#that it's actually sending the conversation backwards. like how does hoarding your culture and pretending it's not there benefit anyone

[hella1975]

all hate to tiktok for taking 'having a space to more openly and actively talk about different cultures' to mean 'cultures are NOT to be shared and we must be vigilantly defensive of our cultures for fear of appropriation, a word that can be applied to any multicultural interaction'. like of course cultural appropriation is a very real problem but ive seen with the access to global multicultural conversation that tiktok provides it's made people TERRIFIED to even interact with cultures other than their own for fear of 'doing it wrong'. like at some point you have to acknowledge that in the real world of the great outdoors, the majority of people are eager to SHARE their cultures. yes there are ignorant questions and biases but also... how do you think those things get unlearnt? i dont understand how deciding that multiculturalism is an elephant in the room instead of a normal thing that should just be talked about and lived with is supposed to benefit anyone? and kids on tiktok are CONVINCED that it's a time bomb of a conversation to have and therefore must be avoided at all costs but like. people generally LOVE their home and their culture and are PROUD of it and want to share it. how have we made it so that showing genuine interest and a desire to understand something so integral to a person's identity is now feared and borderline demonised?

#thinking about this a lot lately. thinking about how fun it was comparing cultural differences in america #thinking of how when i was homesick one thing i found a great comfort in was talking about my home #and how it differed and i really loved and appreciated it when people would ask me about england #in a way that they genuinely just wanted to learn about it and not to take the piss #thinking about how the kitchen at work has chefs from all over europe. we have an irish chef and a spanish chef and an italian chef #and one of the kps is from eastern europe (i havent actually been able to find out where yet) etc and the way they banter with each other #like usually chefs are Problematic bc their humour is VERY abrasive and usually offensive #but this is one instance where it's actually to their benefit bc they're so unafraid to ADDRESS THE FACT THEY HAVE DIFFERENT CULTURES #i feel like the tiktok gen are so petrified of even acknowledging other cultures let alone discussing them #that it's actually sending the conversation backwards. like how does hoarding your culture and pretending it's not there benefit anyone #LET ALONE YOU AND THE CULTURE IN QUESTION. idk it just baffles me a bit that something that started as people on tiktok #genuinely spreading information and talking about the BAD side of this where people DO culturally appropriate or invade spaces that arent #theirs has now become 'for fear of speaking bad about it we will not speak about it at all'. and they'll crucify you if you do. like what #even at uni my best mate is indian and she's too scared to join the sikh society on her own so i regularly go to the events with her #and im typically one of the handful (or the only) white non-sikh there and i get SO welcomed each time #like there's such a genuine excitement to share the culture with someone who is effectively a blank slate #and like yeah ill ask 'dumb' questions or i'll have different experiences (tried a samosa for the first time at one of these events #and the moment that info got out i had like five STRANGERS trying to give me different samosas to try and it was genuinely such #a laugh bc yes they were TEASING me bc 'how have you never had one' but they were also really eager to share MORE as a result) #ugh idk what im saying. i just think it's a shame to watch this happen in real time on the internet #when if people would just go outside and actually TALK to people from other cultures they'd realise 9 times out of 10 the interactions #are actually really really nice for BOTH parties. and actually refusing to talk about this stuff is long-term pretty fucking detrimental #and it also goes the other way!!! like imagine if i - citizen of colonisation motherland herself - didn't interact with other cultures #and didnt ask questions or hear their opinions on whatever shared history we have from THEIR POINT OF VIEW #imagine the kind of shit id be internalising bc i only hung out with other white british people. it wouldnt matter if i was doing it #to be woke or 'respect their culture'. it would still be fucking ignorant. like half my interactions with other cultures #see me as the butt of the joke bc of this like aforementioned irish chef at work VOCALLY slates the english all the time #but it's done in an environment where we're FRIENDS and it's poking fun at each other while still addressing a very serious history. like?? #idk if any of this is worded in a way that makes sense but yeah. i have thoughts #cant believe i got inspired to make an actually serious post bc of the CHEFS AT WORK. embarrassing. no one let them see this

[miseriathome]

Nah, queer theory is very much actively pushed by academics, who are people with real power over others - maybe not as much as some other category of people, but don't try and pretend that tenured faculty are weak and powerless outsiders. Besides that ... I can't dissuade you from your choice of ideology, but ime it was made very clear that "queer" was Not For Me, and I'm ostensibly one of those multiply-marginalized people who were supposed to find it liberatory.

[ presumably the same anon as this one ]

If your life experience doesn’t lead you to feel swayed by the really cool work that queer theorists are doing, then… whatever. I don’t feel particularly swayed by theoretical physics. But as somebody who is multiply-marginalized (aren’t we all?) who actually loves social theory, I’m still going to use my own blog as a platform to talk about it:

I don’t think you understand how broad the field of sociology is. Tenured sociology professors teach a whole broad range of topics. You know what tenured professors’ sociology classes really are? History, historical theory (pure theory, no applications), psychology, anthropology, economics, a lot more history, political science, and methodology courses. Things I’ve learned from tenured sociology professors: the history of capitalism as it developed from feudalism; Marx/Weber/Durkheim (which were beaten to death in every. single. course) ; the history of labor unions; pseudopsychology; a lot of statistics about population distributions based on things like age and sex; ethnographies about big industries; the history of factories; critical race/class/gender theory in the abstract; some weird shit about the function of sports in society, fuck if I know; the American Dream across time; modern cultural differences around the globe; political processes for passing legislation; fucking pussy hats, everyone couldn’t stop talking about the goddamn pussy hats; classifications of professions; lots of American history.

Social theory, economics, psychology, anthropology, political science, etc all are valid approaches to sociology. But being a tenured professor means being stuck in a niche all your life, never bothering to reach out of your own area of expertise. And you know what kinds of people have had a much more difficult time entering the present day class of tenured professors? People of color, disabled folks, queer people. You know, people who like queer theory. And research about minority issues doesn’t get funded as much as broader, “more applicable” research does., which makes it harder to enter academic fields and research positions if that’s your specialty.

You have to realize that people who are currently tenured professors have followed a career path to get there over the past 10+ years (if they’re even a newly tenured professor), and that’s in light of the changing political climate of that time which–as you go backwards to their early college days–would get more and more socially conservative, making it harder to have had that career path. Then there’s the fact that in a given sociology department at any university, there’s only so many professors that can specialize in identity politics, narrowing the potential for university-level teaching positions even further. Finally, a lot of queer theorists aren’t… even… sociologists? Like I said before, queer theorists are ordinary people who write about their lives and experiences, who sometimes come from other backgrounds like political science/anthropology/human rights and then  sort of get swallowed into academic sociological queer theory. So you don’t have to have any specific credentials to write cornerstone pieces of queer literature, but you do have to have them to teach in a university, and thus I don’t think it’s very fair to assume that queer theorists are entering universities in hoards to push their queer agenda. (Also, colleges don’t really want to hire people who are too ~radical~ because of controversy–even liberal colleges.)

Or, if you’re trying to imply that the few professors who do teach queer theory are intentionally pushing it as much as possible… it’s probably because it’s such a relatively new, unexplored, and underrated area that deserves attention? I don’t see how gender/sexuality professors are any different in that respect than every other professor who gets super enthusiastic about their own research.

The people I know who teach queer theory are grad students, aka they aren’t tenured?? I mean I’ll give you some benefit of the doubt if you mean women’s gender/sexuality studies professors, since my avenue is sociology, but even then. And you totally can’t act like grad students have power, given how poor and exploited they are and how easily they can be dismissed for toeing a line at their institution.

I legitimately do not think professors are people with any significant amount of power over others–especially not broad social power a a class. Like, there is soooooooo much social theory that could go into breaking down this ask. I literally just pulled up my class notes on the social distinction of professions. It’s the nature of the public to try to deprofessionalize certain skills and knowledge bases, and university professors are frequently attacked in this regard.

I also established already that most queer theorists aren’t actually people who have fulfilled an academically-acceptable career in queer theory. Faculty are the people who synthesize documents and structure syllibi around them in order to teach them effectively. The people who are “pushing” queer theory (still unfortunate rhetoric with queerphobic implications) are queer people. Non-professor queer people. Many of whom are multiply-marginalized and find writing about their lives liberatory. You’re getting uncomfortably close to “marginalized people actually have tone of power” conspiracy logic. It’s a lot simpler than all of that. Professor teach queer theory because a good education requires a broad representation of multiple sides, and queer theory is just another lens, just like neocolonialism, neoliberalism, neo-Marxism, and critical race/class/gender theory are. Like, my social theory textbook has one section about queer theory (which is literally only about Judith Butler, actually) which is only one part of one chapter on postmodernism.

But like… aside all of that, most theory–except maybe music theory, because fuck that shit–is descriptive. Theory is developed through observations and life experiences and quantitative/ethnographic research. If you read prominent works within queer theory, they’re either what are essentially memoirs/opinion pieces, argumentative essays that build off the work on philosophy-style theorists, or published, peer-reviewed studies. And considering the fact that those things are present in all branches of sociological theory, I don’t think you can be against that, either.

I definitely gave myself a headache trying to condense all of the things I’m trying to think of, and I’ve been chipping away at this ask for multiple hours. The bigger fact is that one person sending me super short, super vague anons is not a good start to a productive and meaningful conversation, because I’m just grasping at straws trying to make inferences about what’s really being conveyed. This might be an inadequate job but it’s a starting point and is hopefully broad enough that it hits on some meaningful points.

Also, anybody who doesn’t find the word queer liberatory but still calls themselves queer should really ask themselves why they want to be called queer in the first place when it’s a choice.

#anon #ask #queer theory #reply #I...? #long post #academia