Back in the eighties, we would have said “oh, burn!” Nicely done. It’s funny how a comic strip can make a point so succinctly.
Donniesays
I am a white male. I understand it. Simple concept. Why do I have such a problem educating others? I cannot even get someone to understand the concept BET and the fact that having ‘Black’ in the title does NOT mean it is racist….sheezzzzz. Logic: How the fuck does it work?
I cannot even get someone to understand the concept BET and the fact that having ‘Black’ in the title does NOT mean it is racist
Huh. Do you mean in the “what do they need their own channel for” type thing? If so, I’ve noticed this way of thinking getting more and more common.
Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thoughtsays
Hah. Brilliant.
nichsays
Why do I have such a problem educating others? I cannot even get someone to understand the concept BET and the fact that having ‘Black’ in the title does NOT mean it is racist….sheezzzzz.
And why is there no white history month, amiright?
On the other hand, Liberal Dudebro kind of has a point – if we try to craft movements to address any given person’s intersectional experiences of marginalization all at once, we wind up with a movement of one, which entirely undercuts the central concept of a political movement. So, then, Black queer feminism, Black queer disabled feminism, poor Black queer disabled feminism, poor Black queer disabled feminism for non-Enlgish-speakers, etc. Movements gain power through numbers, hence the appeal of identity politics that center a single identity as the primary or most important one.
I very much think that the particular concerns of e.g. poor Black queer disabled non-Enlgish-speaking women DO need to be particularly addressed, but I think a much more useful approach than subdivision of political movements is to do so within the context of a broader movement for equality of opportunity and access to our various social institutions and resources. When that’s not happening in the broader movement, then we need to fix the broader movement and not simply abandon it for one composed entirely of people like us (e.g. we shouldn’t abandon Movement Atheism™ to sexist, racist, Neoliberal/Libertarian narcissists, we should do everything we can to marginalize their positions withing the broad movement). Part of the problem we’re now facing is that the focus on individual (and individually-self-defined) identity in social justice activism has gone so far that it actually is causing barriers to addressing systemic problems that impact large groups of people in similar ways – the focus on difference means we can’t even identify similarities. This isn’t everywhere all the time, but it is concerning. I just read a recent blog post by Jack Halberstam that looks at some problematic ways in which these cases of hyper-individuated identity politics are playing out (the central examples around which the piece is built are the use of identity labels that are constructed/interpreted as slurs and the way in which trigger warnings have proliferated).
I don’t see a real problem with organizing around specific marginal identities/positionalities shared by few people as long as it’s done with the potential for working in coalition with other dissimilar people; sadly, I’ve been seeing potential allies told both that they can’t understand the concerns of the specific group becasue they’re not part of it and that it’s not the job of the members of the group to educate other people about their concerns. That’s true on both counts, but it’s probably not the best strategy for driving social change because it also is the perfect way to ensure that you can never gain allies or work in coalition with dissimilar people.
carliesays
Donnie – send them to Yo, is this racist? and tell them to read for awhile – it takes several pages for it to sink in how depressingly common such crap is, and how ridiculous it is.
Seven of Mine, formerly piegasmsays
I’ve been seeing potential allies told both that they can’t understand the concerns of the specific group becasue they’re not part of it and that it’s not the job of the members of the group to educate other people about their concerns. That’s true on both counts, but it’s probably not the best strategy for driving social change because it also is the perfect way to ensure that you can never gain allies or work in coalition with dissimilar people.
This business of “All your potential allies are going to take their collective ball and go home unless you tutor them personally” is really getting rather tiresome.
Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :)says
This business of “All your potential allies are going to take their collective ball and go home unless you tutor them personally” is really getting rather tiresome.
Yelling at people for “doing it wrong” but refusing to tell them what “doing it right” would entail – especially when they’ve indicated a desire to – is recognized as an abusive behavior in pretty much every other context. Am I just being too literal here?
Seizesays
Excuse me while I post this daily for the next several years.
Anathemasays
@ John Horstman #12,
I was really unimpressed by that blog post you linked to. Hauberman calls for more intersectional social movements, yet he also says that people who have been marginalized by these movements that need to stop complaining since his just leads to infighting which distracts from the real goal. But this does not make any sense. How can a social movement become more intersectional if it does not listen to the complaints of people who currently feel marginalized by the movement? Hauberman says that the he wants the LGBT movement to be more multiracial and anti-poverty. How does he expect that to happen if poor people and people of color within the LGBT movement don’t speak up about racism and classism within the LGBT movement?
In his essay, Hauberman complains about how some people have criticized a San Francisco nightclub for having a transphobic slur in its name. If the nightclub had used a racial slur in its name instead, would Hauberman treat the people who criticized it in the same dismissive manner? Would Hauberman tell black people in the LGBT movement who complained about the name that they were letting their personal hurt feelings get in the way of the larger fight for justice? Would he say that the black people who complained about the name were ignoring the history of the LGBT movement reappropriating bigoted slurs? Would he write that the people who complained about the name were wrong because “When we obliterate terms like ‘nigger’ in the quest for respectability and assimilation, we actually feed back into the very ideologies that produce homophobia and racism in the first place!”? If he would, then he’s part of the very problem that he’s trying to criticize. If he wouldn’t treat people who’d complain about racial slurs in this manner, then how come he’s willing to treat people who complain about transphobic slurs like this? Hauberman says that he wants the LGBT movement to focus more on systematic injustice than individual hurt feelings, but apparently it hasn’t occurred to him that the use of transphobic slurs by cis gay people might be a manifestation of systematic transphobia within the LGBT movement. I guess the protecting the hurt feelings of gay cisgender people who like using transphobic slurs matters more to Hauberman than stopping a manifestation of systematic transphobia.
Anathemasays
@ John Horstman #12,
I was really unimpressed by that blog post you linked to. Hauberman calls for more intersectional social movements, yet he also says that people who have been marginalized by these movements that need to stop complaining since his just leads to infighting which distracts from the real goal. But this does not make any sense. How can a social movement become more intersectional if it does not listen to the complaints of people who currently feel marginalized by the movement? Hauberman says that the he wants the LGBT movement to be more multiracial and anti-poverty. How does he expect that to happen if poor people and people of color within the LGBT movement don’t speak up about racism and classism within the LGBT movement?
In his essay, Hauberman complains about how some people have criticized a San Francisco nightclub for having a transphobic slur in its name. If the nightclub had used a racial slur in its name instead, would Hauberman treat the people who criticized it in the same dismissive manner? Would Hauberman tell black people in the LGBT movement who complained about the name that they were letting their personal hurt feelings get in the way of the larger fight for justice? Would he say that the black people who complained about the name were ignoring the history of the LGBT movement reappropriating bigoted slurs? Would he write that the people who complained about the name were wrong because “When we obliterate terms like ‘n*gger’ in the quest for respectability and assimilation, we actually feed back into the very ideologies that produce homophobia and racism in the first place!”? If he would, then he’s part of the very problem that he’s trying to criticize. If he wouldn’t treat people who’d complain about racial slurs in this manner, then how come he’s willing to treat people who complain about transphobic slurs like this? Hauberman says that he wants the LGBT movement to focus more on systematic injustice than individual hurt feelings, but apparently it hasn’t occurred to him that the use of transphobic slurs by cis gay people might be a manifestation of systematic transphobia within the LGBT movement. I guess the protecting the hurt feelings of gay cisgender people who like using transphobic slurs matters more to Hauberman than stopping a manifestation of systematic transphobia.
Jackie the wackysays
:)
Anathemasays
Just pretend that every time I wrote “Hauberman” in my last comment, it actually says “Halberstam.”
Yeah, you’d think that I’d have realized that I’d gotten the guy’s name wrong before I posted a comment criticizing him. I’m kind of an idiot sometimes. Sorry about that.
Seven of Mine, formerly piegasmsays
Yelling at people for “doing it wrong” but refusing to tell them what “doing it right” would entail – especially when they’ve indicated a desire to – is recognized as an abusive behavior in pretty much every other context. Am I just being too literal here?
Telling, for example, a white man that he can’t understand what it’s like to exist in the world as a black woman is not telling him he’s “doing it wrong.” It’s a statement of fact. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing he can learn or nothing he can do to help. It just means he needs to shut up and believe black women (or whichever group) when they relate their own lived experiences.
A really really lot of people conflate being told they can’t understand what it’s like to be a part of X group with being told they can’t understand anything at all X group’s concerns.
Likewise, an individual being unwilling to personally tutor that particular white man doesn’t make the entire bloody internet vanish. There are plenty of resources and, often, plenty of other people willing to educate if that person is really interested in being an ally.
I’m not with him all the way on everything, but I think he has a fair point. Might this specific slur could be used in the same way as queer, dyke etc? ie, a word that at least some part of the community has claimed and used as its own.
Kichaesays
@John Horstman
Social movements splinter when people within that social movement start to notice that the movement as a whole isn’t representing them. What frequently happens, then, is that the under-represented people come together so that A) their combined voice is heard by the larger group, and B) they have a band of fellow travellers they can use as support who are bound by a commonality of experience.
Black Feminists are still Feminists. On all of the big stroke issues, they’re shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of us. They’re not just allies, they’re… Well, they’re kinda like family. They don’t always see eye-to-eye on all issues, but when there’s an outside threat, they’re, usually, all right there to support the cause.
In other words, these splinter groups already are allies. What they’re not, necessarily, is friends. Maybe they could be if the majority stopped and took stock of how they treat minority issues within their ranks, but until they do the splinter groups are going to be there to remind them that they’re not doing enough to ensure that marginalized groups feel, well, less marginalized!
Guess what happens when the majority in a given social movement work hard at being inclusive. Those splinters disappear!
Well, as Crip Dyke isn’t around…please don’t use trans as a noun. Jack Halberstram is a transperson is better.
Anathemasays
@ Alethea Kuiper-Belt, # 21,
If the nightclub that Halberstam was talking about was run by trans women or had mostly trans women for its clientele, then I’d be a lot more sympathetic to that argument. But the nightclub Halberstam is talking about seems to be mostly a venue for drag queens. This isn’t an example of trans women reclaiming a term that’s used to denigrate them. It’s an example of a group of people using a slur that’s usually directed at others and then, when the people who that slur is actually directed against complain about it, insist that they are reclaiming it.
The only people who have the right to try to reclaim a slur are the people who that slur is used to denigrate. You don’t get to attempt to reclaim a slur that’s used to denigrate a group of people that you aren’t a part of. This is especially true when people who that slur is used to denigrate say that they think that your use of this slur is perpetuating bigotry against them and ask you to stop using it.
samihawkinssays
@Anathema, Jack Halberstam IS trans.
I’m not with him all the way on everything, but I think he has a fair point. Might this specific slur could be used in the same way as queer, dyke etc? ie, a word that at least some part of the community has claimed and used as its own.
Him? He? So he’s not a transwoman? You know, those people who are statistically far far FAR more likely than transmen to be victims of violence? The ones who are overwhelmingly the target of that slur? The ones who have to live every moment out in public with the fear that they’ll hear someone yell that slur followed moments later by a blow to the back of the head?
But hey why should he let a little thing like that stop him from lecturing us about how we should shut up and stop standing up for ourselves against the people promoting the use of that slur?
As for the comic itself, yes! Dear zombie Jesus yes! So totally accurate and applies to so many situations.
antepreprosays
samihawkins:
Him? He? So he’s not a transwoman? You know, those people who are statistically far far FAR more likely than transmen to be victims of violence?
Though your point that Jack is wrong to dismiss slurs against transpeople is well taken, I think this comment is dangerously close to Oppression Olympics. Or rather, it is dismissive towards the troubles that other transpeople suffer through in order to (unnecessarily) explain why Jack gets it wrong. I very much doubt being a transman is much of a cake walk either. Both groups would be much “better” off if they didn’t rock the boat and pretended to be cis. And both receive a ridiculous amount of push back for daring to defy cultural gender expectations, even without looking at the actual violence as well.
Also: turning this into some sort of contest between “Transmen” and “Transwoman” also reinforces a binary view of the gender spectrum.
Bryan Longsays
@25
This gets complicated quickly, because in the past, drag queens were the subject of that same slur and violence. Interestingly, drag has become more accepted in many places or at least is more often, correctly seen as something different from being a trans woman. You and Zinnia Jones really nailed the key issue. Drag and trans do not necessarily face the same issues.
Yelling at people for “doing it wrong” but refusing to tell them what “doing it right” would entail – especially when they’ve indicated a desire to – is recognized as an abusive behavior in pretty much every other context. Am I just being too literal here?
No, you’re wrong here.
The contexts in which this IS abuse is when there’s a relationship of power between the yeller and the yellee. Teacher-student, parent-child, boss-employee.
I’m neither the mother, nor the boss, nor the teacher of clueless men. While I’m very glad for the education I did and do get from other groups, and generally happy to play “Erklärbär” (somebody who explains things), I won’t ask people who have just been hurt and who are angry about the harm they suffered to clamly explain why this is wrong. To demand that they do, that is abusive.
=8)-DXsays
@John Horstman #12
– if we try to craft movements to address any given person’s intersectional experiences of marginalization all at once, we wind up with a movement of one, which entirely undercuts the central concept of a political movement.
I’m no expert here, but isn’t it true that people’s labels and experiences interact with each other? Don’t for instance black women experience things that neither white women nor black men experience? Doesn’t a heterosexual white male have a level of privilege incomparable to a white transwoman? I’m pretty sure one can’t have in-depth discussions about race without mentioning class, incomes, education. Intersectionality is what their *is*, it’s the actual face of reality.
OK, so it may make things simpler to have single-issue movements, but surely they should be *inclusive* of people with other issues, *cooperative* on points of common interest and *mindful* of the needs and perspectives of others.
A racist (ableist, transphobic, homophobic, classist.. etc.) white feminist group is doing no good if it is perpetuating one set of harmful stereotypes while fighting to remove another set. You’d end up having to acknowledge the validity of the MRM, just because there are one or two men who actually adress the one or two legitimate issues they have.
In other words, these splinter groups already are allies. What they’re not, necessarily, is friends. Maybe they could be if the majority stopped and took stock of how they treat minority issues within their ranks, but until they do the splinter groups are going to be there to remind them that they’re not doing enough to ensure that marginalized groups feel, well, less marginalized!
Guess what happens when the majority in a given social movement work hard at being inclusive. Those splinters disappear!
THIS
And it’s the damn job of the majority to do that work, to recognise that this work is NECESSARY and THEIR JOB is a first step. Everything else is jam tomorrow and lie back and think of the movement.
Seriously, I can understand why many WOC use “white feminism” as an insult. The amount of times I see white feminists being totally clueless and then defensive is astounding. Laurie Penny is a good example. I’m quite often in agreement with her, cause we’re both educated white women, and then there are the times my Twitter explodes with WOC being really angry about some thing she wrote, usually from a point of heavy privilege talking about women while actually not representing women but a certain kind of middle class white women. The main difference between her and some atheist guy talking about “people” while actually just talking about straight white men is that there are usually no rape threats involved.
Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :)says
The contexts in which this IS abuse is when there’s a relationship of power between the yeller and the yellee. Teacher-student, parent-child, boss-employee.
Azkyroth
As much as I like the comic, no.
I mean, seriously, what can a black woman throw at a white man? She doesn’t even have all those “nice” words to use that he can use in return.
Just like there’s a huge difference between my kid yelling at me, telling me that I’m mean and that they hate me and me doing the same thing in reverse.
Bryan Longsays
@32 You are not wrong that words can hurt and this is what leads to much of the anger against social justice. But I don’t think this is always the fault of the yeller. I cannot count the number of times that “society is sexist and you are not helping” is misheard as “you are a sexist piece of shit”. Now ego gets involved and the yellee gets defensive and doubles down.
Also if the yellee is used to a lot of privilege, they are not used to being called out like that and may not have the tools to look at themselves and think about changing. Yes words can hurt, but we all also need to be able to take a few words without becoming too hurt and defensive, because listening to words is the only way to change for the better. A person with more privilege may not understand how often other people are forced to shrug off hurtful words.
Yes, we all should think about the emotional damage our words can have; turnabout is not fair play; but worrying about the underprivileged hurting the privileged with their words really should take a back seat to raising awareness about social justice issues in most cases.
Spot. On.
Indeedly do.
Hah! Well done indeed.
*applause*
+ 1
Day saved.
Back in the eighties, we would have said “oh, burn!” Nicely done. It’s funny how a comic strip can make a point so succinctly.
I am a white male. I understand it. Simple concept. Why do I have such a problem educating others? I cannot even get someone to understand the concept BET and the fact that having ‘Black’ in the title does NOT mean it is racist….sheezzzzz. Logic: How the fuck does it work?
Donnie:
Huh. Do you mean in the “what do they need their own channel for” type thing? If so, I’ve noticed this way of thinking getting more and more common.
Hah. Brilliant.
And why is there no white history month, amiright?
1. LOL!
2. Ouch.
On the other hand, Liberal Dudebro kind of has a point – if we try to craft movements to address any given person’s intersectional experiences of marginalization all at once, we wind up with a movement of one, which entirely undercuts the central concept of a political movement. So, then, Black queer feminism, Black queer disabled feminism, poor Black queer disabled feminism, poor Black queer disabled feminism for non-Enlgish-speakers, etc. Movements gain power through numbers, hence the appeal of identity politics that center a single identity as the primary or most important one.
I very much think that the particular concerns of e.g. poor Black queer disabled non-Enlgish-speaking women DO need to be particularly addressed, but I think a much more useful approach than subdivision of political movements is to do so within the context of a broader movement for equality of opportunity and access to our various social institutions and resources. When that’s not happening in the broader movement, then we need to fix the broader movement and not simply abandon it for one composed entirely of people like us (e.g. we shouldn’t abandon Movement Atheism™ to sexist, racist, Neoliberal/Libertarian narcissists, we should do everything we can to marginalize their positions withing the broad movement). Part of the problem we’re now facing is that the focus on individual (and individually-self-defined) identity in social justice activism has gone so far that it actually is causing barriers to addressing systemic problems that impact large groups of people in similar ways – the focus on difference means we can’t even identify similarities. This isn’t everywhere all the time, but it is concerning. I just read a recent blog post by Jack Halberstam that looks at some problematic ways in which these cases of hyper-individuated identity politics are playing out (the central examples around which the piece is built are the use of identity labels that are constructed/interpreted as slurs and the way in which trigger warnings have proliferated).
I don’t see a real problem with organizing around specific marginal identities/positionalities shared by few people as long as it’s done with the potential for working in coalition with other dissimilar people; sadly, I’ve been seeing potential allies told both that they can’t understand the concerns of the specific group becasue they’re not part of it and that it’s not the job of the members of the group to educate other people about their concerns. That’s true on both counts, but it’s probably not the best strategy for driving social change because it also is the perfect way to ensure that you can never gain allies or work in coalition with dissimilar people.
Donnie – send them to Yo, is this racist? and tell them to read for awhile – it takes several pages for it to sink in how depressingly common such crap is, and how ridiculous it is.
This business of “All your potential allies are going to take their collective ball and go home unless you tutor them personally” is really getting rather tiresome.
Yelling at people for “doing it wrong” but refusing to tell them what “doing it right” would entail – especially when they’ve indicated a desire to – is recognized as an abusive behavior in pretty much every other context. Am I just being too literal here?
Excuse me while I post this daily for the next several years.
@ John Horstman #12,
I was really unimpressed by that blog post you linked to. Hauberman calls for more intersectional social movements, yet he also says that people who have been marginalized by these movements that need to stop complaining since his just leads to infighting which distracts from the real goal. But this does not make any sense. How can a social movement become more intersectional if it does not listen to the complaints of people who currently feel marginalized by the movement? Hauberman says that the he wants the LGBT movement to be more multiracial and anti-poverty. How does he expect that to happen if poor people and people of color within the LGBT movement don’t speak up about racism and classism within the LGBT movement?
In his essay, Hauberman complains about how some people have criticized a San Francisco nightclub for having a transphobic slur in its name. If the nightclub had used a racial slur in its name instead, would Hauberman treat the people who criticized it in the same dismissive manner? Would Hauberman tell black people in the LGBT movement who complained about the name that they were letting their personal hurt feelings get in the way of the larger fight for justice? Would he say that the black people who complained about the name were ignoring the history of the LGBT movement reappropriating bigoted slurs? Would he write that the people who complained about the name were wrong because “When we obliterate terms like ‘nigger’ in the quest for respectability and assimilation, we actually feed back into the very ideologies that produce homophobia and racism in the first place!”? If he would, then he’s part of the very problem that he’s trying to criticize. If he wouldn’t treat people who’d complain about racial slurs in this manner, then how come he’s willing to treat people who complain about transphobic slurs like this? Hauberman says that he wants the LGBT movement to focus more on systematic injustice than individual hurt feelings, but apparently it hasn’t occurred to him that the use of transphobic slurs by cis gay people might be a manifestation of systematic transphobia within the LGBT movement. I guess the protecting the hurt feelings of gay cisgender people who like using transphobic slurs matters more to Hauberman than stopping a manifestation of systematic transphobia.
@ John Horstman #12,
I was really unimpressed by that blog post you linked to. Hauberman calls for more intersectional social movements, yet he also says that people who have been marginalized by these movements that need to stop complaining since his just leads to infighting which distracts from the real goal. But this does not make any sense. How can a social movement become more intersectional if it does not listen to the complaints of people who currently feel marginalized by the movement? Hauberman says that the he wants the LGBT movement to be more multiracial and anti-poverty. How does he expect that to happen if poor people and people of color within the LGBT movement don’t speak up about racism and classism within the LGBT movement?
In his essay, Hauberman complains about how some people have criticized a San Francisco nightclub for having a transphobic slur in its name. If the nightclub had used a racial slur in its name instead, would Hauberman treat the people who criticized it in the same dismissive manner? Would Hauberman tell black people in the LGBT movement who complained about the name that they were letting their personal hurt feelings get in the way of the larger fight for justice? Would he say that the black people who complained about the name were ignoring the history of the LGBT movement reappropriating bigoted slurs? Would he write that the people who complained about the name were wrong because “When we obliterate terms like ‘n*gger’ in the quest for respectability and assimilation, we actually feed back into the very ideologies that produce homophobia and racism in the first place!”? If he would, then he’s part of the very problem that he’s trying to criticize. If he wouldn’t treat people who’d complain about racial slurs in this manner, then how come he’s willing to treat people who complain about transphobic slurs like this? Hauberman says that he wants the LGBT movement to focus more on systematic injustice than individual hurt feelings, but apparently it hasn’t occurred to him that the use of transphobic slurs by cis gay people might be a manifestation of systematic transphobia within the LGBT movement. I guess the protecting the hurt feelings of gay cisgender people who like using transphobic slurs matters more to Hauberman than stopping a manifestation of systematic transphobia.
:)
Just pretend that every time I wrote “Hauberman” in my last comment, it actually says “Halberstam.”
Yeah, you’d think that I’d have realized that I’d gotten the guy’s name wrong before I posted a comment criticizing him. I’m kind of an idiot sometimes. Sorry about that.
Telling, for example, a white man that he can’t understand what it’s like to exist in the world as a black woman is not telling him he’s “doing it wrong.” It’s a statement of fact. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing he can learn or nothing he can do to help. It just means he needs to shut up and believe black women (or whichever group) when they relate their own lived experiences.
A really really lot of people conflate being told they can’t understand what it’s like to be a part of X group with being told they can’t understand anything at all X group’s concerns.
Likewise, an individual being unwilling to personally tutor that particular white man doesn’t make the entire bloody internet vanish. There are plenty of resources and, often, plenty of other people willing to educate if that person is really interested in being an ally.
@Anathema, Jack Halberstam IS trans.
I’m not with him all the way on everything, but I think he has a fair point. Might this specific slur could be used in the same way as queer, dyke etc? ie, a word that at least some part of the community has claimed and used as its own.
@John Horstman
Social movements splinter when people within that social movement start to notice that the movement as a whole isn’t representing them. What frequently happens, then, is that the under-represented people come together so that A) their combined voice is heard by the larger group, and B) they have a band of fellow travellers they can use as support who are bound by a commonality of experience.
Black Feminists are still Feminists. On all of the big stroke issues, they’re shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of us. They’re not just allies, they’re… Well, they’re kinda like family. They don’t always see eye-to-eye on all issues, but when there’s an outside threat, they’re, usually, all right there to support the cause.
In other words, these splinter groups already are allies. What they’re not, necessarily, is friends. Maybe they could be if the majority stopped and took stock of how they treat minority issues within their ranks, but until they do the splinter groups are going to be there to remind them that they’re not doing enough to ensure that marginalized groups feel, well, less marginalized!
Guess what happens when the majority in a given social movement work hard at being inclusive. Those splinters disappear!
Alethea:
Well, as Crip Dyke isn’t around…please don’t use trans as a noun. Jack Halberstram is a transperson is better.
@ Alethea Kuiper-Belt, # 21,
If the nightclub that Halberstam was talking about was run by trans women or had mostly trans women for its clientele, then I’d be a lot more sympathetic to that argument. But the nightclub Halberstam is talking about seems to be mostly a venue for drag queens. This isn’t an example of trans women reclaiming a term that’s used to denigrate them. It’s an example of a group of people using a slur that’s usually directed at others and then, when the people who that slur is actually directed against complain about it, insist that they are reclaiming it.
The only people who have the right to try to reclaim a slur are the people who that slur is used to denigrate. You don’t get to attempt to reclaim a slur that’s used to denigrate a group of people that you aren’t a part of. This is especially true when people who that slur is used to denigrate say that they think that your use of this slur is perpetuating bigotry against them and ask you to stop using it.
Him? He? So he’s not a transwoman? You know, those people who are statistically far far FAR more likely than transmen to be victims of violence? The ones who are overwhelmingly the target of that slur? The ones who have to live every moment out in public with the fear that they’ll hear someone yell that slur followed moments later by a blow to the back of the head?
But hey why should he let a little thing like that stop him from lecturing us about how we should shut up and stop standing up for ourselves against the people promoting the use of that slur?
As for the comic itself, yes! Dear zombie Jesus yes! So totally accurate and applies to so many situations.
samihawkins:
Though your point that Jack is wrong to dismiss slurs against transpeople is well taken, I think this comment is dangerously close to Oppression Olympics. Or rather, it is dismissive towards the troubles that other transpeople suffer through in order to (unnecessarily) explain why Jack gets it wrong. I very much doubt being a transman is much of a cake walk either. Both groups would be much “better” off if they didn’t rock the boat and pretended to be cis. And both receive a ridiculous amount of push back for daring to defy cultural gender expectations, even without looking at the actual violence as well.
Also: turning this into some sort of contest between “Transmen” and “Transwoman” also reinforces a binary view of the gender spectrum.
@25
This gets complicated quickly, because in the past, drag queens were the subject of that same slur and violence. Interestingly, drag has become more accepted in many places or at least is more often, correctly seen as something different from being a trans woman. You and Zinnia Jones really nailed the key issue. Drag and trans do not necessarily face the same issues.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/zinniajones/2014/04/the-worst-assimilation-of-all-how-modern-day-drag-hurts-trans-women-and-achieves-little-or-nothing-of-value/
Azkyroth
No, you’re wrong here.
The contexts in which this IS abuse is when there’s a relationship of power between the yeller and the yellee. Teacher-student, parent-child, boss-employee.
I’m neither the mother, nor the boss, nor the teacher of clueless men. While I’m very glad for the education I did and do get from other groups, and generally happy to play “Erklärbär” (somebody who explains things), I won’t ask people who have just been hurt and who are angry about the harm they suffered to clamly explain why this is wrong. To demand that they do, that is abusive.
@John Horstman #12
I’m no expert here, but isn’t it true that people’s labels and experiences interact with each other? Don’t for instance black women experience things that neither white women nor black men experience? Doesn’t a heterosexual white male have a level of privilege incomparable to a white transwoman? I’m pretty sure one can’t have in-depth discussions about race without mentioning class, incomes, education. Intersectionality is what their *is*, it’s the actual face of reality.
OK, so it may make things simpler to have single-issue movements, but surely they should be *inclusive* of people with other issues, *cooperative* on points of common interest and *mindful* of the needs and perspectives of others.
A racist (ableist, transphobic, homophobic, classist.. etc.) white feminist group is doing no good if it is perpetuating one set of harmful stereotypes while fighting to remove another set. You’d end up having to acknowledge the validity of the MRM, just because there are one or two men who actually adress the one or two legitimate issues they have.
Kichea
THIS
And it’s the damn job of the majority to do that work, to recognise that this work is NECESSARY and THEIR JOB is a first step. Everything else is jam tomorrow and lie back and think of the movement.
Seriously, I can understand why many WOC use “white feminism” as an insult. The amount of times I see white feminists being totally clueless and then defensive is astounding. Laurie Penny is a good example. I’m quite often in agreement with her, cause we’re both educated white women, and then there are the times my Twitter explodes with WOC being really angry about some thing she wrote, usually from a point of heavy privilege talking about women while actually not representing women but a certain kind of middle class white women. The main difference between her and some atheist guy talking about “people” while actually just talking about straight white men is that there are usually no rape threats involved.
There’s always a relationship of power between yellers and yellees.
If you only mean the broad institutional kind, say that.
Azkyroth
As much as I like the comic, no.
I mean, seriously, what can a black woman throw at a white man? She doesn’t even have all those “nice” words to use that he can use in return.
Just like there’s a huge difference between my kid yelling at me, telling me that I’m mean and that they hate me and me doing the same thing in reverse.
@32 You are not wrong that words can hurt and this is what leads to much of the anger against social justice. But I don’t think this is always the fault of the yeller. I cannot count the number of times that “society is sexist and you are not helping” is misheard as “you are a sexist piece of shit”. Now ego gets involved and the yellee gets defensive and doubles down.
Also if the yellee is used to a lot of privilege, they are not used to being called out like that and may not have the tools to look at themselves and think about changing. Yes words can hurt, but we all also need to be able to take a few words without becoming too hurt and defensive, because listening to words is the only way to change for the better. A person with more privilege may not understand how often other people are forced to shrug off hurtful words.
Yes, we all should think about the emotional damage our words can have; turnabout is not fair play; but worrying about the underprivileged hurting the privileged with their words really should take a back seat to raising awareness about social justice issues in most cases.