visibility, invisibility, and oppression

[sophiaserpentia]

This is a very difficult topic to grasp at, as both a writer and a reader, because our patterns of perception and conceptuality have been formed in ways that facilitate the kyriarchal status-quo.

Some forms of oppression are visible, and we can have awareness of them, because there have been somewhat successful movements to raise that awareness. Even so, one must undertake constant positive effort -- as if one were swimming upstream -- to avoid allowing sexist, racist, or classist presumptions to intrude into one's language. Consider the depth of effort and vigilance required -- and witness the consequent resentment many have against "political correctness" -- for an illustration of how deeply our brains have been colonized by oppression.

It sometimes seems like a fruitless undertaking to be conscious of sexist/racist language, because what we've witnessed in recent decades is a flowering of tacit forms of sexist or racist expression -- and the sense that "we all know what's really going on, so why candy coat it?" The best answer i can give involves the transmission of oppressive memes to our children. It is now well-known that the brain is exceedingly plastic when we are children, but not so when we are adults. Our brains were wired with racism and sexism when we were young, watching the way adults treated us and each other, in actions and words. In the brain there is no real distinction between hardware and software -- this is why the "software upgrade" of oppression awareness does not automatically fix our internalized sexism/racism. It may only seem like a faulty pretense, but there's a chance that the next generation will observe our struggles, and our attempts to address them, and will be better equipped to handle the struggle against institutional oppression.

Some forms of oppression are just now coming to public awareness, such as the oppression of queer people, transpeople and people with disabilities. Other struggles have yet to come to public awareness, such as the mistreatment of neuro-atypical or fat people. Modern oppression of these people includes marginalization by way of patterns like medicalization (the above are treated by modern society as medical disorders, as femininity was and still is in some ways), moralization (they are treated as moral failings or psychological errors fixable by therapy or religious intervention), fetishization (cultures of 'chasers' and 'admirers' have been established around these characteristics), and ridicule (much "humor" depends on the ridiculousness of being fat or transgendered or neuro-atypical). Light is made of our plight and then we are told, "What, can't you take a joke"?

Whole industries have been set up to make a profit off the plight of the oppressed. The beauty and diet industries are huge; politicians make political and financial capital by promoting homophobia; neuro-atypical people are medicated or unwillingly hospitalized.

These marginalizations are "common sense" -- we all know and understand them and they are the expected social attitude towards people with these attributes. Since they are common sense, the person who questions these attitudes or agitates for their reversal can be characterized as unreasonable (especially if, heaven help them, they have a bit of anger in their voice) -- and can then be told their errors in a "calm, reasonable" tone of voice. Other language tactics of avoidance are employed -- the accusation of having an agenda beyond the scope of one's actual comments, or the use of cavil to draw attention to the details of one's statement and away from the wider implications.

In all of these ways the deck is stacked against the targets of oppression, so that it is impossible for us to win; to turn our abuse in on ourselves, to make it our fault, to traumatize us, to deny the perception of the larger pattern, to isolate us, to desensitize us to the reality of what is going on, to break up our coalitions, to render us more helpless, to make it easier to exploit us economically, emotionally, sexually. And this cannibalism is the bottom line, why it is all done.

Comments

[badsede.livejournal.com]

A brief thought... While I agree completely with the underlying intention to remove oppressive, discriminatory and insensitive trends from our language, I think that political correctness has, itself, become a tool of a kind of counter-oppression in our society. Even if it may pale in comparison to what we have seen historically, it is a cancer that has, in effect, come to afflict the very cure and if we are not vigilant, that cancer will grow.

Every good can be twisted to ill.

[yaksha2.livejournal.com]

George Orwell wrote an essay entitled "Politics and the English Language", pointing out that, " As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of terms of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse."

One of the things I hope to incoporate into my undergrad thesis is the assimilation of any marginalized group under Queer, at least in a theoretical sense. This includes handicapped people and overweight individuals, as well as the elderly and drug users (legal or not). However, a large hurdle in getting past the intellectual posturing is attacking the internal problems with the marginalized community. The people that call the shots in lobbyist groups are those most like the ones in power. Rather than address individual needs and differences, pre-fabricated personality traits are given to those who are unfairly represented by Queer, or whatever other term applies, in order to grease the wheels of justice. This seems at the expense of reality, however.

There is a difficulty in achieving thought if nothing is ever wrong. If discrimination does not personally affect you day to day, and even if it does, if you don't notice it, it takes a gargantuan effort to internalize a cry for help as truth. This is why we yell for joy whenever a queer character in the media provides non-queercentric insight, and then laugh uneasily when they indulge in a pound of doughnuts, make a hilarious joke at their expense, or proceed to fully contradict themselves, therein negating the meaningful personal statement. Granted, contradiction is a universal spot-check, but when a marginalized character does it, it's a flaw and not a fact of life.

[velitu.livejournal.com]

i don't have thick enough skin to argue and articulate these sort of things like you do right now. however i just wanted to let you know that it is comforting to read your efforts and thoughts. i think one of the most difficult things about oppression for me was/is that invisibility created by "common sense". so when someone like you comes along and articulates so well, giving validation to our lived experiences and a voice to boot... well something inside relaxes and is comforted.

the world tells us constantly that its all in our heads so its healing to hear others who have lived a version of what you have and you know your not crazy.

[cennetig.livejournal.com]

I don't know if political correctness strictly means censoring what words we use to label someone, or if it also includes the censoring of thoughts we not supposed to articulate.

I don't mind addressing someone with whatever terms they prefer but I have noticed that this is impossible to do with an entire group. One example is the term African American which I used religiously for a few years when I was close with a woman who was trying to lead an Afrocentric lifestyle. I later worked at a factory where using the term African American got me teased a lot by the black guys I worked with because it only highlighted my white college boy upitiness to them. Now I try to listen to what terms people are using to descibe themselves and attempt to figure out if it is ok for me as an outsider to use it.

I have a much greater problem with the idea of censoring what one is allowed to talk about because it is politically unfavorable to the group who is claiming offence. The most obvious example of this is being called anti-semitic for breathing so much as a question regarding Israeli national policies.

I am no fan of snarky rebuttals to political correctness but I do think there is something to be said for being "allowed" to say things that are not popular.

Madame Serpentia...

[publius-aelius.livejournal.com]

...I wonder if, at your new website called "Against Fundamentalism," you'd be interested in pursuing the Biblical injunctions against homosexuality as a subject. And I don't mean the Paul and Deuteronomy stuff, which is pretty cut and dry, I suppose. No, I mean the possibly variant meanings of the centurion story and the bit in Matthew about "eunuchs"--which some modern exegiticists (WHAT IS the correct spelling of that word?!) claim has a far different meaning than the conservative Scripture scholars say.

I've written about this subject several times, and made the moderators of stuffy places like catholicism and christianity furious, it would seem.