Since then I've had a number of conversations with a number of people (this is vague for a reason), and some of the things I've learned from these conversations are:
- When someone says something offensive, it's my fault for being offended.
- I get angry because I stretch myself too thin caring about other people and groups
- I need to calm down when I'm angry; people can't engage with someone who is angry
One of the most common criticisms lobbed at the newly-vocal atheist community is, "Why do you have to be so angry?" So I want to talk about:1. Why atheists are angry;
2. Why our anger is valid, valuable, and necessary;
And 3. Why it's completely fucked-up to try to take our anger away from us.
So let's start with why we're angry. Or rather -- because this is my blog and I don't presume to speak for all atheists -- why I'm angry.
Well, I think Greta Christina does speak for me with this article. Rather, I agree with a lot of the things she says (although not all of the words she uses). Furthermore, I think this applies to other historically, culturally, and institutionally oppressed groups; the histories might be different but the anger stems from similar causes. I cannot speak for people of color, or people with disabilities (see: link for people of color), or anyone I am not. But I can speak for me, and I can speak from the experiences I have had.
In a society that constantly delegitimizes my relationship, provides me with few role models, and actively seeks to silence my voice, I get angry sometimes. When I go to the hospital and pretend to be my girlfriend's friend out of the fear that she will not receive the medical attention she needs if people know we are dating, I become angry. When someone compares me sleeping in my girlfriend's room, while we are both sick, to "someone falling ill in [a random dorm's] lounge," I become angry. When people intentionally look away when they see us holding hands on the street then claim they are not homophobic, but allies to the queer community, I become angry. When people tell me I am hypersensitive and that I "couldn't possibly be feeling" what I tell them I am feeling, I become angry. When someone tells me they won't stop using a word I've asked them not to use because it hurts me, I become angry. And when someone tells me I should be quiet, that all of this is somehow my fault for existing, I become angry. Being told not to be angry is being told that my experience is not valid. I should shut up and deal with being oppressed. It's my fault.
I can't jive with that.
Edit: And I will just provide Greta Christina's response to her comments. Just something to think about before providing a comment here.
I really liked your post here. Well, I really liked all the links from it and thought they explained some of the things that have been on my mind lately in a thorough and clear manner.
ReplyDeleteMy only "one point" from your own style of comment response is that sometimes I think it's too easy to see everything from coming from a privileged or "phobic" place and we need to be careful as people thinking about these issues immediately calling them out as such. My example would be the part about people looking away when your girlfriend and you hold hands and then claim it's not a reflection of internalized or outward homophobia and claim to be allies.
I had a long discussion with my aunt about public displays of affection. It all started when I explained that I felt uncomfortable doing the exact same thing you're talking about, holding my boyfriend's hand in public. Her position on it was she was uncomfortable with all public displays of affection regardless of the partners involved.
Now, believe me, I'm not saying that this was true of the people you experienced this with and was probably not the case for most of them. But I do believe my aunt that a response like that from her would not be coming from a place of homophobia. A someone who is actively involved in confronting ableism, works on anti-racist and gender and sexuality workshops for middle schoolers, and someone who has always supported me personally in my struggles with coming out, I think it would be incredibly off the mark and offensive to her to claim a response like that was homophobic and that she had not confronted her own sexuality privilege.
So I think that your aunt is an interesting case. I believe you when you say those things about your aunt. And I believe that your aunt honestly is uncomfortable with all public displays of affection. So I do not intend to make the claim that she is homophobic and has not confronted her own sexuality and privilege.
ReplyDeleteBut I want to make a distinction between intent and effect. Her intent is not to seem homophobic, but to avoid any type of public display of affection. In a heteronormative, homophobic society, however, the effect of people looking away makes me think that there is a specific reason they are looking away. I generally assume (and perhaps this is discrimination) that because of the world we live in, this is at least partially due to homophobia. That is not to say that your aunt is homophobic, nor even that she intentionally participates in homophobic acts. I am saying that, given the climate in which I live, sometimes I can't help but feel that it's at least partially due to who I am. Again, intent vs. effect.
Thanks, again, for your thoughts! I've found your comments to be respectful and thought-provoking.
The "Atheists and Anger" post is fantastic, so thank you for the link.
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of notes on language. First, you're right that "being told not to be angry is being told that [your] experience is not valid". But this is never an unintended side effect, and I don't think your post quite articulates that. When someone tells you not to be angry about something, that person is explicitly telling you that your feelings are not justified. This is why it's not effective to tell a person saying this that they are not validating your feelings: they know that already. Rather, you somehow have to get across why your feelings are valid; often a much harder task.
Second, I disagree entirely with A brief PSA on language. I see three points there: (1) that it is simple for a person to simply stop saying crazy, idiot, etc.; (2) that just omitting these words is much easier than what the author does -- confronting people who do use them; and therefore (3) asking people to stop using those words is reasonable. After all, they'd only have to exercise "two seconds" of thought!
The main problem: I don't think that you can just ask people to stop using certain language. Use of privileged language isn't a distinct problem that can be solved; rather, it is a symptom of having whatever privilege that "allows" you to use it. Trying to get a person to stop using the language without understanding how their position in society has influenced their use of that language is confusing. Even if a person does stop using it, their thought process is likely to be "oh, I can't use this because it's not PC, sigh", instead of any meaningful understanding of why the request was made.
Additionally, stopping use of certain language is not always simple. The view of the post is that it is possible to create two classes of people who use language considerately. The first class is visible: not only do they use language considerately, they engage people who do not to try and get them to see what they're doing. The second class is effectively invisible: they have omitted certain words from their speech, but since this isn't an active engagement, nobody can tell that they have been "converted".
But the words the author is urging people to drop do not have good substitutes. What I mean is, saying "Oh, he's an idiot" sounds completely natural in conversation in many circles. The author implicitly assumes that you can instead say something in that situation
that avoids privileged language, but still sounds natural. But there's no such thing. If you try, you will sound (and feel) weird, and people around you will notice and ask you what you're doing. You can't omit this language and avoid engaging people on it. (And, if you do get asked what you're doing, but you've been trying to change your language without understanding your privilege, you'll have nothing coherent to say in response, and you'll probably abandon your efforts.)
TL;DR: Using ableist language is a symptom of unknowingly holding a privileged position, and that symptom cannot be "treated" independently; and it is often hard or impossible to skirt use of such language without outing yourself as intentionally skirting it.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure you can speak for everyone when you say that telling someone not to be angry is "is never an unintended side effect." I'm almost positive the people telling me this were not intending to invalidate my experience. But I can't be sure, and unless you've spoken to each and every one of them, neither can you.
On language, I disagree with much of what you've said. I will respond with a quote from one of those language articles (there are two). "It’s a post about people who complain that it’s too hard to rid their vocabulary of words that are used to marginalize people, because they’ve never thought about it before. Those people are essentially telling the people marginalized: your marginalization is an acceptable cost for my continued thoughtlessness. My ability to never address my privilege is more important than your basic human dignity."
And the idea of "natural" doesn't mean anything. It means conventional, to me, "the norm." And in this case, these words are normative words with ableist roots.
I've had a lot of conversations about language, lately, and people tend to make a lot of excuses instead of just doing what oppressed people ask them to do. I don't understand this. I see no problem with being intentional about not using these words, since they hurt people. I don't want to hurt people. Period. So I don't find debating whether there are other words, or whether or not these words should still be used to be productive. Perhaps a productive thing to do would be to ask why pejorative words need to be used at all? Or perhaps a productive alternative would be to get creative and produce other words that fit these types of situations?
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ReplyDeleteIn response to Brian:
ReplyDeleteSimilar to Laura, I also believe what you said about your aunt and do not want to discredit or devalue her preferences or the ways she has supported you. I am not accusing your aunt of this, but my experience has been that some people have very different standards for what are appropriate public displays of affection for straight couples and queer couples. I have seen people comment on how cute straight couples are when they kiss or are affectionate in public and have seen people look away, leave, or make rude comments about queer couples doing the same thing or doing even less intimate things like holding hands.
I think Laura was getting at this, so maybe I am just repeating this in different words. Having someone look away from me and my girlfiend- even if the intent is totally benign- has effect of feeling like homophobia. This is because that person looking away from us is not an isolated incident. It happened within a context of homophobia and heterosexism in our society and within a context of experiencing discrimination repeatedly personally. I think this effect needs to be considered because people can still be hurt by the effects regardless of the intentions.
Hi Laura,
ReplyDeleteLet me try to express the point I'm making more clearly. I am not arguing that changing the way I speak (or anyone else speaks) is "too hard", and thus not worth doing even if the way I speak is offensive or derogatory. Rather, I am arguing with a specific idea in the first language article: it says that it is easy to change how I speak without other people noticing, and thus I can do so without having to "put my safety on the line" and engage people by explaining what I am doing (an explanation that at least implicitly argues that the listener should be doing the same).
In other words, if I change the way I speak to omit ableist language, I am signing up to defend that change to anyone who notices it and inquires; and since, I argue, that it's hard to make that change unnoticeably, I'll have to defend it frequently.
To be clear, this does not mean it's not worth doing. It only means that the author is wrong in thinking it's trivial. Do you still disagree?
On people telling you not to be angry, you're right. I'm making an assumption of people's intent that I cannot really back up. I'll make the weaker claim that it's possible that a person saying that to you really does not believe you're having a valid reaction. I suppose that in any case, you can react to that situation by asking, "Do you think it's not valid for me to feel this way?" If they respond with "no, I don't mean that", you can talk about how their words imply that anyway, and if they answer "yes, you're being ridiculous", well... actually, I'm not sure how I'd respond to that, but I'd know not to try to tell them that they're expressing that idea.
Ah! I see what you're saying about the article. I think that may be true, but I really haven't come up against much resistance simply when I don't use words. It's when I try to convince other people that they shouldn't use them that I meet the most resistance. So, I don't know, my experience aligns pretty nicely with the article's perspective.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't doubt that if someone does say something about the words I use, it would require an explanation, if I was asked for one. But I think this is the case with any word.
Have you come across a lot of resistance to any language changes you personally have made to omit certain words? How have you dealt with this resistance?
Hi, my name is Derrick and I stumbled across this blog a few days ago. I am a Black, Latino, genderqueer Jew and I embrace all parts of the aforementioned labels as integral components of my self-identity. As you can imagine, there's plenty of perceived contradiction among those identities. Society tells me its weird to be "Blaxican," or a "Black Jew," let alone a "Blaxican Homo-Jew" (yes I've actually been called that...). I come from a fairly conservative community in rural Iowa. As you can imagine, this is not exactly a community that is sensitive to my specific identity issues. Here, Jews, Blacks, and Gays are all equally "exotic," (I won't even go into "gender-queer," because explaining that to my friends/classmates would be pretty futile). Throw them all together and you have a miracle of probability...a FREAK. IT'S REALLY FRUSTRATING AND PROBLEMATIC. I have definitely dealt with some problematic language in my time in Hick-town, Iowa. I've generally coped with these comments by ignoring them. Though reading literature on the matter has really demonstrated that this is an unhealthy way of dealing. As you can imagine, this frustration often manifests itself in my interactions with my peers as anger. They make me feel like it is my fault for feeling the way I do... for being angry. This blog-post really hit home with me. The atheist articles were a beautiful touch. I'm just now realizing that it is REALLY PROBLEMATIC when people try to consider your anger as an overreaction when they're the ones standing (or sitting, to be less ablist ;D)in the positions of privilege. I have a few questions for you, since I've not had very many people I could seriously talk to about these issues:
ReplyDeleteFirstly, does it make me sexist to not be attracted to women? I have a few feminist friends who get incredibly offended at the fact that I don't find them attractive sexually. I know that the ultimate point of feminism is that women are better then men (and all other genders/identities in between to keep it PC), and I completely respect that viewpoint, but I feel that being offended that a genderqueer homosexual man doesn't want to have sex with you is a bit much. Am I wrong? Perhaps I am and I don't even know it. I'm sure this is how my friends feel when they attempt to understand my problems.
Secondly, has there been any research as far as male child-birth goes? As a genderqueer, my identity does not conform to that of a "traditional" man. I've been with my boyfriend Tobias, for about two years now and I really think that he's the one with whom I want to spend the rest of my life. I really want to have a child when I am older, but want to be biologically related to him/her, and thus do not wish to adopt. The process of child-birth is perhaps the most beautiful symbol of one's connection to a child, and I feel that such a break-through in science and gender/sexuality issues would deal a crippling blow to the problematic gender binary by which we are forced to abide. Thank you very much for this blog, it's really helped me recently.
Hey Derrick,
ReplyDeleteI'm really glad you enjoyed this post! I'm so happy that it is making you feel validated.
To respond to your two questions:
I absolutely do not think it makes you sexist not to be attracted to women. Also, I personally don't think that the point of feminism is to prove that women are better than men. I think feminism is about liberation and self-actualization for everyone - providing space for anyone to be who they are (so long as that identity does not actively oppress others). bell hooks says these things a lot better than I do, I would highly recommend her book "Feminism is for Everybody." I personally (as far as I know) am not interested in having sex with men, and I don't think this makes me sexist.
And sorry but I really don't know anything at all about male child-birth! I think it's really great that you want to have kids! What I will say is, I am almost certain surrogate mothers are a possibility. If you really want to be biologically related to your child(ren) and your partner does not, you could be the one to inseminate the surrogate mother (I don't really know how it works but I'm assuming it has nothing to do with sexual intercourse). If you both want to be biologically related to the child, I don't know what to tell you! Maybe science will be able to provide this technology in years to come.
Below is a link about picking a surrogate mother; I think it has some basic information.
http://www.therainbowbabies.com/ChoosingASurrogateMother.html