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yelosonThe last couple of days have been pretty demonstrative of privilege.
Writer, Jay Lake, complains that he is afraid to go to WisCon, you know, because someone might criticize him.
Or: A writer complains that he is afraid to go to a convention because he might be criticized for his words.
Or: A Man is afraid to go to a convention for Women in Science Fiction, because he won't receive a free pass to not be criticized on privilege.
Or: A Man is afraid because he might be held to the same standards as every other human being.
I haven't even gotten to the racial angle of his statement, or it's mirroring the same "ZOMG, Brown = violent!" dog whistles of previous writers and privilege that seems to come up whenever people of color write more lucidly, logically and intelligently than the writers criticized, but I'm sure you get the picture...
In the bigger picture, this is just an example to the real phenomenon.
That fear tells us a lot about how privilege thinks. The level of narcissism that completely ignores the context of why women would organize a convention in the first place, that you get a free pass to do what you want without criticism, that your feelings matter more than anyone else's.
All the issues of why women build these spaces "doesn't matter", because in the mind of privilege, everyone else's problems are fictional. They're not real, not important, mostly the victim's fault anyway. Not like the special privileged snowflake - those things ARE real, those things MATTER.
Privilege doesn't understand what hate looks like- so being held to normal standards is "threatening", since they keep acting out and keep getting checked. They don't see what they did as wrong, but everyone telling them so, somehow is. So now it's time to claim victimhood, how everyone is unreasonable forfailing to obey massa not listening, and how you have friends of the offended group and how much you've done for them.
Poor white man's burden!
The ignorance of privilege is a facet of denial, subconsciously the person knows there's a power issue, which is why they're quick to claim victimhood - to try to deflect the power issues involved. Obviously, this just a slight modification of White Women's Tears and the terrible injustice that the world is not all yours to have. One need only look through history and current media to find examples of how privilege reframes itself as the victim ("Those savage Indians keep forcing us to use violence!"/"Why did you make me have to hit you?/Your Political Correctness is impinging my right to insult you with genocidal slurs!" etc.)
Because this is a denial thing, the rationalizations are self-contradictory. It works one way when it benefits, then it works the opposite way, whichever way is most convenient to the moment. (Ex: "I get to demand people provide evidence without providing any of my own. I get to tell other people about things I have no background or study in, but dismiss their statements, even when backed up by accepted sources and authorities.")
See also: a small child throwing a tantrum about not getting to have their cake and eat it too.
Privilege understands "hate" as anything that doesn't let it get it's way and nothing else, in classic narcissistic fashion.
Which is why there's no point in talking to most of these people - the only value in engaging is to hopefully display to the rest of the world what kind of person this is, and to highlight the behavior as an educational example- much in the same way you might dissect the rantings of Charles Manson or the Timecube author.
Writer, Jay Lake, complains that he is afraid to go to WisCon, you know, because someone might criticize him.
Or: A writer complains that he is afraid to go to a convention because he might be criticized for his words.
Or: A Man is afraid to go to a convention for Women in Science Fiction, because he won't receive a free pass to not be criticized on privilege.
Or: A Man is afraid because he might be held to the same standards as every other human being.
I haven't even gotten to the racial angle of his statement, or it's mirroring the same "ZOMG, Brown = violent!" dog whistles of previous writers and privilege that seems to come up whenever people of color write more lucidly, logically and intelligently than the writers criticized, but I'm sure you get the picture...
In the bigger picture, this is just an example to the real phenomenon.
That fear tells us a lot about how privilege thinks. The level of narcissism that completely ignores the context of why women would organize a convention in the first place, that you get a free pass to do what you want without criticism, that your feelings matter more than anyone else's.
All the issues of why women build these spaces "doesn't matter", because in the mind of privilege, everyone else's problems are fictional. They're not real, not important, mostly the victim's fault anyway. Not like the special privileged snowflake - those things ARE real, those things MATTER.
Privilege doesn't understand what hate looks like- so being held to normal standards is "threatening", since they keep acting out and keep getting checked. They don't see what they did as wrong, but everyone telling them so, somehow is. So now it's time to claim victimhood, how everyone is unreasonable for
Poor white man's burden!
The ignorance of privilege is a facet of denial, subconsciously the person knows there's a power issue, which is why they're quick to claim victimhood - to try to deflect the power issues involved. Obviously, this just a slight modification of White Women's Tears and the terrible injustice that the world is not all yours to have. One need only look through history and current media to find examples of how privilege reframes itself as the victim ("Those savage Indians keep forcing us to use violence!"/"Why did you make me have to hit you?/Your Political Correctness is impinging my right to insult you with genocidal slurs!" etc.)
Because this is a denial thing, the rationalizations are self-contradictory. It works one way when it benefits, then it works the opposite way, whichever way is most convenient to the moment. (Ex: "I get to demand people provide evidence without providing any of my own. I get to tell other people about things I have no background or study in, but dismiss their statements, even when backed up by accepted sources and authorities.")
See also: a small child throwing a tantrum about not getting to have their cake and eat it too.
Privilege understands "hate" as anything that doesn't let it get it's way and nothing else, in classic narcissistic fashion.
Which is why there's no point in talking to most of these people - the only value in engaging is to hopefully display to the rest of the world what kind of person this is, and to highlight the behavior as an educational example- much in the same way you might dissect the rantings of Charles Manson or the Timecube author.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-30 09:09 pm (UTC)*nods* During the Bear race fail imbroglio, many white fen said "But what are we expected to do, woe!" It bewildered me at the time, but since then a longtime white friend, who has been attending mandatory diversity classes at work, burst out with, "What the hell do they want from me?" It wasn't until then that I realized the white fen were really saying the same thing, "But what do *they* expect me to do?," and that my friend's anger and the white fen panic was due to the horror of having something, anything, expected of them by people of color instead of coasting on white privilege as usual.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-30 10:59 pm (UTC)http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=RaceFail_09
Plus ca change.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-30 11:25 pm (UTC)The content on Lake seems to have been deleted from the wiki, and quite recently. Huh.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-31 08:02 am (UTC)(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-06-01 12:35 pm (UTC)I have close to a million words in print and that much more in bloggery, and great deal of it would stand counter to your facile analysis of me. Have you read any of what I have to say? Really, if you want to hang me out to dry, learn something besides my gender, skin color, and one or two isolated statements of mine. I'm quite certain you're opposed to judgment of people based on gender and skin color in other contexts.
Most ironic to me is your summation:
Which is why there's no point in talking to most of these people - the only value in engaging is to hopefully display to the rest of the world what kind of person this is, and to highlight the behavior as an educational example- much in the same way you might dissect the rantings of Charles Manson or the Timecube author.
That's pretty much exactly been my experience of dealing with the anger and frustrations of the RaceFail movement. I wouldn't have put it that way myself because I place a high value on both politeness, and respect for your point of view, which believe it or not I actually share and have done so for the past 25 years or so, since I first learned about the concept of white privilege and came to understand even a little of it. I've had some time to think about this, you see, and raising a daughter who's a POC has given me a lot more to think about viz race, gender and privilege.
Thank you for your kindness and understanding.
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-06-01 02:28 pm (UTC)You said specifically racefail has made WisCon feel unsafe for you.
Literally. Unsafe. For you. As a man, going to a convention organized by women to build a place SAFE from the issues they face in sci-fi by men. As a white guy, unsafe, because people of color are talking about how the culture both of the writers and fans makes it unsafe for them.
Did YOU read about how some of the attendees got racial genocidal slurs thrown at them on the street last year? Did YOU read about some people deciding to put people's personal home addresses and phone #'s on the web as an encouragement to harassment?
And now YOU'RE blowing the "unsafe" whistle?
Your comment shows that you haven't thought about any of these points, even though I mentioned most of them in the post above. In my experience, people who show poor reading skills and reply by dodging the issue with appeals to authority and tone arguments, never decide to -start- reading with more replies and conversation.
That is, if you can't read 1 page, there's no point in giving you 20 pages.
I understand exactly how you feel:
You're a white man who feels unsafe that other people talk about how white people and/or men have made THEM feel unsafe, and that your needs of safety trump theirs, even though they have history, recent, of people doing literally threatening things, and ALL you have to worry about is something telling you that you said something stupid.
Poor baby.
I hope you consider how egomaniacal and ridiculous your initial statement was, and what a poor showing of yourself you're making in defending it. As I said, you've made an excellent example of the larger behavior pattern we've seen for a long, long time.
This conversation is over.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-01 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-22 05:51 am (UTC)AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Just... the smugness. God. Love the way you showed him what's what, though.
Anyway -- can I link to this post? It is perfectly perfect and I get the feeling it'll be awhile before it stops being relevant.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-22 06:04 am (UTC)