our roads may be golden or broken or lost

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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(*digs post out of drafts, finishes writing it*)

Can anyone think of a social-justice anthem (generalised anti-bigotry preferred; failing that, feminism-focused) with a line involving the word “home”? Where “home” refers to, like, the post-bigotry utopia the songwriter wants to bring about*, or the community of universal sisterhood, or something like that, rather than the dystopic kyriarchy of one’s presumed birth.

I want a category tag for talking about social justice as a culture (rather than an ideology), and I’d like it to match my other homeland tags.

*However, the specific “home” line should not refer to it as not currently existing.

Tags:

#oh look an original post #I tried Seanan McGuire’s ”Wicked Girls” and every SJ-y Phil Collins song in my collection #none of them had anything suitable #(though if I can’t find a home line I might consider ”our roads may be golden or broken or lost”) #(although you’d need to imagine ”or broken or lost” said in a much more bitter tone) #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #(spoilers)

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truffledmadness:

Be wary of anyone who talks about “the real world.” Your world is real. Your experiences are real. And the phrase “the real world” tends to be bandied about by people who want you to imagine that everyone is as cruel as them, you’re just too sheltered to know it.

No matter how many adult responsibilities you have, it is not impossible to find compassionate people.

Tags:

#yes this #well sort of #I mostly get into trouble not with ”everyone is cruel” #but ”everyone is cruel *in these particular ways*” #and claiming that because my culture generally expresses its cruelty in different ways it is not real #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ilzolende:

I say this both from an SJ and an anti-SJ standpoint: There are actually lots of things more annoying than being told that traits and experiences you have don’t exist, but it’s still pretty annoying.

original post

Tags:

#yes this #(”five bucks says she denies my existence in the first five minutes!”)

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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tinierpurplefishes:

justice-turtle:

So @brin-bellway mentioned that being born into liberal feminism is apparently “vanishingly rare, to the point that I’ve seen people who will actually base an argument they’re making on the assumption that everyone comes from somewhere else. (“Nobody’s born spouting feminist doctrine! Give people a chance to learn!” Dude, I *was* born spouting feminist doctrine *that is now two decades out of date*.)”

Thing is, being a convert (so to speak) from hyperconservatism is also vanishingly rare – I know of one other person besides me who switched, and the most common argument I see against tone policing is “Nobody ever changed a hyperconservative’s mind by talking to them.” Which, I mean, tone policing is in fact wrong, but that argument is invalid, because I’m sitting right here not being hyperconservative anymore. ^_^

So what we were wondering is: where the fuck did all the rest of y’all come from? O_O Is there some large pool of mildly apolitical families out there that we just don’t hear about? (And in today’s polarized political climate, how’d you manage that? ;P)

Well, I more or less was born into liberal feminism, as were a number of my friends. But, that said, I think that, pre-9/11, there was a much larger pool of mildly apolitical families in the US. The polarization had been building since before I was born, but it felt like it really hit an inflection point around that time.

I suspect there are also a bunch of people from families that are liberal, but not explicitly feminist. That kind of think that they’re post-feminist, that the fight’s all done and everything is equal now. I rather suspect most of those folks think the same about race as well. Kids from those families might well end up getting shook up a bit when they start having to deal with the world outside their bubble.

But that’s the problem I’m having, that even when people acknowledge the existence of their own fucking culture they use derogatory words like “bubble” to describe it and act like it shouldn’t exist. Isn’t that what feminists want, isn’t that the point? A world where every child grows up that way, and they never have to learn better because there is no better to learn. Every child that does grow up that way is a step in the right direction, a little piece of the utopian future made manifest.

Even assuming the war is eventually won, it will not be won all at once, could never have been won all at once. You want your culture to win out over the other cultures, your mores to be the mores, and the way that happens is with little pockets where your culture has won, little “bubbles”, that expand until they encompass everything. Try to destroy your own strongholds at every opportunity and you’ll never get anywhere.

Tags:

#in which Brin has strong feelings about subcultural validity #again #reply via reblog #a movement does not survive on converts alone #discouraging the existence of non-convert feminists is a *bad* move #I am tempted to tag this #proud citizen of The Future #though that is not the usual meaning of that tag #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

justice-turtle:

So @brin-bellway mentioned that being born into liberal feminism is apparently “vanishingly rare, to the point that I’ve seen people who will actually base an argument they’re making on the assumption that everyone comes from somewhere else. (“Nobody’s born spouting feminist doctrine! Give people a chance to learn!” Dude, I *was* born spouting feminist doctrine *that is now two decades out of date*.)”

Thing is, being a convert (so to speak) from hyperconservatism is also vanishingly rare – I know of one other person besides me who switched, and the most common argument I see against tone policing is “Nobody ever changed a hyperconservative’s mind by talking to them.” Which, I mean, tone policing is in fact wrong, but that argument is invalid, because I’m sitting right here not being hyperconservative anymore. ^_^

So what we were wondering is: where the fuck did all the rest of y’all come from? O_O Is there some large pool of mildly apolitical families out there that we just don’t hear about? (And in today’s polarized political climate, how’d you manage that? ;P)

I’m not, though. I mean, I am now, but just as I am a liberal feminist through an accident of birth*, so too am I American through an accident of birth. In fact, I’m Canadian for political reasons: you know how people always say that if a Republican gets the presidency, they’re moving to Canada? Dad saw the “you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” speech, went “fuck this, I’m moving to Canada”, and actually went through with it. (I occasionally refer to our move as “part of a long tradition stretching back to the Loyalists”.)

*Please don’t ask what my sincerely-held political opinions are. (The answer is “I’m not sure I even understand the concept of a sincerely-held political opinion, let alone whether I have any, let alone what they are”.)

Tags:

#I have some *vague* suspicions that I might actually have some genuine opinions around here somewhere #I occasionally notice a moral claim that hurts to hear even though #I happen to qualify by the standard in question #(I notice it most with people shaming kinks I don’t have) #even when there is no consensus in my tribe on the morality of it #it isn’t–I think–the pain of ”that was a dangerous thing to say and I’m scared I’ll get caught in the ensuing flamewar’s crossfire” #but more like the pain of encountering someone being factually incorrect #from this I tentatively infer that I genuinely disagree with these claims #but there are few claims that have either little enough or balanced enough baggage that I can sense the feeling of whether it’s Incorrect ov #over the feeling of whether it’s Dangerous #reply via reblog #our home and cherished land #(a tag which does double-duty as both a general Canada tag and an immigration tag) #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

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sdhs-rationalist asked: 17, 36, 42, 63

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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17. Who would be your ideal partner?

My first reaction is “????“ and my second is “for starters, someone I’m not scared of”. Over the past year or so, I’ve been learning that perhaps this is not as exacting a standard as I once thought.

36. Favorite clean word?

Meridian. It has such a nice flow to it.

42. Are you a good judge of character?

My gut is a paranoid wreck. Intellectually, I don’t know.

63. Biggest Fear?

Hmm. I’m not sure. *digs through brain* Well, I don’t think I would call that the biggest fear, and lately it’s turned out that that one wasn’t quite a fear per se at all…

Memory of seven-year-old self: *gives me a Look*

…oh, of course, you’re right. It could never have been anything else.

Death, specifically my own.

(You can tell how good I’ve gotten at suppressing it by the first paragraph of this response. Even now, as I type this, I am careful not to think too hard about what I’m saying. It is a hard-won skill, honed through sheer self-preserving necessity for a decade and a half, and it is still best to avoid straining the limits when possible.)

Tags:

#tales from the askbox #ask meme #oddly this skill *doesn’t* extend to a general capacity for doublethink #I have to learn it all over again for each new thing I try to suppress #(but the price of failure is never *quite* so high) #death tw #sdhs-rationalist

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Splain it to Me

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ 3 Comments

{{Title link: https://status451.com/2016/01/06/splain-it-to-me/ }}

theunitofcaring:

fierceawakening:

taymonbeal:

Wow. This is a truly excellent work of Rationalist Social Justice. Status 451 may have just redeemed itself in my eyes.

(Also, I had no idea just how deeply I’d internalized the “nerd model” of communication. Not even just with other people; my internal monologue consists largely of me Taymonsplaining things to myself. Including while reading this article.)

This makes a ton of sense to me. The whole concept that “privileged people” are not supposed to correct “marginalized people” makes me instinctively feel like people are trying to avoid intellectual discussion and trying to evade defending their perspective or ideas. Which bothers me in part because I don’t want to be taken less seriously BECAUSE I’m marginalized – I’m concerned I’ll be dismissed as a politikid if I talk about it at all.

Where to them it might be more like “we don’t have the advantage of a whole long field of study with far-reaching traditions, but that doesn’t make my perspective invalid. Please take seriously the idea that a different way of thinking about that might make sense.”

The opening section about New York listening is a great explanation of competing access needs. 

And, yeah, I feel like different communication norms is a part of what’s going on in peoples’ reactions to learning ‘don’t correct marginalized people’.  To people like me who feel infinitely more comfortable with the information model of communication, “don’t correct marginalized people” almost comes across as “exclude marginalized people: cut them off from the flow of ideas and corrections and debates and redefinitions”. When a conversation is almost entirely about corrections and counter-corrections and reframings, “don’t argue with people” means “don’t take their ideas seriously”. 

Just like if you told the New Yorker “don’t interrupt me while talking”, they might think you mean “don’t behave in a way distinguishable from a flowerpot” and decide you don’t actually care about them as a listener. 

For people coming from a different communicative context, though, “don’t correct marginalized people” means “when people correct me, it’s almost always to assert the worthlessness of my ideas, not to engage with them. I don’t expect, when I’m corrected, that we’ve embarked on a back-and-forth of refining ideas; I expect that you’re corralling excuses to dismiss me. I can’t override this expectation (and it’s usually warranted, anyway) so if you want to actually hear my ideas communicated and fully realized, don’t offer your objections and disagreements and thought experiments. Doing that doesn’t include me, even if it is how you always communicate.”

…huh. I’m having a lot of trouble trying to map this article’s descriptions to my own life, because to me, the defining experience of navigating social-justice culture is constantly perceiving status games that nobody else would admit to seeing and that may not even have existed. (Seeing everything in terms of hierarchies and commands is what They do, after all. We are better than that. (Not that anyone would phrase it in quite that way, of course.)) I have had conversations that I perceived as an exchange of carefully veiled insults and insinuations that the other person should be outcast, and that I suspect (but am not certain) the other person perceived as friendly conversation about, say, the downsides of cleverness-based power fantasies. I have had so many conversations that I suspect the other person perceived as commiserating and that I perceived as them presenting their credentials and demanding to inspect mine.

I feel better around rationalists not because they lack hierarchical thinking but precisely because they acknowledge it. In general, they tend to recognise when things they say might be interpreted as orders and are careful to make it clear when things are not orders. And if it’s not clear, *it is permitted to ask for clarification on whether something was an order*. I use such extreme emphasis because it’s very, very important. Thinking in terms of “mandatory” and “permitted” and “forbidden” (rather than “right” and “okay” and “wrong”) isn’t itself forbidden here! I actually feel reasonably confident that you won’t jump all over me for writing this post! (Slightly less confident than I was before you reblogged this, but still enough that I’m willing to post it.) I don’t know whether you understand how huge a relief that is.

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#not only am I reasonably confident people from the rationalist-sphere won’t jump on me for writing this #I am even cautiously optimistic some of them might stand up for me if somebody *else* jumps on me #which in the end is the deciding factor in pressing ‘reblog’ rather than ‘close’ #reply via reblog #my issues with sj let me show you them #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

Orgasmic design: how vibrators have become ambitious tech products

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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{{Title link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/09/vibrator-design-tech-product-orgasm }}

ellaenchanting:

brin-bellway:

ellaenchanting:

sadydoyle:

This was a fun one! The concise history of vibrators; how they started as scary medical devices and shameful secrets, became a feminist statement, and are now a massively profitable industry that employs the same guys who used to design iPhones. 

I, for one, welcome our new tech overlords. Thank you, tech overlords, for helping me maintain my long distance relationship!

From a 1908 vibrator ad: “Bebout is ‘gentle, soothing, invigorating and refreshing. Invented by a woman who knows a woman’s needs. All nature pulsates and vibrates with life.’” It does indeed.

My reactions are torn between “ooh, knowledge! neat!” and “*fumes at normativity*”.

So, followers, here is some neat knowledge. Try to look past the bits like “women who used vibrators were actually more likely to take care of their sexual health by going to the gynecologist for regular exams”, as if there were no reasons other than “failure to take care of one’s sexual health” why one might avoid both vibrators and gynecologists.

(Hint: my GP told me that, as someone too young for disorders of age and too virginal for disorders of the sexually active (emphasis added), I should not have gynecological checkups because I wouldn’t get anything out of them.)

(Hint 2: some people just aren’t into genitals, sometimes including their own.)

You know, that part flew right by me without my even thinking twice about it. This is why privilege checks are important- when you are normative it’s hard to notice when you are being exclusionary or offensive, Thanks @brin-bellway!

You’re welcome!

Like I said in the tags, though, it’s impossible not to be exclusionary when talking about sexuality: people are just too diverse to be able to account for everyone. While I would definitely like people writing for small audiences that they know I’m in to be inclusive of me, I don’t seriously expect inclusivity of general-audience material (even if part of me is always disappointed when they fail to measure up). I do respect people who have considered these things, thrown up their hands at the impossibility of going much beyond the top few most common options, and knowingly sacrifice the visibility of people with very unusual sexualities to the altar of the greatest good for the greatest number: it’s not like I can come up with a better plan.

(Stuff that’s specifically about sex ed does need to be careful to acknowledge when it’s throwing up its hands, though. Some of the ““inclusive”” sex ed I got was worse-than-useless misinformation when applied to myself, and maybe if it had stated up front that it couldn’t cover everyone and “none of the above” was an option, I wouldn’t have had to learn that the hard way.)

(Whether “women* who are ineligible for gynecological checkups” is a common enough group to be worth accounting for is another matter. I reacted to this particular issue as an instance of the general case.)

*I’m not even getting into gender issues here, as I’m focusing on my own personal area of relevance.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #nsfw?

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sinesalvatorem:

You have a right to exist even when politically inconvenient. Your experiences don’t become less true or less important for not fitting a convenient narrative. Everything you’ve felt is valid.

So if a feminist space says you’re bad for women, or a queer space says you’re bad for gays, or anyone else tries to shut you up; then fuck them. Walk away and start your own space with fewer assholes. You’re fine; they’re wrong.

Tags:

#thank you

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

lethriloth:

sinesalvatorem:

madeofpatterns:

madeofpatterns:

The A stands for ally *because the LGBTQA community decided it did* decades ago. 

It’s not something straight people wanting to be cool are asserting for themselves. It’s something the community decided. A long time ago. For important reasons. 

Like, when I was in high school, this is what we meant when we used the A to mean allies:

  • the straight couple who regularly took in kids who’d been kicked out of their families for being gay or trans
  • the straight adults who were brave enough to give rides to scared gay kids with violently homophobic parents
  • etc, etc

The A was also there meaning allies to protect people who were LGBTQ but weren’t out:

  • people who were probably gay or trans, but needed space to think about it, and needed to be in LGBTQA space without pressure to self-identity while they were figuring it out
  • people who couldn’t afford be be out, and needed to be able to say “I’m an ally; you don’t have to be gay to go to GSA; I’m just there to support my friends”

I think all the reasons it was important when I was a teenager are still important now.

And like, yeah, having a concept of allies means tolerating a certain amount of obnoxiousness from straight people who want to feel cool. But I think that’s a lot better than only being welcoming of people who are willing to shout from the rooftops how queer they are. Because that excludes some of the most vulnerable people.

(Like – if we want to talk about the problem of queer youth homelessness – it’s important to acknowledge that one thing that protects vulnerable queer kids is having access to spaces that are affirming of their gender and attraction, *and* rigorously careful to avoid outing people. Because people who have access to enough community to sustain them have a much, much better chance of being able to stay alive and stay closeted until they’ve managed to safely move away from dangerous parents.)

My country is super homophobic and this matters a lot. Last year I volunteered as part of an organisation dedicated to combating homophobia. All the members officially described themselves as allies. Yet, this is the first conversation I had when attempting to join them:

Me: *fills out application form while leaving the ‘gender’ section blank*

Secretary: So, are you transgender?

Me: …Yes. But, like, I’m not committing that to writing, or anything.

Secretary: Of course. Totally fine. I’m bisexual. Everyone else here is queer some way or another. I don’t think a straight person has ever joined.

Me: So, the reason you all list yourselves as allies is because…

Secretary: Because homosexuality is illegal.

Me: Thought so.

I am torn on this issue: on the one hand, it’s very important to be welcoming to allies, and not just because often ally==closeted, but for strategic reasons as well. On the other hand, the LGBTetc. acronym does not seem the place for that?    LGBTetc. groups should pretty much be always open to allies in my opinion, but… I don’t think there are many closeted folks going around saying “I’m LGBTQA! I’m the ‘A’, it’s for ‘Allies’!”

Of course, I might also just be bitter because I (an ace-ish-kinda person) don’t ever see “A is for Allies AND Asexuals”, only ever “A is for Allies”. And I saw “A is for allies!” at around the same time I saw a lot of “Asexuals are not a part of the LGBTQ community”.

Tags:

#oh good somebody else wrote about the ace thing #it was bugging me but I couldn’t quite figure out how to put it #asexuality