Just hit publish
[I started writing this several hours ago, so now the "Rusty in a meeting" part doesn't make sense. But he was in a meeting when I started it!]
While Rusty is at a meeting and I’m waiting for him at the office after hours since we carpooled to work, I should take this opportunity to blog. And there’s so much I could blog about.
Diva’s post about acceptance, sexuality, and gender identity. I don’t disagree w/ the premise. But a few parts of it felt like little barbs, because I’ve had the “acceptance” line used against me to punish me for not staying with my ex after I found out she was trans. You know: “If you REALLY loved her, you’d stay with her!” Love is about the person not the gender, etc. But what none of them seemed to understand is finding out she was trans was about more than the gender. SO much more. That was part of it, of course, and not a miniscule one; but people reduce it to that and draw this line in the sand when they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Often it came from other trans people, probably projecting their feelings of resentment toward their own exes onto me, and at the same time using pronouns I was not ready to hear. Guess what: sometimes it’s not about you. And that’s why I created the SOTS Forum web site, to talk about these things that nobody else seems to get, to have a place where we didn’t have to constantly explain ourselves and do damage control. And this morning, I was cleaning up a few things on the site, and everything felt painful. I know I’ve neglected that site for a long time, and the message board has been broken for over a year and I recreated it as a half-assed Google group… but it feels too draining to try to maintain it, a lot of the time. I don’t think it’s healthy for me. But then I feel guilty because I feel like I’m leaving other SOs hanging out to dry – people who need the support like I needed it when there was nothing there for me (and so I created the group). The good news, though, is that in the years since 2003 a few other support forums/sites have sprung up. I haven’t really taken a look at them to see what they’re like, though; but at least I know they’re there. Then I start wondering about my responsibilities to myself vs. my responsibilities to others, and what the balance is. My dad used to say I should write a book about my experience, and there isn’t a book out there like it; and indeed I’ve referred to it as the book that scares me. That book would be filling an empty space and maybe helping to make some people feel a little less alone, less like bad people for not loving their trans partner unconditionally (not that that’s really what the situation is, but I’m saying, that’s what people spin it as). But for now, at least, I don’t think writing that book would be healthy for me. And yet I feel so strongly empathic to all the suffering people out there who have nowhere to turn.
I could write about going through a depressive spate – but lately I feel hyper-aware of writing about anything like that, even though I really want to. My mom reads my blog, Twitter, etc., even though we don’t openly talk about it (which is probably fucked up in its own right but I need to focus on one thing at a time), and I’m not going to try to stop her, because it’s the internet and we’re both adults. But I do think she has some responsibility, too, to realize that we’re BOTH adults, and if I need her help or support on something, I’ll tell her. Sometimes we’ll talk on the phone and she’ll preface something with, “I know this might make you mad but…” and inevitably it’s about something she read on my blog, and she’s saying she’s worried. Which I didn’t mind terribly the first few times, but it’s getting to a point where it’s starting to feel less like concern and more like, take care of my need to think you never have ups and downs in your life by silencing yourself on the not-so-great parts. Even though those are the parts I most desperately need to write about.
Then there’s this fucking post which makes my brain want to slide out of my ear – but if I write about that at all, I think I’ll do it in a separate post.
I’ve had this post by Daisy saved in an untitled draft for two months, and the thoughts about blogging and what it means to me and how it feels have been hanging around, mostly unwritten, since that time, too (actually more like three months now). That last round of bullshit in late February changed something for me. I actually have mentioned this briefly before. But speaking of being hyper-aware, I’m now hyper-aware of writing about ANY part of my life because someone might pounce on it and attack me for my “privilege,” (never mind I spend half my time calling out ACTUAL privilege), twist my words to fit their own agenda, use me as a convenient punching bag, etc. All that kind of stuff had been in the back of my mind for years – it comes w/ the territory of being a woman blogger, particularly a feminist blogger – but somehow that last crap made it feel even more stark. I’m trying to push it down and push it away and just press on like I always have before, but it feels way harder this time. I was reading back through some of my archives recently, looking at some of the bullshit I was handed by commenters before I either banned them or they got bored and stopped coming around, and to look at it objectively I wonder how I stood it. And how can people be so awful that they think it’s okay to talk to another human being that way? But then, that’s MALE PRIVILEGE for you.
I’m getting off track here. I want to write more about class and my experiences, but I feel like there’s no good way to do it without someone using me as an example for something. I hate the feeling of being analyzed and picked apart under a microscope by people who don’t know the half of it. You don’t know my life. So who the fuck do you think you are?
I think maybe part of it, for some people (the ones I’m at least willing to give the benefit of the doubt – a list which, admittedly, is getting shorter), is that they have a hard time understanding differences in blogs. This is a similar thing to what I mentioned when Toby interviewed me, and I’ve experienced it plenty from that direction too – where people who use social media for business/marketing purposes simply can’t conceive of the fact that there are bloggers out there who have different goals, non-business-focused goals, and that those goals are just as valid as theirs. Likewise, people who use blogging primarily for activism/advocacy can have a hard time differentiating the personal and the political. Yes, sometimes they mesh, and yes, sometimes I write posts of that nature. But my blog has never had one “theme” for me to feel boxed into (I started blogging before there was much of a concept of themed blogs) and sometimes my posts are just PERSONAL. As in, there is nothing here to debate or question. This is my truth. It is not a political statement aside from the fact that I think any woman speaking her truth is an act of personal revolution. But when I talk about my experiences with class growing up, I’m not talking about CLASS in the big-picture, societal, analytical way. I’m sharing something with you, the readers, and if you get something out of it, that’s awesome. I do hope that sometimes my personal posts will help someone out there feel less alone, or whatever. But if you don’t get anything out of it, or you want to project all over it? Just leave it alone, because it’s not that kind of post. Some things are not up for debate.
This is the same kind of thing I mean when I said, for example, reproductive justice is not an “issue” to “debate.” This is MY LIFE. You don’t get to “debate” about it, and fuck you for thinking of it as a dehumanized issue; THAT is one of the hallmarks of privilege.
But back to blogging and how I feel about it… Basically there’s a lot of goddamn drama in the feminist blogosphere and I’m sick of it. I barely read any feminist blogs anymore because I don’t have the energy for all the bullshit. We talked about this a little at Sex 2.0 during the Naked on the Internet panel… Dacia said something like, “I think we’ve all been in the position of getting righteous in a comment thread on Feministing and then saying, ‘Oh, fuck this!‘”
But I will always call myself a feminist. I know that the drama and bullshit is with the feminist blogosphere (and really just part of it – a loud part, but not the whole), not feminism itself. I am continually baffled by people who conflate the two, and I really don’t have much patience for it.
I don’t have a lot of patience in general (except when I do – but that’s another tangent) and I’m fucking DONE trying to explain privilege, feminism, class, etc. I should also be done w/ trying to appease people who are going to complain about what I say no matter what I say. But I just hate that w/ some topics there doesn’t seem to be a good way to write about it that doesn’t make me sound like someone whose views I disagree w/ equally.
I know what I really need to do is what I’m constantly telling myself: write like no one is reading. That is what blogging is about, for me. But it’s not always easy. And of course I always keep in mind issues of where my life intersects w/ other people’s lives, and that even though there are things I might want to talk about, they might not want their life made public in that same way. But that’s a whole other can of worms and not what I’m rambling about here. That can of worms, I actually feel pretty equipped to deal with and I can happily discuss the ins and outs of it all day long!
I guess in a way this very post is indicative of me trying to take back my own blog… half of it doesn’t make sense, I’m talking in circles, making sense to no one but myself, and it’s fucking LONG. Yay!
I had a few other things on my “could write about” list but they’ve flown out of my head at the moment. So I suppose I’ll do what I thought I’d be doing a few hours ago: just hit publish!
Clearly I’M not in the corporate world!
Dan Greenfield commented on Toby Bloomberg’s “Atlanta Women In Social Media Marketing” post from yesterday (the one I’m in) and that reminded me of something.
In the post, I mentioned the anecdote of the guy who was completely condescending and dismissive toward me at SoCon07 and seemed to view social media as the realm of silly young-uns who haven’t entered the real world yet and when they do, they’ll leave childish things behind so they can be taken seriously. Surprise! He showed up at SoCon08, only this time he was a “social media expert” running a “digital consulting company.” (I see now he is also calling himself a “brand therapist.”) That experience is never far from my mind as I view the glad-handers keen on building their personal brands with a wary eye.
SoCon07 wasn’t the first time some “professional” know-it-all looked down their nose at me, and it wouldn’t be the last. For example, the one I remembered after seeing Dan’s comment:
About two years ago, Rusty and I went to a Social Media Club Atlanta meeting (this was when SMC-ATL was in its first incarnation). I didn’t mention it in the post, but the guy, Mike, who I talk about in that post? I remember him saying something exasperatedly to me about how, “Well, those of us in the corporate world don’t have time for all this stuff!” I was so fucking pissed off. Look at those assumptions. I didn’t try to conceal my irritation when I told him, “Hi, I’m in the corporate world, too. Why would you assume I’m not?”
I remember he was visibly surprised. I guess he assumed I just spent all day in my pajamas, maybe had a part-time job at Starbucks. People and their stupid assumptions.
*continues work on carving out nice little echo chamber of my own*
Good lord. I got sucked into the various “o-spheres” (from which I had mostly extricated myself over a year ago, btu occasionally visited due to links from blogs I actually enjoy reading because they’re interesting, thoughtful, funny, challenging, insightful, personal, etc.) tonight and was reminded why this blog break has been so important in the first place. The levels of ridiculousness, drama, passive-aggressiveness, double standards, and overall STUPID BULLSHIT continues to astound. You want a concrete example? (EVERYBODY DOES!) – look at this comment from Belledame at ye olde untouchable BA’s blog -
BA is speaking for herself. It doesn’t matter if you think she’s wrong or what; it’s intrusive and invasive as hell (at minimum) to keep pushing at her like that.
Oh really! Well that’s rich. And quite interesting. ‘Cause when some of us (ME, that is – god forbid *I* be passive-aggressive too and not NAME NAMES!) do the same thing, we’re the subject of 100+ comment blog threads straight of high school and random interlopers coming over to dissect whether we REALLY know the truth of OUR OWN LIVES, demand EVIDENCE, break out the litmus test for Are You Really [insert fave oppression here]®, and better have those creds at the ready. </royal_we>
One thing I can say for myself about that thread on Belledame’s blog that I finally visited about 2 weeks after those jackasses came over here – it didn’t *hurt* me or anything. Not anymore. I looked at it and thought, you sad sad people. This is what you’re doing? How old are you. And it’s mostly the same small handful of people, I noticed. Belledame’s a classic bully and queen bee. Fortunately I graduated from high school many years ago. And being asked to leave (’cause it “just wasn’t working out”) that Den of Dysfunction Top Secret email list in late 2007 was a very good thing, it turns out.
But yeah – blog break continues, at least for a while, bc there is jut so much BULLSHIT. I feel I should write *something* in light of my approaching 7th blogiversary – not sure what yet. Maybe I’ll NAME MORE NAMES and INCITE DRAMA. Who knows. What I do know is, at the moment I’m refocusing and re-centering (as I said at Amani’s today). I need that once in a while. This blog was started for ME and no one else, and as such that’s how it shall remain, in whatever form it continues to take.
Freewriting on privilege, class, inaccurate words, and frustration
Still so much I want to say about class and privilege and the feminist blogosphere… but no idea where to jump in or how to structure my thoughts.
Here’s a great post from the Feministing community area, by someone called Okra, that really illustrates the trap that the thread about Courtney was falling into. All Courtney’s critics were calling out her “privilege” but really what they meant was not privilege as we, activists, understand it. And we should know better, and be much better at avoiding falling into this trap. But apparently we’re not, because I see it all the time.
Privilege isn’t a personal failing. It’s not a character flaw. It’s not something you can renounce. It’s something granted to you by society. You don’t choose it. The term “unearned privilege,” which is used so much in these recent threads, is nonsensical, because privilege by definition is unearned. If we’re talking about something that was earned, then it’s not privilege.
Privilege is something you have to be aware of. Someone pointing it out is not a personal attack. It doesn’t make sense to take it personally when someone points out privilege.
We are all largely blind to our privilege; that’s the point. What we can do is work at becoming less blind to it. We don’t think there’s anything there at all because we don’t have to know what life is like in its absence! Example of privilege in action: a few years ago, a woman at work said, “I was dating someone [blah blah blah]…” and I replied with a question, “Did he [whatever else I said]…?” And the woman corrected me: “She.”
I wanted to kick myself – and I apologized. That was heteronormativity in action, straight privilege. Straight until proven gay… opposite sex as the assumed default partner.
I could’ve gotten bent out of shape and fallen all over myself to say I didn’t mean it… but who gives a shit? That would make me an asshole. Because it’s not about me. And intent doesn’t matter.
This is why I am consistently gobsmacked – though not really surprised, because it happens so often and is so damn predictable – when people have a conniption fit when someone says, “Hey, that was a racist remark” or “that was sexist” or “that was ableist” or whatever. And if anyone uses the P-word, they assume… well, what Okra said:
Do we have a better word than privilege? All words have multiple layers, but the potential for misunderstanding seems especially pernicious with “privilege,” which prompts a hearty “Not me!” from many members of the population. The idea of social privilege is far more subtle than its more popular meaning of pampered Rockefeller-type.
You acknowledge your privilege. You strive to be more mindful of it, and of the fact that not everyone is like you. You recognize that you’ll probably fuck up again, but you work to try not to. Because, of course, apologies are worthless if your behavior never changes.
But what’s been going down w/ Courtney isn’t, for the most part, people “pointing out privilege.” No, instead a lot of people are using that word because they know it’s loaded, they know how much of a hot button it is in the feminist blogosphere, and they probably surmise that it can be a way to say all kinds of assholish things and not be called out for being an asshole. Because, hey, they’re just calling out privilege. (Incidentally, it’s exactly this sort of thing that got me ousted from the walled garden a little over a year ago. Woe, I say!)
What’s tough is that we don’t have (or at least I don’t know of) clear language to talk about class that doesn’t at some point co-opt the word “privilege” and turn it into meaning “living a life of relative economic luxury.” There is such a thing as class privilege but I think many of us – myself definitely included – have gotten too lazy with that term, throwing it around when we can’t think of anything more appropriate.
But this goes back to what I said the other day; I’m getting more adept at it little by little, and finding Bitch|Lab a few years back was an epiphany; but I still largely lack the words to talk about my experiences with class. I firmly believe this is due in large part to Americans wanting to believe, with all our heart, that we live in a classless society, and doing whatever possible to uphold that fantasy – to the point where we can’t even talk about the reality because, well, how would we start? What are the words?
Basically, I’m sick of a lot of this shit. I’m sick of the hypocritical self-identified progressives, who cloak their own insecurities and fears in “calling out privilege” and “anti-oppression work.” I know how abusers manipulate and this looks all too familiar. I know that might seem over-the-top, but keep in mind I’m not equating stupid online drama with abuse, but saying, well, the patterns of behavior are damn familiar.
People make themselves look like idiots when they say things like, Jessica Valenti lives in a ritzy NYC apartment. What planet are they on?? Seriously, I wish somebody would explain to me on what planet freelance writers are living a life of ease and luxury, reclining on a daybed eating grapes and perhaps enjoying a mid-day mimosa. Yeah, having no health insurance is real glamourous. Having to constantly shop yourself around for one-off jobs that pay peanuts is real glamourous. Not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from or if you’ll make rent that month… the height of glamour.
I wish people would pull their heads out of their asses!
I’m sick of the constant policing of each other (which I refuse to partake in, but I’m talking about what I see others doing), of who gets to speak and who doesn’t, the hierarchy of who’s the most oppressed; yes, the Oppression Olympics. Just look how stupid it got on this thread. I have to be at work by 8:30! Oh yeah, I have to be there by 8:00! I make $15,000 a year – how low is YOUR salary, so I can make a judgment about how hard you do or don’t work??!! I bust my ass!! Oh yeah??
But I sure as hell can’t go in the other direction, because shit like this keeps happening, and if I have to read bullshit like “I don’t think I’ve ever found myself prejudiced against someone based on the colour of their skin, and I would certainly never put prejudicial thoughts into action” one more time I’m going to bang my head against a wall. It’s why I can’t read mainstream political blogs. Forget trying to call out sexism… it’s rampant… and no one does a damn thing, and if you say something, you’re a shrill militant ball-busting feminazi. Yeah, no thanks. How often have I been among mainstream political advocacy groups and felt beyond uncomfortable… where my brain was repeating, “Get out, get out, get out” because the moment you dare to present a different perspective, center gender, race, anything but white male straight cisgendered middle-class status quo, you’re ATTACKED. And issues such as sex workers’ rights and reproductive justice are certainly not discussed, because they’re not the IMPORTANT issues, like the war in Iraq and illegal wire-tapping. That’s what MATTERS, now shut up, little lady! Oh, and to the non-upper-middle-class among us: get a job, hippie!
Fuck THAT, too!
But I’m a capitalist, and as such, a lot of “activists” irritate me and I feel alienated. Certainly they are under no obligation to include me; I’m simply stating my experience. But the constant tearing down of anyone who happens to have a moment of success is getting real old. The feminist blogosphere in particular seems so intent on self-flagellating at every turn (as Apostate mentioned a while back), and including anything and everything so that we’ve diluted what truly is a feminist issue, and I just have no patience for it. Plus there are a lot of people talking out of their asses about shit they don’t know enough about, and everyone’s supposed to listen because they’re “not privileged” – even though we ALL are, in different ways, because privilege is a matrix, not a linear quantitative measuring system.
This post was just the latest last straw (yes, yes, I know!) and I’m so irritated I don’t know what to say about it specifically. Maybe I’ll come back to it later and try to make some sense. In the meantime, Octogalore has a good post.
But I know this: there’s a hell of a lot of conflation of “class” and “privilege” and “your life isn’t like mine and even though I don’t know shit about it, I’m assuming it must be way better” going on. I’ll never forget what Bitch|Lab said a while back: Class is not a sweater you take on and off. And I think that’s another thing people forget. You might be “middle class” now, in terms of income and net worth, but your background will forever color your perceptions of the world. You will understand things that people from comparatively comfortable backgrounds will not. It doesn’t make you automatically right about everything; but it means you have a way of approaching things that can’t be separated from what you know. Daisy called it class consciousness and I guess that’s it; and guess what else? Everyone’s interpretation of it will vary, too.
But some people seem to twist “class consciousness” into a persecution complex, and that, I have no time for.
Give me a break!
First of all, I just have to say that Courtney has far more patience than I do. She has handled this shitstorm with way more grace and diplomacy than I’d be able to muster. Jesus!
Look at this, from a commenter called Whit, on Courtney’s follow-up post wherein she doesn’t even get angry at people feeling free to make a ridiculous caricature out of her.
I can’t bear to read most of the other comments, so I apologize if someone has said it before or better than I can, but much like male feminists, those with class/race/etc. privilege need to remember to center people who are less privileged at the heart of their work if they’re trying to be an ally.
That means, among other things, 1. resisting the temptation to try to ‘lead’ the discussion, work, committee, etc. Necessarily implied is 2. Listening to the voices of people who you are trying to ally with, and giving them more weight than those who share your privilege. 3. Try to emulate Courtney’s introspective thoughtfulness about your own privilege whenever you’re called on it.
The original ‘day in the life of’ post failed at #s 1, and to a lesser extent 2, in a big way. Perhaps it would have been better if you had just asked for different day in the life comments before posting your own. Oh well, c’est la vie. It’s certainly opened up a great conversation about privilege that we all need to have.
Are you fucking kidding me?? Her original post “fails” in 1 and 2? Well, hello, maybe that’s because it was a post about A DAY OF HER LIFE. How in the hell is anyone supposed to “center” other people when they’re writing about THEIR OWN LIFE?? It doesn’t make sense!
And really, just what kind of hairshirt is Courtney supposed to wear before everyone will be satisfied that she’s done sufficient penance for her “privilege?” (most of which isn’t “privilege” in the true sense of the word – again, falling into that old trap of not being clear on the definition – but a bunch of people projecting their own shit)
I agree w/ commenter Rachel:
I think this has sparked a useful conversation and debate on privilege, but I’m unsure as to why it began. Courtney simply posted a glimpse into a day in her life for people who are curious as to what how one of the Feministing blog authors and noted author spends her work day. She then invited others to do the same, thus giving others an opportunity to share their lives and struggles and demonstrate the ways in which privilege works for or against them, and instead, she was criticized for it. Courtney’s initial post reminded me of a quote by Muriel Rukeyeser… “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” The world didn’t split open, but it sure seems as if Feministing’s readers are divided.
…
I think that Courtney has always been frank of the ways in which she is privileged and, in turn, has used those privileges in a way that benefits all women, privileged and underprivileged. I guess I don’t understand what is expected of her here. She’s already cognizant of the ways in which privilege manifests itself and writes useful conversations about it and other issues that affect women’s lives. Should she quit her job? Choose Ramen Noodles over fruit? Give up her yoga class? And, is the fact that Courtney is privileged in some aspects make details of her life or her voice any less legitimate, interesting or valuable?
What if she did choose Ramen Noodles over fruit? Then she’d be a poser, which is really worse. And that’s exactly what Amanda said on Lauren’s first thread the other day. People pretending to be less fortunate than they are is pretty insulting – and yet too many of these Feministing (and elsewhere) commenters seem to be setting up a situation where there’s no other solution. Or, disturbingly, that the only thing that will satisfy them is for certain women (oh yes, there’s a list, because they know everything, based on superficial observations) not to write about our lives. And that FUCKING SCARES ME.
I think we’ve all met the kind of people who interpret everything as a personal attack. And I think we can all agree those people have ISSUES, and WE are not responsible for THEIR lack of boundaries. Courtney choosing fruit = “hey, that reminds me of ME!” Guess what? Not Courtney’s problem.
If any time a friend vented to you about something bad that happened to them, your response was, “Oh yeah? Well, you have privilege, so suck it up!” you’d be shitty friend. Offering a dose of perspective now and then is important, but so is knowing when that’s not appropriate or even irrelevant.
Twitter is killing your soul
AV Flox has a post entitled, “The Night We Live-Tweeted The Suicide of A Desperate Man,” and I could not disagree with it more. The premise is that social media is making us desensitized to people’s suffering, making us objectify people and think of them only in terms of how useful they are for our page rank or new follower count.
I call bullshit.
The post reads like any number of “oh isn’t technology awful!” articles that make the rounds through various print and online publications every few months or so. Haven’t we heard this all before? It’s Twitter now, it was MySpace last year, and before that, weren’t video games “desensitizing” us? Television? Music? Movies? What’s the current monster of the week? The formula seems to be: pick something relatively new and use it as a scapegoat; wring hands; bemoan the direction society is heading (downward, one presumes); repeat in 2-3 months.
To lay the blame for this type of behavior on Twitter is beyond ludicrous and doesn’t hold up to even the most superficial examination of recent history. It reminds me of anti-porn feminists who claim misogynistic porn is to blame for men objectifying women and perpetrating violence against us. I’m always baffled by that claim, because to me it’s so obvious that misogynistic porn is one of many symptoms of a fucked-up, sexist society in which rape apologism prevails.
I’m glad that someone in the comments brought up jokes about the OJ Simpson case. I remember those jokes well, and guess what, there was no such thing as Twitter at the time. Unfortunately, a fair amount of people (and I never fail to be disturbed by just how many there are, including people I otherwise like) always make jokes at the expense of people who become public figures. Celebrities become dehumanized by virtue of being in the public eye; that’s the nasty side of celebrity that no one likes to talk about. The internet is yet another manifestation of people’s tendency to say all manner of mean, disgusting, appalling things in the name of a “joke” that (one hopes) they wouldn’t say if they stood face-to-face with the person and had to look them in the eye. And even then, they might still think those things.
Look, online life is not so different from offline life. It’s really not. As time goes on I think this is becoming more obvious to many more people, but there are still plenty who want to draw a hard line between “the internet” and “real life,” as if the two are mutually exclusive. That might have made for a salacious feature story in 1996, but in 2009 it comes off as stale and willfully devoid of analysis.
Classy
Here’s the progression of how things went. Apparently Courtney wrote a post at Feministing talking about what a typical day for her looks like. Lauren at Faux Real wrote a post in response, saying she’s tired of hearing about people having too much email and how it’s soooo hard for them, when people in her community are struggling to keep their jobs, if they haven’t been laid off already. She then wrote another post, which expanded on some of the stuff in the first post. Aunt B wrote a post linking to Lauren’s second post, and Daisy linked to Aunt B in her post about WAM being elitist, which I took issue with.
I didn’t see any of the posts until I read Daisy’s, and then I went in reverse-chronological order trying to catch up (and was still left wondering what WAM had to do with any of it – I guess Daisy just wanted to try to tie it in).
I agree w/ this comment Amanda left at Lauren’s:
There’s kind of no way to write about your life if you’re lucky in any way without becoming a lightening rod for envy on the blogs, though. I can see your point, but I also worry about the way women have been socialized to compete with each other on whose life sucks the most. It’s a lot like the, “You’re not fat, I’m fat!” game. Women aren’t permitted to be happy with themselves, and so writing something that insinuates that you are pretty happy with yourself automatically generates bad reactions. I can see how Courtney is trying to fight against that.
Predictably, another commenter (someone called evil fizz) comes along and says:
But is is possible to write about your own successes and privilege without being bone-crushingly oblivious to the fact that not everyone enjoys such things. It’s not necessarily about envy as much as it is awareness that one’s corner of the universe is not the quintessential experience.
Well, I really wish someone would tell me what that way is, because I’m getting the feeling there really isn’t such a way, unless you devote nine-tenths of every post to self-flagellation. Because that wouldn’t become tedious to read, oh no.
As Lisa said recently…
I’m tired of writing disclaimers of my privilege. I’m tired of apologizing. Even as I write that, I’m sure it reads RESISTANCE to acknowledging my privilege. But it’s like, no matter what I write about, no matter how much I paint the elephant a traffic cone orange color and acknowledge it, point at it, sit next to it, and then I write my thoughts – someone, somewhere (usually “anonymous”) comes in and reminds me, “don’t forget – you’re a privileged person of color. You don’t have that much experience in oppression.” Here’s the thing: I don’t know how to acknowledge it any more than I already have. And if I stop acknowledging it, I’m sure someone will call me a “leftoid cunt” again. I don’t want to spend my life writing about privilege. That would be a sardonic tragedy all on its own.
EXACTLY.
I mean, how many times do you have to spell it out to people? At a certain point, you just can’t be responsible for other people projecting their own drama and hangups onto your writing about your life. And on a blog, especially! Evil fizz goes on to say that (s)he doesn’t care about Courtney’s day. Well, then don’t read about it. Get on with your life and find something you do care about to occupy your time. Does every blogger exist simply to satisfy what you personally want to read about?
I get that on a large group blog like Feministing, the lines are less clear – and indeed, this is what people spend entire social media conferences talking about. Know your audience, write stuff they’ll be interested in, etc. But I just keep coming back to the fact that blogs started as people writing about their own lives, and guess what, an audience showed up, eventually.
In Lauren’s “Context” post, she says:
And I wonder too if those making feminism their career change her message to remain marketable? Does the new Professional Feminist have to set aside some of her feminist beliefs to keep the paycheck rolling in? Will she self-censor?
This is always a problem. The difference is, feminist bloggers did not START with the goal of being ‘professional feminists’ – they were just writing, doing their own thing, and they got recognized for who they are. (A modicum of success; say it ain’t so!) Now, if they’re expected to change… -but this is the same thing as all bloggers. At social media conferences bloggers are so concerned w/ their “image” and how to be “professional” and present themselves online. But they forget that the first bloggers who are now relatively famous – Scoble, etc. – took risks, and that’s why they were noticed. Yes, a lot of ‘em are assholes, but this isn’t about the characteristics of their individual personalities; the point is that they weren’t sanitizing everything they said. They were writing in their own voice – sometimes even writing as if no one was reading.
But stepping away from bloggers specifically, let’s get back to the larger issue of class in more general terms. I agree w/ much of what Lauren says here. I share her frustration w/ “get ahead” solutions that are aimed at people who are beyond the access point of many people looking for advice. I’ve been there. Suggestions to buy less Starbucks and refinance your home ring hollow to someone who doesn’t go to Starbucks at all and rents instead of owns. It pisses me off that this passes for “solutions” in some people’s eyes, and I wonder how they can be so blind to others’ reality. Do they REALLY think everyone owns a home, has a 401k, can afford a new car or even has a car at all?
I agree that the NY Times piece about not being able to live on $500k in NYC is insulting. It’s the same thing I was talking about in this post from October 2006, where I criticize a Creative Loafing article that purports to explain why the younger generation is having a hard time economically. People who behave like Mr. Whitey McPrivilege (as I lovingly dubbed him) make the rest of us look bad. It’s an irresponsible piece of journalism because it falls into the old trope of casting as irresponsible anyone who isn’t middle class, so we can all attribute their situation to personal failings, wipe our hands and be done w/ it, rather than have to examine underlying, systemic issues. This goes back to the points raised in Stephanie Coontz’s book The Way We Never Were.
And yet… I do take issue w/ the rest of the stuff referenced here and here.
Putting aside the fact that I become very skeptical of anyone who uses the term “the intelligentsia” with any degree of seriousness, I’m frustrated that “the intelligentsia” is cast as upper class – always is and always has been upper class. Whereas the poor cannot be well-read (even tho Lauren’s friend mentions her mother, we’re to understand that she’s a curious outlier). Yes, it’s more likely, but it strikes as a dichotomy, that there’s one right “way” to be poor, and it strikes as insulting to those from poor backgrounds who are interested in “intellectual” things.
I guess I am annoyed because (going back to Lauren’s post) I have seen both sides of it, so I GET IT. Also – I have a distrust for people who have never experienced what it’s like to *not* have a safety net. I think they don’t get it, don’t really appreciate the double bind the working class and poor are often in. That’s why their solution is always the offensively simplistic “get a job,” and it’s so much BS.
Now, to respond to a few comments.
Aunt B’s comment on Lauren’s “Context” post:
And it pisses me off-it seems so “let them eat cake”-ish-to read feminists talking about a feminist day that is basically “La la la, here’s my wonderful life.”
Yeah, I get where she’s coming from, but this also reads to me a bit like: Shut up. It’s too similar for my comfort to what Ren hears all the damn time. It feels like a game of oneupsmanship: who’s the most oppressed, who gets to speak.
Yes, it’s helpful to have perspective. Some people are just self-centered, non-self-aware assholes who really do seem to think their email problem is the worst problem in the world. And they complain all the freaking time. (I think we’ve all had the misfortune of knowing at least one person like this.) They need to be smacked upside the head with some reality, reminded, “Hey, at least you HAVE A JOB, and this is a luxury thing to worry about for many people.”
I mean, just yesterday, there was a guy at work complaining about how high his HOA fees are, but at least they pay for the tennis courts. Obnoxious!
But most of the people in question here do not lack that perspective. They simply write about their lives, and if their life includes the frustration of a lot of email, then maybe they write about that. I don’t see any of them saying this is THE WORST THING EVER. But do they have to repeat that at every other sentence for people not to assume it?
Like Aunt B in her 2nd comment on Laurent’s “Context” post, I don’t know quite how to talk about my experiences, either. It wasn’t until I started reading Bitch|Lab that I had any of the words necessary to begin trying to describe class-related experiences – and I’m still not very good at it at all.
In the past couple of years I feel like I’ve been slowly entering a new world – one that was always there, going on right under my nose, but I never knew about. Is this the *real* middle class? It seems “upper class” to me, but I have a feeling upper class involves even more. What do people MEAN when they say “middle class?”
It’s why I felt so uncomfortable when that shitty financial planner asked, “When you retire, how much money would you like to have to live off of each month?” What is the right answer? X amount of dollars… is that too much? Too little? I have no frame of reference.
And from the other end, I was embarrassed when I bought my car last January, and I handed the salesperson the paperwork and upon seeing my salary, she said, “Wow, that’s a good job! I wish I had that job!” How am I supposed to respond to that?
But I’m not ashamed. I’ve worked too damn hard to allow somebody to lay a guilt trip on me out of what often seems like – and this will not win me any friends, but I’m calling it like I see it – good old-fashioned jealousy. Hell, at least Aunt B comes out and admits that she is jealous – but that still doesn’t excuse her nasty finger-pointing and line-drawing, deciding who’s the real feminist and who’s not, who’s sufficiently guilty about their success and who’s not. Shit like this props up a nasty system of shaming women out of economic achievement. Oh, you can do it, but only if you FEEL REALLY BAD about it!
Back to comments. Daisy comments and says:
You are talking Class Consciousness 101, and according to THAT, the people on top will never be nice to those of us on the bottom, because they are too busy congratulating themselves that they are not us. Why would they listen to people that they believe are inferior?
Personally? I feel uncomfortable with “the people on the top” AND “the people on the bottom.” I have problems in both directions. Both seem so blind in their own ways.
Sometimes I think we need to remember, being poor doesn’t give you some special insight into How The World Works. But neither does being rich, of course.
I don’t think there is anything wrong in telling privileged people to be more aware of their privilege when they speak.
This sets up a dichotomy, as if there are two kinds of people: privileged and not privileged. It also, once again, casts privilege in solely economic terms, which is why a lot of people not versed in the academic language of privilege get defensive and misunderstand it – e.g., I’m white and poor, how do I have “white privilege?” We need to do much better at avoiding falling into this trap.
There’s always been an “introduction to intersectional feminism for comfortable college students” feel to the blog, which is probably due, at least in part, to the fact that it is a blog, and, as such, is very much bound up in the lives of the people who write there (almost all of whom seem to come from very comfortable backgrounds, have MAs, and are getting their names out as a way of getting their books published).
The key word here? SEEM. Yep, it happened again. Why assume??
THIS is the kind of shit that pisses me off. You don’t know shit about their backgrounds. Yes, I know humans make assumptions to fill in the blanks about the things we don’t know. To an extent that’s human nature. But then at a certain point, stereotypes take over. The woman Daisy mentioned assumed there were no feminists in the welfare office; Casey assumes the Feministing bloggers have always had an easy-peasy life.
And for the love of god, can someone tell me WHY so many people think writers live a life of luxury??
For another example, just recently I got into it with Renee in a thread at her blog (link forthcoming when I dig it up), where I called her out for being judgmental and making assumptions about people who shop at Wal-Mart. You want to talk about privilege? There’s a hell of a lot of unexamined privilege going on in those types of judgments. She tried to tell me that the poor have more opportunity to “produce within the home”… give me a fucking break. I was incensed at that point and asked her how, exactly, when my mom was working from dawn to dusk and simultaneously trying to care for her dying, uninsured husband, she was supposed to “produce within the home?” I reminded her that for people with schedules like that, who don’t live in metropolitan areas, Wal-Mart is often the only place that’s open when they are able to go shopping! Not to mention the prices. “Going green” is a luxury for many, many people. Oh and if you live in a more rural area, Wal-Mart if often the only store around, period!
Bottom line: You don’t know someone’s situation.
On a completely different note, Catherine’s comment captures exactly the problem I have with ATACC (or is it just ATAC now?)…
I can’t tell you how many times I have listened to members of my peace group gripe about it being all white. (and, I have to say, majority middle class and above). why aren’t black people in our group? Why aren’t poor people in our group? Umm, maybe they have other, more pressing things to worry about? Maybe they are wondering, how come we aren’t at the protest of the latest cop-killing of an unarmed black male youth. Maybe, black people in particular are wondering why they, who were already against the iraq war long before most white people caught on, should be marching to stop that, when very few if any white people, are marchign to stop something that is much more insidiously destructive to many black communuties; the drug war, and instituionalized and racist sentencing disparties.
Finally, on another unrelated note – and to end on a more positive note – I really enjoyed this post by BFP. I don’t often read her, but I’m glad I clicked over to her blog, because that post was a jewel.
Quote of the day
From Melissa at Shakesville, via Small Town Gay Blog:
In all seriousness, the fear of—or, perhaps more accurately, the frustration with—being seen as irrational (unintelligent) and hypersensitive (uncool) are as equally important factors for feminist women, which is why I firmly believe that every women’s studies program at every university should include an introductory course called You’re Dumb, Oversensitive, and Ugly, the objective of which is to explore the practical realities of being an active feminist in the world. I’ve seen women with a belly full of fire and a head full of steam about overt sexism at work absolutely crumple like a flan in a cupboard with one comment about how they are humorless, over-reactionary, dowdy, fat, or, simply, not fun. It’s a shock to the system to collide head-on with such an entirely inappropriate comment about one’s appearance or personality, to have a meritorious argument dismissed with schoolyard mockery dressed up as adult discourse.
So annoying
I said it on Nikki’s blog but the comment is currently in moderation; and I know I’ve said it here and elsewhere before, but it bears repeating: I am absolutely fed up with people who think they get a free pass on assholery just because we both oppose the Iraq War, or we both voted for Obama, or we both think Saxby Chambliss needs to be ousted from the Senate. BFD! No, you do not get a free pass on sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-sex worker bullshit, ableism, ageism, classism or any of the rest of it just because we pulled the same (metaphorical, at this point) lever on election day. That shit is never okay, no matter who’s saying/doing it, no matter if you agree or disagree on certain political issues with the person… NEVER. And sitting silently by and tolerating it is basically just as bad as saying or doing it yourself. Your silence is complicity. And if you want to be ANY kind of ally then you damn well better be ready to listen if someone calls you out on any of this shit.
Basically
He’s pissed because he doesn’t think about repercussions, he just thinks about action and then more action — he says something douchebaggy, he apologizes, there, done, move on, like there is no past, only now, he is in charge of the present. He can tell RKB to stop writing about him but not address his non-desire to censor HuffPo. He can call everyone a bitch and then apologize. Just as he’s entitled to drink as much as he wants and still expect privileges (I don’t know any woman who carries that kind of entitlement) like actually having girls around him. He’s entitled to being the king of the male sex blog-gods. He’s entitled to have everything just the way he wants it.
— Commenter riese on that ongoing thread