privilege as a meme

http://electricliterature.com/should-white-men-stop-writing-the-blunt-instrument-on-publishing-and-privilege/

I am a white, male poet—a white, male poet who is aware of his privilege and sensitive to inequalities facing women, POC, and LGBTQ individuals in and out of the writing community—but despite this awareness and sensitivity, I am still white and still male. Sometimes I feel like the time to write from my experience has passed, that the need for poems from a white, male perspective just isn’t there anymore, and that the torch has passed to writers of other communities whose voices have too long been silenced or suppressed. I feel terrible about feeling terrible about this, since I also know that for so long, white men made other people feel terrible about who they were. Sometimes I write from other perspectives via persona poems in order to understand and empathize with the so-called “other”; but I fear that this could be construed as yet another example of my privilege—that I am appropriating another person’s experience, violating that person by telling his or her story. It feels like a Catch-22. Write what you know and risk denying voices whose stories are more urgent; write to learn what you don’t know and risk colonizing someone else’s story. I genuinely am troubled by this. I want to listen but I also want to write—yet at times these impulses feel at odds with one another. How can I reconcile the two?

Go down to riverbank, plug iBook into hollow reed, work away.

I want to listen but I also want to write—yet at times these impulses feel at odds with one another. How can I reconcile the two?

Don't publish your writing, just write for yourself personally.

Submit all yr writings to ilx.com

That guy seems really condescending. He's not going to stop writing so why agonize about it publicly like this? Although, if he really feels like his work doesn't have inherent value, and is just another example of a "white male perspective," perhaps he should stop writing.

That guy needs to fuck off

This is like a man, in conversation with a woman, announcing he is going to hold back on his opinions to avoid overpowering hers and mansplaining. He's reinforcing the aura of male privilege, not working toward a world where everyone is treated equally.

Don't even know why j is giving this posturing worthless moron the time of day, although for a laugh someone pls repost some of his poetry

that paragraph is like a miniature of everything nietzsche was writing against in the genealogy.

more people should feel the urge to stop writing things generally

i support that notion.

everyone should realize that their writing is a worthless waste of time that will improve nothing on earth and will earn them almost no money. if despite that realization the compulsion to write is still overwhelming, they can continue. it needs to be a calling that cannot be suppressed. i find potential writers who suppress their writing to be extremely virtuous. the kotzker rebbe once said: "Not all that is thought need be said, not all that is said need be written, not all that is written need be published, and not all that is published need be read."

tldr

i think theres a moral good in not publishing/recording/broadcasting things currently. félix fénéon saying 'i aspire to silence' is really moving to me

first mistake this chump made was thinking he was a poet

Samuel Beckett — 'Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.'

Everyone so otm right now.

i think theres a moral good in not publishing/recording/broadcasting things currently

i've tried to argue this in academic settings, to little success against those who thing professors should be writing daily blogs, etc.

i am agreeing with you all telepathically

ah dammit

...

I'm amazed at the response this "posturing" anonymous (!) letter writer is getting for earnestly seeking advice on a set of difficult questions that, if you haven't sought counsel on yourself, you might not have thought about hard enough. I've considered these questions a lot, I think it's commendable he earnestly sought advice, and even though I have no idea what the answers ought to be, it doesn't seem to me like the answer he's given here is sufficient.

What do the rest of you do, assume these questions sort themselves out in the wind?

HOOS otm

This is like a man, in conversation with a woman, announcing he is going to hold back on his opinions to avoid overpowering hers and mansplaining. He's reinforcing the aura of male privilege, not working toward a world where everyone is treated equally.

― Treeship, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 3:25 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's not like this at all. This is like a man writing an anonymous letter to an advice columnist asking whether or not he should hold back on his opinions to avoid overpowering women & mansplaining. There is no public flagellation aspect of this when you're wearing a mask with your hairshirt. It changes the meaning entirely.

speaking very sincerely if you don't think the world needs your perspective then don't offer it. that he's asking for advice anyway implies that he's looking for some kind of absolution or permission to continue writing as a white male. it's bizarre + absurd.

also i think it's sad that he has so dehumanized himself that he thinks his perspective in his writing is a 'white male perspective,' and not the perspective of an individual human w/ unique experiences + thoughts. that he does feel that way suggests that the answer to his question is obvious. he should not write anymore.

i feel like 'dont publish your poetry' is more than sufficient advice for this person and anyone struggling with these questions

he should just go with what feels good, I bet the eagles felt like this but beat it and just went with what felt good, and thank god for that say i

think he shd let the market decide

his most irksome error is his dichotomous approach to 'experience' and 'perspective', deconstruction of this should be facile to a writer of any cerebral heft

i.e. Mordy otm

mordy otm.

hoos also otm wrt the fact that my analogy was bad bc i didn't consider the anonymity angle

Mordy that's the point, isn't it? He's trying to figure out if the world needs his perspective or not--he isn't sure. He's asking for feedback, and yes, absolution probably. I don't think it's bizarre or absurd, I think it's in fact a natural place to find yourself if you want to believe you have something to say but worry you'll be louder than others because of your inherited station. I've talked to writing teachers & editors about this more than a few times, and this guy's concern is a common and sincere anxiety among a lot of people.

I think if the ppl from those other communities were that worried about their voices not being heard they wouldn't be writing poetry

The world does not need the perspective of /white maleness/. If that is what he thinks he has to offer the world then he should not write. If he thinks he has things to offer besides teaching the world how white men see things, then maybe he should. It seems like a very simple question to me.

xxxxxp

the answer he's given is not sufficient because the columnist doesn't bother contesting any of the writer's assumptions

e.g. that writing is or has to be primarily a matter of 'sharing your experience'; if he were writing good shit would he or anyone else care that he was white?

or that this dude's experience is worth anything anyway. 'waah i am wite' can just be a poorly fathomed expression of perplexity at the state of affairs that some experiences are currently promoted, and others denigrated, as sources of literary material. without that social validation he may be realizing that there is little intrinsically interesting that he has to say on the basis of his own experience, just the usual crude attempts to transmute bits of life-stuff into the stylizations and posing of 'literature'

what is being assumed about literature that makes the line of thought, 'maybe i shouldn't be writing, because i am x?', valid where it would sound bonkers when put in terms of e.g. cooking, or being a scientist, or starting a business?

i'm sure there's a lot to say about it and it can be thought 'hard' about, but i don't think the presumption that it's a big serious question with a moral aspect to it helps much.

"what is being assumed about literature that makes the line of thought, 'maybe i shouldn't be writing, because i am x?', valid where it would sound bonkers when put in terms of e.g. cooking, or being a scientist, or starting a business?"

core question. literature is either well done or not. ppl need to get into leaflets in a bigger way if they are still looking for lyfe answers in art imo

also i think it's sad that he has so dehumanized himself that he thinks his perspective in his writing is a 'white male perspective,' and not the perspective of an individual human w/ unique experiences + thoughts.

It can be both - but attention is not a zero sum game, and any spent on him is not spent on a perspective that has less opportunity to express itself (and is, if you get me, more unique) - and is more likely to already have internal blocks on whether the world needs it.

what is being assumed about literature that makes the line of thought, 'maybe i shouldn't be writing, because i am x?', valid

that people are what others take them to be. that human imagination cannot fundamentally transform the materials of experience to create something new. literature can't exist.

I think you mean it 'is a zero sum game,' AF. but if you read literature to be exposed to writers of different identity groups than you're normally exposed, there is plenty out there. his writing places no limit on locating writing from someone else. if you read literature for other reasons, why should his identity group make a difference?

like that is on the reader not on the author. his writing makes no claim on my attention. there are millions of people generating written content worldwide - to claim that the added presence of (1) particular writer will shift the dynamics of the field of literature in any given direction is absurd.

mordy & j otm

One could say by Othering W/M dominance, framing it in past-tense, and pretending it is something you can simply ignore, is all harmful to whatever cause this guy is struggling with.

Samuel Beckett — 'Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.'

On the other hand, he said it, amirite? (h/t art spiegelman in Maus)

Ah yes, you're right there - but still addicted to odd binaries, I see. People read literature for lots of reasons, some not even clear to themselves.

It is of course a pompous thing for him to wonder, as if his choice will make an enormous difference to anyone - but it is good sometimes to act as if there was a larger number of you, in voting or general civic mindedness - there are worse pompous things to do than viewing yourself as a part of a statistic rather than a special snowflake.

TL;DR: this should be a mandatory question on a lot of university courses.

it reminds me a little of radical marxist literary critics who are only really concerned about whether a piece of fiction challenges or reaffirms capitalism. it's a mostly internally consistent way of viewing of the world but it seems so sad to me that ppl live & think this way.

join a curriculum committee sometime : /

Sometimes I feel like the time to write from my experience has passed, that the need for poems from a white, male perspective just isn’t there anymore

This is a strange egotism at work. An author doesn't decide what sort of writing people want or need. An author writes and people either read it or they don't. Or else the author stops writing and takes up macramé for reasons that they know best. But if no one wants to read your poems, maybe it has nothing to do with being a white male whose time has passed. Or maybe it does, but it shouldn't concern you. Your job is to write poems. The rest is out of your hands.

i think it's sad that he has so dehumanized himself that he thinks his perspective in his writing is a 'white male perspective,' and not the perspective of an individual human w/ unique experiences + thoughts.

He's also dehumanizing others, in effect claiming that there is only one white male perspective. This is a bad move no matter what group you're claiming; any sentence that begins, e.g., "As a [member of x group], I believe..." is a sentence that should be deleted.

I've considered these questions a lot, I think it's commendable he earnestly sought advice, and even though I have no idea what the answers ought to be, it doesn't seem to me like the answer he's given here is sufficient. What do the rest of you do, assume these questions sort themselves out in the wind?

There is no one who is capable of giving him the type of advice he is seeking. The answers he's been given here are sufficient, in that they are the only valid answers, even if they do not appear to satisfy his desire for a different kind of answer. Although his questions may be asked endlessly and the desire behind them is real enough, the answers really do sort themselves out 'in the wind', in that the eventual use of what anyone writes cannot be controlled or predicted by anyone at all. Least of all the author.

"i feel like 'dont publish your poetry' is more than sufficient advice for this person and anyone struggling with these questions"

i feel like this sufficient advice for most people on earth.