Celebration is not validation

[yeloson]

Watching recent online antics come forth, and I'm realizing something that has bothered me for a while.

There's this thing people do where they mistake celebration for actual equality. You know, like the idea that if a bunch of white people show up to watch a lion dance in Chinatown, they're not racist, or by having Black History month, or a bunch of straight folks showing up at Pride, or a bunch of men judging Ms. Universe...

You know, somehow by the virtue of showing up to be entertained and say nice things once in a while, that it somehow is a replacement for real, actual changes in power structures and social dynamics.

Hence, why somehow voting for Obama ended all racism.

Right now, I'm watching a bunch of supposed feminists flip out over the fact that WisCon will not honor a bigot who puts out hate language.

And I realize, these people are probably the people I described above- the whole premise of WisCon, and why women would even MAKE a separate convention is completely invisible to them- it's actually only about coming together to "celebrate" and have a sparkly fluffy time...

...the idea that there's more to feminism than simply saying "Women are AWESOME", that, you know, you might actually have to negotiate power structures and policy, that you might have to call out people in your community, that people you look up to might be problematic to the point of not being able to participate in all the happy events...

This hasn't crossed their minds at all.

Because real anti-oppression work isn't fun, it isn't an AWESOME celebration, it's hard fucking work that means you have to pick your battles and the costs you're willing to pay for the principle that all people are people.

Or you know, you can sit back and only show up for the parties and act like you did something. And stomp your feet when you show up and aren't entertained.

After all, that's what equality is all about, right? Someone dancing for you because you're special and they know their place?

Comments

[daedala]

This is really helpful for picking apart what's wrong with "celebrating diversity" stuff. Thanks!

(That said, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the Anonymous comments are not from what we might call Wiscon's core constituency. I'm not disagreeing with your point -- I just think that the trolls are not necessarily people who consider themselves feminists.)

[yeloson]

Yeah, I'm not thinking that's the whole con.

This particular troll-stance has pretty much clarified the whole "You can be feminist and wear high heels!" backlash movement, which, instead of putting women's agency as primary, put women's "choice to not upset the patriarchy" as some kind of virtue.

In this case, the trolls are going on as if celebrating a woman author is all that's necessary. Under that logic, we should be having Stephanie Meyer as Guest of Honor, right?

[daedala]

Well, Moon has "strong female characters."

..yeah, idek.

[spiralsheep]

At least one of the commentors has admitted arriving via:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instapundit

And the hate screed posted there about wiscon.

[spiralsheep]

jonquil says the wiscon post was also linked by Vox Day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Beale#Feminism_and_multiculturalism

[daedala]

Ew. Thanks, I think. :)

[spiralsheep]

And I ttly should've put a trigger warning on my previous comment. ::self-headdesk::

[daedala]

I recognize the name. Vox Day, oy. And the comments on the Wiscon posts started low and crawled lower.

[glass_icarus]

YES. &hearts Thanks for putting this into words.

Also, wow, those comments are ugly.

[littlebutfierce]

Because real anti-oppression work isn't fun, it isn't an AWESOME celebration, it's hard fucking work that means you have to pick your battles and the costs you're willing to pay for the principle that all people are people.

YES.

This whole post is brilliant; thanks for writing it.

[cynthia1960]

Seconded.

[imnotandrei]

Your icon, I loves it.

[0jack]

It took me so long to understand this, even about the areas where I experience oppression. I vacillated between placated and confused/angry for years before I got it. A lot of people in my life stopped liking me as much when I stopped being willing to accept their willingness to eat Ethiopian and take fashion advice from TV queers as progressiveness.

[hederahelix]

the idea that there's more to feminism than simply saying "Women are AWESOME", that, you know, you might actually have to negotiate power structures and policy, that you might have to call out people in your community, that people you look up to might be problematic to the point of not being able to participate in all the happy events...

And when you're in a position of privilege it means being willing to give up that privilege and call other people like yourself on that privilege when it's so damned easy to just let it slide because you can because you're in that position of privilege.

It also means being really deep-down okay with there being events that your friends can go to that you shouldn't go to. Without whining about it.

And, and I so do not understand why this one seems to be so hard for so many people, it also means that you need to melt down into a pile of pain and shame when people from those cultures you're so busy celebrating told you that that thing you just did was racist/sexist/classist/ableist/ageist/heterosexist/etc. and you should maybe stop and think about that.


I guess I'm always astounded at how hard that last one is for so many people when compared to the other two.

[cynthia1960]

The melting down in pain and shame is important, but if you don't reforge your mental structures to fix the flaw that made the faily meltdown happen in the first place, no true progress gets made. Mea culpas are only the start.

[crossedwires]

Thanks for this post. ♥

[bcholmes]

Thank you for this post.