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belonglab · 3 years

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Gaslighting: A Tool of Oppression and Exclusion

by Alisha Patel, Communications & Research Fellow at GenLead|BelongLab

February 2, 2021

“I don’t see color.” This is one of the most common phrases people will use to defend themselves against accusations of racism. It isn’t the best, but at least it’s not explicitly racist, right? In a culture where calling out institutional and systemic racism feels like an ongoing battle that’s fought tiny steps at a time, that phrase feels like an adequate place to start. However, this phrase is actually a form of racial gaslighting, and its acceptance only perpetuates stereotypes and the racism we are trying to fight.

Gaslighting in general is a form of manipulation and psychological abuse where the perpetrator convinces the victim that they are imagining or overreacting to abuse. Over time, this can solidify the perpetrator’s position of power over the victim, turning it into an ongoing cycle of abuse. The effects of gaslighting are extensive-- the victim will start to second guess themselves and their judgments. While this form of manipulation is often talked about with regard to personal relationships, it can additionally be used to to cloak bigotry like racism.

Racial Gaslighting

Racial gaslighting often is used to excuse microaggressions in all forms. It can invalidate someone’s experience of perceived racism by subtly denying their feelings and emotions, excusing implicit comments meant to demean or discredit them, or even excusing explicit attacks on them. Its effects are grave; it subtly reinforces and sustains racial and social hierarchies that inevitably hurt minority groups. Not only does racial gaslighting allow stereotypes to continue, but it also degrades the victim’s sense of self and teaches them to invalidate their own instincts and judgments.

For example, imagine if someone had experienced racism in the workplace and attempted to tell a fellow coworker about the incident; instead of empathizing, the coworker reassured the victim “it couldn’t possibly be racism,” “it is all in your head,” or “you’re too sensitive.” Statements like this place the perpetrator in a position of power and control under the guise of morality, while undermining the victim’s experience as lesser-than. In turn, the victim can develop feelings of anxiety and depression as they start believing they cannot trust themselves and cannot express their emotions outwardly. According to clinical psychologist Dr. Roberta Babb, racial gaslighting also, “overtly and covertly erodes a person’s sense of self, self-worth, agency and confidence.” Thus, racial gaslighting feeds internalized oppression and Imposter Syndrome.

Racial gaslighting is so common that it is sometimes difficult to tell when it is happening, and it can even be unconscious or unintentional. Normalized phrases like “I don’t see color” seem to mean well at first glance, but in actuality serve to invalidate the struggles of a minority group while erasing the group’s lived history. It tells the listener, quite unequivocally, “I am not racist. What you are perceiving as racism on my part cannot possibly be racism.” Phrases like these are un-nuanced and oversimplified takes that may have been accepted in the past, but as we learn more about deep and entrenched racism, we see they are outdated, insensitive, and quite frankly, racist.

This type of manipulation often is used by mainstream media and people in power, ingraining its use in our culture and further highlighting the power dynamics underpinning racial gaslighting. Think of Donald Trump and his response to protest movements through the past year: On one hand, he refused to condemn Neo-Nazi protestors, saying there were “fine people on both sides.” But he mischaracterized Black Lives Matter protests calling for an end to police brutality as thugs and threatened them with the National Guard, warning “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” He then mischaracterized the white supremacist, violent insurrection he incited on January 6th as a march, declaring his love for the insurrectionists. According to Trump, white supremacists are allowed the benefit of the doubt and could possibly be good people at heart. Yet, those in support of black lives are automatically dangerous and should be perceived as a threat. With these statements, Donald Trump at once validates the platform of white supremacists while invalidating black lives in the United States and negating the idea that racism is a problem; he normalizes the presence of white supremacy while revealing the inability of the country to acknowledge its inherent racism and bigotry. Anyone witnessing photos and images of how the BLM protesters were treated versus how the white supremacist insurrectionists were treated at our Capitol can see that racial gaslighting has deeply permeated our country systemically and is a problem that outlives the Trump presidency.

Gender Gaslighting

Also problematic is gender gaslighting, where a woman may not feel comfortable voicing concerns about sexism because her concerns are automatically dismissed. Consider a woman -- let’s call her Jana -- who has been working for a company for many years and is very qualified for a promotion. Yet every time Jana expects to be promoted, a man is given the promotion instead, even though he has had less time at the company and is not as qualified. Jana may attempt to discuss this with her boss, but he insists it has nothing to do with her gender; he tells her she is overanalyzing the situation and being over-sensitive. While it is possible that Jana’s boss could be telling the truth, it is more likely that her gender is in fact playing a role in not receiving a promotion, as this pattern has repeated multiple times. However, Jana has learned that she does not have a space to speak up about this sexism, will likely be negatively judged for speaking up and thus have an even harder time getting that promotion, and therefore most likely will not attempt to speak up again. This is the same situation that is seen with racial gaslighting-- the cycle will continue for Jana, and her emotions may inevitably turn inwards, convincing her that she is not qualified for any promotion and deserves to be limited to her current level.

COVID-19 Gaslighting

We even see gaslighting around COVID-19. As a college student at a very urban university, the pandemic has shaken up every single aspect of college life. Though my school has adjusted as best as possible (we are tested twice a week and receive our results within 24 hours; most classes are online and if they aren’t, there are usually less than five people in-person, all socially-distanced; so on and so forth), interacting with other students and people my age really reveals the mindset around the pandemic.

As the pandemic has raged on, it feels as though people have accepted its presence, or stopped caring altogether. It’s a stark difference from the first lockdown in March, where it felt (at least for the most part) that everyone was on the same page. But now, instead of staying inside and mitigating the impacts of the pandemic, it feels as though it’s now a matter of working around the pandemic to do things we used to do. Those who are still staying inside have become more of the minority than the majority, and are sometimes gaslighted to feel overly paranoid for continuing to take the pandemic seriously. This gaslighting is clearly very harmful to society as a whole, as it simultaneously perpetuates coronavirus while undermining common sense and the empathy to care about the collective nation.

COVID gaslighting can exist on a small interpersonal level. Consider a situation where two friends want to get together, but one is insisting on following social distancing regulations while the other is suggesting to abandon them altogether. The one wanting to abandon social distancing may claim that they have both been isolating themselves since the beginning of the pandemic, and it is unlikely that they could infect each other. They may go on to call their friend overly paranoid of the virus and accuse them of not wanting to get together. Though this is not actually the case, the friend who was attempting to follow COVID regulations is made to be the villain, which is a common gaslighting mechanism.

Even worse, COVID gaslighting has been perpetuated by some people in power, who can afford to preach a careless and selfish mentality around COVID-19 because, even when they contract the virus, they have the money, power, and resources to combat it. Meanwhile, they continue to manipulate the American public into believing that COVID is not something to be taken seriously.Their followers adopt the same invincible mindset, but it is clear that they -- and most other average Americans -- are not in the same situation and do not have the same money and resources to combat COVID if needed. The situation is even worse for identity groups that have been historically oppressed.

Many Black and brown communities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19: African-Americans deaths are two times higher than would be expected for their population, and it is the same for Hispanics and Latinos. On the other hand, white deaths from COVID are “lower than their share of the population in 37 states.” These disparities result from institutionalized and systemic racism (fed by racial gaslighting) that has been snowballing since our country’s inception.

Combatting Racism by Contending with Gaslighting

It is in no way, shape, or form the victim’s responsibility to attempt to change their gaslighter’s behavior. Instead, it is important for us to create safe spaces for these victims to be heard and validated. Thus, putting a stop to gaslighting begins by looking inwardly at our own behavior and preconceived biases; particularly, if you find yourself recognizing some of the behaviors symptomatic of gaslighting, it may be wise to engage in self-introspection and attempt to accept some responsibility. Though some gaslighting may be done unintentionally or what you believed to be well-meaning, it clearly is still harmful and must be mitigated. To confront the biases that may underlie your possible gaslighting of others, you can also take this online test that examines and assesses internal biases that you may not have even noticed (it takes about 10-15 minutes). Attempt to challenge these internal biases, and pay attention to how they affect your interactions with others.

Additionally, be prepared and open to truly listen to and learn from other people and their experiences, and focus on increasing your awareness of others’ circumstances. These steps can begin the process of acknowledging gaslighter responsibility. By first starting on a personal scale, we can expand this introspection to a larger scale and begin holding the racist systems in our country accountable.

If you find yourself a victim of gaslighting, it is important to safeguard your mental health. This can be done by taking a step back from the situation and removing yourself from the environment to consider the hurtful behavior and resulting emotions. You can write down your thoughts to affirm your judgement as valid and for reference if necessary. It also can be helpful to talk with other members of your identity group and share experiences like this. Affirmation from others with similar circumstances can validate your experience of harmful gaslighting and remind you that you are not alone. This can help you to trust yourself more as well as recognize the gaslighting as it is happening.

In the moment gaslighting is occurring, it is important to call out the behavior publicly (when possible and safe to do so), showing the perpetrator and others in proximity that the behavior is inappropriate and will not be tolerated. Further (again, to the extent safe and not harmful), you can talk one-on-one with the perpetrator to discuss the behavior, making sure to describe the behavior and why it is harmful. Setting boundaries (e.g., taking a step back, removing yourself from the situation, as described above) will help to loosen any grip the negative environment or perpetrator may have on you.

As an ally, it is important to help support victims of racial gaslighting by helping to call out the unacceptable behavior, as well as creating a safe space for victims to express themselves and be heard and respected. Make sure that what you are doing is not self-indulgent or performative, but rather is truly helpful to the victim and in their self interest.

Combatting racism in a present day context is not an easy task -- it is extremely complicated and has far-reaching and entrenched roots in the United States. That said, the task should begin with dismantling the practices that perpetuate racism on interpersonal and societal scales. By recognizing racial gaslighting, it is possible to disrupt stereotypes and racial hierarchies, while also offering the historically oppressed, excluded, and marginalized a safe space to speak and be heard, which uncloaks hard truths from underneath imposed false narratives. Those who insist they don’t see color are not seeing people of color and their lived experiences.

Without seeing the hard truths, we are unable to address them.

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markwhitwell · 3 years

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Establishing a Home Yoga Practice | Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

The biggest challenge we face when starting our life of Yoga is to establish a home practice that feels natural and pleasurable to do every day. Our daily practice should feel as simple as brushing our teeth in the morning, as easy as slipping into our favorite pair of jeans and as necessary as taking a shower (perhaps more necessary!). Yet, as we all know, when we wake up we can easily let the demands of the day take over and forget to practice.

Some rare people can start to practice without any difficulties at all. For most of us however, the journey is uneven and this is all good. We all have our unique karmas, addictions, circumstances, emotional complexes and frustrations to cut through.

We may practice for a few weeks or months and then stop. We practice some days and then do not practice on other days. When we stop we may feel guilty. We then resent Yoga for making us feel guilty. The next week we feel a burst of enthusiasm and recommit which is followed by a loss of faith and so on.

Does gender play a role? Men may find it easy to practice because they have long been encouraged by the culture to prioritise their spiritual fulfillment. Although, typically the means of fulfillment is located in career, artistic pursuits, a sense of mission in the world, and action. The stillness, restfulness and receptive quality inherent in a Yoga practice may deter many men who only know and want to penetrate life.

On the other hand, women have been so trained to be tuned in to the needs of the others that the actual discipline of taking half an hour to an hour a day to do sadhana for themselves may result in a direct confrontation with deeply ingrained social patterning. Female friends describe how even when they do have the time to practice, their own tendency to put themselves second to others needs (real or imagined) means they won’t do it.

Where there is an obstacle to practice it must be inspected. And when there is a couple who both want to practice, it is the responsibility of each person to ensure the other has the time and the literal space to do so.

Perhaps the most significant barrier to practice however, is the idea that Yoga is something that you do on yourself in order to get to a future improved place.

We have been raised to believe that we are separate body living in a separate world. Spiritual disciplines are provided to us by well-meaning (or exploitative) people as the means to return to a state of unity with life and others. The starting point is problem and Yoga is presented as the solution. Such a prospect either turns us off practice altogether or makes us obsessively practice for several hours a day trying to fix ourselves. The very presumption that we are separate and need to re-connect causes stress on the organism and turns us off practice.

Another approach is possible. Yoga is Not a Struggle for a Future ResultYoga arose in the great Upanishadic culture in a time before the concept of the holy personality or exclusive God had developed in history. It was a wisdom culture that simply acknowledged that everything is Brahman or God: Sun, moon, male, female, breath, senses, food, and all tangible and intangible aspects of the cosmos. There was no concept of a special person as God, implying that everyone else was not.This dichotomy was made worse when the idea of the divine person was packaged, distributed and forced into the social mind and behavior as doctrine. This is the cause of human misery, trying to be something we are not, rather than enjoying the wonder and power of Life that is already abundantly given.The message from the wisdom traditions of humanity, prior to the imposition of male power structures, is that there is no ultimate reality or God to be attained because God or Reality is already our innate condition and appears as every thing. There is no world separate from Source.Call it God or spirit if you will, but there is no necessity for religious language or belief. It is simply to understand that life and all there is to know is never further away than your own breath and all ordinary conditions. The secrets of the universe are fully in you, as you. There are no steps to be taken. None. Your body is not different from its source. Your whole body is not different from God.This is not something we can turn into a process of seeking. Just as the fact that the sun is the source of our solar system does not provoke us to seek for the sun. The sun is a tacit presence in our lives that we enjoy. Attempting to get closer to Reality or God is like trying to find the sun as if it is not pouring down on us every moment of the day. It only keeps the mind busy and stressed and we soon injure ourselves in our struggle. No Problem YogaOnce you realize that there is nowhere to get to, then your journey to daily practice is clear. Actual yoga arises naturally as the movement of Life in body, breath and relationship, rather than the manipulation of the body and mind.If you find yourself still caught up within the seeking logics of the mind then don’t worry. For as long as your practice is organised around the specific principles that Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) brought forth then your Yoga will be the unitary movement of body, breath and mind. Your Yoga is direct participation in Reality itself: no matter what the mind is up to.These principles are:The body movement is the breath movement.The breath envelops the movement.The inhale is from above as receptivity; the exhale is from below as strength.Asana creates bandha; and bandha is not to be practiced outside of asana.Asana, Pranayama, meditation and life are a seamless process.These principles functionally override the mind’s seeking impulse by gently but deliberately subordinating the mind to the flow of the breath. The breath leads the movement not the brain. As a result, the mind automatically becomes immersed in the whole body and the whole body is always in the present moment. You find that you do not have to be here now, you are here now!The faith or certainty in the body’s intelligence and presence gradually enters the mind and the only motivation that remains for your daily practice is pleasure. The body loves its breath; the exhale loves the inhale. We feel the whole body, mind included, fold up from its fearful struggle. We gently relax into the nurturing field of Reality itself. Our system relaxes and energy flows. Then we are away.There is still of course a degree of discipline, but it is now conceived of as a discipline of pure pleasure. Just like making love regularly with our special partner is a discipline, because if we do not make it a priority then we tend to let work and other matters take over. The gamble is that pleasure (rather than fear, guilt, or hopefulness) becomes the guarantor of your daily sadhana.So get your practice into your day whatever it takes. Do not be casual about it and do not make it random. Have a time in your day that fits into your daily routine. Like eating breakfast or having a shower your practice will soon become a seamless part of your day.

#yoga #heartofyoga

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theculturedmarxist · 4 years

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Against Biology, Against the Sexed Body

Gender, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and the Molecular

The specter of biology is near omnipresent. This omnipresence is nowhere more evident than in the way in which sex, and thus consequentially Gender, is understood. The left has long forwarded the understanding of systems of power as that which constitutes political, and thus social, life. That said, what is surprising is that this semiotic imperialism of biology over the field of sex has planted itself within ‘radical spaces’ as well, and in most cases, expresses itself in ways that would seem contradictory to the held beliefs of those expressing them. For example, how can one resolve that biologization is a primary force of Western colonialism, but also forward an article that ascribes penises and sperm as “Male reproductive physiology” and vagina’s and eggs as “female reproductive system(s)” as “one of my favorite articles” (Martin 10–11; Spira)? It would seem that the praising of such a blatantly transphobic, and thus biologizing, article as positive merely reproduces the same colonial force of Western biologization, thus formulating these two positions as necessarily mutually exclusive. That said, the very fact that these two positions are mutually exclusive and thus contradictory to hold at the same time reveals the way in which biology has penetrated the molecular realm to such a degree that we have been circuited to desire a folding of all life (specifically understandings of sex and gender) under the taxonomy of biology; even when it seems inherently contradictory to other ideologically held beliefs. Following Oyèrónke Oyewùmi, we ought not understand biology as an independent vector of violence, but rather as one that is necessarily situated within the production of Western modernity; anti-blackness, settler colonialism, and by consequence compulsory heterosexuality (9). In that sense, I hope to indicate that the taxonomization of molecular life under the signifier of biology necessarily sexes the body, and in doing so, deploys the structures for which compulsory heterosexuality is able to gain coherence. This essay will hopefully not only impel the necessity of gender abolitionism in revolutionary struggles against compulsory heterosexuality, but also a re-articulation of life that “instead of denoting a possible reality” understands life as fundamentally virtual (Parisi 14).

Biology and the Molecular

Despite what biology would lead you to believe life is not determinate, i.e. life is not transcendentally knowable or “determined genetically, predominantly by parts of the genes called chromosomes” but rather fundamentally indeterminate; always already in flux (Stryker 8). The reason for which this is the case is due to the fact that the very quantum materiality’s that make up like, for example protons and electrons, exist within a constant state of flux (Barad 394). As briefly mentioned earlier, one of the primary ways in which the biologization of life operates is through the creation of a singular meaning for which life can express itself. For example, there is a unitary classification system that is imparted onto particular species to such a degree that all of the difference that exists between those that might be considered a species is reduced down to a singular set of unifying traits. In this sense an ontology is created, attached, and reproduced as the de-facto way in which life should be understood; as having a constitutive being. It could be said that this ontologization of life is the raison d’etre for Western science in that “difference is expressed as degeneration” and thus must be smoothed over through the signification of an ontology, or being (Oyewùmi 3). Biology serves as one of the fundamental vectors of this collapsing of difference because of its ability to justify its logics as determinate of how the world operates, which through its omnipresence at the heart of any scientific development, has spilled out onto an understanding of quantum physics as well (Oyewùmi 9). As an instance of this, traditional quantum physics has generally explained quantum properties (waves, particles, etc) as necessarily determinate, and thus because of that developed the determinate principle as the overarching structure for which life expresses itself (Sheldon 4). This generally takes the form of constructing waves and participles as having universal principles that always already determine their expression, and because of that, have a definite expression (Sheldon 4).

There is a multitude of reasons as to why this understanding of life is problematic, but first and foremost it just misunderstands the basis for which it justifies its claim to determinacy; particles and waves. Rather than having determinate characteristics that a-priori dictate the way in which particles and waves express themselves, they are rather indeterminate in the sense that the way in which they express themselves is always dependent on the realities for which they are expressed within; they are virtual. Virtual in the sense that their trajectory is not teleological but rather open to the infinite possibilities made possible by particular material realities, or in other words, “the virtual is reality in terms of strength or potential that tends towards actualization or emergence” (Parisi 14). To elaborate, the classic way in which particles and waves are recorded is through shooting them through an apparatus that is comprised of a screen or, “slit,” that once passed through records the pattern for which the particles/waves were composed (Sheldon 4). Traditional quantum physics would say that particles passing through a double slit would produce a scattershot pattern due to the fact that once a stream of particles bounces off of the first slit it should radiate out like buckshot. That said, when particles do pass through such an apparatus they do not actually express themselves as theorized, instead they tend to represent the formation of what a wave is typically understood to be; an interference pattern (Sheldon 4). Compounded with this, if a detector is added after the fact to determine which of the two slits the particles actually passed through their formation reverts back to a scattershot (Sheldon 5). This indicates that the foundational principle for the very building blocks of life is not determinacy, but rather indeterminacy, virtual particles that are constantly opening themselves towards the possibilities constituted by the material relations they both create and are situated within (Barad 395–396). In this sense, life should not be understood as a stabilized biologic force, but rather an interplay between molecular relations that constantly produce mutations within all fields at which life is able to express itself (Parisi 53–54). To reiterate the old Deleuzoguattarian adage, life is about becoming and not being; any attempt to compress becoming into being (as biology does) is a reactive force of violence (Deleuze and Guattari 106).

Sexing the Body and the Project of Gender

Biology engages in this sort of violence in that it seeks to create a determinate principle, or being, for which life is organized. An example of this being the way in which biology categorizes bodies as constitutive wholes, or organisms, instead of machines that necessarily interplay and are contaminated by their ecologies. Summarizing Merleau-Ponty, Judith Butler articulates that one of the primary ways in which biology engages in this process is through not only the invention of the body as a naturalized product, but specifically the sexed body (463). I want to stress the importance of this argument, Butler’s claim is not merely that taxonomies of biology create a specific conception of the body that is sexed, but rather the structuring logic for which the body catalyzes into existence through a biologic frame is one that is necessarily sexed. To be clear, this is not to say that the impact for which these conceptions of the body are not ‘real’ in their impact/violence, because they certainly are, but rather serves to indicate that the claim to naturalism that they deploy is part in parcel to that violence, and in many cases is the operational logic for said violence (Butler 464). This specific biological project, the compression of the body to be strictly organized around sex, is a process of collapsing the virtual potentialities of the molecular to an ontology and thus a violent attack on life itself. Describing this process, Luciana Parisi brilliantly says this “model of representation does not entail the exact reflection of reality or truth, but is more crucially used to refer to a system of organization of signs where structures of meaning arrange … through the hierarchies of the signifier. The model of representation reduces all differences … to the universal order of linguistic signification constituted by binary oppositions where on term negates the existence of the other” (9). In this sense, it’s clear that the process for which biology embarks upon, the inducing of the body into the semiotic realm vis a vis a sexing, is one that is fundamentally violent, the question then becomes what this conception of sex looks like.

While Susan Stryker’s seminal “Transgender History” is incredibly important for a variety of reasons, it does reinvest within the biologization of sex and in doing so inadvertently is able to reveal the particular conception of sex biology deploys. This reinvestment on the part of Stryker’s when talking about the division between gender and sex, which as Parisi reminds us, are not two distinct entities but rather co-constitutive forces utilized to forward a signified (and thus violent) conception of the body (50). Stryker says “Sex is not the same as gender … the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ refer to sex. Sex refers to reproductive capacity or potential … Sperm producers are said to be that of the male sex, and egg producers are said to be of the female sex” (8). This reveals pretty plainly the specific conception of sex biology deploys as constitutive of the body, one at which is predicated on the idea of static genital expression (penis and vagina), sexual dimorphism, and reproduction. In short, this construction of sex seeks to justify its reduction of genital life to the signifiers of penis and vagina, and the consequential construction of those two signifiers as dimorphic under the banner that sex has solely do to with ‘species’ reproduction. This a-priori association between sex and reproduction is independently violent in of itself in that not only does it constitute the body as a stabilized organism, thereby creating the subject to be disciplined by biopower, but explicitly works towards the overkill of intersex folks (Parisi 35). To elaborate, given the way in which intersex bodies are ones that exist outside of the signifiers of penis and vagina, and the association between sex and reproduction seeks to elevate said signifiers as the only way in which bodies can materialize, it means that intersex people are literally eradicated from existence. To return to the earlier Parisi quote, this semiotic refrain seeks to negate the existence of the other by creating a regime of meaning (in this case what genitals ‘are’) that always already frames them out (9). This is a violence that can once again be seen in Stryker in that she positions sex as the two dialectical positions of male and female ‘sex organs’ that “cannot be changed” (8).

The sexing of the body, through a process of life’s capture within the referent of biology, is not only violent in this sense, but also due to the fact that it is the priming logics used to gender bodies. Logics that gender bodies in such a way that necessitate colonialist, transphobic, and through its production of compulsory heterosexuality, heteronormative violence. Briefly stepping away from the question of biological sexing, it’s important to understand just what Gender is and thus how said sexing paves the way for it to deploy itself. To be clear, when I say that Gender is inherently a violent structure I do not mean to say that gender identity in the abstract is bad. Rather, I mean to articulate the way in which a dominant conception of Gender has been created, deployed, and enforced in such a way that it forces people into specific gender identities that they did not determine. Thus when we critique and call for the abolishment of capital G Gender, that does not mean the eradication of gender identities that exist outside of said paradigm like the Hijra, Two-Spirit, Fa’afafine, etc but rather for the destruction of the system that makes said identities unintelligible. In this sense then, Gender refers to the structure of gender that has been semiotized as the end all be all of what gender could mean, and because of that, the a-priori script for which bodies can exist (nokizaru 6).

This specific structure of Gender was one that was explicitly deployed, and still is, as a tool of the settler colonial project of the land mass we know as the ‘Americas’ and ‘Canada’ (nokizaru 4). To elaborate, not only was this conception of gender one that was almost exclusively a European, and specifically Christian, understanding of how gender operates but it was purposefully forcefully deployed onto indigenous nations in now settler colonial states as a way to engage in the settler colonial project of indigenous eradication (nokizaru 5). This was done due to the fact that a vast majority of indigenous nations not only structured their socialites in non-patriarchal makeups, but specifically had conceptions of gender that did not at all correlate to the European model (Lugones 25). Thus, Gender functions through the production of two gendered subjectivities (man and women), the hegemonic correlation of those subjectivities to particular genitalia, and in doing so, constituting the ontology of those who possess said genitalia. In this sense, Gender could be thought of as operating through what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari call the ‘faciality machine.’ The faciality machine refers to a particular construction of how subjectivity comes about, or subjectification, in which subjectivity becomes exclusively defined by static characteristics (168). In this sense then, “faciality … ends up excavating a binarist figure-ground referent as the support of the universal … statements. All flows and objects must be related to a subjective totalization” and thus works in service as a weapon of reactionary violence (Guattari 76). In the context of Gender, the faciality machine works in service of signifying penises as men, vaginas as woman, thereby injecting said gendered subjectivities into said genitalia and then making that subjectivity constitutive of the body who its signifying. In this sense, Gender will always already be not only transphobic, because of its coercively assigning bodies at birth and obliteration of non-binary trans folks, but also exclusively utilized to eradicate indigenous populations all over the globe.

The sexing of the body becomes the precursor to this process of Gender because it constitutes the stage, i.e. the compression of genital life into a static expression, for which the subjectification of Gender necessitates. To elaborate, the idea that bodies are born with either male or female sex organs is the necessary first step for gendered subjectificaton, on the part of Gender, to even happen in the first place. Due to the fact that this subjectification is premised off of the injection of a gendered subjectivity (man or woman) into specific genitals, and then facializing that as a bodies white wall, that becomes incoherent if there is not first a static construction of what genitals are (i.e. either penises or vaginas) for which the sexing of the body is able to provide. In this sense then, the sexing of the body provides the necessary first step for the internal logics of Gender to deploy themselves. A logic that forms the basis for all transphobic violence to dispense itself; coercively assigning bodies genders at birth. What I mean by this is that due to the fact that Gender reproduces itself through a claim that it operates as the a-priori, or ‘natural,’ screen for which all bodies pass through it means that it needs to deploy some sort of constitutive claim onto every single body that passes through its systems. The way in which Gender does this, through a multitude of different apparatuses but most chiefly the medical industrial complex and the police, is through retroactively gendering fetuses in the womb and then once they are born. This process is necessarily coercive because bodies have no choice in whether they are gendered or not, they simply are forcibly shoved into a subjectivity of man or woman by virtue of existing and/or not existing with a particular genital makeup. This process is not only violent in the abstract because, as nila nokizaru articulates “Gender benefits those who want to control, socialize, and manage us and offers us nothing in return. Every time a person is scrutinized and gendered, society has attacked them, waged war on them,” but also because it forms the basis for which all transphobic violence is able to justify itself (4). This project is what is able to frame trans folks as abominations in the face of Gender, because they refuse said process of coercive assignment, and thus are justified in violence being taken against them to sustain the internal logics of Gender’s expression. As previously mentioned the way in which this gendering operates is through the faciality machine, you are born with a penis and thus you are a man and will always be a man. This process becomes incoherent if there is no sexing of the body that stabilizes the genital signifiers that Gender requires to inject its subjectivity into.

Compulsory Heterosexuality

I ultimately contend that not only is this process of biologizing life violent, and just frankly incorrect, for all of the reasons listened above but also that through its justification for Gender, creates the conditions for what Adrienne Rich calls ‘compulsory heterosexuality.’ It does this because, if Rich is right that compulsory heterosexuality is a regime that is first and foremost structured through the gendered relations of man and women, which I think she is, then the creation of the system of Gender that provides coherence for said gendered relations is necessary (633). To elaborate, if we understand ‘sexuality’ to describe a specific taxonomy of desire that orients bodies towards politically constructed forms of relations, then sexuality requires an object for which it is oriented towards (Puar 30). It requires such a complete object because, like Rich articulates, the primary way in which sexuality comes to be understood is through the psychoanalytic frame of Oedipalization (especially compulsory heterosexuality) (638). It requires this because the Oedipal understanding of desire articulates that the direction of desire is always attached to a complete, or determinate, object, which in the context of desire being trapped within the sexuality referent of compulsory heterosexuality looks like desire being oriented towards gendered bodies (Nigianni 170).

If compulsory heterosexuality functions as not only a force of heteronormativity, but more specifically as both a re-justification of male dominance over those who have been disciplined into womanhood it means that Gender is an integral part of compulsory heterosexuality’s formation (Rich 640). This means that absent the biologization of life that paves the way for which the project of Gender is able to gain coherence compulsory heterosexuality is not able to dispense its violence because it does not have any desiring orientation for its sexual taxonomy, and more importantly, does not have a class for which its violence is directed at (womanhood). Additionally, compulsory heterosexuality is first and foremost concerned about reproduction, i.e. due to the fact that women are semiotized as only ever having vagina’s, the fact that lesbian sex under this paradigm cannot ‘give birth’ is one of the justifications used to forward cis lesbian’s marginalization (Rich 637). In this sense compulsory heterosexuality should not only be thought of as a system that dispenses solely heteronormative, misogynistic, or lesbophobic violence but transphobic violence as well. Compulsory heterosexuality, in its predication on the project of Gender, forwards the sex-reproduction association and thus the constitution of womanhood and manhood based on imagined dimorphic genitalia. This is important not only because it reveals a dimension of compulsory heterosexual’s violence that is oft ignored, but also because it reveals the necessity of the sexed body in the figuration and production of the multitude of structures that dispense compulsory heterosexuality. Not only does compulsory heterosexuality require some figuration of gender, to become the object of its structured desiring orientation, but it specifically requires the Gender that is produced by the sexed body because of its interpolation of bodies as having an intrinsic sex-reproduction connection.

Conclusion

“Gender is a war against all of us, and for those who desire freedom, nothing short of the total eradication of gender will suffice” (nokizaru 7). We must turn against Gender not only because of its foundational violence(s), but also because in a time in which Rich’s theories are once again gaining prominence. To be clear I think this recovery is important, Rich was right to identify compulsory heterosexuality (among a multitude of other things) as a central vector of violence, but we can never dismantle said violence if we do not recognize that Gender is part in parcel to said vector. If we do not orient our revolutionary politics against compulsory heterosexuality to also be Gender abolitionist it means we will always fail to truly deconstruct the violence of compulsory heterosexuality, and specifically, a re-deployment of violence against trans people (specifically trans women) under the guise of feminism. This move is not only reactionarliy violent in the sense that it is rabidly transmisogynistic but is also a reinvestment within the logics of compulsory heterosexuality through a reformation of Gender, and thus the sexed body. Moves like this are dangerous because they are wear the veneer of revolutionary action as aesthetic while still forwarding the violent material conditions of the status quo, merely allowing for despotic assemblages to rearrange themselves. This could look like Rich forwarding the necessity of deconstructing compulsory heterosexuality while still supporting transmisogynists like Mary Daly, or properly identifying the violence of biologization yet still doubling down on there existing male or female reproductive systems (644). To avoid this, yet still necessarily combating the violence of compulsory heterosexuality, our politics must aim to abolish the structure of Gender entirely. A Gender abolitionism that seeks not only to destroy all of the systems, apparatuses, and enforcers that make Gender a reality, but also a release of life from its domination from biology. This requires not only an affirmation of life as becoming, but a material freeing of life from its fascist constraints under biology and thus an endorsement of life as “the matieral wanderings/wanderings of nothingness … the ongoing thought experiment that the world performs with itself … an endless exploration of all possible couplings of virtual particles, a ‘scene of wild activities’” (Barad 396).

#not sure what I think of this yet #interesting #gender #gender abolition #saewol

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bullet-farmer · 5 years

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Okay, I’m having a horrible mental-health day and feel overwhelmed by work, and talking about something that’s been bothering me really feels liberating. Because I feel like it’s one thing I can control right now.

Please don’t reblog this or tag it. I don’t want this to become Discourse, especially in an awesome fandom. But I needed to get this out in a space where people I trust can reply if they wish. I’m fine with disagreement and discussion, as long as people respect my feelings, or ask for clarification if they don’t understand what I’m talking about.

This got long. And it’s about pronouns. And fictional characters. And idk.

Another thing that kind of bothers me about assuming they/them or ze/zir for Beelzebub’s pronouns, and why I’m using both less and less*: I’m really uncomfortable with how few authors do the same for any other character (save, of course, for Pollution, whose pronouns are clearly mentioned as they/them and really should be used exclusively, because that’s just the decent thing to do). Of course, some people use they/them across the board, or pronouns other than she/her and he/him in any combination. But in my experience, authors who do this are quite rare, at least on Ao3. In most cases, I find authors using “gendered” (for lack of a better word) pronouns for everyone else--namely, those that (presumably) match the gender of the actor who plays each role. For example: she/her for Michael and Dagon, and he/him for Hastur and Gabriel.

I don’t want to make assumptions about why people do this. For one thing, making sweeping generalizations about people is always a bad idea. It’s even a worse idea when talking about why a group as diverse as fanfic authors. For another, I don’t know what is in people’s hearts or minds, and I’d rather not try to arbitrate any thoughts but my own. That said, in the West, we are swimming in a sea of gender essentialism and binarism. And I can’t help but feel that both are somehow in play in this phenomenon.

Angels and demons in Good Omens are nonbinary. But from a binarist point of view, you could say that nearly all of the angels and demons have at least a few stereotypical masculine or feminine qualities. For example: Michael wears makeup, and a very frilly blouse at one point; Michael’s suit and Uriel’s have what we would call a feminine cut. Dagon has long hair in a style we would call feminine, Sandalphon has male-pattern baldness, Hastur has a deep voice and wears “masculine” clothes, etc.

But Beelzebub breaks this pattern. She’s what people in the West tend to think of when they hear the term “androgynous”: somewhat boyish and youthful in appearance, dressing in typically “masculine” clothes that don’t emphasize her shape, and behaving in a way that many would call more masculine than feminine. To put it another way, she is aggressive, she speaks forcefully, she shows no hallmarks of being a queen or princess, and she entirely lacks subtlety. Women, of course, are socialized to do the exact opposite. Save for her appearance at the airfield, she is also far more unkempt than any character in the series with the possible exception of Hastur. I’m beginning to see several problems as I go deeper into this deep dive. First problem: the assumption that “nonbinary” means androgynous or genderless. And, as a subset of that problem, the assumption that androgynous and agender/genderless are synonymous, and that they/them and ze/zir are “genderless” pronouns. For some people, they very much are. For others, they are not. (For example, a blogger I follow identifies as a cis woman and uses both she/her and they/them). Second problem: The fact that a character played by an actress simply must be agender or “not female” because said character is androgynous and behaves in stereotypically “masculine” ways. Third problem: ...Why are we only insisting on they/them or ze/zir for the dirtiest, least conventionally attractive character in the show? I mean, being dirty and unkempt isn’t a stereotypically nonbinary trait, but considering how society sees women who don’t obsess over their looks as “not real women,” this has some very unfortunate implications to me. Fourth problem: Y’all, Neil didn’t say that Beelzebub would probably use they/them as pronouns. He said “zir” (and to be honest, I think that was him being witty rather than making an official statement). I understand that some people can uses these interchangeably to describe themselves, but they really aren’t interchangeable. And acting like they are, strikes me as basically saying “well, these are all nongendered pronouns, so just pick whichever you like best when talking about someone.” Imagine calling someone whose pronouns are they/them, “ze/zir” and thinking that isn’t misgendering or upsetting. I also don’t see posts that insist we respect any other character as nonbinary--particularly characters like, say, Hastur, Ligur, or Gabriel. (Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I really feel like people are even more hesitant to call more “masculine” characters nonbinary than they are Dagon, Michael, etc. Which also strikes me as having really unfortunate implications. But that’s a whole other post.) Or regular use of “Nonbinary Character” and “Canon Nonbinary Character” tags on AO3 for any other demon or angel. All of this is really starting to get to me as a nonbinary/genderfluid person who absolutely does not see myself as agender or androgynous, even if people regularly describe my looks as “masculine” for reasons I’ll get into in a second. I’m genderfluid and nonbinary because I do not fully or consistently identify with the gender I was assigned at birth--and because I never have. While some days I feel fine with having society see me as a cis woman, some days I am deeply not okay with it--and am actually dysphoric because my body doesn’t look more stereotypically androgynous. However, when I realized that stereotypical androgyny is a concept that cisheterocentric society forces on nonbinary people--and DFAB people in particular--my dysphoria became a bit more manageable. I also do not attend to my appearance. I have no interest in wearing makeup, flattering clothes, or even feminine ones. I wear skirts for comfort; I’ve always hated pants because of sensory issues, but if I didn’t, I’d probably wear a lot of “men’s” clothes. As it is, I wear T-shirts cut for men, rather than the fitted versions for women. And baggy clothes that men can get away with wearing, but women not so much. I don’t regularly style my hair despite having it long. I don’t shave any part of my body--which began upsetting people when I was twelve, y’all. Adults constantly bothered me about it, and about looking more feminine and stylish. I may be the only “girl” on the planet whose father encouraged her to wear shorter skirts and more flattering tops when she was in her early teens.

It really upset me, but at the time I had no language for why--other than that I felt pushed and harassed. Thankfully, people have since mostly cut that shit out, but when you deal with it as a child, it really leaves some scars and some gender confusion--a fact I only realized while typing this out! Of course, I don’t believe that any of these life choices inherently make anyone any particular gender. But society thinks differently. To it, I’m a failure as a woman, and when you add on the fact that I’m nearing forty, childfree, offbeat, clueless about ‘appropriate” interactions with men, and loud and messy because of ADHD, I’m labeled as even less of a woman. I would have no problem with this if it didn’t come with the pejorative baggage. I have never been a girl or a woman, though I feel I share enough in common with this gender to be comfortable having it be part of my identity to some degree. Even as a child, I felt this but I had no name for it because no one was talking about trans issues in a conservative red state in the 80s and 90s, and they sure as fuck wouldn’t have done it around kids. I didn’t even hear the word “nonbinary” until the early 2010s. All of this also means that I don’t get many characters or images that represent me. Again, media portrayals of people like me (DFAB and not consistently woman-identifying) are so rare that Beelzebub is the ONLY one I have found in my adult life who isn’t, you know, the butt of a joke about viragos and lesbians who are too ugly to get a man, and “undateables.” So having people insist that using she/her is somehow misgendering is...well, I get that it’s not directed at me. That it isn’t about me personally. That it isn’t meant to hurt me. That it is a lot of nonbinary people and genderfluid people talking about their own experiences. I know all of that, and I don’t begrudge people their feelings. But it still kind of hurts when they disapprove of disagreement. And it makes me worry that fewer people will read my fic, and may accuse me of misgendering if they do, even if I always “warn” for pronouns. I’m even hesitant to make posts like this or to refer to Beelzebub as she/her in casual conversation. Which, well...kind of makes me feel like I do in life. Almost no one but my therapists knows I’m not cis, because I don’t think I could explain it to them without causing confusion and some distress. Which I don’t want to cause and don’t have the spoons to deal with, especially when my own gender issues are so complicated and unclear even to me.

I also just don’t have the spoons to deal with people for assuming I’m a cis, straight girl writing a hetero relationship when I use she/her in most of my Beelzefic. And to be honest, I’m just sort of hurt at the inconsistency around pronouns and the issues said inconsistency raise for me.

I mean, like I said, I know this isn’t personal, and I do my best to keep that in mind. But I don’t like having to hold my thoughts in because they might upset other genderfluid and nonbinary people.** I have to do that enough in my life already as a queer person, and as a mentally ill person whose feelings are not always appropriate to the situation. Having to hold them in here, too, feels really unfair and frustrating to me, and kind of like I can’t be myself even in LGBTQ+ spaces. so... tl;dr Use whatever pronouns for Beelzebub you like, or no pronouns at all. I am not the pronoun police, and I would never tell anyone what to do with their writing. But please don’t accuse people of misgendering if they do otherwise, or mistreat them if they do, or make assumptions about them or their reasons. You don’t know who they are or what experience they’re writing from, just as they don’t know who you are and your experiences. I guess that’s it. thank you.

* Yes, I am aware of what Neil said on the subject. I’m genderfluid and allowed to disagree and to present an alternate view. ** I really don’t care too much about cisgender folks’ opinions on this issue. I’m sorry, but I don’t. Especially when cisgender people opine about what pronouns we should use for a character. I’m glad that they’re concerned and think they’re trying admirably to be good allies, but this really is an in-house and stay-in-your-lane issue.

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roidespd-blog · 5 years

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Chapter Nine : SEX, SEXUALITY and GENDER IDENTITY

Ask yourself three simple questions. What are your biological characteristics ? What does or does not turn you on ? What are you ?

If you can get through all three, congratulations. You’ve built great foundations for yourself as a human being.

That is not always the case.

SEX — A NON-BINARY CONCEPT

That seems to be the easiest one. It was. Also, it never was. Organisms (entities that exhibit the properties of life) of male and female varieties, each known as sex. We’re not talking about doing the nasty but the genetic traits that constitutes your sexual reproductive system. Among humans (and other mammals), males typically carry and X and Y chromosome whereas the female typically carry two X chromosomes. Humans may also be intersex. That’s when it becomes complicated — but only if you are not eager to understand. To the first question (“What are your biological characteristics?”), I can say that I have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. I produce small gametes (AKA sperm) and I have a penis (a nice little fellow). To my knowledge, my friend Julie has two X chromosomes and produces large gametes (AKA egg cells) and I might over reach because we’re not sot intimate that I have seen all of her, but I do think she has a vagina. Intersex people are individuals born with variations in sex characteristics that are not strictly XX-male or XY-female. They do not fit the definitions of male of female bodies. In the past, you would have called them hermaphrodites but believe me, this is so wrong and offensive. Don’t. I won’t get into much details about intersex individuals as I want to give them an entire article to focus on their existence. Just know they’re here and that your binary concept of the human body, though right for you and most of your friends and family, is no longer valid.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION / SEXUAL IDENTITY

It’s gonna get a tiny bit more complicated as they have one identical word in common. Sexual. You know that word, stop focusing on it. Put your eyes on their companions. Orientation is an pattern of romantic and/or sexual attraction to persons of the opposite sex and/or gender, same sex and/or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. Those orientations are usually divided into three categories : heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. Bullshit.

Identity is how a person thinks of him/her/themself in terms of whom one is romantically or sexually attracted to. Or not. The beauty of this new world is that you can pretty much identify with whatever words you feel comfortable with. I used to identify myself as an homosexual man with a 5,5 on the Kinsey Scale. But time and research made me rethink my personal point of view. I still use the terms homosexual, gay (though I have a preference for the umbrella word that is Queer, and the slurs I like to appropriate as my own) but the Kinsey method only include the three orientations I previously cited. I now more and more in phase with being androsexual and it redefined my attraction as a matter of identity.

I’m sure you don’t know what Androphilia is. or Gynephilia for that matter. Neither was I not so long ago. They are terms used to describe sexual orientation as an alternative to a gender binary homosexual / heterosexual / bisexual conceptualization. Androphilia describes sexual attraction to men or masculinity. Gynephilia describes the sexual attraction to women or femininity. Ambiphilia, finally, describes the combination of both Androphilia and gynephilia. I thought I was only attracted to cisgender man but a few years ago, I found myself incredibly aroused at the sight of what happened to be a transgender man. A gorgeous man that I will not named. Though confused at first, I realized that wouldn’t change who I am. I’m still the same person with the same sexuality. I just happen to be attracted to masculinity traits. By applying those terms to the common understand of sexual identity, we avoid bias inherent in normative concepts of human sexuality, confusion and offense with people of multiple identities.

But whatever the term, you get to decide. You can be : Asexual (experiencing little or no sexual attraction to others and lack of interest in sexual relationships or behavior) Bicurious Bisexual Demisexual (little or no capacity to experience sexual attraction until a strong romantic connection is formed with sometimes) Fluid Gay Homosexual Lesbian Pansexual (a person who experiences sexual, romantic, physical and/or spiritual attraction for members of all gender identities) Polyamorous (the practice and desire of consensual non-monogamous relationships) — yeah, that can be part of your sexual identity. Queer Skoliosexual (being primarily sexually, romantically and/or emotionally attracted to genderqueer, transgender and/or non-binary individuals)

You can even be straight and identify as MSM or WSW (Men who have Sex with Men or Women who have Sex with Women).

Honestly, the possibilities seem unlimited at this point. To the question “What does and what does not turn you on?”, be honest with yourself and don’t be afraid to think about it.

GENDER IDENTITY

Now on to the final curve of this ever-so complicated path. Gender Identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender. It is not always on par with the gender you were assigned at birth. To take myself one last time as an example, I am a cisgender man. Cisgender : an individual whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. Got it ? In terms of gender, I don’t have to ask myself too much questions except socially as I slowly but surely try to break codes about masculinity and femininity. But that’s beyond the point for now. So when you are not a cis person, what can you be ? Someone can be transgender.

Transgender : a gender description for someone who has transitioned or si transitioning from living as one gender to another. Two warnings on this. First, “transitioning” doesn’t mean a transgender person has to change his/her/their you-know-me-down-there surgically. Transitioning means changing things as varied but not obligatory as exterior appearance, name, pronouns. What you do with your body is your own business (more on that in a future article). Second, the word transgender was preceded by two other words : transvestite and transexual. A transvestite is a person who dresses as the gender opposite his/her/their own but has nothing to do with sexual or gender identity. A transexual is the grandparent word of transgender but the term has been rejected by many transgender people as “beyond the scope” (with sexual in it, no shit). I would not use that word unless that person identifies as transexual. But I doubt it. But again, gender is a complex thing and it is associated with identity. And though you cannot chose who you love, who you are attracted to and who you are, you get to choose the words that fit you best. Not cis ? Not trans ? Maybe you are non-binary, or genderqueer (a spectrum of gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine and are outside the gender binary and cis normality). Maybe you are genderfluid. Maybe agender (someone who identifies as having no gender or being without a gender) or demigender. Maybe all or none of the above.

So to the third question I had you earlier, “Who are you?”, what will you say ?

There are no wrong answers. Only wrong silences.

As I get to write these articles one by one, I learn a lot about my people. Where they’re coming from, what they want and who they are. And through that, I’m learning a shitload more about myself, and not only as a queer person. This article was, in the end, only about little boxes available to you. Do not conform to them because they are there. I asked you three questions and expected answers. What if they aren’t any final ones for you ? What’s so bad about that? As long as you get the freedom to ask yourself a double “what” and a simple “who”.

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xtruss · 3 years

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Q. & A.

Robin DiAngelo Wants White Progressives to Look Inward

The Author of “White Fragility” Discusses Her New Book, “Nice Racism.”

— By Isaac Chotiner | July 14, 2021 | Robin DiAngelo

“All white people have absorbed racist ideology, and it shapes the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves in the world.”Source photograph by Jovelle Tamayo (2019)

In 2018, Robin DiAngelo, an academic and anti-racism consultant, published the surprise best-seller “White Fragility.” The book, which argues that white people tend to undermine or dismiss conversations about race with histrionic reactions, climbed best-seller lists again last summer, when the murder of George Floyd and the surging Black Lives Matter movement forced American institutions to address structural racism. Major corporations, such as Amazon and Facebook, embraced the slogan “Black Lives Matter” and brought DiAngelo in to speak. Millions of Americans began to consider concepts such as systemic racism and look anew at the racial disparities in law enforcement, and DiAngelo became a guide for many of them.

DiAngelo’s success was not entirely without controversy: critics claimed that her definition of “white fragility” was broad and reductive and that DiAngelo, who is white, condescended to people of color. Carlos Lozada, of the Washington Post, wrote, “As defined by DiAngelo, white fragility is irrefutable. . . . Either white people admit their inherent and unending racism and vow to work on their white fragility, in which case DiAngelo was correct in her assessment, or they resist such categorizations or question the interpretation of a particular incident, in which case they are only proving her point.” In The New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh wrote that DiAngelo “makes white people seem like flawed, complicated characters; by comparison, people of color seem good, wise, and perhaps rather simple. This narrative may be appealing to its target audience, but it doesn’t seem to offer much to anyone else.”

Last month, DiAngelo published a new book, “Nice Racism,” which argues that even well-intentioned white progressives—the types of people who might read DiAngelo’s work—are guilty of inflicting “racial harm” on people of color. She writes that “the odds are that on a daily basis, Black people don’t interact with those who openly agitate for white nationalism,” but they do face a different danger: “In the workplace, the classroom, houses of worship, gentrifying neighborhoods, and community groups, Black people do interact with white progressives.” She continues, “We are the ones—with a smile on our faces—who undermine Black people daily in ways both harder to identify and easier to deny.”

I recently spoke by phone with DiAngelo about “Nice Racism.” During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether her work includes structural critiques of racism, why she has become so popular over the past year, and whether it’s possible to disagree with her and not be a racist.

How important is attending workshops like the ones you run and talk about in the book if America is going to become less racist?

I’m not sure that it has to be a workshop, but it does have to be education in some form or format, because we’re not educated in this country on our racial history, and of course workshops are an excellent way to gain that education. If they are not followed up and sustained by continuing conversations, then they’re not very effective. Stand-alone, onetime workshops I don’t think are effective.

What is the goal of your work, if white people, as you say, are never going to be completely free of racism?

Less harm, to put it bluntly. I am confident that as a result of my years in this work, I do less harm across race, and that is not actually a small thing. That could translate to one hour longer on somebody’s life, because the chronic stress of racism, for Black people and other people of color—literally, it shortens their lives. I would definitely like to do less harm.

Your work starts from the premise that history and society have made all white people racist. But I was trying to figure out whether you were making a structural critique or offering structural solutions to racism, in part because so much of the book is about workshops.

The foundation of the United States is structural racism. It is built into all of the institutions. It is built into the culture, and in that sense we’ve all absorbed the ideology. We’ve all absorbed the practices of systemic racism, and that’s what I mean when I say we are racist. I don’t mean that individuals have conscious awareness of anti-Blackness, or that they intentionally seek to hurt people based on race. That’s not what I’m referring to when I make a claim like all white people are racist. What I mean is that all white people have absorbed racist ideology, and it shapes the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves in the world, and it comes out in the policies and practices that we make and that we set up.

What needs to change structurally?

Well, the homogeneity alone at the top guarantees that advantage would be built into those systems and structures by the people in the position to build them in. This doesn’t have to be conscious or intentional, but, if significant experiences and perspectives are missing from the table, they’re not going to be included. If a group of architects is around a table designing a building and all of them are able-bodied, they’re simply going to design a building that accommodates the way they move through the world. It’s not an intentional exclusion, but it will result in the exclusion of people who move differently.

You have to have multiple perspectives at those tables, and you can’t just take the additive approach, like, “Oh, well, we included some more diversity,” if you don’t also address power. That’s what I wanted to say. You can have policies that appear to be neutral, but, because we don’t account for just centuries of social discrimination, the impact of those policies will not be neutral.

Your book is a critique of individualism, by which you mean, as you put it, “Our identities are not separate from the white supremacist society in which we are raised, and our patterns of cross-racial engagement are not merely a function of our unique personalities.” What is the problem with individualism?

Individualism cuts the person off from the very society that the concept of individualism is valued in. That’s the great irony, right? If we were in a more community-oriented or collective-oriented society, we wouldn’t value being an individual the way that we do. We have been conditioned to see that as the ideal, that every one of us is unique and special and different, and if you don’t know somebody specifically you can’t know anything about them.

Of course, on one hand, that’s true, right? I don’t know everybody’s experience and life stories and so on, and we are also members of a social group. By virtue of our membership in this social group, we could literally predict whether you and I were going to survive our birth—and our mothers also. It’s like saying, you know, upon my birth, it was announced, “Female,” and then I have been completely exempt from any messages about what it means to be female. We wouldn’t say that, because we know that the moment I am pronounced female, an entire set of deep cultural conditioning is set into place.

I don’t think anybody would say, “My gender has had no influence whatsoever on my life.” When it comes to race, we want to take ourselves out of any kind of collective experience. These are observable, describable, measurable patterns. Does every single person fit every pattern? Of course not, but there is a rule that the exception of course makes visible.

You also talk about an ideology that is called universalism, and you say it functions similarly to individualism, and write, “But instead of declaring that we all need to see each other as individuals (e.g., ‘Everyone is different’), we declare that we all need to see each other as human beings (e.g., ‘Everyone is the same’).” To be clear, “everyone is the same” is not what universalism is, correct? My understanding of universalism is that it’s essentially saying, “We’re all human beings and we all deserve to be treated as human beings.” Do you see it differently?

I’m sure there’s different nuances of the term. When I use it, I’m using it to capture this idea that these categories have no meaning, at the same time that one group consistently is seen as objective and able to represent everybody else’s experience. The example I often use is that we have film directors and then we have Black film directors, or we have film directors and then we have women film directors. We only mark that which is not that universal norm, right? And, in so doing, of course, we reinforce this idea that some people are objective and can speak for everybody.

You have many scenes throughout the book of you talking to people at workshops, and sometimes they get contentious. You write that after one training session two people, “a white woman, ‘Sue,’ who had been sitting next to a white man, ‘Bob,’ approached me and declared, ‘Bob and I think we should all just see each other as individuals.’ Although in my work, moments like this occur frequently, they continue to disorient me on three interconnected levels. First, I had just gone over, in depth, what was problematic about individualism as a means to ‘end racism.’ How could Sue and Bob have missed that forty-five-minute presentation?” In several of the scenes you get annoyed or frustrated with people for not getting the point of what you’re saying. Is there a tension between seeing white people as irredeemably racist and fragile, and also thinking that the best way to change their consciousness is to berate them a little bit in these group settings?

I’m explaining. I don’t know that I’m berating at that point. It’s, like, “O.K., let me help you understand why that is actually a problematic response. Let me break it down for you and explain.” I’m an educator, right? So I want you to understand what that does, how that functions in the conversation. Having just laid that out, yes, I do continue to feel frustrated, because I do have an expectation that people will have some insight or at least some food for thought. When it’s framed as “We think this,” as if they actually didn’t hear any part of it, as if they have no sense that I have a different take on it and that take might have some weight or some value in relation to theirs, that does throw me off. There is a kind of scratching of the head that happens. You would think at this point I would be used to it, but not always.

You have a list in your book of things that are racist, including some obviously racist things such as blackface. One of the things on the list is “Not being aware that the evidence you use to establish that you are ‘not racist’ is not convincing.” Is there a tautological aspect to this?

Yeah, I mean, I think what is missing that makes that problematic is the humility and the curiosity, given that the vast majority of white people live segregated lives, have never studied systemic racism, all the way through higher education. You can get a Ph.D. in this country and never have discussed racism. You can be seen as qualified to lead virtually any organization with no awareness or ability to engage in these conversations on racism. Given all that, it’s the lack of humility about what you might not be understanding. It’s not granting that this is arguably the most complex, nuanced, social, institutional, cultural, societal dilemma of the last several hundred years.

I may land, after thoughtful reflection, on “That’s not going to work for me,” but that’s very different from rejecting it out of hand in a way that will allow no more information or nuance to come in. I think I’m a great example of someone who must at some point make a decision about the validity of the feedback I’m getting, right? Because I couldn’t possibly follow it all. I’ve worked hard and long to gain some ability to do that, and I have people that I can check in with to help guide me in that. Trusted and authoritative sources. But somebody who’s never really thought about these issues, couldn’t answer the question of what it means to be white, and just rejects it out of hand, I think that’s problematic.

Another entry on the list is “Not understanding why something on this list is problematic.” This seems to imply that someone who disagrees with you, Robin DiAngelo, is racist. Is there another tautological issue there?

Well, maybe one of the challenges in the way that’s framed is that “racist” is such a strong word. Keep in mind that the subtitle is “racial harm,” right? I deliberately didn’t say how white progressives are racists but how we perpetuate racial harm within a racist society. Again, rather than “Am I missing something? Can I thoughtfully engage in a conversation about this?” is it just “Nope, nope, nope”? I mean, if somebody fundamentally, at the base, accepts the existence of systemic racism, accepts that they have inevitably been shaped by it, and is willing and open to struggle with that, challenge that, then there’s going to be lots of nuance in whether we agree or disagree on particular things. I’m really talking about people who haven’t done any of that work and still feel it’s completely legitimate for them to determine what is valid and what is not.

The list also includes “Lecturing bipoc people on the answer to racism” by saying things like “People just need to . . .” This was obviously written by you, a white person, in a book that tells people that they “need to” do various things. Is there a circularity there?

Well, I’m always asked to make sure I give the answer. It’s not as interesting to me as the analysis.

What do you mean?

For me, the analysis of racism, the question of how things function—that’s fascinating and interesting. I do believe that, if you understand more deeply how racism functions, you know that answer in the sense of what to do, what not to do, what kind of basic orientation skills will help you in almost any situation. There’s constant pressure when you write a book to “Make sure that last chapter tells people what to do.” What was the other part of what you asked?

On the list of racist things is lecturing people of color about the answer to racism, and saying people just “need to” do things. Since your book is talking about the answers to racism and telling people what they need to do, I thought it was interesting that that was on a list of things that were racist.

Yeah, but notice that the book is written by a white person to white people. I’m not lecturing bipoc people on what to do but I’m offering some analysis, some deconstruction of things that white people often say and do, and letting my readers know that that’s generally considered problematic. How do I know that? Years of feedback, years of witnessing, of falling in it myself, which I hope I demonstrate. If you are already starting from a place of denial of systemic racism, then we’re just having two different conversations. It’s like climate change. If somebody denies climate change, we’re not going to have that conversation.

Your book argues that white people should not presume to speak for people of color. Do you think that’s an accurate description, and can you talk about the importance of that?

There is a nuance there. When people of color aren’t present, do you understand enough about racism that you can represent, generally, that perspective? That’s different from speaking for them. I, again, am talking to white people as an insider, as somebody who shares all the same socialization. I have challenged some of that, and that is a lifelong endeavor—it’s been twentysomething years. Here’s lessons learned, gathering from my own research, from mentorship, from Black scholars, white scholars, practice. I’m sharing lessons learned and observations made and analysis, and hopefully it’s useful.

Another thing on the list is claiming “to have a friendship with a Black colleague who has never been to your home.” Isn’t that up to the two people in that situation, one white, one Black, to say whether in fact they have a friendship? How do you make a judgment like that, not knowing specifics?

Well, in my experience, many Black people have shared that there are white people who believe they have relationships with them that the Black person does not share. It’s a polite, respectful kind of acquaintanceship, but there’s a level of trust that isn’t present, and the white person is not aware of that. I’m also talking about when white people use friendship with a Black person as evidence that they are free of racism. Not only would that not be good evidence in general—because, trust me, I have friendships with Black people, and I do on occasion say and do hurtful things—but if you haven’t even ever been to their home and you’re using them as your evidence that you couldn’t possibly be racist, I would offer that the relationship may not be as close or deep as you think that it is.

On your list of racist things is “Speaking over/interrupting a bipoc person.” Maybe this goes back to our individualism conversation, but is that the type of thing that needs context, and might not belong on a list that also includes things like blackface? Certainly, in some situations, personal or at work, people speak over one another. In some cases, obviously, that’s a sign of racism, and in other cases it might just be the way people talk or the way they interact. How do you disaggregate that?

Well, first of all, it’s a range. There are things on the list that are more obvious, and then there’s some more insidious, subtle things, and they don’t stand alone. You talked over that Black person, and that’s your personality and you always do it, you do it with everybody, but that’s the tenth time that day or that week that that person has been talked over, and they’re left having to wonder, Isn’t this about the fact that I’m Black? It sure seems like it happens to me more than other people. They’re on that wheel of trying to assess that.

I think part of our arrogance and our entitlement is that we don’t have to consider the impact of our actions on people who are positioned differently in relation to us. A great example is, if I work in an overwhelmingly male workplace and that’s how they talk to one another—they yell at one another, they talk over one another—great, but when you do it to me it’s going to have a different impact. I would want and expect them to be attentive to that. I can just hear somebody saying, “Oh, I have to watch everything I say.” Well, you know, is that really that much to ask, that we should just be aware that there is historical harm between our groups, and that you do need to think about the impact that might have?

You write, about the things on the list, that “the intentions are irrelevant to the impact.” Is it that they’re irrelevant, or is it that circumstances matter?

Let me think about how I want to phrase this. I am pushing back and trying to close all of the escape valves that I have seen my fellow white people use over the years, and focussing on intentions is a very common escape valve for saying, “It shouldn’t matter, because I didn’t mean to.” On the one hand, I’m glad you didn’t mean to, but it does matter and it did have an impact, so let’s let go of your intentions and move over here and take responsibility for the impact. I’m trying to, again, take that escape hatch away, so maybe I’m being stronger than necessary because I don’t see a lot of nuance in people who are new. Sometimes you kind of have to say, “Here’s the boundary. Don’t even go there. Let’s just go here until you get a little more skilled at that.”

There’s one scene in the book in which some white women begin crying because a Black woman is telling a story about her son and the police. You call the white women to account for reacting in such a way, and taking the focus off the Black woman. That’s followed by a chapter about white silence—the idea that white people not speaking up or not showing how they’re feeling about racism is also a problem. Sometimes it seems like maybe you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t in some of these workshops.

I would say in some ways you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, and that applies to all of us. In other words, we just simply are not going to get this right. There are many, many tensions in this work and that is one of them, but again, that should never be the reason you don’t struggle to get it a little more right. I don’t think I took them to task. I observed and I had a realization. I hope I framed it that way. Sometimes, in watching the dynamic, I realized, like, Oh, this is not our place to be comforting Black women about the pain of racism right now. I also add, you know, a hand on the back, just a real “Hey, may I touch you? May I put my hand on your back?” you’re showing your presence, but you’re not actually telling people that something’s O.K. or going to be O.K. from your position. I find that to be problematic. There’s no way you can tell me it’s O.K. from your position as a member of the group that perpetrates this and benefits from this.

You write, “Although motivated by compassion, this seemed deeply inappropriate to me.”

Yes, although motivated by compassion. I’m clear. I didn’t stand up and call anybody out. It was an observation that was kind of like, you know, Note to self: don’t do that.

You’ve spoken to large and small companies, especially after the murder of George Floyd forced many institutions to address instances of racism. How does it feel to have your work at the center of this conversation, and what is it about your work that you think makes so many companies want to turn to you?

Well, some of this I can answer because the Black people in many of these companies bring me in, and they understand that their white colleagues are more likely to hear it from me, and that there’s a way that I can name it and it’s harder to deny than when they try to name it. Oftentimes, that then makes room and space for them to continue forward with what they’ve been trying to do. What I bring is an insider’s perspective that, again, is harder to deny. Implicit bias is such that, consciously or not, I’m probably granted the benefit of the doubt even before I begin in a way that Black people are not.

When a Black person is laying out how racism functions, they pretty much can only point the finger outward. I mean, they can share their own experience, which white people don’t share, and then they can explain to white people that what white people are doing is harmful. When I do it, I can point it both inward and outward. When I point it inward, it gives room for other white people to admit that they have said and felt and done the same things. There’s a little bit of, like, O.K., if she can admit that, then I can admit that. It brings down some of the defensiveness, and yes, it does at the same time center white people. This is one of the great tensions of the work. There is no way outside of the construct we’re in.

You’re saying that you’re bringing something to the table that would be harder for a person of color in our society to bring to the table?

It’s only one piece of what should be at the table, but it’s a piece that’s been missing for so long.

— The New Yorker

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ponyregrets · 7 years

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Here are two things that are both true:

Bisexual characters are important representation

Same-sex relationships are important representation

These things both being true does not make them related. It is neither the purpose nor the responsibility of bisexual characters to provide same-sex relationships. Bisexual characters are not problematic if they do not provide same-sex relationships, and acting like they are inherently devalues them. I’ve never seen anyone object to a same-sex relationship for not providing bisexual representation, nor have I ever seen anyone object to a m/f relationship for not providing bisexual representation. The demand for bisexual characters is almost always tied to a desire for implicitly straight characters to be in same-sex relationships (see #GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend), with very little focus on making the character bisexual simply to have a bisexual character. Bisexual characters who provide same-sex relationship rep are praised (for as long as they do so), while bisexual characters are in m/f relationships are accused of everything from being pointless tokens who exist only to get their creators brownie points to reinforcing harmful stereotypes about how bisexuals always pick a side (an argument I’ve never seen used against a bisexual character in a long-term same-sex relationship).

And I want you to really think about the implications of all these things, in terms of representation. They’re saying that bisexual characters have no value, outside of providing same-sex relationships. That there’s no reason to be bisexual, if you’re in a m/f relationship. They’re implying that it would be better to not have bisexual characters than to have bisexual characters who are in m/f relationships. And that is deeply biphobic and fucked up.

I’ve read the arguments about bisexual characters in m/f relationships. I’m not saying that these relationships are perfect or without their problems; a lot of the time the characters involved don’t get to ID as bisexual, and their sexuality is the subject of one episode, at best. They are almost always female, and their male partner usually thinks it’s sexy. This is a pattern across several shows I can think of, and it’s annoying, but it’s also not some kind of horrific epidemic. To hear some people in fandom talk, every show has a token bisexual female character who says she’s into women despite being exclusively in m/f relationships.

To the extent that this is a problem that exists, it’s a writing problem, not a problem that’s inherent to bisexual characters in m/f relationships. Bisexual characters being in same-sex relationships doesn’t mean that their bisexuality will automatically be handled well, or that they will discuss or explore their bisexuality in any meaningful way. It doesn’t even mean the character will be obviously or explicitly bisexual; often, in fact, characters in exclusively same-sex relationships are just assumed to be gay, and fandom treats it as offensive to bring up these characters could be bisexual, lacking a textual label. Which is another delightful fucked up level of the fandom treatment of bisexuality.

When a bisexual character is in a same-sex relationship, it will be obvious they experience same-sex attraction. That’s it. And it’s easy to think, well, that’s better representation because you can tell they’re LGBT! But the truth is, the average person watching isn’t going to think, ah, that character is bisexual. They’re probably going to think the character is gay or lesbian. It’s not better representation because a casual viewer makes a different wrong assumption; it’s a different kind of erasure, and it’s still harmful to many actual bisexual people, both ones in m/f and same-sex relationships.

So I’m tired of fandom blaming bisexual characters for a lack of same-sex relationships in media. I’m tired of the idea that bisexual characters in m/f relationships are MORE responsible for a lack of same-sex relationships than straight characters are. Because, okay, let’s say, for the sake of argument that Clarke Griffin is 100% going to end up with A Dude at the end of The 100. Doesn’t matter what dude for our purposes, just the character she is romantically involved with at the end of the show is going to be male, and the writers have always known this will happen and have never wavered from this plan. Would we better off if, because of that, she was never written as bisexual? If she never had relationships with women? Is her bisexuality pointless if her end-game pairing is with a guy?

If your answer to this is yes, then, and I mean this genuinely and wholeheartedly: fuck you. And I know what the argument here is: “But why can’t she be in a same-sex relationship? It’s gross that she HAS to end up with a guy.” Which is in some sense true, but in a larger sense beside the point of the exercise. In this hypothetical, she is, and that’s just how it’s going to be. It’s valid to talk about getting away from that, but it’s a derail. And let’s even say the reason for it is any of the things I’ve seen argued wrt same-sex relationships: that the network doesn’t want it, that the writers are afraid to go there, that someone with power over the story genuinely believes that bisexual women are going through a phase and will always end up with men in the end. It could be any or all of those things, and I still say fuck you if you think that’s a reason to not make a character bisexual. If you think it would be better for a character to be straight, if they don’t provide the relationship you want. I still want that character, and fuck you if you want to take that away from me.

The truth is, if you want to have good bisexual representation, you need bisexual characters in m/f relationships, just as much as you need bisexual characters in same-sex ones. You need bisexual characters who are single, who are promiscuous, ones who are confident in their identities and who are figuring it out. As always, the best way to represent any group is through a diversity of experiences, which is why I find the devaluing of bisexual characters in m/f relationships so frustrating. We need to stop acting like these characters aren’t a vital and valuable part of representation; we need to stop acting like they’re a disappointment or failing as rep. They are not.

Most of all, fandom in general needs to stop acting like bisexual characters are valuable in direct proportion to how much same-sex relationship content they provide. Bisexual representation has inherent value, regardless of the character’s relationship status.

(As a final note, I apologize for how gender-binary this post is; this argument as I’ve seen it in fandom is basically restricted to cis-male and cis-female characters, and m/f felt like a better way to refer to relationships between them than “different sex” or “opposite sex.” If anyone has better terminology for “relationships between people who do not share a gender identity” vs “relationships between people who do,” I’d be happy to use those terms in the future.)

#I found this in my drafts #it's like a year old #I'm still annoyed about this so I guess I'm posting it

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gbsoriginals-blog · 4 years

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but you can’t trust Wikipedia (w8)

This week we looked at truth in regard to knowledge sharing on Wikipedia, and how the infrastructure of a program limits its capacity to subvert ideas of objectivity.

Reading

Ford, H and Wajcman, J. 2017. ‘Anyone can edit’, not everyone does: Wikipedia’s infrastructure and the gender gap. Social Studies of Science, 47(4). pp. 511-527.

Wikipedia’s inclusivity, while claiming to be "universal" and "inclusive", is limited by its foundations. The infrastructure is based upon two formats developed in an epistemologically masculine way (the free software movement and the Western encyclopaedia). I would question how valid an online encyclopaedia is as a platform for knowledge sharing, given the information is only presented to those who ask for it. Wikipedia can surely only challenge the norms of encyclopaedic knowledge sharing if it subverts them.

If we consider the issue to be a lack of representation on Wikipedia of (a) female contributors and (b) female history (i.e. scientists who are women); people are using Wikipedia to find out about a topic which they are already aware of and want to know more about. Are people aware of female contributions to history and science? Are school curriculums prompting students to search for (e.g.) female scientists? Prompting questions aside, Wikipedia's verifiability rule of only referencing existing reputable sources mean the prejudiced and limiting structures of publishers are inherent in the inclusion (or exclusion) of information on Wikipedia.

This paper suggests Wikipedia’s infrastructure is to blame for the editing gender gap, more so than women’s lack of confidence or desire to avoid conflict. Concurring with the paper, I think the structure and purpose of Wikipedia is flawed to a degree where it needs to be overhauled entirely to "re-balance" the editing gap. The online encyclopaedia itself is locked into its own form too much for any rule-following disruption (i.e. female editors increasing representation) to challenge the masculine epistemology of the site.

Task

I was hesitant starting this task. I don't consider myself an expert, certainly not in any "objective" presentation of any idea or person or place. I don’t identify with Wikipedia’s policy of presenting knowledge as objective, and I think this perspective exists as part of a world of histories and sciences constructed and populated by men.

I found myself asking the following questions: Is knowledge important to me? Do I think putting information on Wikipedia constitutes knowledge sharing? If there is knowledge that I think should be shared, is it the kind of knowledge that is verifiable and therefore could ever be recorded on Wikipedia? Do I care about the wrong things? Am I, realistically, doing anything to share knowledge about the things I do think people should know about? This thought spiral gave me respect for the people around the world who are dedicating time to adding information to Wikipedia pages, especially women doing so despite the emotional labour involved (referring to page 6 of reading).

Having recently discovered the practice of self-compassion, and the work of Dr Kristin Neff in researching self-compassion, I edited the 'Self-compassion' Wikipedia entry. Practical questions I asked myself once I had determined some information to add to a relevant topic: is this important? Which page should it be added to? Which part of the page should it be added to? How much of this information is valuable, and therefore how much should be included? I skimmed through the page to see the current contents and added a single benefit of self-compassion. You can see my edit in the screenshot below:

A day later, the edit was removed because a full citation was needed, and the DOI I had supplied was not enough. I don’t feel especially attached to the edit I made and feel that was reflected in my negligence in providing the full citation. I don’t know if I will go back and add the citation, it seems tedious and I’m not convinced my edit will make any difference. I wonder how many first time Wikipedia editors, especially women, experience this malaise with the site’s formalities and give up.

Ultimately, while I did this task for the sake of reflection in this blog post, I found the process eye-opening and challenging. Both reading the article and going through the mental process of preparing myself to edit, challenged me to ask why I haven't considered this important before. I really enjoy sharing things I've learned with people I know and care about, but the benefits of my knowledge sharing are capped. I now think of editing Wikipedia (as a woman) as an act of feminist defiance, regardless of the topic I am contributing to. I have also been prompted to consider what other platforms may be more suitable for the kinds of knowledge sharing I want to be a part of.

Project - Stranger Visions

This project raises questions about objectivity and truth. Due to the nature of science, especially in line with the arguments presented in the reading (which implied the objectivity of science is a perspective developed in a male-dominated science world), data is often discussed in a factual, detached way.

DNA is often used to assuage doubt and uncertainty, designed to be a conclusive answer without the flaws of human subjectivity. Alternatively, criminal profiling is drenched in human subjectivity. Stranger Visions' exploration of this dichotomy, questioning how "solved" something like racial profiling can be where DNA profiling software is used instead, challenges the objective nature of science. In the case of the profiling software, conclusions can only be as accurate as the data the software is built upon. How can it be ensured that the algorithm which determines profiles is accurate? I wonder, like the artist, if using this software will only deepen patterns of racial profiling.

It makes me feel uncomfortable to think that increasingly processes which govern us, which protect us and discipline us, are ruled by data. So often data is talked about as if it can be objective, yet the process of collecting data, of even defining which data to collect and which to exclude, is by necessity subjective. When a program is made by a human, it inherits the subjectivity of the human, becoming set in some way in line with the limited perspectives held by the programmer.

Having read the article which begins to "ask the science question in feminism" I feel disconcerted by the leaps being made to include women in STEM, and I feel afraid that inclusion of outliers is not enough to challenge the inliers who made the rules in the first place.

#week 8

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redscullyrevival · 7 years

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Royal Assassin: Farseer Trilogy Rundown

It’s that time again @sonnetscrewdriver - as if you didn’t know because I am chatting to you right now lol

Setting/Plot/Narrative:

More great quality, I mean I can only repeat myself so much lol

The one part that really stood out to me was the first encounter with the white ship

That socked me in the gut I loved it so much

The series is overall well written and paced, occasionally meandering but I enjoy the world given and am not a intensely plot oriented reader - I like a good meandering

But every once in a while Hobb lays before the reader a scene of just precisely perfect prose, and I have no doubt those scenes shift from person to person but for me the reveal of the white ship, the person pointing and laughing at Fitz the only one who could see

The way the scene is written is simple enough, its mostly a relay of events void of emotion other than silent terror

It is however wedged into two larger connecting moments and when I read it my heart raced and I found myself reading too quickly that I didn’t understand so I went back to re-read the paragraph and didn’t gain anymore answers - which was thrilling! It’s like a dreamy haze in the middle of events, a mirror of Fitz own experience and I in turn cherish the experience. Hobb has endeared me to her completely, I ordered the last Farseer book before I finished this one as well as the first Tawny Man.

The game of cat and mouse and lies and keeping a straight face and restraint and all that is tops, I love love love tension and paranoia in media even though it destroys me in my real life.

Where the heck do we go from here though omg

Fitz

This guy

What’s almost completely unbelievable about Fitz isn’t his magic mental walls and wolf brother and ax wielding assassin resume, that shit makes sense in well placed, paced, and intentful context.

What (almost) makes Fitz unbelievable is his introspective-to-extrospctive ability.

Example:

Fitz being able to acknowledge the pain he put Molly through for the benefit of no one else without being prodded by anyone one else; understanding that he used her, hurt her, and didn’t listen to her, coming to that truth all on his own is completely phenomenal.

I’m glad Fitz realizes all this, that Hobb is compelled to explain unseen social male transgression/aggression- she doesn’t want her readers to think Fitz and Molly’s parting is romantic or entirely one parties “fault” and I applaud that.

She pulls it off, but oh man it gets close, it gets really close at times.

Fitzy’s life blows lol

I felt bad for him, that he got stuffed back into his body. Things went south so bad for him and the outlook ahead is so vast and steep there was a real part of me that was like “No, just... just let him hunt. Leave the poor bastard alone.”

Burrich

I cry

This is my favorite man

Burrich needs hugs

Ya know what’s great though?

I’m eh on the reveal about Burrich/Patience/Chivalry but thankful at the same time. ‘Cause it’s a love triangle sure but from the much more interesting perspective of being over with by the time I learn of it and I appreciated that.

Burrich is a very slow burn of a character isn’t he? I think that’s why I like him so much, he is someone I think we’re going to keep learning about along with seeing him react to events and survive and all that.

Best part of the book hands down was when Molly was like “Yeah the ladies love Burrich” and Fitz is like “Wha duuur why?”

pfft

Prince Verity

I love you Verity

Where Shrewd didn’t take any risks Verity has taken many, and good for him.

I mean, it hasn’t really worked out for him so far but you know, good on him for taking action

Verity is a character I actually really, really like. He is a warm glow whose presence is sturdy and reassuring not just to Fitz but to myself. I want him to pull through and succeed almost more than Fitz does I think!

Hang in there Verity!

Please don’t make me cry, fuck

Prince Regal

Alright

I know I’ve only read two books into this series and then Liveship Traders but the pattern I’ve peaked into thus far is that Hobb’s villains are acutely frustrating and not just with their machinations, oh no; Regal and Kennit’s grasps for power are understandable, it’s their obliviousness that causes, me at least, to look-up-from-the-page-to-stare-into-the-office-camera.

Granted Kennit could see some of the wider picture, more so than Regal, but both are still incredibly short sighted for being so overly ambitious - and are undoubtedly that way by design.

Because that’s one of the biggest markers of selfish people.

And that’s ultimately the baseline evil of Regal, he is just selfish.

I know I’m suppose to probably be repulsed by Regal but I’m not. I can’t honestly pinpoint what it is about him I like.

That’s a lie, I can

I like Regal as a character because he is a bit wild. This story is all secrecy and plots and trying to be steps ahead of magic and schemes and shadows and doubts and in the mist of it all is this overgrown toddler with no sense of tact or skill (or Skill, haha) but there he is anyways twirling a baton of destruction and chaos.

He’s a professional competent moron!

And I enjoy his use in the narrative.

I can’t believe he wants to inherent a scorched earth though, come on Regal open your eyes

Lady Patience

Oh sweet Lady Patience

She is a great character

Her ability to be perceptive and subtle is better than Chade’s or Fitz’s or anyone elses but at the same time she is off the mark more often than not

which is such a great contrast for a character to have, love her to bits.

I really hope she is in the next book a lot more - oh and Lacy! I love Lacy. She looks like Jasminka Antonenko in my head.

Chade

What’s fascinating is I spent the book waiting for Chade to betray Fitz.

The idea of the Pox Man being an omen withing the narrative struck too deep for me, a over analytical reader.

I wasn’t actively reading thinking to myself “He’s going to betray him! He’s going to do it!”

Naw

But a little subconscious nagging, a little pause before continuing his scenes perceived and followed Chade around my experience reading.

I believe the often reiterated Pox Man myth in this book is meant to coincide with Chade’s appearance, that the Pox Man hovers above disaster and implies doom but Chade is true and loyal; a debunking of the world’s superstition for the reader.

Chade is still mysterious and I think he’ll always put me on edge a little bit but I’ve grown fond of him.

King Shrewd

A shady mofo up until the very end.

Shrewd plotted like how I play chess; badly.

He sat on his tools for to long, he didn’t take risks or defended peices - in a lot of ways he seemed to be a lot like Royal to be completely honest, just fortunate enough to be the actual king.

If he weren’t king though...

That might be a bit unfair, Shrewd was a bit vague for me.

Kettricken

I’m frustrated on Kettriken’s behalf

Her strength is unfathomable to me

She needs to be allowed to loose her shit

I’m stressed out for her, I’m frustrated for her, she is so quick and smart and talented and is just wasted within her situation and the way things work in the keep and society and ugghghghgh

Be safe my Queen!

The Fool

What a precious little bean

Confounding and irritating at times but a soft soul trying their best

I won’t allow anything to happen to them

Still kind of annoyed with them on occasion though

You may notice I am using gender neutral pronouns because I think we’ve been given enough clues that the Fool is outside of Fitz’s understand of many things including the constant use of “him”.

Very interested in that but I doubt it will be a focus in this next book if ever

In the mean time though I hope the Fool is with Kettricken or somewhere safe. I hope they become more coherent and consistent for their own sake and maybe start to do and act for themselves instead of exclusively for others.

Molly

You go do you baby, don’t look back

Get the fuck outta dodge

Don’t take this the wrong way but I hope I don’t see you again any time soon

I love you but you gotta move on, be the sane one, sever ties and float away

I believe in you

Kisses

xoxo

#realm of the elderlings #Farseer Trilogy #multiplayer notepad #fandom talks #year of book

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nastysnowflake-blog · 7 years

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Intersectional Feminism

So I was browsing Facebook today, as I often do, when I happened across an album of screenshots. The screenshots were from a Twitter thread started by an indigenous woman who attended the Women’s March in D.C. on Saturday with a group of other native women. The women came dressed in traditional regalia and were prepared with songs and chants for the march. The woman, Hokte as the images said, began her thread with thanks to the organizers and a mention that the experience was invaluable. This quickly degenerated into talks of the toxicity of the movement, “plagued with white supremacy.” She mentioned that many women of color had already criticized the march and that she was disturbed in the moments when she left her prayer circle, her “home” as she called it, to be surrounded by the gaze of white women.

She went on to describe a very uncomfortable experience of being photographed, mocked, of having her culture questioned and of being approached by women who were more interested in fondling her regalia than discussing the fliers she and her partner were handing out. She talked about women walking through their prayer circle and about women approaching them wearing “R*skins” hats (Washington Redskins, a team that has been under fire for its racist depiction of American Natives).

She concludes her thread with a few statements that could be seen as slippery slope fallacies by the uninformed reader (generally anyone who listens to Faux News) and begins angrily attacking the values of all white women in attendance, listing off an experience with a woman who “is from Minnesota” and “knows Indian” because she can name all the lakes as her reason for feeling disrespected, finishing with, “White feminists treat us like we are burdens or that we are divisive. Because it’s inconvenient for you to let go of your whiteness.”

Being a white woman, this should be where I stop and put my tail between my legs and apologize for my support of the feminist movement I’ve been taught about. Being a middle-class, college-educated liberal in a blue state, this is where I should strip myself down and cry, clearly in the wrong.

Bullshit.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I haven’t been ill-prepared for this moment. I’m not going to deny the inherent privilege I’ve grown up with my entire life being white, and I’m not going to deny that I’ve certainly been blinded by the white-washed education I’ve received. I’m certainly not going to deny that the women partaking in the genitalia-based marching that seemed to flood the social media sphere on Saturday were not excluding literally every other demographic in attendance. “Not all pussies are pink!” No shit they’re not. So let’s get started.

If you search for images of the Women’s March, you’ll undoubtedly be met with wave after wave of women sporting home-made beanies with pointed edges in all shades of pink imaginable. Thus, The Pussy Hat Project. According to their website, the mission of the project is to provide the people of D.C. with a visual statement that will help the activists be heard and to help those who could not be in the National Mall with a way to show their support. The mission statement then breaks into separate sections: “Power in Numbers,” which discusses the imagery that would spawn from every marcher wearing a pink hat, “Power of Pink,” which discusses the societally assigned femininity of the color pink, “Power of Individuality within Large Groups” which allows for varying shades and patterns of hats to show that we don’t have to be identical to be powerful, “Power of the Handmade” which covers the assigned femininity of certain crafts and how this has created a stronger unity among women, and, lastly, “Power of Pussy” which discusses the term that has since been turned into an insult and their desire to reclaim it as a symbol of power and resistance. This section is precisely the section I’d like to focus on.

The Pussy Hat Project has come under fire for being exclusive to white cis-women, or women with pink pussies. Because the color pink was selected it was seen as an attack on women of color, and because the term “pussy” was used it’s been seen as an attack on trans-women or intersex people. The project literally addresses this concern in their mission statement: “Women, whether transgender or cisgender, are mistreated in this society...A woman’s body is her own.” Right, but what about women of color!?

The color pink was literally selected as a statement, not to in some way elude to the color of genitalia. When I was in high school we often had “color war” nights for certain sporting events. A week before the game we’d all agree to wear all red or all black or all white in support of our team, and when the night finally rolled around we would show up in large numbers, looking unified in our goal to win whatever game it was we were playing. The intent with the hats was the same. Create a large group of people that, when seen from higher positions (both literally and figuratively), it appeared to be a unified mass with the intent of “supporting their team.” Pink just happens to be the color many of us are assigned at birth. Had that color been yellow or green the Pussy Hat Project would have patterns involving yellow or green worsted yarn. Not all pussies are green…?

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the necessity of intersectional feminism. I’m not going to pretend that a white feminist is going to have to fight in the same way as a black or latinx feminist. My concern, however, is in taking something as innocent as a knit beanie and dismantling the message. It is literally attempting to be all-inclusive and is somehow still not good enough. Don’t like that the color pink seems like it’s excluding you? Knit a black one. Knit a brown one. Knit a fucking rainbow one, it clearly didn’t matter. The beauty was in the difference. No two vaginas are the same, no two women are the same, and no two hats were the same. I’m sure no one was going to castrate you for showing up in a tan pussy hat, they’d have probably applauded your thoughtfulness with the issue at hand.

Which leads me to my last point, thoughtfulness. Returning to Hokte and her message, I must repeat for the people in the back that I AM A PRIVILEGED WHITE FEMINIST. I have never struggled to be taken as seriously as my counterparts, I have never been told my “costume is really pretty” or had my heritage brought into question. I will never know the struggle for clean drinking water, and I will only know the qualms of being hired second if I’m applying for the same job as a man. I will never be marginalized and stereotyped in the way that many other cultures have been (though there are plenty of stereotypes I face, that’s an argument for another day). That does not mean I cannot stand with you and that I will not support you.

It was her anger that triggered me. It was the way Hokte approached the issue that made me feel so disappointed. It’s the many women of color on my feed who argue and misplace messages that make me feel like nothing I do is safe. I am a child of the white-washed education system. I am born of the feminist movement, thinking it was merely a universal movement for all women to partake in. I was never taught to scrutinize photographs for their diversity, to choose my words carefully so as not to exclude people who do not identify as cis like I do. I was simply taught that if women wanted to fight for equality of the genders, they became feminists. So as I’m learning there are many facets to feminism I’m beginning to notice things like the exclusion of trans and intersex, I’m beginning to notice the silencing of women of color. I can see it. I am trying my best to understand it.

It’s when you attack me for being an uninformed cis white feminist that the power of our movement turns against us. Is that not the argument of those who fight against feminism? We’re constantly angry at those who do not identify as feminist, we call them names, we generalize them, right? At least that’s what they say. So when you perch on your branch of this great tree and shout at those perched on other branches that they’re uninformed, not good enough, and thoughtless, does it not alienate them? Is that not what we’re trying to end?

You have to educate us.

It’s work, and it takes time, and there are always going to be the bandwagon feminists who are simply unteachable. There’s always going to be someone who thinks they know more than they do because they took one women’s studies class during their freshman year of college. There’s always going to be someone who thinks saying, “I guess we’re Indians today!” is a good way to start conversation with the traditionally dressed women beside her. There’s always going to be someone who dresses up as a giant vagina and thinks they’re helping the cause. It’s still worth trying. There are more than a few women in those crowds that marched on Saturday and that are still knitting Pussy Hats (like myself) that would be genuinely interested in learning about your culture and learning how best to include you in our idea of feminism. There are going to be bumps in the road, but rather than call us disrespectful and force us to leave, explain why what we said was wrong and teach us how to work with you rather than against you.

We can make intersectional feminism a reality. You just have to understand that many of us are still fighting with what society has taught us and are blinded by misinformation. Help us learn so we can stop fighting one another and start supporting one another. While some of us may not want to part with the “convenience of our whiteness,” there are plenty of others who would like to learn how to use that convenience to help raise you up.

#Womens March #Intersectional Feminism #White Girl Rant

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