privilege as a meme

yeah i feel you, there is a lot to be said for finding your center and learning to react in a healthy way, i'm not great at this but i recognize i can get better at it

that said, i think 'tone policing' is useful to describe how assertiveness and advocacy are interpreted by privilege as belligerence and anger

tone policing is the worst, it always seems like a tactic to divert focus away from the actual argument, as if a point made rudely is automatically invalid. and often the people being rude have good reason to be angry!

not that i'm totally familiar with the phenomenon but it seems like a symptom of so much of this discourse being people reading and writing on the internet.

where 'tone' is as much a matter of reader inference as writer intent

one day in the future we will all communicate via videoconferencing

there's always a point in any internet debate or fight where you just want to put all the participants into a room irl (either because it'll help them sort it out without getting internet-angry or because they'll be out of my sight)

Uzjfkshe I just wrote a long post on my phone and zing ate it

For me it breaks down two ways:

1) That kind of tone policing ONLY is ever used against people in non-privileged groups when it wouldn't be used against a person of the privileged group.

2) Who the fuck are you as a white person or straight person (or man, able person, etc.) to tell me as a black person or queer person (or woman, disabled person, etc.) that I can't be angry or sad about the things I or other people in those groups experience?

b-but I'm demisexual

every time I read that word, I think http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/stylewatch/gallery/red_lips/demi_moore.jpg

oh man, that tumblr

^ review of her work on striptease?

http://aseasonedplateofmurder.tumblr.com/post/57764676625/idk-how-frank-is-supposed-to-help-me-pay-rent-if

I have to step away from that tumblr

and actually that was the post that made me realize I needed to step away, lol

it's ok, the next 200 posts are about Dr. Who

ok this is an obvious troll because there's a REALLY NSFW picture

http://aseasonedplateofmurder.tumblr.com/post/57764676625/idk-how-frank-is-supposed-to-help-me-pay-rent-if

― mh, Tuesday, August 20, 2013 6:13 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is the most important piece of writing i have ever read on the internet

lmbo

focusing on the most extreme, earnest, insane examples of the subject is ALSO a diversionary tactic imo

conservativeginger likes this

there's no way in crap this isn't a parody blog. seems to have a large following from the kind-of conservatives who make macros about Obama congratulating people for being gay instead of saving Benghazi

sorry abt Benghazi I was getting gay married

smoking gun's in the description, don't even have to read a post:

I am a socialist who believes that more government regulation is the best for all people.

find me a socialist who puts it like that

also this

I like how she's all "have morals, go socialist" in her header but capes up for democrats whenever anyone criticizes them from the left.

― s. cloverlandthug (The Reverend), Tuesday, August 20, 2013 1:50 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

suggests that it's someone from the libertarianish right who is anti-nsa but thinks "leftist" means "Democrat" (means "socialist"), like the people who thought occupy was obama astroturf

or idk maybe it's a college girl, people are weird

thirteen-minute gap between those posts clearly belying my "don't even have to read a post"

Who the fuck are you as a white person or straight person (or man, able person, etc.) to tell me as a black person or queer person (or woman, disabled person, etc.) that I can't be angry or sad about the things I or other people in those groups experience?

i feel you here for sure, and that's what i was getting at when i was like

like i recognize and honor the validity of all kinds of emotional responses to heavy information

i don't think anybody gets to tell people who've been subject to the violences of patriarchy or white supremacy or ableism how to feel about their experience.

separate from that fact, apart from the notion that no one gets to tell (i was gonna say you, then i was gonna say us, then i was gonna say you--fuck me, this shit is complicated for me) how to feel or whether those feelings are justified or useful or reasonable--shouldn't we be willing to ask ourselves if anger is our best response? anger can be cleansing, in lots of times and places its the only thing there is to feel, but in other times and places there might be ways *better for our damn selves* to approach the things that incite rage. catharsis notwithstanding.

but like i said, i don't fuckin know.

like call me a corny motherfucker but i know that as much as anger can empower the angered love can transform the one loving and the one loved, and i just wonder what it would look like if we tried to build our engagements with one another on that instead

i'm not tryin to whitesplain nothin to nobody or anything i'm just trying to feel my way through this shit cause its complicated to me

like my dude saw the zimmerman verdict come down, and the big discourse about racism it jump started, and he was like "ok, what's the best thing anti-racist white people can do right now to educate other white people about racism?" and he decided to start the i am not trayvon martin tumblr, where people started talking about white privilege and how the experience of POC is different in a society based on white supremacy and why a white boy in a hoodie could never say "i am trayvon martin." before long folks on tumblr put him on blast for "putting white people's white guilt front and center AGAIN," and it's just like damn, i don't think my dude deserved a medal or whatever ("do you want a cookie??" came up a lot) but he was operating from a place of love on an anti-racist impulse and the internet outrage machine just shat all over him, and i just don't understand why it has to be that way. i think that criticism--"ay white people, stfu for once, this one is ours" is on point, even! i just don't understand why that has to make my dude the target of hate mail from the permanent internet outrage hurricane.

"apart from the notion that no one gets to tell"

ppl "get to" do what they want tbh. this "u don't get to..." thing is tilting at windmills

p sure u dont get to say that tbh

at least when the state says you don't get to do something they can back it up w/ violence, criminal system, etc. what are you going to do if i tone police you? tweet angry things at me?

Want to see more posts tagged #tone policing?

mordy does what he wants you guys, you can't stop him

Decide you aren't worth arguing with? xxp

mordy just blew my mind

i... i had never thought about it like that

ppl "get to" do what they want tbh. this "u don't get to..." thing is tilting at windmills

― Mordy , Tuesday, August 20, 2013 11:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not an argument from threat, legal or physical or rhetorical or otherwise, it's an argument from an ethics that rests on history: an oppressor class's definition of the oppressed class's experience can never be the truest definition of that experience. it's only one that serves the oppressing class's interests, which can't be aligned with the reality of the people being pressured by the weight of a culture aligned against them.

here "you don't get to xyz" means you have no standing to do what you're doing, not "i will break your face with my state violence."

i'm pretty sure it is just whinging signifying nothing

YOU DON'T GET TO TELL ME WHAT I FEEL

There's an assumed shared discourse in a lot of these conversations.

Approaching the discourse like its absurd on its face without making any good faith effort to understand the obvious relevant context is sort of silly.

But have you heard of the Internet, your capital letters will fit in well here

I read once that typing in all caps is like shouting on the internet, and that it's impolite.

"you don't get to" as an quick but flawed shorthand for calling out logical fallacy, false authority, & other flaws in argument. it's an idiomatic expression and thinking it has anything to do with free will is fucking dim thinking indeed

We also have a thread called I'M DRUNK if that helps.

here "you don't get to xyz" means you have no standing to do what you're doing, not "i will break your face with my state violence."

― there are more than 3.5 HOOS per steen (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Tuesday, August 20, 2013 8:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well i think you're ignoring the powers granted to the tone police under subsection six of the patriot act, article twenty two.

The tone police, they live inside of my head.
The tone police, they come to me in my bed.

it's not an argument from threat, legal or physical or rhetorical or otherwise, it's an argument from an ethics that rests on history: an oppressor class's definition of the oppressed class's experience can never be the truest definition of that experience. it's only one that serves the oppressing class's interests, which can't be aligned with the reality of the people being pressured by the weight of a culture aligned against them.

^

did you see when that fake tumblr vegan socialist had a "first time frank and I had sex" pic and it was an actual p in v pic