Saturday, June 4, 2016

Educate me!

Image Description: 3 Contestants in a game show
So let's play a game of Which is More Likely....

It's time for another round of your favorite game. So for 3500 points and the chance to go to the final round,

Which is more likely....?

That a guy who spent six hours on ten different forums researching the best Player vs. Player healing talent build for their priest to really kick ass in battlegrounds and the 4X4 arena (because if they don't they will be called a n3wb by pissed off gamers) and who was willing to spend three hours on Wikipedia to win a political argument about the difference between AR-15s and Barret M468 carbines (because if they don't they will be told to GTFO by gun connoisseurs) has suddenly completely, utterly, and inexplicably lost the ability to Google when it comes to the basics of "misogyny," "feminism," "sexism," statistics about sexual assault or domestic abuse, how a trope like ‪notallmen‬ has become cliché derailment of genuine dialogue.

OR...

The fact that they are insinuating themselves into a discourse without a moment's research, redefining terms or objecting to the ones that exist, and insisting they know more about it than those who live it, might actually be evidence of their level of respect for the topic.

And that taking center stage and stopping the entire discussion that they might be educated on the issue (gently--ever so gently) might actually be a microcosm of the larger issue.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Social Justice Struggles

The predominant struggle of social justice is not between people who want equality and people who don't.

It's between people who think we basically already HAVE equality, and those with the temerity to point out the invisible mechanisms by which this isn't so.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

A Very Dangerous Intersection

Image description: A sign that says: "Dangerous Intersection Ahead"
Image description: A sign that says: "Dangerous Intersection Ahead"
There's a really dangerous intersection near my house. I have to be careful when I'm walking with The Contrarian. It's a one way turn from a freeway offramp, so drivers often only look left to see if there's oncoming traffic before turning. If I'm coming from my house (coming from their left), they usually see me without any problem, but if I'm walking towards home (from the right) they often don't bother looking–they glance to see if there's oncoming traffic and then dart out, never thinking that there could be a pedestrian coming from the other direction. Every couple of days, drivers whip out without even seeing me and if I'd kept walking, I would have been hit. I try to make sure I have eye contact before proceeding. There was a near miss yesterday when a driver–

DRA: Not all drivers are like that. I'm not like that.

Where did you come from? I'm in the middle of writing a post. Excuse me.

Anyway, I have to keep vigilant for these drivers because they don't look both ways–

DRA: Not all drivers do that. You can't just make sweeping generalizations.

Okay, I don't know what you're doing here, but you're kind of derailing my point. Enough drivers are like that to make being a pedestrian very dangerous–especially when they don't think to look out for our safety.

DRA: What you are saying impugns all drivers, and we need to stop painting them all with the same brush. Not all drivers are so careless.

Yes, but all pedestrians are in danger and have to be careful of drivers who aren't.

DRA: But what you said was about all drivers. ALL drivers are not dangerous drivers, this is about drivers. Because you are generalizing in a way that hurts me.

Actually this is about me almost getting hit.

DRA: By ONE driver. ONE bad apple.

Yes, but this happens all the time. I am constantly being endangered by drivers. I don't know which drivers are going to be the safe ones and which ones are going to not pay attention at a one way turn.

DRA: Not me though. This is about all the good drivers out there you're hurting and offending with your generalizations. I take umbrage with you painting "drivers" with the same brush.

This is not about drivers. This is about how dangerous it is to be a pedestrian. I'm sure there are great drivers, but enough of them are dangerous that my safety becomes an issue almost daily.

DRA: You know drivers probably wouldn't almost hit you if you wore something more visible. Maybe you should carry a whistle to let them know you're there. Maybe if you walked in pairs you would be easier to spot.

Or maybe they should look both ways because that's like the first thing you learn in driving school.

DRA: I always look both ways. The idea of someone not looking both ways makes me violent. I want to hurt those drivers.

Great. Then this is not about you.

DRA: It is about me because I'm a driver. You said "DRIVERS" don't look both ways. Not all of us are like that. Most of us look both ways. Whoever allegedly almost hit you is probably a good driver too. They spend their whole lives making safe turns and now you want to assassinate their character because they didn't think one turn all the way through?

I'm not assassinating anything. They almost hit a baby. And it happens EVERY FUCKING DAY.

DRA: So you say. I'm sorry, but I can't really even listen to this without getting the other side of the story. Well meaning drivers who (maybe) make an innocent mistake deserve my rational impartiality.

The other side of the story? What other side of the story?

DRA: How do I know you didn't make one of those "go ahead" gestures, and then regretted it after the fact.

What? Are you trying to be horrid? I'm telling you I was almost hit and that it happens a lot.

DRA: But you're fine. Be thankful it wasn't worse. If you really don't want to get hit, you'll dodge the cars. When a legitimate hit is coming towards you, the reflexes have ways of shutting that down.

That's completely absurd. Pedestrians get killed all the time.

DRA: You're not doing your cause any favors by getting so upset. Look, I'm not saying you just want attention, but there are a lot of people who fraudulently report accidents–maybe for the insurance money, or maybe just for sympathy. How do I even know you're not one of those?

Why would I do that?

DRA: How should I know? You pedestrians have your reasons. Did even you report this "terrible crime"?

The cops wouldn't care.

DRA: Convenient. Did anybody else see it happen?

Lots of people saw it. Nobody did anything. I don't know who any of them are, and they didn't stop to do anything about it.

DRA: Wow. The convenient hits just keep on coming. Pedestrians have been making up stories about dangerous drivers for a long time.

Pedestrians get killed by drivers all the time! How is that making anything up?

DRA: Sure, but those pedestrians... I mean they're near the road, wearing clothes that don't scream "get away." That's just the world we live in, and pedestrians need to be responsible for how cars might behave. You can't wear whatever you want and cross dangerous intersections and not expect that someone is going to drive without checking both ways. Drivers will be drivers. Have you even bothered to think about how traumatized the driver might be that they almost hit someone? 

Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me?

DRA: Trying to change the fundamental nature of drivers is too hard. They are what they are. You should focus on how to make sure pedestrians DON'T GET HIT. You can't just go around generalizing that all drivers are bad because you didn't bother to undergo a few basic safety precautions.

Yes, I fucking can! Get out of my post. Go away!

DRA: I don't see why you can't be reasonable about this. Pedestrians are always so hysterical about everything. What I'm going for here is EQUAL access to the road. I already can't drive my monster truck on their sidewalks without consequence, but they sure can come into my streets any time they want. You Pedestrian Safety Warriors and your anti-driver rhetoric are just trying to destroy good and decent drivers with your Pedestradry. I'm tired of your anti-driver, anti-car bigotry.

What????

DRA: And why aren't we talking about how often people on foot hurt cars. I mean they can key them or break their windows. Do you think it's another driver who steals a stereo systems. No. It's a person on foot. The struggle is real.

That has nothing to do with–

DRA: Wait you said this happens a lot? Why do you keep putting yourself in that position day after day.

What? You mean walking down the street? Because I'm not going to sit at home.

DRA: Honestly, you probably wanted to get hit. I mean, look at how much attention you're getting. I bet this blog isn't doing to badly based on the traffic you're getting from telling your.....story.

You need to leave.

DRA: Sounds like you could use a good collision honestly. I hope you get run over!

Get the fuck out of my post.

DRA: Look I'm sorry that you're misunderstanding me. See how emotional pedestrians are? And they're anti-driver bigots. 

LEAVE!!!!

#notalldrivers 

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Educate Your Damned Self!

Image description: A disabled peasant petitioning King David
in supplication.
If you expect marginalized people to "educate you" on the issue, you are the problem.

White people expecting to be educated about racism, heterosexual people expecting to be educated about homophobia and heteronormativity. Men expecting to be educated about sexism. Able bodied and neurotypical expecting to be educated about ableism. You evade your own responsibility for the impact of your words and actions. You maintain an oppressive power dynamic that shifts the burden onto a marginalized group as to why they deserve to be treated like human beings. You are a drain on time, energy, and good will that forces a group to feel the pangs of your oppression and then (nicely) explain to you why it hurts. By being the arbiter of the success or failure of their education to sway you, you still maintain the power dynamic of judge. Finally, you send a clear message that the harm you are causing isn't even worth spending ten minutes on Google to educate your damned self--you expect someone else to spoon feed you even that effort to prove themselves worthy of your arbitration.

Basically you are sitting on your vaunted throne demanding that a villager explain (with decorum an ambassador couldn't muster) why burning down their village to make room for your new water park makes you a "tyrant," while they are incensed that you have so little empathy that they should have to.

Go find an ally and ask them to educate you. Doing your precious gentle 101 is one of the things we're good for.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Friday Fragments

Dear MRA dillhole,
By the "not all men" logic, Russian Roulette is a perfectly safe game to play. Sure one of the chambers has a bullet in it.....   but not all chambers.
By the "not all men" logic, Russian Roulette is a perfectly safe game to play.
Sure one of the chambers has a bullet in it.....   but not all chambers.

Feminism didn't START treating men like rapists. You're thinking of patriarchy....where men rape women, and then blame them for being out in the open without escorts.

Look at every traditional culture you can think of. Just about every single one. Women are warned not to be alone with men–in many cases even their own uncles and certainly cousins. (Men are told this too often through religious morality, but it's the women who require a male family member around to protect them*.) These cultures treat (all) men like potential rapists.

That's NOT because these cultures are feminist.

*Though I'm now imagining a culture where the guys are obligated to take an escort from their family any time they leave the house to prevent them from raping women. That would be pretty cool.

Tweet from Mike F: It's stupid when girls say they can't find a guy, yet they ignore me. It's like saying you're hungry when there's a hot dog on the ground  outside.
Tweet from Mike F:
It's stupid when girls say they can't find a guy, yet they ignore me.
It's like saying you're hungry when there's a hot dog on the ground
outside.

Gamers: Gamers are not pathetic. Games are a legit art form! We *demand* to be treated as art!!

Culture: Okay. Let's start with Critical Race Theory and Feminist theory. Post colonial theory and Orientalism would be useful too. And you're industry is about 92% white males so your art itself has a dreadful problem with inclusion and representation. I like what's happening over here in your indy games. This stuff seems like it's got much more artistic integrity than Call of Duty MCXVII.


Gamergate: Shut up! Shut up or we'll kill you!

"If you think women are crazy you've never had a dude go from hitting on you to literally  threatening to kill you in the time it takes you to say "no thanks."  -Kendra Wells
"If you think women are crazy you've never had a dude go from hitting on you to literally
threatening to kill you in the time it takes you to say "no thanks."  -Kendra Wells

Republicans:

At this point if you aren't speaking out openly against the front runner of your party, I'm done with my nuanced, different-opinions-about-what's-best stuff. It's not that I don't think any of you have some sort of considered view about economics or the state's roll in seizing property or maybe even some agree-to-disagree point about trickle down economics or the scope of the social safety net and how to fund it, but it doesn't matter if you're going to subvert it for the party line on THIS guy.
Not THIS guy.

You're about to nominate a demagogue for the office of President of the United States who is literally inciting his followers to violence–largely WHITE SUPREMACIST violence. He is a light from which the cockroaches of voiced racist thoughts don't scatter but rather gather toward. He's endorsed by the KKK. People are coming right out and saying things they didn't talk about at parties a few years ago because of Trump. Kids are being little racist bullies because of Trump. This is a presidential nominee practically goading his people into rioting against his opponents.

Where any other nominee, right or left, would be telling his people about the virtue of the democratic process and free speech, telling people to let them have their say and to save their energy for campaigning and polls, and absolutely condemning any sort of violent action that may have happened in their name by overzealous supporters, Trump is offering to pay people's legal fees and talking increasingly of the "consequences" of protesting in his bygone chimerical era when America was "great." Consequences like being wheeled off in stretchers–violence which he talks about with a nostalgic yearning.

The only thing he's really promised is to cut planned parenthood, the EPA and to build a wall, which he will go to war with Mexico to make them pay for. Everything else is jazz hands playing and preying on white people's anxieties that things would be so much better ("great again") if we stopped "being so PC" and rolled our social progress back fifty or sixty years. (Because of course it's political correctness that have fucked your economy up, not Reganomics.) If he wins this election he represents more Republicans than deniers would admit. But the real concern is that his rhetoric has become increasingly violent.

Trump has now, recently (this week), changed his rhetoric subtly but noticeably. Where before his sneering words about "political correctness" were limited only to speech and being able to say whatever racist, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, sexist, bullshit popped in his head, recently it has very deliberately been used to ALSO include people who are afraid to be violent for political ends.
Let me say that again: The frontrunner of the Republican party for the office of President of the United states is calling NOT violently suppressing opposition speech being "Politically Correct."

Are you now seeing what's at stake here?

This is the kind of historical event that you don't get a pass on unless you were outspoken from the very beginning. This is the cusp of one of those "dark chapters" you always think you wouldn't be a part of when you read about them in your history book. ("Not me," you think. "I'd have been with the resistance.") This is your chance to prove that your party is something other than what it gets so often accused of being. But mostly, this is your chance to prove that something matters to you more that staying silent so that a person with an (R) after their name can get into the White House.

If you're not on the front fucking lines telling this guy to step down and promising to vote for anybody else in the general should he take the nomination (even a Democrat), you deserve EVERY GODDAMNED white supremacist, sexist, heterosexist, transantagonist (who will do anything to silence their detractors) label that gets thrown at you. You are NEVER going to reign this guy in once he's in office. Get over that fantasy.

If you let this guy in, your party will deserve its every toxic stereotype. That you're racists. That you're sexists. That you're xenophobes. That you hate anyone who isn't Christian. All of them. No matter how much you personally feel insulted to be lumped in with them.

Every. Single. One.

Image Description: Picture of Donald Trump White Privilege is needing this guy to make you realize how racist America is When you could have just listened to people of color years ago.
Image Description: Picture of Donald Trump
White Privilege is needing this guy to make you realize how racist America is
When you could have just listened to people of color years ago.

Yeah....I think they mean "supremacy" instead of privilege. 



Sunday, March 13, 2016

Let's Make Firefly about Star Wars

Firefly Promotional Poster With All the Characters
Image description: Firefly Promotional Poster With All the Characters 
An extended metaphor for geeks:

Imagine that every time you try to have a conversation about Firefly, I show up and talk about Star Wars. You bring up the laser in the brothel episode, I talk about the new lightsaber cross-guard. Talk about Serenity the movie, I bring up the timeline of Episode 8. Fox canceling mid-season? That's not going to happen with Star Wars because of the Disney merger (which you think is great because....). The way canon psychics didn't get developed in the show. I talk about Force powers and midichlorians.

When you finally point out that you're actually talking about Firefly right now--not Star Wars, and that I am derailing a conversation in the middle of a Browncoat's Ball, I claim that you obviously don't LIKE Star Wars, and have no real interest in the broader arc of modern science fiction as a whole–even though both those statements are patently false (and in fact, you can probably better contextualize how Star Wars fits into the Science Fiction milieu than I can). You're a huge fan of science fiction, love Star Wars, and discuss at length how Star Wars's mainstream acceptance has brought more acceptability to a genre that was considered fringe.

But it is patently obvious that what I really care about is not the "science fiction milieu" but really just Star Wars.

But Star Wars is better, I claim! Everyone has heard of Star Wars. Star Wars wasn't cancelled in the middle of its only season. No one even knows all the characters or actors in Firefly. I can't even be bothered to learn what Firefly has to do with that vampire show from the 90s. Firefly fans are just hanging on to something that's over and alienating younger fans.

No matter where you go or who you're talking to, there I (or someone like me) am there to derail your Firefly talk into Star Wars. It's not enough to say "You're right, Star Wars is awesome" and go back to talking about Firefly. I demand that the subject be changed. I demand that you stop talking about Firefly. I derail every single conversation. And I fricken show up EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

This is called derailing. It's actually changing the subject and it has more to do with stopping conversations that deign to be about something other than "Star Wars" than it even is about "Star Wars" itself. Whether it's bringing up "all lives matter" in response to BlackLivesMatter or "men suffer too" when discussing women's issues. At worst it's a calculated attempt to keep the focus on the subject of social supremacy. But even at best it's just a clueless and rude invasion into a conversation that's about something else entirely.

[This was originally a post over at Writing About Writing, but it seems a better fit here.]

Friday, March 11, 2016

Allies are like Sports Fans

Image description: Full soccer stadium with a pyrotechnics show.
Image description: Full soccer stadium with a pyrotechnics show.
Being a social justice ally is a lot like being a fan of a sports team. You’re there to support them, spend money on their merchandise, identify yourself as a supporter so that your team feels the love and the world knows you're there, cheer for them, talk them up to others, gush about why your team rocks to anyone interested in sports (and maybe a few who aren't), and jump in if someone's talking trash about your team (or your sport). You bring a megaphone and a big foam #1 glove, and you use the megaphone not to bloviate about your armchair theories on what the team could be doing better but to lead the cheers you have been taught and that the team likes to hear. And maybe if you're good at what you do, you lead the bleachers in a cheer or two and get a few seconds on the JumboTron.

But you're not part of the team. You don’t get your name on the roster. If your team wins or loses, you're going to your normal job on Monday. If you're wearing a jersey, it's got someone else's name on it. You don't hang out in the locker room. You don't sit down with the MVP and tell them what you think they could be doing better. You aren't invited to the strategy sessions.

Also, if someone from the team is doing a press conference, you don't run up and steal the microphone to talk about how the team's playing has made you feel. You fucking sit down and let them talk.