sophiaserpentia | Entries tagged with privilege

I haven't thought for a while about the ethics of taking, but it's on my mind today. A couple of connected developments this week:

Zerlina Maxwell, a feminist writer, made the comment to Sean Hannity that maybe we should put more energy into telling men not to rape. Hannity retorts that such an approach is useless because "criminals won't listen." Since appearing on the show, Maxwell has faced a wave of death threats and other violent, angry responses.

A couple of high school football players are convicted of rape, setting off a wave of commentary in the media expressing sympathy for... those two poor rapists whose lives are now ruined. The survivor gets death threats; two girls were arrested just today for threatening to kill her. Her identity has of course been revealed by the press, despite guidelines meant to prevent this.

By now most of you have probably heard of "rape culture," which is what happens when you combine the "abuser planet" phenomenon with misogyny. Our cultural narrative inherently sides with the bully, with the abuser. They are the one whose lives and thoughts are clear to us, whose justifications we buy into without question. "Look what she drove me to do!" "She was asking for it." "She's responsible too." Say any of these things and people will nod knowingly. Say them and you automatically recruit at least half of all observers into co-conspirators. "She's just saying it for the sympathy" (only true if by "sympathy" you mean death threats).

The ethics of taking have something to say about this, and provide a counter-narrative. As I described it before, "this ethic would require us to consider what the costs are of taking anything that we feel free to take." Even if overtly offered, because offering is not always an act of free will. I originally applied it to resources, but it could just as easily apply to our relationships with other human beings.

In any interaction you have with someone else, if you don't know which of the two of you is the one with more privilege, then it's you.

Mark Morford has me thinking this morning about the pull of temptation. It is a very old moral dilemma; the defining dialectic of Christian (and perhaps Judeo-Christo-Islamic) society; the worldly vs. the pure, participation in the 'world' versus the path of virtue and holiness.

I do not see the world this way, though the culture around me does, and this creates a dissonance. For me, the dilemma is between privilege and lack, and the gap created by people who act with disregard to the ethics of taking. I've described this before, but put simply, my assertion is that we have an ethical obligation to consider the cost of taking something, even something that appears to be freely available to us or willingly offered.

Consider, for example, a couple where the female partner does more of the housework than the male partner. How does this common pattern come to be? In my experience when a man and woman live together as a couple they fall into this pattern without it ever being discussed. And all the while the woman's resentment builds slowly at the fact that she is doing more than her fair share around the house until it erupts into argument, at which point the man pleads innocence. "I never asked you to do all that," he might say. And it's probably true, on the face of it, that he did not specifically ask her to do everything she does.

The system of ethics we are taught in the United States tells us it is wrong to take what does not belong to us. However, it is okay without reservation to take what is due to us. And it is quite amazing when you contemplate it how much the average US citizen considers his or her due. Even better to take that which is offered to us or freely available.

In movies and on TV we see 'noble yet primitive' Indians giving thanks when they hunt and kill. There are so many things that could be said about this, but what is relevant to this post is that this strikes me as a relic of awareness that not all people have the same ethics of taking as we are taught in the US. There is in this the tacit admission that, well, yeah, it would probably be better to consider at least for a moment the animals we kill and eat, but, we've moved beyond such quaint spiritual values. We are a nation of 'the world.'

This brings me back to the point I was making at the outset: the dialectic between 'the worldly' and 'the virtuous.' Christian virtue is often presented as a package deal (you're either in or out, no in-between) and once a person has already decided they are not going to participate, then it becomes that much easier to dismiss the 'loftier' parts of it, especially in the absence of anyone to call them out. "You're a better person than me," someone might say, before shrugging and taking what is their 'due.'

When you say, "Don't take someone for granted," it is understood that this is generally a crappy thing to do. Or "Be respectful or considerate," it is understood that these are generally good things to do. But they are shunted off as virtue, as a detached abstract value that can be easily and safely shelved (though maybe with the occasional vague abstract sense of guilt about it), rather than considered as actual ethical obligations.

The difference between a spiritual virtue and an ethical obligation is that the latter does not go away because you decide not to adhere to a religious belief. Ethical obligations reflect the material consequences of actions, and the fact that humans are smart enough to see them in advance much of the time.

Behold the architecture of privilege.

It is privilege not to consider what something costs. Only that which has a price tag has cost, right? How very convenient it is that expenditure of effort, or even more invisibly, silent sacrifice, are not viewed as things of "cost," because there is no one to stick a monetary price tag on them. There are those who dismiss, with a smirk even, the hidden cost of performing tasks, because pain, fatigue, resentment, what are these, they are ephemeral, they are unseen, keep them unseen and give me my due.

So, going back to my example of the couple above, while the male partner may not have specifically asked his gf/wife to do more of the household stuff than he does, he also didn't object or say anything when she did. Since he materially benefited from it, he was by my perspective ethically obligated to consider what it means to accept the gift of her labor. We could get into things like, maybe her standards are higher than his, unreasonably high, etc., but this is an aside from the larger issue because this goes way beyond household chores. It concerns the conduct of humankind as a whole.

It goes to things like humankind eating a plentiful species into extinction, or strip mining whole mountain ranges, or dumping so much trash there's a continent of floating plastic in the ocean. This is not driven, organized evil; simply the collective result of a million decisions made by individuals with little or no thought given to the ethics of taking what can be taken. Just a few pesky nags like me complaining, and we are easily enough ignored. Whether or not we could have known, or even should have known, that such things can result from our collective decisions, we can't afford as a species to forever react in hindsight to consequences. We're smarter than that.

Mea culpa.

Privilege is the most contentious topic I have ever posted about. It brings up righteous anger, defensiveness, refusals, claims of "opting out," claims of not really having it, claims that the assertion that someone else is privileged is "an attack" or "an accusation," such that the nuances of it are rarely ever examined. But I've been thinking about this and I think I have a clearer understanding of why this is.

At heart, privilege is a measurable notion, and it starts at the top of society. Almost all presidents and members of the House, Senate, Cabinet, and Supreme Court throughout 233 years of US history have been white male outwardly-heterosexual Protestant landowners. Until about 50 years ago almost all CEOs, bank presidents, lawyers, doctors, and university professors were white men. What change there has been from this did not happen except at the behest of a massive multifaceted civil-rights movement. Some of the unevenness has been addressed but even still the average white person in the US is wealthier and has a higher income than the average person of color and the average man in the US has a higher income than the average woman. And still, the values, laws, and ideologies that permeate and define society are based on the experiences, needs, and preferences of white male heterosexual Protestant landowners/shareholders. (This is not, BTW, an exhaustive list of privilege axes.)

The notion of privilege suggests that the fewer of those characteristics that you display, the more you will find that law, values, religion, and ideology is an obstacle rather than a source of support. The law was not written for you. Religious doctrine was not defined by people like you, and is not currently taught or professed by people like you. Your experiences and needs are not reflected by law or religion. You are less likely to be listened to when you request a change in the law or (goddess help you) religious doctrine that would better reflect your experiences and needs, because authorities are less likely to sympathize with your accounts of difficulty. You are more likely to be victimized and less likely to succeed if you seek legal redress for wrongs committed against you. You are likely to be more harshly penalized if you are found to be guilty of an infraction, because the judge and jury is made of people who are less likely to sympathize with you. This is... let's call it institutional privilege.

The last paragraph is the subject of considerable debate. Most of the dispute in my experience takes the form, "But I am [white]/[male]/[heterosexual]/[Protestant] but I don't feel privileged." There are two things going on: (1) intersectionality, and (2) centering in cultural discourse. Intersectionality comes from the fact that there are many axes of privilege and almost everyone is underprivileged in one way or another. A most common form of underprivilege is income. Most people make less money than the authorities who define the laws, doctrines, economic patterns, and values that affect them and who settle their disputes -- who, in short, lessen their range of possible choices and opportunities.

The other thing, though, is centering in cultural discourse. Our culture is centered around the idea that being wealthy is the norm. This goes from depictions in the media (how many supposedly 'middle-class' families on TV are shown as living in a far-wealthier-than-average environment) to economic institutions (why are payday lenders allowed to operate?) to law (legal mandates for almost anything seem to cost more than most people can afford).

To say that cultural discourse is wealth-centered is to say that people who are not wealthy see the difference between the cultural "norm" and their own lifestyle, and from this know exactly the degree to which they fall short. But their own way of life is not depicted in the media -- it is effectively invisible. So they see the difference as something that's wrong with them or their life, not as a common experience.

So they take this to mean that they are underprivileged, and, being underprivileged in one way or another, react with vehement resistance to the notion that there is any way in which they are privileged.

But also, the centering of cultural discourse makes invisible to them the ways in which they do have privilege because that privilege is made to look normal to them. For example, since cultural discourse is white-centered, white people perceive white values and white ways of life as the "way things are," and the values, experiences, and ways of life of people of color are invisible to them. So it is easy for someone who's white to not know the ways in which they are privileged over people of color unless they specifically look to see the difference.

Centering of cultural discourse goes much deeper than it sounds: it is not merely an external thing, but we tend to internalize the values that are centered and presume they describe the way the world works, or should. Deviation is devalued and denigrated, and people who deviate are frequently insulted and abused. It is odd, though, because the "center" of cultural discourse is not the demographic center; it is quite far from the average experience. So we see the unusual phenomenon of a majority of people actively defending laws, values, and politico-economic systems to which they have rather limited access.

Derailing For Dummies

Fantastic. Wish I'd seen this sooner. :)

When i say i find something offensive, why is there always someone who feels compelled to argue with me and explain why i shouldn't be offended? Do you think i'm honestly so dense that i am incapable of seeing the supposed "irony" or "sarcasm" in the alleged "joke"? Why isn't it enough to say, "Huh, you were offended by that?" No, you gotta argue with me, and tell me why i shouldn't be offended.

Well, let me tell you something. If there's anything i shouldn't be subjected to, it's a lifetime worth of homophobic attacks on my self-esteem, my sanity, my health, my prosperity, even my physical well-being. But this is what i have lived through, and i am worse off for it.

And if some jackass heterosexual stand-up comedian wants to be my ally, he should find a way to do so without saying things that offend me, because if he offends me while allegedly doing an ironic send-up of homophobic hypocrisy (which, strangely enough, resembles in every way the homophobic comments of numerous other stand-up comedians), he is not helping me at all.

For me the question of cultural appropriation, especially when it comes to, "Where does the inter-cultural exchange of ideas stop and misappropriation begin?", is endlessly fascinating. The thing is, there isn't a monolithic answer to these questions, and we can't come up with an easy answer or template and just tack that on whenever the question arises.

How such an exchange, or misappropriation, occurs has to be seen in the historical context of how it came to be. As a jumping-off point, there's this interesting video of Jennifer 8 Lee talking about Chinese restaurants in America (seen in

debunkingwhite):

From the point of view of a merchant, trade between nations and cultures is a good thing -- because it means more potential buyers, more potential profit, more potential opportunities. So it may have seemed to restaurant owners or merchants in Chinatown when white folk started coming in greater and greater numbers to see what food or decorations they could buy that were unlike anything else they or their neighbors had.

And so i think the notion of cultural misappropriation feels to white people like a glass of cold water thrown in the face when a friend accuses them of it because they have a statue of Buddha sitting on their fireplace mantle. Well, hey, they might reply, i bought it in Chinatown from a woman who seemed happy to sell it to me; if *she* doesn't have a problem with it, why should *you*? Or, taking it a step further, doesn't it foster understanding if the people of different cultures who live side-by-side sell things to one another? It makes them less alien, and therefore less scary... doesn't it?

And on their own these are perfectly valid points, IF and only if you exclude the macropatterns of racism in our society. On the micro-level, it's not necessarily a huge deal; where it becomes a problem is when it's enough people in the privileged class who partake of the "exotic" that it starts to drown out the voices and living cultures of the minority.

What i've seen in the last couple of years is that awareness is starting to spread among white people that there's this thing called "cultural misappropriation" and if you're not conscientious you could be doing it too, and ZOMG i don't want to be an oppressor so how can i make sure i am not a cultural misappropriator?

It's gotten to where i've seen people say they're only comfortable with seeing white people exploring the religious traditions of their ancestors. Anything else is too close to cultural misappropriation. So, what, someone has to get a mitochondrial DNA test before they know what religions they are allowed to explore? And isn't this in its own way a restriction on people of color, in that it prevents them from potentially sharing their faith or beliefs with white people?

And yet, i don't mean to deny that cultural appropriation of religious ideas and imagery is very real, and very detrimental. Where it concerns me most is (1) when cultural motifs are reduced to "entertainment value" or "diversion" to the extent that their original meaning is obscured; when this happens, people of color can no longer express their own ideas or criticisms using those motifs without white people hearing "entertainment" when they encounter it; (2) when cultural motifs are stripped of any political implications, especially those which are critical or subversive towards the dominant paradigms; and (3) when people of privilege are turning a profit by stripping the meaning away from cultural motifs. The motif in question becomes an element of the larger culture, and the meaning the larger culture attaches to it drowns out the original meaning attached to it by the smaller culture.

In short, it is a part of the greater pattern of commodification and of misappropriating the language of dissent, the process by which meaningful utterances which pose any threat of causing people to question the authoritarian ideology are rendered harmless.

So, the question becomes, how can people of different cultures share ideas, motifs, food, relics, without them losing their meaning in the context of the original culture? The only way, ultimately, to share ideas in a truly free way is in a world free of hegemonic dominance... which is a tragedy, because humans have so much to share with one another.

In response to the charge by NYTRO that a drag performance by three Westchester County legislators (which i wrote about yesterday) was comparable to a "KKK blackface show," Monica Roberts reminds readers she's been writing for some time about a genuine drag blackface show centered around the character Shirley Q. Liquor.

I've seen it pointed out that satire works when the person who's doing it directs it towards people or figures with more social privilege. When one is 'satirizing' people with relatively less social privilege, one isn't being satirical, one is acting like a bully.

Virtually all ideologies and institutions are devoted to a gender binary that has no room at all for people who do not fit it. As a result all facilities, processes, and designs are made in ways which are completely blind of the needs of people in transition. This makes a lot of things difficult, risky, or essentially impossible to do if you are pre-op or non-op transgender. Here's a few of them; people are welcome to add more in comments.

Travel on an airline. If existing procedures didn't make it fraught with risk, imagine what it will be like after the TSA finishes installing new scanners which basically see right through all layers of clothing.

Pee in public. I've heard too many accounts of run-ins with rude, ignorant, transphobic security guards to ever feel safe doing this, even in nominally trans-friendly spaces. Actually, this can even happen to cisgender people, if they are perceived as trans, as happened in two high-profile cases in the last year.

Swim in public. Unless you don't care if a wet bathing suit makes you non-passable, or you've taken extra heroic measures to compensate.

Fall in love with someone you meet at random. Meet someone you really dig at work, or in an online forum, or at a bar? Unless they just happen to be one of the few people who are willing to consider a transperson as a viable romantic partner, they are going to reject you when you have "The Talk."

Work out at the gym. Unless you can arrange special locker room and shower facilities, this could be very complicated.

This is intended for a wider audience (eventually) than just my journal's readership, hence the tone is a bit different from what i usually strike here.

The following will probably come across as preaching, but i offer this not as a high and mighty guru who is spirtually perfected and better than thou. This is a lesson i learned the hard way, by being a jerk from time to time and having to be called on it. It bears my mea culpa; i did these things repeatedly, and only slowly learned what i was doing wrong.

If you are a white person who wants to be a better ally to people of color, please heed my words.
If you are a man who wants to be a better ally to feminists, please heed my words.
If you are a straight person who wants to be a better ally to queer folk, please heed my words.

Sometimes you're going to encounter utterances from a less-privileged friend that make you angry. This could be for a number of reasons. Maybe you are reading about against an injustice done to someone else. Or, you might be angry because the utterance contains an unqualified generalization that unfairly impugns... well... you.

You might be tempted to reply with an insistance that your friend modify their statement by adding "most" or "some" because "we're not all like that." You might reply with a detailed argument about why one of the examples chosen doesn't prove the point they are trying to make. You might demand proof, and then accept nothing less than a peer-reviewed published academic article. You may be tempted to connect your friend's utterance to heavy-handed social strategies that they didn't even bring up; e.g., "Even so, that doesn't mean we should engage in censorship." Or, you may decide that it's helpful to comment on your friend's angry tone, suggesting that a more calm way of expressing oneself may lead to better results.

None of this is helpful.

Anyone who wants, who truly wants, to see the world become a better place has to make a commitment to listen to their friends' anger. And, yeah, it's hard the first time. But it's not nearly so hard the second time.

It should be a point of basic reading and listening comprehension that any generalization has exceptions. This is true even if the generalization does not come with a disclaimer. If you weren't taught this in school, well, i'm teaching you now. If your friend feels safe enough making this utterance in your presence, perhaps it could be that it's not about you, or that they think you're capable of getting it. So insisting on the appendage of a disclaimer is not helpful.

Part of the anger you're feeling is a reflection of the anger your friend is struggling to give voice. Finding your voice after a lifetime of having your concerns shoved aside can be an awkward and difficult process. Someone at this stage of growing awareness and rising consciousness needs encouragement, not defensiveness and cavil. Defensiveness and cavil are what they've received their whole life, and it's why finding their voice now is a struggle.

It's not necessary for every single utterance to be precise, scientifically accurate, academically rigorous, and polite. While one might think that calm, rational, well-articulated utterances are more effective than angry rants, when it comes to challenging privilege, activists can tell you that doesn't actually tend to be the case. That's why activists often use more agitating tactics like strikes and protests and sit-ins -- because sometimes that's what you have to do to get anyone to listen to you.

Now the hardest part of this: sitting with your friend's anger. Instead of reacting to anger with anger, make a commitment to step aside from your response and examine the anger for what it is. A lot of the time when it has happened to me, i find it is an indication of my own unexamined privilege. If someone says to you that they think you are privileged in a way they are not, it's common to get defensive about it. But this statement is not an attack. So don't respond to it as if it were. If you can say "I feel like i'm being attacked here," you're facing a moment of truth.

Some of the most illuminating realizations i've ever had came as a result of doing this.

If you can step aside from the statement that angers you and see it as an expression of your friend's experience more than an objective rhetorical assertion, you can come away with a clearer understanding of what your friend's life is like.

Reflexive defensiveness makes it difficult to have genuine conversations about privilege and social class. And so, as i said above, if you are someone who truly cares about doing your part to help the world become a better place, you have to let these conversations happen. Sometimes it means listening to a statement that makes you angry and resisting the urge to tear it apart with logic. The reward for this is that you will understand better where your friend is coming from, and you will be a better ally.

The first time is the hardest.

Please don't take the above to mean that there's absolutely no way to respond with an objection. It just means you have to be a bit more conscientious about it -- which consideration is a small momentary inconvenience compared to the impositions your friend endures every day. You can manage it.

Clogging the arteries of discourse about racism (and sexism, though for the specifics here i'm going to stick to racism) is this notion that people who work against racism, by bringing it up, are preventing us from having a "truly color-blind society."

Here's a couple of examples.

The first stems from a recent incident in Arlington, Texas. Silk Littlejohn was hit with a two-by-four by one of her white neighbors, who also spray-painted racist slurs on her garage door. While she's in the hospital recovering from the attack, neighbors began to ask her husband, Roland Gamble, to paint over the racist graffiti. Their comments include things like, "Everyone knows what happened. They get the drift. It's time to take it down.", and "We understand that someone got hurt, and we understand that someone's feelings got hurt. But our kids don't necessarily have to be exposed to it."

The second example is seemingly disconnected. Ron Paul, who has been a member of Congress off and on for over 30 years, was the only one who voted against a 2004 measure recognizing and honoring the 40th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. LewRockwell.com praised him as "heroic" for doing so.

There was a lot i could say in response to Paul's justification - and i have a long entry on this in the works. But for now, what i want to draw attention to is this: "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society."

What these examples share in common is a fundamental misperception among many (all?) white people that discourse about racism is, at heart, an intellectual or ideological undertaking. We whites don't feel racism in our gut; we don't deal every day with the exhausting effects of racist trauma or the health effects of economic disadvantage. We can walk away from thinking about it and our lives will go on just as they have.

And so even if we say something like, "We understand that someone got hurt," we don't really understand the depth and breadth of it.

From that mistake, it's easy enough for white people to think that the solution is just simply creating a world where "race doesn't matter," which in turn is simply a matter of declaring it so, holding a few parades touting equality and giving black people a federal holiday named after one of their activists -- and then aferwards accuse anyone pro or con who discusses race of perpetuating the problem.

Fighting racism takes more than simply declaring it to be over. It requires more than talking about racism. It requires material measures to stop the violence - including the weapon of mass destruction known as poverty - and right the economic inequalities. Racists have to be held accountable. Real, tangible things in the world have to be done, on large scales, for a long time.

The neighbors of Silk Littlejohn and Roland Gamble got a teensy-itsy-bitsy taste of how persistent and invasive racism is, by having to see a reminder of it every time they drove down their street - and their immediate response was to demand that it be hidden away so they and their kids don't have to look at it anymore. "Don't make us face this!" But what are people of color supposed to do when they don't want to face it anymore? They don't have the privilege of removing reminders of it from their lives by simply repainting a garage door.

(For more on this, i refer you to my earlier post the bizarro-world of misappropriation.)

Originally published at Monstrous Regiment. You can comment here or there.

Transfascism (n) (related to BiFascism; both being subsets of QueerFascism)(def) hysterical whining tantrums accompanied by maniacal shouts of ‘Oppressors’ or ‘Hitler” while calling for the banning/shunning/hitting/hating of any gay man or lesbian (LG) who does NOT embrace forced “inclusivity” of everything BTQ. source

Oh, yes, bi people, transfolk; fascists. Now that you point it out, i totally see the connection. Silly that i missed it before, especially after we took over the government, rounded up dissidents, and silenced the journalists. And we look smashing in tall leather boots. Yes, it’s plain as day.

This week has been very instructive. Watching events unfold regarding the Dyke March, and seeing the aftermath, observing what is said and what is not said… oh yes, very instructive indeed.

Let’s start with a basic truth: you can’t force anyone to include you. Unless you have a gun, ha ha.

But men and women of color and white women could not have simply barged into polling stations and cast votes, and thereby solved the problem of disenfranchisement. Women cannot simply barge into the boardroom and start voting on corporate decisions and thereby shatter the glass ceiling. When you have been excluded, disenfranchised, written out, all you can do is stand outside and talk about how wrong it is that you have been excluded.

So, when the fifteenth and nineteenth amendments were added to the US Constitution, it was not just a victory for men and women of color and white women — it was also a victory for the white men who saw the wrongness of exclusion and acted to change it. (Not that this is worthy of a medal or a cookie, since the exclusion should not have happened in the first place. But it is never too late, as they say, to do the right thing.)

For better or worse, though, it is the excluded Others who get the credit, and the blame. The excluded Others are perpetually salient; they are the ones who get the scrutiny. The dispute was “about them;” funny how it was never seen to be “about” the ones doing the excluding.

Now, it is a different story when we are talking about the machinery of society on one hand, and small private groups or gatherings on the other. You can’t make a convincing case for exclusion in the first case. In the second case, it may be warranted. For example, gay men might want to have one hotel, one lousy little hotel, where they can… you know, do gay male bonding things without having others come and watch. And women might want to have one festival, one lousy little festival, where they can gather and camp for a week with no men around.

It’s not the same as being excluded from the right to vote or the economic infrastructure of society. It’s not necessarily wrong or inappropriate either.

So. Here is the popular conception of how the inclusion of excluded Others happens:

1. Excluded Others perform “hysterical whining tantrums accompanied by maniacal shouts of ‘Oppressors’ or ‘Hitler’”
2. Excluding in-group gets fed up and lets the hysterical whining protesters in.
3. World goes to shit.

And this version is probably a bit closer to reality:

1. Excluded Others express disdain at having been excluded. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they demonstrate, sometimes they wear tape over their mouth, sometimes they whine or shout.
2. Increasing numbers among the excluding in-group come to understand the wrongness of what they are doing and push for inclusion of Others until it happens.
3. Life goes on.

Let’s look at 1. “Hysterical whining tantrums accompanied by maniacal shouts” is the perception the in-group frequently has of protests by Others. Others are supposed to remain silent; so even when they speak they are already out of line. Let any anger creep in and suddenly they are whining, screaming, being shrill, and so on.

Feminists are “shrill.” Sound familiar? It’s because whenever a feminist speaks, she is by definition speaking out of turn.

Part 2, and this is really what i’ve been building up towards during this whole post. I opened with the basic truth that Others cannot make the in-group include them, except maybe by violent force.

What i saw unfold before my eyes, here in Boston, was an action largely by members of the in-group (mostly women-born-women) expressing their solidarity with transgender Others. It appears to have been a woman-born-woman who initiated the call to remove Bitch from the performing line up; it was mostly women-born-women on the committee making the decision to do so; it was mostly women-born-women who i saw in the crowd cheering when a committee member read the announcement.

Why would they do so? Maybe they have transgender friends or lovers they hoped would feel more comfortable about going to the March with them. Maybe they just think in principle that transfolk should feel welcome at the March. I’m sure there’s as many reasons as there are folks who participated. I’m sure there are also just as many different levels of comfort with the decision as well.

And yet, this is how the world sees what happened:

lesbian rocker Bitch was removed from last Friday’s performance roster at the Boston Dyke March, due to complaints by transgender activists. source

For better or worse, we transfolk got the credit. We transfolk got the “credit” for pulling the film “The Gendercator” from the lineup at Frameline, even though this decision was also made by non-trans-people.

Does it seem, i don’t know, histrionic of me to point this out? I know it’s inconvenient and people want to pretend that it’s all being done by transpeople, that it has nothing to do with any women-born-women who have expressed solidarity with us.

It’s remarkable that no matter how many times i’ve pointed out this week that this was an action largely performed by people who are not trans — it is pointedly ignored. It is not convenient. It is easier to say we Others are being divisive, whiny, pushy than to acknowledge how many in the in-group agree with us and want us in there with them. Never forget that the in-group is invisible.

Marti of Transadvocate posted yesterday about certain perennial topics of discord in and around the trans community. This is worthy of deep contemplation because, as i've mentioned before, the terminology we transfolk choose to use for ourselves, versus the terminology which has been foisted upon us, is a question about which we need to have sustained discourse.

I hadn't seen the terms "women born transsexual" (WBT) or "Harry Benjamin Syndrome" (HBS) before. They are interesting.

The idea behind renaming "Gender Dysphoric Disorder" as "Harry Benjamin Syndrome" is to recast transsexualism as an endocrine disorder rather than as a psychological disorder. I'm not unsympathetic, but this is not representative of transfolk in general. Not all of us seek or want hormonal or surgical therapy, not all of us want our gender identity to be medicalized in the first place. It also presupposes a questionable bio-psychological causality. I think there may be some usefulness to the term HBS but it is not an interchangeable replacement for gender dysphoria.

At first glance i thought the term WBT was a direct response to the term "womyn born womyn" used by some to distinguish women judged as female at birth from gallae. But when i googled it, i didn't see any discussion of this matter at all, nor was it raised in Suzan Cooke's essay in which she mentioned why she and her partner coined the term. So i deduce that the purpose of the term is to downplay the "trans," to counter the dominant culture's gaze, which wants to see only the procedures and paraphernalia of our transition, to focus instead on the way transfolk see ourselves.

Using emphasis to demonstrate more clearly the meaning of the term, then, a "woman born transsexual" is a woman who happens to have been born transsexual. For a person who sees herself as inherently female but otherwise defined by society because of, essentially, an unfortunate birth defect, this might be an appropriate term.

To be honest i'm not sure how i feel about this term. On the one hand i approve of the term's basic goal, as tending towards expressing more clearly than "transwoman" how we see ourselves. See, the world sees us as "trans" first and woman... well, usually never, but if ever, then definitely not first.

Secondly, i know MTF transfolk who would not really fit this depiction, because they have taken the identification of "trans" as part of their identity. So on the basis of that alone, the term "woman born transsexual" can never be a blanket replacement for "transwoman" and could even be divisive.

But there is a second, somewhat savage, dimension of divisiveness here. Only some gallae have any chance of actually being seen as women first: those who pass. For transfolk being able to pass can be a ticket away from the numerous limitations we face for the crime of being trans. Think, for example, of light-skinned black people who have 'passed for white' and the opportunities they gained by doing so. Opportunities they should have had in the first place, of course. Not that being a woman in a misogynistic culture is necessarily great shakes, but, judging by some of these stats from 1999, in some ways it sure beats being a tranny.

So when Suzan Cooke says "goodbye to being transgender" she comes across as having a nasty overtone, and it is plain as day that she has never checked her own privilege. She writes as if any galla can easily assimilate into society as a woman:

Because most of us assimilate as members of the sex that we have been reassigned to and are loathe to make spectacles of ourselves few stand up to contradict the politicos who claim to represent us. ... The transgender community is like a cult that pounds extremely negative messages into the heads of people treated for TS/HBS. Its fear mongering aims to convince post-sex reassignment surgery people to stay in the transgender ghetto rather than assimilate in to the world of members of their new sex.

It's a nice gig if you can get it, Suzan. I can definitely sympathize with wanting to escape the traps and stigmata heaped on transfolk (ETA: and let me be clear on this, i have no disapproval for people who go "stealth"), but not all of us have the luxury, even after surgery and hormones. Having the luxury of moving beyond into the relative utopia of passing, she doesn't see the need for trans advocacy.

IOW she's saying that anyone who doesn't pass can go to hell. And her term WBT can be seen as reflective of this attitude.

Suzan is right to want to escape the negativity, since none of us deserve it. She is right to want to escape from the way the culture sees transfolk, because it does not define her any more accurately than it defines any of us. But she is wrong to blame the transgender community for it; this is just old-fashioned victim blaming. The negativity comes from the rest of society -- the people who beat us, preach against us, kick us out of our houses, and fire us. If she is ever found out, she will be no better than the rest of us "trannies," and i hope she keeps that in mind in the future when she contemplates trans activism.

If there's anyone still around who has a shred of respect for John McCain or any interest in him as a presidential candidate, it must surely have been damaged by his stunt the other night, of singing "Bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann." Or his little 'joke' the other night that during his shopping excursion in Baghdad, he picked up a souvenir for Jon Stewart.

Upon being criticized for these callous remarks, he's told his critics to "lighten up" and "get a life." (Of course, soldiers killed by IEDs in Iraq HAD a life until they were sent there.) Every time i've ever heard comments like this (and "can't you take a joke?" and "snap out of it") the more convinced i become that there are almost no conditions under which these are ever acceptable remarks.

Because what they mean, underneath it all, is, "I don't have to listen to you or care about what you think, you are less than a real person to me. The fact that you even bothered to voice your concern is nothing more than an irritation to me."

On the way home, i started listing to myself the forms of privilege i enjoy, and was kinda shocked, when i put them all in one place, to realize how considerable they are.

I am white. This one is so big i'm not going to attempt to give a small summary of its impact. Every day is a new opportunity to unpack and examine the privilege i enjoy because of this, and i never cease to be amazed at the dimensions of it.

I am a citizen of the United States. As much animosity as there is in the world towards the US right now, i can't pretend that in most places abroad this would not grant me a huge amount of privilege. It does so even here in the US, where roughly 5-6% of the population are undocumented immigrants and/or incarcerated.

I am (by and large) neuro-typical. I say "by and large" because gender dysphoria is a psychiatric diagnosis i've been given, but in all other functional terms, and in the way i am treated by people in general, i am considered sane.

I am able-bodied. Not the picture of health exactly, but i am not disabled. This is a form of privilege invisible to most people.

I speak English.

I grew up in the middle class. We were never rich, but i ate well and had a secure home and a reasonably stable family.

I have a college degree. I earned this, and i'm the first person in my family to achieve it, but it counts for a privilege over people i'm competing with for jobs who are otherwise equal to me. It is also something to which i had more access because of my upbringing.

I am employed and have a stable home. Another thing i can say to one degree that i earned, and to another degree came to me because of other privilege.

I'm sure i could come up with more.

I know what it is like to be male and married. It's hard to put into words the difference between now and the way people treated me when i could hide under heterosexual male privilege. It's not that they were friendlier. To give an example, it's more like something that would get me an extra helping of consideration when dealing with businesspeople or bosses or employers. I'd walk in for an interview or for a meeting with my boss as a man with a wife and a college degree, and they saw me as therefore more serious and weighty.

So, Don Imus was suspended by MSNBC for two weeks for the recent racist/sexist outburst by him and Bernard McGuirk on his show. Who says "jigaboos" anymore -- i mean, really?

Someone on my friend's list (please step forward if you want to be attributed) predicted that of course he wouldn't be fired because he speaks for MSNBC. The more i think about this, the more obvious it seems. Of course he speaks for MSNBC, he has been a mouthpiece for institutional racism/sexism/homophobia/classism for 30 years. It suits the interests of the upper class to have people saying what he says.

A while ago i pondered whether it is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that makes oppression possible, and if i ever create a "Sabrina's greatest hits" tag, that one will be on it, because it is an idea i continually return to. Let me be a bit more specific, though, and modify that hypothesis just a bit: it is perhaps more accurate to say that it is Complex PTSD that makes oppression possible.

From an essay on C-PTSD:

It's widely accepted that PTSD can result from a single, major, life-threatening event, as defined in DSM-IV. Now there is growing awareness that PTSD can also result from an accumulation of many small, individually non-life-threatening incidents. To differentiate the cause, the term "Complex PTSD" is used. The reason that Complex PTSD is not in DSM-IV is that the definition of PTSD in DSM-IV was derived using only people who had suffered a single major life-threatening incident such as Vietnam veterans and survivors of disasters.

... It seems that Complex PTSD can potentially arise from any prolonged period of negative stress in which certain factors are present, which may include any of captivity, lack of means of escape, entrapment, repeated violation of boundaries, betrayal, rejection, bewilderment, confusion, and - crucially - lack of control, loss of control and disempowerment. It is the overwhelming nature of the events and the inability (helplessness, lack of knowledge, lack of support etc) of the person trying to deal with those events that leads to the development of Complex PTSD. Situations which might give rise to Complex PTSD include bullying, harassment, abuse, domestic violence, stalking, long-term caring for a disabled relative, unresolved grief, exam stress over a period of years, mounting debt, contact experience, etc. Those working in regular traumatic situations, eg the emergency services, are also prone to developing Complex PTSD.

"lack of means of escape, entrapment, repeated violation of boundaries, betrayal, rejection, bewilderment, confusion, and - crucially - lack of control, loss of control and disempowerment" -- these are par for the course when you live in a sexist, racist, classist culture. That is pretty much what those terms mean.

Suppose people were not capable of being beaten down and broken. Suppose they would object to every mistreatment and slight, no matter how big or small, no matter how often it had happened to them, no matter how vicious the repercussions. If this were so, then over time, it just wouldn't be worth it for one person to expend the energy to lord it over another human being. The benefits would be outweighed by the costs involved.

It wouldn't be possible for employers to exploit the people who work for them. It wouldn't be possible for an entire nation to lock women up in their homes and keep them separated. It wouldn't be worth the grief to build walls dividing neighborhoods and populations.

But, because we hear about our worthlessness in subtle ways every day, week after week, month after month, year after year, we DO get beaten down and broken. We learn that when we complain, instead of finding solidarity in others who have been wronged as we were, we get left to twist in the wind and take the heat alone, and be made an example of; and maintaining one's defiance in the face of that takes more and more energy by the day. Eventually the complaining stops, because tending to the emotional injuries (and, not infrequently enough, the physical injuries) on top of the disadvantages we are asked to accept become so costly that there is no energy left to complain any more.

Bit by bit, so slowly that we rarely see it happen in real time, the efforts we expend make those with privilege wealthier and better-fed, while we lose sleep and make do and struggle to pay our bills and say "it's nothing" when we're sick but can't afford to see a doctor. The pattern is so widespread there is nowhere we can go where we aren't under the net, we can't even talk about the net without people saying we're crazy or exaggerating, and nothing we can do will stop us being slow-motion cannibalized.

And then there are people like Don Imus and Michael Savage and Ann Coulter. These are folks who keep up the steady drumbeat of negativity, the slow pulse that reminds you how and why you're broken. Polite society hems and haws and says they are out of line, but if they were really out of line, they'd be out of work, wouldn't they? They wouldn't have audiences of millions and millions, would they? They wouldn't be living high on the hog 14 years after comparing the New York Times' White House Press correspondent (at the time) to "the cleaning lady", would they? Their "rowdy words " (hey, can't you take a joke?) wouldn't be repeated again and again and again in the mainstream media if they were truly offensive, would they?

So, yes, Don Imus speaks for MSNBC and all of corporate America. Don Imus speaks for people who don't want us to complain about their privilege.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to put a price tag on something.

It works like this: if you have the money to buy it, whatever "it" is, then you can claim ownership of it. It seems a more civilized way of acquiring things than stealing them or taking them by force. There is also the illusion of egalitarianism (assuming you don't have laws prohibiting women or people of color from buying land in wealthy suburbs) in the unspoken assertion that every person's $1 bill has the exact same worth.

But you're not required to ask whether anyone was harmed in the making of it. You're not required to ask whether the animals invovled were treated humanely. You're not required to wonder whether the purchasing of mass-produced items is ecologically sustainable. As far as you know, the blouse you buy for $14.99 at WalMart came into existence on the clothing rack; and so, as far as you know, purchasing that blouse is not in any way a political decision or an action in support of child labor or animal cruelty.

There was nothing in human tradition to prepare us for the industrial age because throughout most of human history, we knew who made the objects we're buying. We didn't have to inquire about cruelty or sustainability because we could see for ourselves the conditions under which things were produced.

This privilege turns around and comes behind us as an obligation. In general we don't have time to make our own clothes and barely enough time to make our own food. Many of us, increasing numbers of us, have little choice about buying the inexpensive blouse at WalMart because it's the only way our children will have something to wear. We don't have any way of asking whether children or animals were harmed halfway across the world to make it because our attention is consumed with keeping ourselves afloat.

Many of us do not have the property and resources to be self-sufficient, either as individuals or as a community -- i've seen varying estimates on whether such a thing is even possible with the world population at 7 billion and rising. If you do not own your own plot of land, you are at the mercy of the social economy.

The price tag creates an illusion that one's ethical duty in a given transaction begins and ends with spending money for something -- that if you have $750,000 to spend on a diamond-encrusted Sit-n-Spin for your child, that you have the right to spend it and give no further thought to the ethical or social ramifications of your purchase.

In saying that, i don't mean to imply that no one has the right to spend money frivolously -- i mean to point out that our concept of money makes it easier to mask any unethical implications of one's actions. The primary ethical ramifications of our purchases are likely to be collective, by which i mean, the combined effect of decisions made by lots of people. (To flip that over, bringing an end to a particular kind of unethical pattern will mean many seemingly small choices by millions of individuals.)

This comes from

lady_babalon. It is a variation on the "are you spoiled" meme which has been going around.

She writes, "No value judgements on what any of this means about you, but if you can check off more than 40 of these, you are better off than most people on the planet, and may evaluate that fact as you feel appropriate."

( Read more... )

Current Music: Electronic "Until the End of Time"

A friend pointed me to this list of privilege the other day. Quoting bits which are relevant to frequent discussion in this journal:

privilege is consistently responding to disagreement, criticism, and concerns with condescension and hostility, then accusing the unprivileged of being irrational, inconsistent, duplicitous, guileful, and unappeasable

privilege is feeling entitled to the conformity in behaviours and attitudes of the unprivileged

privilege is not having to be self-conscious and self-critical

privilege is the habit of seeking power and influence over others

the privileged sees power over others as success

privilege is the ability to start, end, and avoid discussion with little consequence

privilege is shelter from direct consequences

privilege is feeling entitled to be better off than others

I want to add a few of my own:

Privilege means not having to wonder, ever, if people around you are regularly putting your needs ahead of theirs.

Privilege means being able to laugh at certain kinds of joke instead of being aware of your inferiority.

Privilege means not having to worry about the effects of your words or actions.

Edit. It was correctly pointed out that this list reflects the automatic assumption or perhaps assertion-by-default of privilege.

For anyone who may think i'm demanding or asking too much in my last post (and i strongly suspect many more feel that way than will say so), i think perhaps that you do not understand the crushing burdens and impositions on my life that i am expected to quietly withstand.

As a transsexual and queer person, i am expected to accept quietly and politely the constant fear of what people will say or do when they find out 'the truth' about me, the increased likelihood of being physically assaulted, the increased likelihood of being emotionally abused, the increased likelihood of being evicted or fired, the certainty of social ostracism, the certainty of losing friendships and family relationships. I do not have to do anything but exist in order to hear religious institutions call me immoral, disgusting, a threat to public decency, to hear medical institutions classify me as diseased and disordered, to hear 'experts' pontificate about me, to hear state and legal institutions refuse to accept or acknowledge my identity or the validity of my relationships, to hear politicians and preachers make speeches putting me down every day, to hear employers and universities and other businesses seek to exlude me. I do not have to do anything but exist to be laughed at, taunted, beaten up, raped, murdered. I am expected to hide who i am in society at large, deny it, nod politely when i'm called sinful or disordered. I am considered out of line or 'uppity' to even question this and ask for the same sort of treatment that others expect as a matter of course. If i complain with any degree of articulation, if i do anything that resembles pointing a finger at someone, i am told i am just as bad as those who have oppressed me.

These impositions are a tremendous drain on my energy, my time, my spirit, my income. They cast a shadow which i will never, ever escape over my emotional health, my relationships, my employment. This is the restriction i live with, it is my reality.

I am not alone in this burden, of course. Women feel it too, people of color, people with disabilities, neuro-atypical people, poor people. They can tell you about similar burdens, that they are expected to shoulder quietly.

What i have asked -- for people to inspect their lives and consider how they may have benefitted unduly at someone else's expense -- is the merest sliver of a trifle compared to the burden of oppression.

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sophiaserpentia

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The Serpent's Wisdom

Eat of this fruit; your eyes shall be opened, and you will be as Gods.

Entries tagged with privilege

rape and the ethics of taking

a rule of thumb

how convenient that 'virtue' can be ignored

privilege: intersectionality and centering of cultural discourse

(no subject)

will someone please tell me what is up with this?

cultural appropriation, part googleplex of infinity

drag, blackface part 2

some things you basically can't do if you're (pre-op) transgender

being an ally part 1: listening to anger

the "color-blind society:" last refuge of racism-apologists

“inclusion fascists”

transsexual self-definition and passing privilege

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owning my privilege

on being slowly worn down

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a few non-exhaustive words about privilege

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December 2021

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