Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

This is a sterile suggestion that "it's not their fault if you don't get it."

This. Many times, reading those uh guidelines, I get the feeling that they're tailored for an audience who will have barriers up against understanding/acknowledging their own privilege. Feels like some of the straightforward talk has been dialed back to be "palatable," as WCC put it.

Or at least to try to emotionally un-weight it, which is probably the same thing as making more palatable. Maybe this is misguided? Or maybe the pitch works for some audiences but would be better re-pitched for others.

If you listen to diplomat-speak, it has many of the qualities of what HOOS posted. Actually, "envoy" is a direct borrowing from diplomacy, so you can see how there was some modeling from that going on.

ftr envoy was, unless i missed it, my term, not from what i pasted

Feels like some of the straightforward talk has been dialed back to be "palatable," as WCC put it.

― drawn to them like a moth toward a spanakopita (Laurel), Saturday, March 3, 2012 4:11 AM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tooooooooootes

i'm really glad s.clover and laurel posted, they articulated some of the things i felt better than i could.

the phrase in that list of commandments that most offended me was "target group" (i am not your fucking target group), followed by the suggestion that as a minority that's been oppressed i ~can't help~ my behaviour towards people who want to fight alongside me. no, fuck you, i am certainly obliged to behave politely to "allies", who - let's be real here - are SO NOT THE PROBLEM WE FACE.

and yes it is 100% the language of exclusionary privilege through and through. my reaction to people who want to fight for the same things as i do is not to treat them as though they're toddlers.

I'd like to be clear, also, that posting that list of suggested strategies was by no means a full endorsement of its style. I had reservations even on reading it, I'm just making an effort to share topical things I find here. I'll be more discerning next time around.

Are we seeing these happening here Assume that making mistakes is part of the learning process of being an ever more effective ally. Be prepared for flare-ups of disappointment and criticism. Acknowledge and apologize for mistakes; learn from them, but don’t retreat.

reading these threads fills my mind with challops and i feel like such a jerk but i have had a problem with words/ideas like "ally" "privilege" (what are some others?) for a while but could never articulate what my problem is. i think sclover kind of did it for me. the phrase "target group" and the envoy thing are gross to me. it imagines a binary of target and non-target and non-target people do this tourism thing where they go to the museum and learn all about the targets and become an expert on target history (wtf?), which is what all the targets want the non-targets to be, and if any targets express that they don't actually want that it's just because they are oppressed. they'll come around eventually. when i started reading it i thought it was satirical with all the things you are supposed to assume the targets want.

it all sounds very martial to me.

i got 3 books from the library just now: backlash, women who kill, AND crack mothers btw

crack mothers ftw

yeah, "privilege" sort of bothers me too, but i use it. i can't figure out a different way to describe things. it definitely feels like shorthand, though.

i think the argument for the kind of language above is ultimately utilitarian. i didn't use "privilege" for a long time because i prized my infinitely more subtle and various understanding of power dynamics in the world, but then i noticed how people would have "eureka" moments with the idea of privilege, that somehow it seemed to get past a defensive dismissal of whatever issue was at hand. i feel like the above language weirdly abstracts away the context it's working in wherein white people think, racism is over, blacks/Latinos/whomever are unfriendly, this whole topic is uncomfortable for me so i will just avoid it. i guess i'm saying, i recognize what that language is going for, even though i understand what harbl and sterling are saying, that it's inadequate and patronizing/reifying if you take it as a full description of...reality.

i had this conversation irl recently and i said basically the same thing, like i guess you can say privilege as a shorthand but it sucks. it especially sucks reading feminist blogs and constantly reading about how one should check his/her privilege as if that's a thing one can really do. i mostly prefer to just not talk about it because i don't like any of the language that's available. reifying is a word i was looking for though.

u should write a book called "beyond privilege:____________" and put whatever is beyond privilege after the colon. i will write an approving foreword!

or u can continue not to talk about it, which is also fine.

i'll call it that and you can write the foreword but it'll be just recipes and cat pictures inside

haha even better

Beyond Privilege: Curry Chronicles

sounds like the perfect book tbh

beyond privilege: best animal friends

it seems unfair to say this emerges from feminist analysis since important work has been done by feminist thinkers.

i am privileged to be on the same thread as this guy ^

i like the phrase "check your privilege" because i always imagine a "before you wreck your privilege" after it. (i do think 'check your privilege' is also used in quite a bullying way in some feminist-leaning parts of the internet, it is treated as a full stop rebuttal that just raises people's hackles, rather than something a person needs to explore and understand and be able to recognise and work with)

also i fucking love activist talk - i find facilitating totally nervewracking tbh but doing a workshop on facilitating meetings was a+ because activist jargon is to me so lovable, how delicately one treads around being tendentious.

the phrase in that list of commandments that most offended me was "target group" (i am not your fucking target group), followed by the suggestion that as a minority that's been oppressed i ~can't help~ my behaviour towards people who want to fight alongside me.

i read this in a totally opposite way! not as "they can't help their behaviour towards you" but as "respect that they have totally valid reasons for their behaviour towards you and don't try to 'correct' them"

basically to me this is a v politely worded list that says 'don't be a condescending dick to people you are supposed to be supporting, it is decent of you to take part but of course they are going to be leery'

and by 'politely worded' i mean 'written to be indirect so the reader won't go 'oh it is not about me because i am [blah]'' - Hoos' "sterile" is the perfect adjective.

since everyone's already thrown their 2c in, my problem with that list of suggestions is that the mindset behind it is so profoundly militarized and conflict-driven. as a result, it treats the people it addresses like mindless drones, like units that can only be put to proper use by "the cause", and not as thinking, feeling human beings with valid interests and agendas of their own.

it breaks people down into three groups: the oppressed, their allies and non-allies (implicitly, the enemy). having done this, it describes the task of allies in extremely prescriptive terms. their job is to get it, not to question and not to think. the job of the ally is simply to fall in line. if would-be allies don't for whatever reason understand something that a member of a "target group" tells them, then it must be their fault.

i understand that every crusade needs willing troops. i understand that soldiers function best when they simply shut up and get with the program. but i don't think this is the only or even necessarily the best model for interactions between sympathetic members of different groups. for one thing, it seems to presuppose that all accounts of oppression are equally valid (they aren't) and that all members of a given oppressed group will view their situations and interests similarly (they won't).

you seem to presuppose that this is a list of commandments to the troops, rather than strategies that people can adopt to make themselves work better as allies.

i agree with horseshoe, but even then i think the excerpt posted fails at what its going for. really wary of telling people to assume things about other people in the context of this kind of work!

Assume that all people in the target group want you and members of your group as allies.

like, why on earth should i assume this!

i wouldnt want me or members of my group as allies!

i think i am from the "tough-love" school of getting people to "check their privilege," i appreciate the effort to make that kind of thing palatable to, well, straight white guys, but really, fuck them, they should figure this stuff out themselves

haha that is the Laurel position iirc

laurel otm

tbh when i read these lines

Assume that all people in the target group want you and members of your group as allies. Assume that they recognize you as such- at least potentially.

Assume that any appearances to the contrary-(any apparent rejections of you as an ally) are the result of target group people’s experience of oppression and internalized oppression.

i at first assumed this was like the 'derailing for dummies' thing and actually a joke? because, yeah, maybe people don't want you, and maybe if they're rejecting you as an ally it's not cos they've been oppressed in the past but because you're domineering and annoying or functionally useless or w/e.

i kind of cant think of anything less helpful than "no, they really want you to keep coming to meetings! they just cant show it because theyre super mad about slavery!"

basically to me this is a v politely worded list that says 'don't be a condescending dick to people you are supposed to be supporting, it is decent of you to take part but of course they are going to be leery'

^^^^^this is p much how I read it. (Though probably without the "decent" part.)

lolllll max

anyway i agree that it's a politely worded attempt at saying don't be a dick I just don't think that that it succeeds either on its own terms or as a larger strategy. coddling irritating ppl "of privilege" so that their feelings dont get hurt seems... Counterproductive. Buy here I am telling social justice orgs how to act so

I don't think coddling people so their feelings don't get hurt is what they're going for so much as making the barriers of cognitive dissonance easier to knock down.

I feel like it ends up just reinforcing bad attitudes by treating certain concerns and mindsets as genuine or appropriate

you seem to presuppose that this is a list of commandments to the troops, rather than strategies that people can adopt to make themselves work better as allies.

― inspector george gentlyfallingblood (c sharp major), Saturday, March 3, 2012 12:20 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

well, i'd say it presents itself as both, and that it's strong emphasis on the former undercuts its utility as the latter.

plus yeah, the suggestion that the oppressed "target groups" really do want you as an ally, no matter what they seem to be saying, seems way off base. if people indicate that they don't want or need your help, you should probably take them at their word.

"it's"

AAAARGH

plus yeah, the suggestion that the oppressed "target groups" really do want you as an ally, no matter what they seem to be saying, seems way off base. if people indicate that they don't want or need your help, you should probably take them at their word.

― Totes le Héros (contenderizer), Sunday, March 4, 2012 12:03 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed

you seem to presuppose that this is a list of commandments to the troops, rather than strategies that people can adopt

― inspector george gentlyfallingblood (c sharp major), Saturday, March 3, 2012 12:20 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

well, i'd say it presents itself as both

disagree with this reading but i'll admit my reading comes out of wanting the best from the text--a best which plenty of others here don't seem to think exists, so i'll defer.

OK, the provenance of this document has rolled back under the cut but hey, I'm going to assume that it is what it was represented as: a group of marginalised people saying, in very clinical language, how they would like to be treated.

And here is a thing: when someone expresses a direct request, "this is how I'd like to be treated," I try to treat them that way, instead of second guessing how I think they should *really* want to be treated.

I'm not going to sugar coat this. It's one thing for someone like horseshoe or lex, who actually are members of marginalised groups themselves, to say "well, I don't feel this applies to me" - but when a bunch of straight white dudes start picking it apart, that is presumptuous as fuck. Because, for many of us, part of the system of oppression has *been* SWDs telling us that we can't *possibly* really want the things that we explicitly state we want.

Additionally, it is very easy for SWDs to talk about "tough love" and insist that marginalised people should ~be more angry~ - but again, this is how privilege (sorry, there's no other word that fits here) works. That if you are a straight white dude getting angry, that anger is seen as legitimate, even righteous, and if it isn't, it is seen as a reflection on you personally, and not your entire group. That if you are a woman, or a person of colour (especially an African-American or a Muslim) and you get "tough love" or get angry, your actions will not be coded as righteous, you will be seen as "hysterical" or "a fanatic" or possibly even "criminal" or "a terrorist."

Personally, my inclination is towards scorched earth and toughlove, but we've seen this again and again on ILX, where some ~well-intentioned~ but bumbling dude comes and shoots his privilege off on one of these threads, people *don't* say "wow, that is some righteous tough love coming from WCC" - they say "wow, WCC is a fucking bitch."

i think it is likely that some SWDs were involved in the writing of that list, actually - if that list was written by and for ~activists~ it was probably written by a bunch of ppl together, probably both ppl who consider themselves 'allies' and ppl who consider themselves 'in the target group'. (however it was probably not written by people who would not be willing to think of themselves as members of a 'target group' or 'allies')

i think what people are missing about this is that it's written for people who consider themselves 'allies' w/in a specific set of circumstances, it's not a general set of rules for life or for everyone.

it's like thinking about e.g. religious law. our image of law is this thing that is top-down and imposed upon people by a state or other group, but there's a whole other historical existence of law as something you use to guide your practice: it's not 'don't steal a sheep because it is immoral and also the representatives of the law will take one back off you', it's 'this is how a good [religionist] organises their inheritance'.

yeah, thats all fair, didnt mean to derail. ill butt out again.

Has anyone linked this aready?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTlmho_RovY&feature=share

It's a really brief, to-the-point lecture on how photoshopping images of women's bodies is, well, doing evil.

hi all,

i have been dating someone who recently showed their true colors by making some really awful comments about women, particularly women's mental health. because i am not quite ready to give up on him i am trying to educate him about it. i have had good luck finding articles about the prevalence of mental health issues in women, specifically linking them to violence towards women. here's a really good summary from the world health organization: http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/genderwomen/en/

what i'm looking for now is an article about the depiction of women with mental health issues in popular culture, how they are often very sexualized, and how it is a really tired trope/device that is offensive, unfair and inaccurate. the tropes vs. women series by feminist frequency was one things i thought of, but none of them specifically fit the situation and i'm looking for something a bit more general. is there a key text that is not too academic or jargony, or an article anyone could recommend?

s.e. smith at Tiger Beatdown and Melissa at Shakesville have both done some good writing on that topic, but unfortunately I don't have any bookmarked at the moment (lost all of my feminist 101 bookmarks when I quit my job.)