The privilege of speaking openly

[yeloson]

One of the sticks waved around recently was, "We post using our -real names- and that means we're more special than you!". Not everyone has that privilege, especially when you're speaking out against an entrenched oppression. There's always someone willing to bring consequences to you for that.

The right to speak freely, without threats being made, without people inviting physical and personal harassment and harm upon you? The ability to say what you will without fear of being assassinated?

And the fact is, these folks don't need to threaten you personally, they simply need to open the door, put up a sign, and throw the info to people who -are- crazy enough.

It's always about who -isn't- protected in this society.

Comments

[furikku.livejournal.com]

Cripes, they're going with that now?! Isn't it a widely accepted thing that putting your real name on the internet is generally a really stupid idea?!

Folks need to quit being stupid.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

A while back some folks were waving around that their opinions held more weight because they put their real names online, mind you, the people they were dismissing weren't Anonymous, but rather folks working in anti-racism and anti-sexism who've held the same screennames for years.

And this dude is running around digging up people's personal info and dumping it online.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

It is also interesting that as a white, male(-appearing) person, I am pretty immune to this stuff in general -- I have that privilege you talk about, in that by and large people don't do this kind of stuff to white people most of the time.

It's worth noting that even in this case, he still had to "otherize" me with the gender issue -- he couldn't attack me with white privilege, so he had to pull out cisgender privilege first before posting my [sic] address and phone number.

I want to back up what you are saying about this by adding that blogging openly about race and racists for me is not an act of courage, just an exercise of privileges afforded to me. I don't want anyone to think I am doing anything other than being a typical white person in this regard, and I fully support POCs and others who do anti-racism work under alternate names.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Right. It's why we can have folks like Tim Wise blog openly, but not necessarily women of color do so.

I've spoken before with folks about the fact that a great deal of ish goes down because it's about who's protected and who isn't. A lot of people stand by and go, "Oh that's too bad" while they don't do anything to step in and stop bad behavior, which is exactly how it keeps going on.

The fact that this guy thinks he's being prosecuted (never mind he keeps his job, never mind he suffers no personal set backs, never mind he isn't ousted from his social circles) says everything about perceived vs. real persecution.

Ditto with the race imbroglio and drama. As Tempest says, "This is what real abuse looks like."

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Indeed! This is something I often fear as a gay person. My LJ however is pretty findable if you want to find it however, for business reasons, but I always do think twice about what I say on this LJ because of that.

The "use real names" argument doesn't hold up in this discussion at all.

[maerhys.livejournal.com]

Ha! Considering my experience back in September... yeah, how nice it must be to do everything under your "real" name especially if it something like John Brown and NOT something like mine, wherein there is one of me.

[distaff-exile.livejournal.com]

Been there. Done that. Got attacked by people from my hometown -- only verbally, thank frak, but I think that was because I'm a smallish girl and it would not have looked good. Small potatoes compared to all of this.

So, um, no, Nielsen Haydens, not always cool to blog as self or even let people you know in on the secret...

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

It was a pretty weak-ass stick, IMO. More like a straw. She grabbed it because... what else was there at hand to grab?

[eclexia.livejournal.com]

I've been afraid of this for years myself. I'm very out, even under my normal handle, but I haven't talked about being trans with my co-workers. I work with very net-savvy people, and they wouldn't have a hard time at all tracking down more info about me.

Even worse, I'm not sure what I'm going to do once we get the project we are working done with. It'll be used on my personal domain as a testbed, and I really want to blog about all kinds of things on it. Only problem is that it's an insta-out, and my non-trans related politics probably wouldn't sit well with my boss. Makes life complicated. ugh.**sighs**

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

It really is the backward thinking, "But if they were all good and right, then they wouldn't have any reason to hide?" under the assumption, that there isn't consequences for speaking, appearing, or just being.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell broke it down perfectly:

"...silence about America's racial legacy is the price of admission to the social contract."

Transpose it accordingly, generally it holds - you stay silent of the inequalities or you get reminded of "your place".

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

And Dr. Harris-Lacewell might well not blog under her own name if she didn't already have tenure.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

ZOMG.

Oh, dear.

I think I just heard the final piece click into place, because I'd been classing this as, "TNH struck me as clueless and stupid about some things in the past (outside this discussion), but this thing is a spectacular new round of *FAIL*."

Except it isn't.

Back at the last WorldCon in Boston, I was sitting in the audience at a panel on transparency or something like that, where TNH and Cory Doctorow and a bunch of other people were on the panel. And TNH came out at the end with a statement I thought was utterly STUPID, which was something like the only people concerned with privacy issues were those who were doing something wrong.

And I was a polite audience member and raised my hand, and didn't shoot up out of my seat and scream "PRIVILEGED MORON!" which is what I wanted to do, because...ZOMG, people feeling a need to be closeted about their lives, because of the harm that others might do, of *COURSE* that's about *THEM* being in the wrong...

*headdesk*

Must think about what I need to do to make this something that will hold up to the firestorm of sticking this up in my journal instead of buried here in comments. Argh.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Taking the analogy even further, "Why do you have locks on your door? Huh? What're you trying to hide?!?" is the same kind of thinking.

There's also the fact that if who says it is more important than what is being said, that tells you everything about the person making that judgement.

As far as firestorms, it's all about what your LJ is to you - I generally screen comments because it prevents firestorms. Clueless and ignorant statements simply don't need to have space on my LJ, and they don't deserve my time or bloodpressure.

There's a (priveleged, entitled) way in which people who are often screaming to enforce the status quo act as if they're an "unheard voice" and such.

Once I figured out their pleas for "fair debate" were really a mask for demanding my silence, and that "fairness" would only exist in their eyes once I agreed with their racist, sexist, heterosupremacist shit, I stopped playing the game. They have the news, the tv, the radio, the movies, books, schools, government, and most communities- they didn't have the right to my LJ too.

What role your LJ is to you determines where you draw the lines, because it's one of the few places we have that kind of control to make space for our voices.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

*nod*

[obsidianeyes.livejournal.com]

I love you and shall be quoting you?

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Quote away.