Despite sharing the values of the social justice community, I often
feel a bit at odds with it, and I think I figured out why. For me,
societal problems are not only a matter of conflicting values but also
of how we respond to the people who hold those values that differ or
even oppose ours. That things like consciously tolerating an increase in
diversity (even of conflicting values and even while challenging them
when harmful) inevitably leads towards more acceptance and progressive
values.
That may be wrong. I need to think about this more, but I
think right now my feeling is that our collective responses across
society and generations haven’t really changed even while our values
have progressed, or at least, increased in nuance and understanding, and
that worries me for the future, that we’ll just be repeating different
iterations of the same social cycles of conflict, because we keep
responding the same ways to each other when hurt. But then, of course we
do, human nature is human nature, and while we can change ourselves and
consciously modify our responses to things, what I’m imagining requires
a large-scale shift in the average self awareness and social awareness
of others.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
To the South:
Some background: A few days ago, I came across a comment from a Southerner
lamenting how non-Southerners move to the south, hate southern culture, and try
to change it, expressing how there’s no other possible reason we would move
there except to ruin their way of life.
I was shocked to see that self-centered perspective finally said directly.
I’ve encountered this interpretation before, just never stated explicitly. I didn’t want to reply publicly under my real name, but I’ll reply here, because this has gone on long enough.
So to the South, I say:
I am an American like you, not some foreign invader trying to dominate and ruin your way of life. We move to the south because we are all Americans and don’t know you hate us, don’t know you think your culture is under attack for having to coexist with us, don’t know we’re your enemy in your version of American history, don’t know some distorted version of a 150 year old war is still so salient, don’t know you see your culture as fundamentally at odds with the rest of us. We are Americans like you, and we thought you saw us the same.
You talk about how great your region is, how relaxed and friendly your lifestyles are, how pretty your landscape is, how mild your winters are, how important your history is to the story of America, and we think, “oh, that does sound nice, I would like to live there too.” But that’s not the reaction you wanted, was it? We misunderstood. You wanted your greatness to be acknowledged and celebrated by others, to be evangelized and exported, to bring in tourism money but for us leave and spread the gospel of the great South when we return home. You wanted to influence the rest of the country, the world, but you didn’t want to be influenced yourself. We misunderstood terribly.
But how could we have known? At first you were nice. Some cultural differences need to be navigated, some problems are observed, some culture shock existed on our end, but that’s to be expected, right? No one’s perfect. We know diversity means some inevitable misunderstandings and minor conflicts, but it can be worked out, we’ve done this before, with wave after wave of immigrants, so surely we can do the same between people already American. Sharing the best of us helps each of us improve our weaknesses, right? We’re all still one country, right? We have stereotypes about each other, but we have stereotypes about everyone, it’s not some personal thing with us “northerners” specifically, right? Right…?
It’s only after we make a life there for ourselves that your “Southern Hospitality” falls, that the full brunt of your true feelings about us, your true perspective of your relation to the rest of us becomes clear and we see the cracks in your claims of a pleasant lifestyle, the lies, the self-delusions. Maybe we were deluding ourselves, us, the supposedly rude “Yankees” trying not to be too judgmental. But you know your culture’s better, more moral, from more respectable heritage, having been here so long you forgot who you once were, only “American” remains in your ancestral memory. You are pure. So of course you think we, with our derived accents and our hyphenated-American ethnic qualifies, are less than you. Who’d have thought a white American could be a victim of xenophobia in the epicenter of white America?
And yet here we are, disoriented and alienated, simultaneously privy to the racism and xenophobia we as white people all try to keep hidden, while also being treated as one of those unwelcome foreigners to your perfect white culture. You don’t know what to do with us and we don’t really know what to do with you. We weren’t expecting this and you don’t seem to realize it. But we’re not the same, and in your hierarchical system that means we can’t be your equal. You can’t fathom that our lives are motivated by our own self interest to make our lives better, that our culture’s not just a twisted version of your own ideal one. No, you and your culture, the shining beacon in the world, must be our motivation, everyone’s motivation, and lack of immediate assimilation to your superior way of doing things is proof that we hate you, that we came to destroy that beacon. Everything we do is motivated by you, everything revolves around you. Change and difference is bad, cultural exchange is evil because you are already perfect. We see it in you choice of leadership: a narcissist in chief for a narcissist culture.
Many resent you now, hate you now, I resent you and hate you now, those feeling themselves you take as proof you were right all along. But that’s also what you wanted; you set us up to fail so you had more evidence of our hateful, inferior nature. We should have known since you’ve been doing the same to your African-American population from the beginning, but unfortunately, racism isn’t unique to you, so we didn’t see it in time.
But this is our home now too, and we work to fix it. You blame us for pushing unwanted social change, but we see plenty who were already here who want to fix it too. We see anti-black racism’s presence ever more strongly now, we see the other native Southerners, like your own LGBT community, First Nations people, non-Christians, people and their families who have also lived here their whole lives like you, but who have not benefited from your “generations of doing things this way.” They have as much if not more of a say in this than we do. Some of us leave, but this is the place they know.
Any hostility I have towards you now is not preconceived prejudice that I brought with me from the evil north – despite what you think, I had no animosity going in. I was too young to know any better. My feelings now are entirely a reaction to how you’ve treated me, a reaction to your assertions of your cultural superiority and my cultural inferiority, your inability to recognize you are capable of having flaws like the rest of us, your resistance to exchange, to learning how other cultures, other Americans, have adapted to things that are new to you. I can leave, but we’re connected, we share this country, this continent, this planet, and that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? For everyone to be connected to and influenced by you? You now need to learn you have no right to a top position, no right to harm others. You have to learn that receiving cultural elements from others is not domination, its growth. You have to accept that you are not perfect and have things to learn.
As much as you forget, we are all Americans.
I was shocked to see that self-centered perspective finally said directly.
I’ve encountered this interpretation before, just never stated explicitly. I didn’t want to reply publicly under my real name, but I’ll reply here, because this has gone on long enough.
So to the South, I say:
I am an American like you, not some foreign invader trying to dominate and ruin your way of life. We move to the south because we are all Americans and don’t know you hate us, don’t know you think your culture is under attack for having to coexist with us, don’t know we’re your enemy in your version of American history, don’t know some distorted version of a 150 year old war is still so salient, don’t know you see your culture as fundamentally at odds with the rest of us. We are Americans like you, and we thought you saw us the same.
You talk about how great your region is, how relaxed and friendly your lifestyles are, how pretty your landscape is, how mild your winters are, how important your history is to the story of America, and we think, “oh, that does sound nice, I would like to live there too.” But that’s not the reaction you wanted, was it? We misunderstood. You wanted your greatness to be acknowledged and celebrated by others, to be evangelized and exported, to bring in tourism money but for us leave and spread the gospel of the great South when we return home. You wanted to influence the rest of the country, the world, but you didn’t want to be influenced yourself. We misunderstood terribly.
But how could we have known? At first you were nice. Some cultural differences need to be navigated, some problems are observed, some culture shock existed on our end, but that’s to be expected, right? No one’s perfect. We know diversity means some inevitable misunderstandings and minor conflicts, but it can be worked out, we’ve done this before, with wave after wave of immigrants, so surely we can do the same between people already American. Sharing the best of us helps each of us improve our weaknesses, right? We’re all still one country, right? We have stereotypes about each other, but we have stereotypes about everyone, it’s not some personal thing with us “northerners” specifically, right? Right…?
It’s only after we make a life there for ourselves that your “Southern Hospitality” falls, that the full brunt of your true feelings about us, your true perspective of your relation to the rest of us becomes clear and we see the cracks in your claims of a pleasant lifestyle, the lies, the self-delusions. Maybe we were deluding ourselves, us, the supposedly rude “Yankees” trying not to be too judgmental. But you know your culture’s better, more moral, from more respectable heritage, having been here so long you forgot who you once were, only “American” remains in your ancestral memory. You are pure. So of course you think we, with our derived accents and our hyphenated-American ethnic qualifies, are less than you. Who’d have thought a white American could be a victim of xenophobia in the epicenter of white America?
And yet here we are, disoriented and alienated, simultaneously privy to the racism and xenophobia we as white people all try to keep hidden, while also being treated as one of those unwelcome foreigners to your perfect white culture. You don’t know what to do with us and we don’t really know what to do with you. We weren’t expecting this and you don’t seem to realize it. But we’re not the same, and in your hierarchical system that means we can’t be your equal. You can’t fathom that our lives are motivated by our own self interest to make our lives better, that our culture’s not just a twisted version of your own ideal one. No, you and your culture, the shining beacon in the world, must be our motivation, everyone’s motivation, and lack of immediate assimilation to your superior way of doing things is proof that we hate you, that we came to destroy that beacon. Everything we do is motivated by you, everything revolves around you. Change and difference is bad, cultural exchange is evil because you are already perfect. We see it in you choice of leadership: a narcissist in chief for a narcissist culture.
Many resent you now, hate you now, I resent you and hate you now, those feeling themselves you take as proof you were right all along. But that’s also what you wanted; you set us up to fail so you had more evidence of our hateful, inferior nature. We should have known since you’ve been doing the same to your African-American population from the beginning, but unfortunately, racism isn’t unique to you, so we didn’t see it in time.
But this is our home now too, and we work to fix it. You blame us for pushing unwanted social change, but we see plenty who were already here who want to fix it too. We see anti-black racism’s presence ever more strongly now, we see the other native Southerners, like your own LGBT community, First Nations people, non-Christians, people and their families who have also lived here their whole lives like you, but who have not benefited from your “generations of doing things this way.” They have as much if not more of a say in this than we do. Some of us leave, but this is the place they know.
Any hostility I have towards you now is not preconceived prejudice that I brought with me from the evil north – despite what you think, I had no animosity going in. I was too young to know any better. My feelings now are entirely a reaction to how you’ve treated me, a reaction to your assertions of your cultural superiority and my cultural inferiority, your inability to recognize you are capable of having flaws like the rest of us, your resistance to exchange, to learning how other cultures, other Americans, have adapted to things that are new to you. I can leave, but we’re connected, we share this country, this continent, this planet, and that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? For everyone to be connected to and influenced by you? You now need to learn you have no right to a top position, no right to harm others. You have to learn that receiving cultural elements from others is not domination, its growth. You have to accept that you are not perfect and have things to learn.
As much as you forget, we are all Americans.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
The road to destruction
Many people believe the way to safety is to put on dominance
displays, expecting others to recognize who is stronger and act
accordingly. Through threats of violence, or actual violence, we show
off our strength, our power, attempt to intimidate the threat.
Many animals do this, and humans are no exception. It’s in our
instincts.
On a broad social scale, we make public displays of power, use our
numbers to show not unity and shared values, but the potential to
overpower others, to harm them. We talk about how much we love and
respect our military, how ours is the greatest, sometimes going so far
as to reject diplomacy all together because that can require putting
aside our need to feel more powerful than our opponent - to pull back on
all that goes against our instincts when we’re afraid of what the other
might do if we give them a chance, afraid of being overpowered
ourselves.
But we are not like other animals because we can communicate complex ideas and values with words and empathy, and large-scale existential threats posed by dangerous ideas are not the same as one-on-one confrontations. Our fight-flight-or-freeze response didn’t evolve to help us navigate such complex social structures where threats can now come from a continent away without ever directly confronting us, where the danger we face from others isn’t dependent on us having things they want, but from those very group/self-preservation power-based instincts themselves.
Supremacy of any kind is a product of our own minds, of our own innate bias that comes from the simple reality that we know, understand, and therefore value ourselves and those like us best, and from our own innate, subconscious need to protect ourselves and the things and people we know from those less-understood others who would cause what we know to become different, to be overpowered. Harmful ideas that depend on believing in a potential threat of others - memes like white supremacy - can’t be intimidated out of existence and will always return, escalate, if we don’t understand it’s roots in all of our unavoidable but overcome-able cognitive biases.
It’s hard, I’m having a hard time, but even still, I can’t give in to that instinct to overpower, to violence, if I want progress, if I believe in the human capacity to work out our fears and differences and needs and find a way for everyone to live. If the only way to make progress is through violence, then we haven’t really made progress at all.
But then, maybe it’s all too late for this now anyway. Maybe hope of progress is gone and survival is really all that’s left. Maybe if we as a society had learned this sooner, better inoculated ourselves and each other against white supremacist ideas and learned to recognize the appeal of power within each of us, there would have been hope. But now…we’re running out of time. The planet’s very ability to support our life is dying, with some doing everything in their power to hurry that along, and we’re still repeating the same cycles of violence and hate and ultimately war like we always do, still believe this time we’re justified and will be the last to have to do this. The beautiful future we were promised…was it really nothing but a dream?
But we are not like other animals because we can communicate complex ideas and values with words and empathy, and large-scale existential threats posed by dangerous ideas are not the same as one-on-one confrontations. Our fight-flight-or-freeze response didn’t evolve to help us navigate such complex social structures where threats can now come from a continent away without ever directly confronting us, where the danger we face from others isn’t dependent on us having things they want, but from those very group/self-preservation power-based instincts themselves.
Supremacy of any kind is a product of our own minds, of our own innate bias that comes from the simple reality that we know, understand, and therefore value ourselves and those like us best, and from our own innate, subconscious need to protect ourselves and the things and people we know from those less-understood others who would cause what we know to become different, to be overpowered. Harmful ideas that depend on believing in a potential threat of others - memes like white supremacy - can’t be intimidated out of existence and will always return, escalate, if we don’t understand it’s roots in all of our unavoidable but overcome-able cognitive biases.
It’s hard, I’m having a hard time, but even still, I can’t give in to that instinct to overpower, to violence, if I want progress, if I believe in the human capacity to work out our fears and differences and needs and find a way for everyone to live. If the only way to make progress is through violence, then we haven’t really made progress at all.
But then, maybe it’s all too late for this now anyway. Maybe hope of progress is gone and survival is really all that’s left. Maybe if we as a society had learned this sooner, better inoculated ourselves and each other against white supremacist ideas and learned to recognize the appeal of power within each of us, there would have been hope. But now…we’re running out of time. The planet’s very ability to support our life is dying, with some doing everything in their power to hurry that along, and we’re still repeating the same cycles of violence and hate and ultimately war like we always do, still believe this time we’re justified and will be the last to have to do this. The beautiful future we were promised…was it really nothing but a dream?
Monday, January 9, 2017
Preservation, Conservation; Antiques and Environmental Ethics
Preserving antiques isn’t just a personal preference for me but an
ethical action, tied so much to my environmentalism. So much of our
planet has been unsustainably used for resources, mountains dug up
completely for minerals and fuels, forests destroyed for their wood…
I have 1920s photos of the Great Smoky Mountains, mountaintops to the horizon and not a tree in sight. The forests regrew, but how much diversity was lost? How much never came back? The American Chestnut is gone to an introduced fungus, the hemlock is following, heart of pine no longer exists because trees can never reach the size they were before. The whole makeup of the ecosystem forever different because life reappeared in a different order than it originally populated an area. In other parts of world, you can find species so specialized they’re only found on a single mountain top…did we have and lose that here when we stripped mountains bare? How many species of plants and insects and amphibians and more did we destroy without ever even knowing they existed?
And it hurt us too. Hardwoods like walnut, used whole for load-bearing columns, replaced today in construction by cheap, soft, easily-warped pine that has to be glued together to get a wide enough piece because we’ve squandered what was available until now it’s no longer feasible to use. Craftsmanship and durability unappreciated when everything’s disposable, our ability to discern material quality, our history of developing different uses for different natural materials lost. How many potential future resources, plant based medicines, biologic-inspired materials, just…simple knowledge of the world, is gone because of our opposition to limiting our consumption, to rationing what we take so it lasts into the future, rather than exploiting it all at once?
When we paint finished woodwork and furniture rather than repair the old finish, when we rip out or “modernize” historic architecture and structures, when we leave old stone to erode away as if it’s worthless…to not respect the products we made from that destruction, to cover up the natural beauty that lead it to be used and exploited in the first place, to throw away and replace the irreplaceable with more destructively-gained and increasingly-inferior materials…painting over old mahogany as if it’s existence and use is no different from today’s laminated particle board and water-logged pine… it’s disrespectful to what was lost, it’s disrespectful to the lifeforms that died to make that piece, it’s disrespectful to the planet itself.
I have 1920s photos of the Great Smoky Mountains, mountaintops to the horizon and not a tree in sight. The forests regrew, but how much diversity was lost? How much never came back? The American Chestnut is gone to an introduced fungus, the hemlock is following, heart of pine no longer exists because trees can never reach the size they were before. The whole makeup of the ecosystem forever different because life reappeared in a different order than it originally populated an area. In other parts of world, you can find species so specialized they’re only found on a single mountain top…did we have and lose that here when we stripped mountains bare? How many species of plants and insects and amphibians and more did we destroy without ever even knowing they existed?
And it hurt us too. Hardwoods like walnut, used whole for load-bearing columns, replaced today in construction by cheap, soft, easily-warped pine that has to be glued together to get a wide enough piece because we’ve squandered what was available until now it’s no longer feasible to use. Craftsmanship and durability unappreciated when everything’s disposable, our ability to discern material quality, our history of developing different uses for different natural materials lost. How many potential future resources, plant based medicines, biologic-inspired materials, just…simple knowledge of the world, is gone because of our opposition to limiting our consumption, to rationing what we take so it lasts into the future, rather than exploiting it all at once?
When we paint finished woodwork and furniture rather than repair the old finish, when we rip out or “modernize” historic architecture and structures, when we leave old stone to erode away as if it’s worthless…to not respect the products we made from that destruction, to cover up the natural beauty that lead it to be used and exploited in the first place, to throw away and replace the irreplaceable with more destructively-gained and increasingly-inferior materials…painting over old mahogany as if it’s existence and use is no different from today’s laminated particle board and water-logged pine… it’s disrespectful to what was lost, it’s disrespectful to the lifeforms that died to make that piece, it’s disrespectful to the planet itself.
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Clinton and Sander’s values and ideas via their websites
As one of the only people apparently still undecided between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,
I finally sat down and took a look at their campaign websites to do a
comparison. I realize of course that they don’t write their own content
for the websites, so details of their views may not entirely be
reflected accurately, but as president, they will have advisers and
cabinets and more, so I think there is value in seeing the kinds of
staff they surround themselves with.
Overall, they present themselves in fairly similar ways, with basically the same issues listed and often discussing and proposing the same or similar things with almost the same language. Their staff clearly are adding and modifying content in response to what the other is saying, sometimes even implicitly referencing what the other said. It does seem to go both ways.
I didn’t read every section/issue, but I read the same ~1/2 of each candidate’s platform, covering issues like racism, women’s rights, income inequality/economy, foreign policy, LGBT rights, the environment, and a few others. Each topic they discuss starts with showing off their awareness of the background of an issue and then listing what they want to do as president, often followed by or including their history on the issue, particularly for Clinton. I didn’t analyze in fine detail their ideas, but here are the overall broader differences I saw (focusing on their proposals/”As president I will...”).
1) Sander seems to spent part of each issue relating it back to the economy. These things are all interconnected, which is good of him to acknowledge, but interconnectedness isn’t the same as root cause or primary cause. I’m not sure if this is what he’s implying by focusing so much on this. Clinton indicates awareness of some interconnectedness as well by also repeating her points in multiple, relevant sections.
2) Clinton talks about transgender rights both in the LGBT section and in the racism section (attempt at intersectional thinking, or just an accident?), and includes both issues of police violence and having accurate gender on official documents. Sanders only specifically mentions transgender people briefly (though does mention gender identity together with sexuality) and only focuses on police violence. Neither mention access to healthcare.
3) Sanders only talks about women’s issues in regards in reproductive topics (abortion and childcare) and income inequality, with a brief mention of domestic violence (with the implication that it’s mostly in the past?). Clinton addresses these as well as sexual violence and international women’s issues.
4) Clinton says she will “appoint Supreme Court justices who value the right to vote over the right of billionaires to buy elections“ while Sanders says he will “Only appoint Supreme Court justices who will make it a priority to overturn Citizens United.“ While these sound like near-identical statements, Sander’s makes me question if he understands how the Supreme Court works (or of he thinks his supporters don’t). The justices can’t just decide to overturn a past decision, and if a case related to it come before them, they have to decide based on the merits of that particular case - their values matter in how they interpret it, but I think legally they can’t actually say/decide ahead of time how they will rule on any particular topic because the specifics of what comes up can vary and they have to at least be willing to hear out the argument. Clinton proposes a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizen’s United, while Sanders proposes nothing else.
4) The biggest difference, the one place where I saw broad differences between them: While Clinton doesn’t seem to be pushing for the US to be fighting more wars, she does indicate a very dominant stance to international relationships, maintaining the image of the US as the leader of the world. Sanders is very diplomacy-focused and seems less “us vs them”.
Again, I didn’t compare all of their positions, and I’m not here analyzing in depth how their plans would work, but beyond what I listed here, they seem mostly in agreement on the issues I looked at. I think a big factor is their history. In my understanding, Sanders has been very consistent in his positions and has refused to “play the game” of corporate support, but perhaps this can read as an all-or-nothing ideological-purity stance, while Clinton has a history of both progressively...progressing...on issues while taking things in steps or through compromise, changing the “game” from the inside, which can seem/be too small or unhelpful or outright harmful.
Overall, they present themselves in fairly similar ways, with basically the same issues listed and often discussing and proposing the same or similar things with almost the same language. Their staff clearly are adding and modifying content in response to what the other is saying, sometimes even implicitly referencing what the other said. It does seem to go both ways.
I didn’t read every section/issue, but I read the same ~1/2 of each candidate’s platform, covering issues like racism, women’s rights, income inequality/economy, foreign policy, LGBT rights, the environment, and a few others. Each topic they discuss starts with showing off their awareness of the background of an issue and then listing what they want to do as president, often followed by or including their history on the issue, particularly for Clinton. I didn’t analyze in fine detail their ideas, but here are the overall broader differences I saw (focusing on their proposals/”As president I will...”).
1) Sander seems to spent part of each issue relating it back to the economy. These things are all interconnected, which is good of him to acknowledge, but interconnectedness isn’t the same as root cause or primary cause. I’m not sure if this is what he’s implying by focusing so much on this. Clinton indicates awareness of some interconnectedness as well by also repeating her points in multiple, relevant sections.
2) Clinton talks about transgender rights both in the LGBT section and in the racism section (attempt at intersectional thinking, or just an accident?), and includes both issues of police violence and having accurate gender on official documents. Sanders only specifically mentions transgender people briefly (though does mention gender identity together with sexuality) and only focuses on police violence. Neither mention access to healthcare.
3) Sanders only talks about women’s issues in regards in reproductive topics (abortion and childcare) and income inequality, with a brief mention of domestic violence (with the implication that it’s mostly in the past?). Clinton addresses these as well as sexual violence and international women’s issues.
4) Clinton says she will “appoint Supreme Court justices who value the right to vote over the right of billionaires to buy elections“ while Sanders says he will “Only appoint Supreme Court justices who will make it a priority to overturn Citizens United.“ While these sound like near-identical statements, Sander’s makes me question if he understands how the Supreme Court works (or of he thinks his supporters don’t). The justices can’t just decide to overturn a past decision, and if a case related to it come before them, they have to decide based on the merits of that particular case - their values matter in how they interpret it, but I think legally they can’t actually say/decide ahead of time how they will rule on any particular topic because the specifics of what comes up can vary and they have to at least be willing to hear out the argument. Clinton proposes a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizen’s United, while Sanders proposes nothing else.
4) The biggest difference, the one place where I saw broad differences between them: While Clinton doesn’t seem to be pushing for the US to be fighting more wars, she does indicate a very dominant stance to international relationships, maintaining the image of the US as the leader of the world. Sanders is very diplomacy-focused and seems less “us vs them”.
Again, I didn’t compare all of their positions, and I’m not here analyzing in depth how their plans would work, but beyond what I listed here, they seem mostly in agreement on the issues I looked at. I think a big factor is their history. In my understanding, Sanders has been very consistent in his positions and has refused to “play the game” of corporate support, but perhaps this can read as an all-or-nothing ideological-purity stance, while Clinton has a history of both progressively...progressing...on issues while taking things in steps or through compromise, changing the “game” from the inside, which can seem/be too small or unhelpful or outright harmful.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Stages of feminism
Disclaimer: This isn’t a historical overview, but a process
that I think people go through when thinking about gender relations and how we,
in the present (in the US at least), interpret and relate to past gender
relations. And by “men” and “women” here, I don’t mean all men or women or that
feminism is the same as the voice of all women and no men, or that all men and
women are straight, or that all people are only men or women. Here, I use “men”
and “women” as simplified way to refer to the common, dominant, social
narrative and “voice” of groups of men or women in a culture or sub-culture, which
can in practice include both men and women who take those particular voices and
narratives as their own.
Somewhere in our history, men created the idea that they are
horrible rape-monsters. They didn’t see it in that negative light of course - no
one believes they’re the bad guy - but they did create it. “Men can’t help
themselves,” “men have needs that women have to meet,” “men can’t stop
themselves once they start,” “men deserve wives who meet all their needs and
will cheat if they don’t get that.” People still teach their children these
things today. These kinds of claims may seem to put men in a bad light, as they
are little more than excuses for why men don’t respect women’s boundaries, but
this isn’t about reputation. Not respecting women’s boundaries, believing and
accepting these claims, in practice gives men social power over women, it
allows those who believe it to tolerate all kinds of boundary violations and
make all kinds of unfair demands and expectations of women. This isn’t just
about sex. Even men who say “no, that’s too far, I wouldn’t treat women like
that” are still given more leeway in this system to expect too much, to treat
women unfairly or disrespectfully when the bar for what’s “too far” to tolerate
is that high. People in a system that skewed are going to have a hard time
seeing what fairness and respect really looks like, even if they mean well.
So men created the idea that they are horrible rape-monsters,
and that benefited them, but eventually people noticed that’s what was created.
Women realize this set-up hurts them, realize that they’ve accepted men’s
terribleness without defining it as terrible only because they’ve been
conditioned by society to not challenge it, to see it as normal. And so they
conclude “men may be terrible - even the well-intentioned “nice” ones expect unfair
things of me - but we still need to interact, so here are my boundaries, here
is what you need to do for me to make up the difference.” And thus we get
attitudes like those expressed in songs like “Dear Future Husband,” where Megan
Trainor does stereotypical 1950s housewife things that no one really enjoys
being expected to do, like cleaning the floor, while laying out how she defines
being “treated right” in return for what’s assumed/implied she’ll be doing to treat
this future husband “right.” Men who recognize some level of fairness with
women often accept this setup in our modern-day impression of “chivalry,” where
men believe, perhaps subconsciously, that they “owe” women for what they get
from them. Thus they put women on pedestals, claim to protect women, buy women
nice things and perform symbolic “polite” gestures like holding doors in
exchange for relationships and sex, and get angry or frustrated when things
like buying dinner doesn’t lead to sex. They paid their portion of this social arraignment,
so they feel cheated and used when the woman doesn’t “pay” their portion.
Others see it less in terms of fairness and more in terms of a game that they
must win to be a successful representative of their gender.
This should be an obviously unhealthy setup for relationship
functioning, and even at its best, women are still expected to sacrifice certain
personal boundaries and life choices if they want respect (however it’s
defined). And it is obvious, if that
particular song’s hatred coming from both feminists and anti-feminists is any
indication. Yet this is where many people stop (some having also started here,
never moving on). It’s also at this point where the narrative starts to split
along gender lines.
Women start to recognize that not only have they been
accepting men’s terribleness because they’ve been conditioned to see it as
acceptable, but men are conditioned to be
terrible. Men’s terribleness is not an inherent state; with everyone just
accepting it as “the way it is” and denying the claims in stage one are even
truly terrible, men have been afforded the social freedom for their worst
tendencies flourish, even if they didn’t mean to indulge that. It’s a freedom
women haven’t been allowed, although can come out in stage two as they try to
define their own boundaries and needs for the first time. Many men also agree
that “no, we are not terrible, just taught terrible ideas about what to expect
as and how to be a man.” This is the way to healthy relationships and more
equal perceptions of each other, and this,
not stage two, is the realm of modern-day feminism. We as individuals may not
be at fault for the system’s existence,
but we are responsible for seeing it for what it is and not perpetuating it.
Meanwhile, many other male voices also claim “we are not
terrible rape monsters,” but not because they refute stage one. Rather, they
just don’t see stage one or it’s bleed-over into men’s roles and behaviors in
stage two, don’t see it as still having an impact despite those claims and attitudes
still existing, or worse, are still in stage one themselves, believing those
claims are not terrible at all. They only see stage two, where women attempt to
assert their boundaries and needs. Thus, without seeing or understanding what
it’s a reaction to, women’s demands for “more” seem unreasonable, and women are
at fault for inventing the idea that men are terrible, rather than responsible
for recognizing the terribleness that was already there, hidden. These male
voices see the moment of revelation of terribleness as the origin of that
terribleness itself. They see feminism as tipping the balance attempted in
stage two.
And so without seeing the progression of these stages, they
can’t see or understand how social norms make unfairness invisible to those who
benefit; they can’t see their own social power, instead assuming they don’t
have any because they no longer have all of it. By thinking about these issues
starting only at stage two, they only see the attempts to balance things,
particularly stage two’s poor-but-still-better-than-nothing attempts, as “taking
away” from men. And since they individually don’t have all the freedom to
behave however they want, since they see everyone as already sacrificing
something to interact with the other gender, then it seems to them that things
between genders as a whole must be equal. They don’t recognize that there are gradations
on the scale of sacrifice, social power, and perceptions of what “respect”
means.
So here we are now, with people saying, either implicitly
and uncritically or explicitly and knowingly, that stage one was this mythical
time of equality, or that there was something in between stage one and two, maybe
the early stages of two, where that equality happened, and that everything
since then has been “women demanding too much, emasculating and denying men’s
true selves.” That stage one’s attitudes were somehow completely erased when
people decided that no, men can’t actually have absolutely everything, and so now there’s no more to actually think
about here. But there is more to think about, more to understand. And I hope
this explains the psychological-history of the motivations of how many feminists
got to where we are.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Sometimes the world seems hopeless
I get depressed about the state of the world. Not just the
balance of terrible to good things in the world, which may or may not be
getting better, but it’s source…us, our instincts, behaviors,
brain-functionings that lead to that good or bad. I’m afraid we can’t really
change. Our tribalism, fear and distrust of others, desire for cultural power,
our general unawareness of our limited ability to perceive or even be aware of
the larger experiences of the many, many cultures and people and how that
unknowingly leads to seeing our own world and our experience as default or more
valuable, our initial instinctive response of anger when our views are
challenged, our hurt and fear from even needed change that holds us back, our
inability to see and respond to long-term consequences as real risks, our
misunderstandings of others’ minds and even our own personal psychology.
These things are all instinctual, but overcoming them,
managing them, living with them, controlling them, requires a level of
self-awareness that itself may have inborn limits within each individual. We
can expand our understandings through education, expand our experiences
interacting with others, we can learn to be more self aware and reflective of
our own feelings and actions…but enough to matter? Enough of a scale to shift the
population far enough from all the harm we do, have done for our entire existence?
What if some us are just simply better or worse at doing this self-reflective
growth than others? What if the average across the population is not really all
that good at any of this, even if they want to be?
I believe most people mean well. I believe most people want
to do “good” and thus change is not entirely impossible. I don’t discount too
many people as entirely unreachable and uncaring. But changing the world rest
on people’s ability for personal growth and awareness of others. We can’t
impose that change on others, can’t make them aware if they don’t know how to look,
and so we have to rely on them to figure it out, trust that they can do it. We
can help people along, if they’re willing, put our representation in front of
them, protest in ways they can’t just ignore, try to change laws and policies…but
people, ourselves included, still have to be aware of our own limited perspective
to understand what we’re seeing. We have to be aware of our own blind spots, our
own tribalism, our own desire for power, our own limited perspective, our own
instinctive and unanalyzed responses. Or else we’ll just keep creating new
oppressions, new harmful social norms, new exclusionary cultures blind to how we’re
marginalizing new “others”.
And I no longer think most people are capable of that level
of self awareness and self critique.
Activists for one social issue, completely clueless that
they are behaving towards another group or issue exactly as they criticize
their own ideological opponents for, people pushing for social change but then demanding
the same level of unquestioning ideological purity and rigidity as the thing
they’re fighting against, dismissing all criticism as oppression or bias as if
there is only ever one correct interpretation or strategy with no room for
discussion, the expectation that people can and should accept an opinion
without acknowledging the intellectual and personal emotional struggle it takes
to really understand and live that view, that simply being told is the same as
thinking about it, that shame and emotional coercion are acceptable ways to
change people’s minds and not simply a form of power-based/top-down social
control (or worse yet, that this type of power-based social control is acceptable
as long as the “right” side wields it), the implication that caring about
people’s feelings is a zero-sum-game where caring about the “unapproved” group’s
feelings means you must not care about the “approved” group’s or just don’t
even understand the issues in question.
These are the
interpersonal behaviors that lead to so much harm in the world, so much uneven
balances of power, so much oppression, marginalization, and just general
unintentional ignorance-based hurt. And I realize now everyone does these
things: right side, wrong side, other’s sides…my side. My side may have better ideas, may even have a better
understanding of the root of so many social problems, may be a little better at
listening, ended up living around a higher diversity of views that they could
incorporate into their own understanding…but we can’t experience everything and
we can’t simply rely on experiences to passively inform us of everything we
need to know to understand and accept others; we still need to analyze
ourselves, and deep down, we’re still a collection of people spanning the same terrible
range of self awareness, following the same basic instincts as everyone else.
And that’s what I find depressing about the state of the world.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
I don't really care to debate theology, but I thought this was an interesting question when I realized the answer actually depends on whether or not you believe either religion, and it's opposite who I usually hear each answer from.
Assuming we agree that the two religions share a common origin, then if you don't believe in the Christian or Muslim god (and let's include Judaism too), then you can look at the history and development of the stories and, like with evolution and speciation, determine if/where the descriptions of God diverged enough to consider them unique, separate characters.
However, if you believe in one of the religions in question, then it seems that if you recognize the common origin and shared stories (and don't believe the potentially polytheistic origins of early Judaism), then the most reasonable conclusion is that all those other religions believe in the same god as you, but misunderstand/interpret him differently.
So, short answer, if you believe in this god, then yes, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all worship the same god, but if you don't believe in this god, then potentially no, the stories may have diverged enough to consider them different figures.
Assuming we agree that the two religions share a common origin, then if you don't believe in the Christian or Muslim god (and let's include Judaism too), then you can look at the history and development of the stories and, like with evolution and speciation, determine if/where the descriptions of God diverged enough to consider them unique, separate characters.
However, if you believe in one of the religions in question, then it seems that if you recognize the common origin and shared stories (and don't believe the potentially polytheistic origins of early Judaism), then the most reasonable conclusion is that all those other religions believe in the same god as you, but misunderstand/interpret him differently.
So, short answer, if you believe in this god, then yes, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all worship the same god, but if you don't believe in this god, then potentially no, the stories may have diverged enough to consider them different figures.
Friday, November 13, 2015
Racist things other white people say to me
(Because, you see, being white makes you part of the secret non-PC club, whether you want to be or not)
I’m white. That means other white people feel comfortable telling me their racist thoughts, assuming same race = same opinions. Here’s the ones that stand out.
Man my parents’ age: I grew up during segregation but I had
black friends then, and they would have told me if they thought segregation was
a problem.
No. No they would not have. I can’t believe I even have to
say this.
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Doctor, knowing I’m from NY: I went to NYC and had a
great time, but the cabs scared me. Cab drivers whispering who knows what in
other languages, you know? Car service is more expensive, but clearly worth it.
No. Taking cabs in NYC is normal. People have accents. Get
over it. If they’re whispering, (and they’re probably not because who are they talking to while driving?)
it’s just to keep their voice down so it doesn’t bother you, their customer. No
one’s secretly plotting against you in other languages while taking you to your
destination.
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Hair stylist: (out of nowhere) Black people’s hair is
so much harder to cut, it’s just so different.
Uh, what? Why are you telling me this? You’ve clearly learned
that cutting/styling my curly white-person hair is different from cutting/styling
wavy hair is different from cutting/styling straight hair (something plenty of
other stylists shockingly don’t seem to comprehend, so you’re already ahead),
so there’s no reason learning to cut and style the rest of the range of human
hair textures should be such an alien concept. I mean, you only deal with hair
for a living; silly me for expecting you to know
how to deal with hair!
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Kids from middle school in NC: I remember the first time I
saw a black person. It happened like this…
Twice! Twice I’ve heard this story! And they were expecting
me to share my own account here? What the heck NC?! Is this a common
narrative?! How in the world are there kids there who never saw black people
until they were old enough to remember it and have is be jarring enough to
leave an impression!? Did their parents never let them watch TV? Go outside?! These were kids from towns
and cities, not isolated areas! Did their parents never take them to the store?
How is this possible?!
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Bonus round! Religious bigotry:
At work, woman giving us her contact information for our
educational programming: My children are in American Heritage Girls. They’re
like Girl Scouts, but GS has “God” as optional in the Girl Scout Promise, so it’s
not welcoming to Christians.
Uuuggghhhhh.
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Privilege
When someone says you have a privilege, they’re not saying
everything always goes your way or your life is easy or you don’t face
oppression in other ways. They’re saying if everything about your life
experiences and situation was the same, but you changed one thing - if you weren’t
cis-male, or you weren’t straight, or you weren’t white – your life on average would
be harder than it already is.
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