being white, or heterosexual, or male. You’re the opposite of everything I am, but honestly, you’re one of the better people I know. But when you come to me telling me that I make you feel uncomfortable… well, your temporary discomfort with me bringing up issues is nowhere near the discomfort I feel when I’m going to run errands in the evening and have to make sure that I’m in a well lit area. Your temporary discomfort is nothing like me growing up and asking my mother why there were no “people like us” on TV.
This goes for anybody who follows me: you can disagree with me and that’s whatever, but if you’re uncomfortable, then it frankly isn’t my problem. If you find yourself continuously uncomfortable with my posts and you dislike the things I say, I suggest you unfollow me to avoid getting irritable every time I show up on your dashboard. But don’t take that to mean I’m uninviting! If you’re willing to “put up with” what I post (for lack of a better phrase), then by all means, you’re totally welcome here.
As someone who has been there with white friends and someone who has basically no white friends in real life anymore…
I think you should know that you probably won’t be friends with a lot of these people anymore within the next 2 years or so.
If the truth about the systems of oppression that benefit you makes you uncomfortable, then maybe you’re part of the fucking problem.
(Source: bunny-bea)
I’m not slithering around on the floor and hissing with my forked tongue when I say that the situations described in these two letters are pretty good examples of what Rape Culture is and why it is so insidious.
Step 1: A creepy dude does creepy, entitled shit and makes women feel unsafe.
Step 2: The women speak up about it to their partners.
Step 3: It gets written off as “not a big deal” or “he probably didn’t mean it” or “he’s not a bad guy, really.” Any discussion of the bad behavior must immediately be followed by a complete audit of his better qualities or the sad things he’s suffered in the name of “fairness.” Once the camera has moved in and seen him in closeup as a real, human, suffering person, how can you (the object, always an object, as in “objectified,” as in a disembodied set of tits or orifices, or a Trapper Keeper, or a favorite coffee mug or a pet cat) be so cruel as to want to hold him accountable for his actions? Bitches, man.
Step 4: Everyone is worried about hurting creepy dude’s feelings or making it weird for creepy dude. Better yet, everyone is worried about how the other dudes in the friend group will feel if they are called out for enabling creepy dude. Women are worried that if they push the issue, that the entire friend group will side with creepy dude or that they’ll be blamed for causing “drama.” Look at how LW #323 put it: ”how can I approach this subject with my boyfriend, and make him understand a) how serious this is, and b) that he is not responsible for Ben’s reactions, without making him feel defensive?” Wouldn’t want someone who covers up for and defends a proto-rapist to have to have SADFEELS, right? (LW, it’s not your fault you’re asking the question this way, it’s just that our culture sucks about this and your boyfriend and his friends have been giving you constant messages that Ben is to be coddled while you are to be shushed in the hopes that it will all blow over).
Step 5: Creepy dude creeps on with his creepy self. He’s learned that there are no real (i.e. “disapproval & pushback from dudes and dude society”) consequences to his actions. Women feel creeped out and unsafe.Some of them decide to take a firm stand against creeping and not come to parties anymore. They slowly slide out of the friend group. Some of the woman decide to just quietly put up with it, because they’ve learned that no one will really side with them and it’s easier to go along than to lose one’s entire community. The whole group works around this missing stair.
Possible Step 6: Creepy dude rapes someone. If he does, there’s a less than 50% chance that the woman will report it. Why?
Could it be that all the people who surround her have taught her that if she speaks up nothing will really come of it anyway? Could it be that she doesn’t trust her friends and the people who love her to have her back on this? I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY. They couldn’t even kick this dude off their weekly trivia team.
Could it be that the authorities, the police, and the court system will treat her like this is something she caused to happen? Worse, will the dude’s history of being creepy come up and, instead of being used as evidence of a pattern of behavior, be used as evidence that the victim tolerated his advances in the past?
So, yeah, I wanted to be very clear that these letters are part of a larger cultural paradigm that is a direct outgrowth of male privilege. Can women be creepy? Yes, for sure. They are human and capable of anything that humans are capable of. But when they are creepy, they don’t have an entire culture backing them up and explaining why their creepiness isn’t that bad.
