On Language

A few years ago, my family had a falling out with what we thought were good, solid family friends. Family conversation often turns to subjects of social justice in our home, and most guests are not only used to it but appreciate the ad hoc safe space we host. But these friends were sulking at every visit. Turns out, they hated us because we reminded them that oppression still existed, were propagating issues by addressing them, or some such bullshit and grew more resentful and angry at every visit. 

I wrote a lot during it and about it, and a lot of the discussion about language is extremely applicable here. The names, etc, have been obscured to protect those that have yet to actually develop the personal evolution they think they have achieved. Editing for clarity of thought has also been attempted, Dear Reader.

See below for description and request.

Description: this is a pink US flag design saying the following: In Our America all people are equal, black lives matter, immigrants and refugees are welcome, disabilities are respected, women are in charge of their own bodies, people and planet are valued over profit. Diversity is celebrated.

"Of Dogs and Lizards" was frequently cited during the original conversation, I want to credit it here. If you know the credit for the graphic above, I would be thankful for letting me know so I can give due credit.
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It took a while to put together what happened, in a bigger picture sort of way. The story: I posted a link that stated using the word "lame" was not only inconsiderate or mean, but discriminatory and prejudiced. For having the audacity to reinforce the idea that people with handicaps are indeed humans worthy of decent treatment, I was isolated and shamed. I was the card while others scored about seven Bingos (disability and some sexist and racist bingo, too).

What this lead to, the point I am getting to is incredibly hard to think, let alone put to words on a screen or say out loud: I was discriminated against. I was treated with prejudice... by people I love. These people had standing invitations to our home. They supped with us. They were around our children. NOTE: Dear Reader, this list could be much longer but then starts to get both tedious and very specific, which is not intended. The intent is to share the thoughts I generated during this mess.

This was a little thing. Such a little thing generated such intense shame and anger and embarrassment and humiliation from me, such rage, hate, and discontent at me. I am not looking away. I will not forget. I will not withdraw. I will use this experience to kick myself back to the things I want to do - to actively fight exactly this sort of thing. I will be more empathic when someone else talks about facing bigotry. I will insist to myself and others that I am not less human than they.

There is a simple reason to talk about "politically correct" language. Every time there is a language & hate issue in US culture, we talk about it for maybe a few days and think we are done, that we did our collective penance. USians are usually free to say what we like. Other people are also free to think what they like and say what they like about what we say. Advising someone not to use offensive language serves a purpose: to separate the assholes from the ignorant or unwitting. Flailing about your right to express yourself while trying to take that right away from someone else is Palin-esque at best.

If you know that the use of some language hurts someone else and you still use it - you are an asshole. You are, of course, free to be an asshole. But if you actually care about how other people think and feel, you will stop. This lets the rest of us know whether you were simply uninformed, or a jerk-ass.

When told that you are using language considered racist, sexist, cis-ist, heteronormative or homophobic, able-ist, class-ist, or otherwise offensive to someone, please take a moment to think. If you are not sexist, racist, or otherwise deliberately offending, then just stop it. Sit down so we can see who the real assholes are, please. Or keep standing, if appropriate, it is appreciated. The same benefit is not denied to you, but rather explicitly given.

I simply do not see trying to be human to my fellow humans as the burden that some do. Yes, it is hard to keep track of all the things that folks say to one another to hurt, demean, humiliate, taunt, disgrace... So when you do hurt someone by accident or ignorance, apologize with some grace, make a note of it and move the fuck on without complaint. If you want to be seen as that sort of person instead.

I do not suggest that I or anyone else tell anyone what to think or say, so I do not know where the jack-booted Thought Police accusation originates although it comes up time and time again by those wishing to do and say what they wish without allowing others to do the same. Why is one cherished freedom and the other so damn oppressive?!? They are the same right, just in different hands.

"All language is oppressive to someone" is both a fallacy and a cop out. As long as one subscribes to that, then one never has to care or try. I am better than that. Dear Reader, I am already sure you are better than that. But if the idea that one may say "that thing you said or did hurt me in real ways" drives you to monk-ish silence or a career as a mime, you do you!

An "ally" that constantly steps on your foot and blames you for hurting, or for having the audacity to say "OUCH!" is no ally. They just want the warm fuzzy of thinking they are an ally with none of the effort.

No one blames anyone for having privilege. None of us get to choose the circumstances of our birth, our families, or pick the culture we were born into. Sometimes it really is just that simple. Political correctness holds us responsible for what we say and do, and is avoided by those that cannot stomach being responsible in that way.

No one is immune from accountability. There is nothing about talking and learning and advocating for racial justice that makes us exempt from saying something racially hurtful. Hell, there is nothing about my currently disabled status that means I am exempt from saying some shit that someone with another disability may find offensive. (It happens.) That was part of the point - we are all going to occasionally fuck up. We all have some privilege, and we are all personally responsible for doing our best not to oppress our fellow human beings. There is nothing about being a woman that makes me immune to internalizing hateful messages and using them to hurt someone. There is nothing, but my knowledge that we are all in the same soup and need to stay vigilant about the ideas we allow to roost in the rafters of our world view.

Ally Maintenance and Upkeep

There is a really provocative graphic going around about allies lately.  (I am not sure of a source to link, but it was a solid series of tweets about being a QUILTBAG ally. If you have the source, please let me know so I can credit and link, thanks!) It got me thinking about allies and ally-ship. Let me share my brain drippings with you!

I think that allies are part of the community like suburbs are part of the city. They are in the same vague area (say, disability rights) but their experiences are markedly different (by, you know, not actually being disabled) and usually less intense. They both take shit for thinking that disabled folks are full and complete people rather than drains on the system that should have been set on ice flows. One is having their own humanity questioned; while the other is just being told they are wrong, even if it is about something they deeply believe.

I do think that allies of any community should have a safe space... to themselves. They should not intrude on a core community, and most certainly not feel entitled to the core safe spaces, or the time and energy of members of the core community. They should not place themselves above or superior to their core group. But they do have needs that they can support each other to handle. Those needs are not the same as the core folks anyway. Someone being called a racial slur is experiencing something much different than I experience when called a race traitor. We may both need a hand and support, but of vastly different types. Which means that intruding on an oppressed group's safe space is not only a jerk-ass move, but would not give an actual ally what they may need, anyhow.

For anyone reading this with a raised eyebrow or proto-side-eye, I understand. Who the fuck am I, anyway?This is only based on my personal observations as a racial justice ally, an immigration/DREAM ally, an ally to the other folks in LGbt, for starters. Also, I see it a member of the QUILTBAG community, the disability community, a woman, a person of low fixed income et al... I have intersections, and I bet you do too! 

Sometimes it needs to be said that being oppressed and/or being an ally of an oppressed group does not make one exempt from being an asshole. Let me emphasize that real quick: statuses of privilege or lack of it are not indications of being a good person or a bad person. Which is why I mention sincerity. Have it, get it, or get the fuck out of the way. I have been called out when I was wrong and accepted it with what grace I could muster. I have also had someone use oppressed status to power insults and social maneuvers, which I took... with less grace. If you are a minority dealing with an asshole, my advice is to walk away and make your group aware so the asshole blowback is minimized (ewww!). If you are an ally dealing with an asshole that also happens to be oppressed, go somewhere else. Do your research instead and do not assume that the whole group is made of assholes. 

In oppressed communities we bristle at the idea of allies needing support from us. It is not our responsibility, true. I think that they can, and should, support each other. It should be acknowledged that allies can and do have needs and sometimes require social support to avoid burnout and continue the work, share resources, commiserate. Frequently allies do look to the core community for where to go and what to do, which is sometimes simple attention seeking behavior, but it can be a sincere request, too. If someone seems sincere when asking, say, how to get ally fellowship from my militantly bisexual self, I point them at PFLAG or something similar, or in other instances give them good terms to use to Google to get them started if I have the energy to do so for them.

So let us approach each other with mutual respect and care.  I am not claiming a special insight here - most folks have an oppression and in some other way benefit from the oppression of others (even if we would rather not). We each have to decide what to do here ourselves, and respect that right even if we disagree. I will not sacrifice my own peace of mind or self care to lead someone that is ostensibly supporting me, nor should I or anyone else be expected to do so. If I can, I will. Allies are people, people trying to do right even though they could go through life not giving a damn. If I suspect sincerity, I will always at least point them in the right direction. There is not a group I belong to that could not use another good ally. 

Have something to add? Read my comment policy and then start typing if you can respect it and me.

One True Cause

I find little credibility in the One True Cause argument. Someone else has probably come up with a better name for it, but a quick tour through Derailing for Dummies has left me unsatisfied. Make no mistake, I find D4D otherwise very useful and like it quite a lot! Give me a minute, and I think you will find that "One True Cause" is used frequently as a derailing and discrediting tactic.

To clear this up, I do not mean "cause" as in cause and effect, although that is also a logical fallacy. I am using "cause" in One True Cause or 1TC or OTC to mean a situation, bigotry, societal failure, civil rights issue... the sort of causes we gather around to solve, resolve, improve, remove, make better. The intent is to make your cause less worthy of time, attention, and effort than their cause.

The One True Cause is this: why are you talking about/working on/devoting time and energy to X cause when Y cause is more important, more universal, more pressing and/or more personal? The OTC shares mental real estate with the Oppression Olympics, although the person committing the logical fallacy need not believe or be touched by either cause, they just want to be done with yours.

A recent example I have seen is this paraphrase of mine: how can you talk about Glenn Greenwalt's pal getting detained and the chilling effect it may have on free speech when Greenwalt is a lying jerk and other people have been treated worse? Here, I respectfully posit that one can care about the assault on free speech via detention of loved ones no matter how much one may dislike the people in this particular story and even still care about the dishonesty and ethical questions raised by the same persons. I can think that GG looks like a lying jerk and still beat the drum of free speech.

A common OTC argument is often brought up regarding US drone bombing. We mustn't concern ourselves with the innocents murdered in the never ending search for "top Al Qaeda" operatives because that would diminish our ability to kill the "right" people in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan... over there. Except that innocents murdered in a bloody attempt to exact justice is how this all started, whether you think it started with 9/11 or the use of Afghani people as chess pieces to fight a Cold War with the USSR, or, or, or...

Admittedly, it may be hard to drag our focus from getting through our own days, fighting the oppressions heaped upon us, scraping to put what we can on the table at dinner time for our loved ones to give a damn about people exploded out of existence while doing the same damn thing over there... someplace far away, some place filled with brown people struggling the same struggles and (just like us) never earned the need to fear random death from above. 

As a disabled person raising a ruckus, I see the One True Cause fallacy all the time. How can I complain about the lack of accessibility at the local Pride Fest when that just give critics more fuel to try to shut it down? Well, I can tell you that as bisexual woman with disabilities I could not cross streets because beer booths had deliberately blocked curb cuts. How can I, a poor white lady, spend time on race issues when I should be focused on poverty? Well, my daughters go to the same schools that are neglected because there are not enough white faces in those schools for the people in power to care about them. Even if they went to lily white schools, better education for "inner city" or "deprived" schools means more skilled workers and smarter citizens which increases economic opportunity for everyone. 

Often One True Cause is used with some legitimate feeling, worry that this other cause will suffer if people are not singularly devoted to it. People and their issues can be complex, and OTC often ignores the intersections that exist in social justice, in caring about freedom and real opportunities for all peoples. But just as we can love our parents, our significant others/spouses, our children, and our friends and extended family - I believe that we can care about more than one cause with legitimate depth of feeling and commitment. Some of us must do so, whether we ever wanted to or not. Just inside our walls here at home we are directly concerned with disability, neuro-atypicality of various types, feminism, poverty, school quality/funding, the Affordable Care Act/healthcare accessibility in general, religious freedom, racism (our neighbors and our children's peers are more melanin gifted than our family), QUILTBAG rights and issues... 

OTC is just one more minor oppression. OTC is other people telling you what causes they think you should support. OTC is just one more way to exert control, but worse since is is usually done by social justice folks to other social justice folks. So it is likely to be listened to, likely to bypass the filters we put in place when we are dealing with folks that could not care less about making the US a more just place. This often comes from people we respect, trust - folks we value in some way.

So you see, we had to learn to juggle many interests and that is just a brief overview. OTC has no place in our social justice cosmology. OTC is different than picking the battles that mean something to you: I get that.  One True Cause desires to denigrate other causes (others' causes?), and that is not cricket. On a good body day, I can actually chew gum, pat my head and rub my tummy all at the same time. But do not hold your breath waiting for a good day, I have less than a handful of those a month right now. The ones I get - I know how to spend them!

"Solidarity Is For White Women"

This post assumes that you have a least seen some mention of #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen and skips some 101 ideas. I am not much of an online presence, but I want to do something useful, something purposeful,  contribute something good. I will talk a little about my own opinions, but that is not my focus. What follows are pointers to some really good work you may not have seen: work by folks involved, works by women of color, works that give background. 

If you have found or produced something I should link here, please let me know below. My spoons are limited, and there is a lot of stuff out there about this. If you are here, reading me, then you probably already know that it can be rough for women on the internet.

The key person you should know about in all of this is brownfemipower. This was not her first rodeo, as it were, and her fortitude and class is amazing. Flavia Tamara is another writer I have admired from afar, when she was writing (wrote? Not sure what is up at TB) for Tiger Beatdown. BlackAmazon is on Twitter and so is Jamilah Lemieux, writers I have seen and respected but was not following 'til recently.

Speaking of terrific women, go to this great article from the Guardian, written by Mikki Kendal, that sums up a lot of what was going on around this hashtag. #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen is her doing, and I congratulate her for it and thank her for the hard work of dealing with the fallout. You can also see her in this interview, where she mentions the erasure of intersectional activists that are disabled, "lower" class/poor, non-Western... you get the idea.

Jamie Nesbitt Gordon wrote about this for Salon. This Week In Blackness talks about it here. Angry Black Lady had already rightfully and righteously gone to town on the sexist. This is another good piece (I have met and like the authoress). Also left out were feminist disability folks, feminist QUILTBAG folks, poor feminists... you get the picture. Gradient Lair has a terrific piece up that highlights the voices of of the people harmed in all of this. 

Student Activism has a whole lot on Schwyzer, but I will just point out one article  It has enough links that also have links to give you a good rundown on the man's career of upsetting folks. AJ's The Stream has a solid piece up.

The HG meltdown is captured on a "Men's Rights" page, but you can Google the pdf if you want to do so. I make it a general policy to not link to MRA sites. No, I have no idea why MRAs would even care, except maybe to celebrate the pain of women, particularly feminists. These guys are the mustache-twirling villains of the equal rights set. 

Feministing attempted to apologize and explain their position here and in a less triggery way here. Both of those links have long comment sections, (and in this rare case on the Internet) I believe you should read the comments. The efforts met with mixed results. There is some doubt as to whether this was motivated by honesty or capitalism. In the places I have linked, you will see opinions vary. I am giving credibility the women that were right about everything in the first place. 

If we are going to take feminism and make sure that it is for everyone, then we are going to have to look at white power in feminism. Yes, I include me in that we. That societal power is given to every white, yes - that is undeniable. HG could not have gotten away with any of this had he not been male, straight, and most of all: white. During his career numerous women of color called out his bad behavior only to be ignored and or discredited and further marginalized. They were right, but they were silenced.

One of the best things I have read about intersectionality in real life: My Feminism Will Be Intersectional or It Will Be Bullshit. 

Note: not every link is an endorsement. Some may contain good information, but be otherwise problematic. Be careful out there.

EDIT: spelling fix at post.

One Less Invisible Oppression

Take a good look at me:

There, that was not so bad. Pictured is head and shoulders shot of a nearly forty, blond, pale white woman with glasses and a mildly challenging expression right after a free makeover.

The last thing you probably see is oppression. You do not see illness. You do not see disabilities. You cannot see bisexuality. You will never see poverty, if I can help it. Me and mine will only show you polyamory when we choose. You cannot see non-Christian in a "Christian" nation. You think you see a woman, but only because I present a woman to you, but you really have no idea. You never really do with anyone - get used to the idea.

Now that the celebrations are mostly over, we can finally start to really understand what happened with DOMA and Prop.8, what the rulings mean now and to start to understand what they may mean for the future. My favorite part was watching the homophobes start to sound off in front of news cameras and watch the cameras turn away from them to the successful DOMA and Prop.8 teams as they walked down those famous stairs and raise their hands high.

As far as I understand it, the Court "punted" on Prop 8, a term usually used when they make a ruling that appears to be noncommittal  But the verdict that the claimants (random straight homophobes that picked up the case when the state of California washed their hands of it) could not claim injury to pursue the case. I think that verdict is anything but neutral, finally saying that straight people cannot claim injury when gay people get married.

I think this punt matters quite a lot. As much as the much more decisive verdict striking down DOMA. The dominoes are starting to fall, and with gay families on military bases inside of bigoted states, and gay families moving from states that honor their citizenship to states that do not... It is only a matter of time. That time feels like forever when it is your family waiting it out, I am sure.

Now the religious fundamentalists are using families like mine, poly families, as the next spooky threat to marriage. Although they have not given one indication as to why it would be bad for the State. It would definitely be a Biblically supported arrangement if I married both the Menfolk if our genders were reversed, but that was never really the point. 

At least in California, and according to the federal government, there is one less invisible second-class citizenship status. 

Note: I am as much a lawyer as a doctor, which is not at all.