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Wisdom That Cuts
It must be a nice privilege to tell someone to overlook the oppressive elements of a program, because it was helpful to you.—Beverly Guy-Sheftall, quoted in "The F Word: On Feminism, Being an Ally & Social Justice" by Dumi Lewis.
It's from a larger interview about dealing with privilege. I've been trying to keep that line close to me.
It's essentially what I've been trying to say about PUA defenders (most recently in
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theferrett's journal). It also runs in nicely with thete1's "'I know it's racist, Te, but the special effects look awesome!'"
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Seriously, thank you, it makes me warm and happy to hear that. I'm sure some day I'll make it up to SF and validate my own existence.
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I was actually going through those posts and I realized that a lot of my current orbit started then.
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Engagement with media that perpetuates putrid values is something I've been wrestling with lately. Since so much media has dominator culture written into its DNA even when it's not being painfully blatant about it, the question seems almost to be not whether to watch something that's sexis, racist, homophobic, etc. but when the saturation of those elements reaches the point of being too much.
In some cases, it seems obvious. Like, the makers of the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie have failed so completely that choosing not to see it has been pretty straightforward for me. But then there's the more subtle cases. Like, I enjoyed the heck out of SyFy's recent Alice miniseries, but I noticed as I watched that people of color were almost entirely absent from the story. This meant that there weren't any particularly awful POC tropes (no "what these people need is a honky!" or "magical negro" offensiveness) but, yanno, it was because POC weren't on screen 97% of the time. And that shit's fucked up. And it follows the racism of SyFy's past projects like Wizard of Earthsea in a disturbing manner. So... yeah. To follow thete1's metaphor, I was asking myself how much piss is too much piss.
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I don't know of any easy answers regarding the exercise of privilege, but one thing that runs through all the links is taking a further step of determining for others how much piss is too much, or whether the rocks in the piss are worth the swimming, which is an abuse stemming from privilege.
One personal example is Dollhouse where I tried to disclaim my privilege in finding interesting things inside well argued PROBLEMS. I also have a problem moderating heated comments on this blog, because I tend to evaluate comments with offensive material in terms of how much value I get out of it, not how much damage other readers are receiving.
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I don't know of any easy answers regarding the exercise of privilege, but one thing that runs through all the links is taking a further step of determining for others how much piss is too much, or whether the rocks in the piss are worth the swimming, which is an abuse stemming from privilege.
:/ Yeah.
One personal example is Dollhouse where I tried to disclaim my privilege in finding interesting things inside well argued PROBLEMS.
Yeah. And, compared to male viewers who watched and tried to dismiss the fact that their enjoyment was grounded in privilege, I respected your attempts there. At the same time, the privilege still is what it is, in the same way that my white privilege means I get to experience a lot more stories as positive and fun even when they've got stuff I can intellectually see excluding people of color.
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Thank you. That's the core of it, and I hadn't seen it that way before.
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I have other thoughts about authorial intent and voting with dollars, but I need to think them through before I express them anywhere.
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I think the book in question is steeped in privilege, though not in a way I've seen anyone address. It refuses to acknowledge the privilege people possess who do not have conditions such as aspergers/autism, social anxiety or other mental illnesses that make communication difficult. It refuses to acknowledge that US culture and society privileges extroverts and dismisses introverts and people with social anxiety as "messed up" and in need of "fixing." This is the reason my stepmother, a natural extrovert, shamed my introvert father into taking a more "active" role in social relationships, and the reason why he pressured me into "making friends" in social events when all I wanted to do was read. In both cases, we were deeply uncomfortable and found something shameful about our need to retire after a few hours of socializing because we felt overwhelmed. It is the reason why people who are not gregariously social are considered "creepy" and even potentially dangerous. It is, after all, no accident that whenever a mass shooting happens, the media always remarks about how the shooter was "quiet" and "kept to himself."
Because of all of this useless advice about "faking it 'til you make it" and trying to make eye-contact or whatever magic spell these authors promote for making friends and having relationships, people who are introverts, socially anxious and non-neurotypical feel defective. And in some cases, following through on this advice can actually be anywhere from triggering to physically uncomfortable for the person who has to fake it.
I wish the people in that post talking about how they themselves or others need to change how they speak and act to be acceptable would realize that not every human has the same neurology. And that NT/extroverted/majority people sometimes just need to look beyond what they may perceive as socially weird behavior, or at least not to assume that the person behaving in a way they find anti-social or strange is somehow unworthy of their attention or regard.
I also really find the book's equation of 24 year old virgin = pathetic to be disturbing on a number of levels, including and especially the idea that, once again, people who can't attract a date or a partner are defective.
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But, yeah. Similarly, WHAT COLOR IS MY PARACHUTE was shoved on me for years, and I always thought it showed lack of gumption that I died inside at the thought of contacting strangers.
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I once heard Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop) talk about how beauty and cosmetics advertising. While many accused such campaigns as "selling sex" she argued that what they did was sell "dissatisfaction of sex," thus creating a need for the product. And in general, most advertising is designed to foster a dissatisfaction of one's self, then offering a product as a balm for that self-hatred.
That's definitely part of what's happening in PUA marketing.
As for "fake it till you make it," I'm a interested in your thoughts. My understanding is that, for a neurotypical mind, this is how the mind works. A person begins by doing something consciously, and then that behavior becomes more ingrained and subliminal. I would think that applies to neurotypical introverts? I don't think of them as non-neurotypical, but this is not ground I'm familiar with.
Regardless, I think this ties into the selling of dissatisfaction above, because there's a bait and switch around what "making it" is. Getting people to like you isn't going to make you enjoy being with people any more than you already do, it's just going to make them enjoy being around you (which is something that Theferrett did briefly note when working with How to Make Friends and Influence People).
Maybe an analogy is fat acceptance and diet marketing? Eating healthy seems to be "fake it till you make it," but losing weight (specifically, changing your body type) lots of people buy into the dissatisfaction that they can change fundamental things about themselves too.
This is not something I am familiar with, so I will end with a link to a comic about introverts and social-anxiety disorder.
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