Cis is hostile terminology? Really?
A regular (a cis gay man) at Pam’s House Blend expresses that he feels “cis” is offensive and demeaning, and that trans people who use it are basically bad people (plus we’re bad people if we’re unhappy with John Aravosis’ transphobic remarks):
For the record, I find cis- to be offensive. In general, I thought our community (I mean the whole LGBT rainbow here) uses terms that are acceptable to those being described. That is, we use the preferred gender of trans people, we call someone bi if they identify as bi, we don’t say tranny, etc.So why is it okay for (some of) the trans community to call us cis-? If members of the trans community said “stop calling us trans, we find it offensive” would we here at PHB continue to say “trans”? I doubt it very much.
Cis is a neutral term applied to people who aren’t trans. It’s intended to decenter the notion that not being trans is the natural, default state for human beings and that being trans is a deviation, and that trans people are other. Most terminology that cis people use to define themselves as cis generally reifies cissexism and cissupremacy.
As much as I disagree with Autumn’s fairly rapid agreement with this statement, despite the reams of material written about what cis actually means, her invocation of the tone argument, and her comparing the use of “cis” to violence and hate:
To begin with, I’m giving up on the words cissexual and cisgender. I saw these as neutral terms, and now I see these are not. Thank you for your reasoned explanation as to why.And yeah, civil tone matters, and thinking in terms of broad communities matter. I see these as being more and more as important as time goes on.
One more MLK Jr. quote:
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
I, for one, want to see the stars through my very real rose-colored glasses — $50, pink-shaded, prescription glasses I actually bought from Zenni Optical to make that personal point about looking for a brighter, more beautiful world.
I am perhaps more concerned by the threat to ban anyone who defends “cis” terminology from commenting at Pam’s House Blend:
This is going nowhere, and is starting to offend people at The Blend.And in a post that’s theme is about behaving civility, I’m not having any of it.
Public warning in this thread — next person who uses this thread to make comment defending “cis” terminology gets a trap door drop.
Message received, Autumn. It is vitally important to protect the cis commenters at PHB from those dangerous trans people who dare to label privilege.
Edit: Just to be clear, it’s not that Autumn disagrees with “cis” terminology. It’s the tone argument (used at least twice), and the threat to ban anyone who defends “cis” usage.
Edit edit: Comments back on
hey lisa do i win free srs for being the 500th comment
tm@(“not a guarantee”)
(sorry… had to say it… please don’t hit me….lol)
javier
July 5, 2009 at 5:37 pm
You can have a commemorative tea cozy!
Lisa Harney
July 5, 2009 at 5:38 pm
ok, can you describe it?
it does sound appealing………..
(& i want to see if if clashes with my decor……)
javier
July 5, 2009 at 7:38 pm
@gudbuytjane:
Seriously, Autumn’s into cis character witnesses now?
Well, as i learned at a very early age from watching Heathers, after you’ve backstabbed all your friends you have to make new ones. When you’re desperate to make new friends, you might make some less-than-stellar choices.
Apologies if i have inadvertently “weaponized” any part of this conversation.
algormortis
July 6, 2009 at 7:20 am
Well, I tried asking Pam nicely and instead she apparently wore out her “bold” and “underline” keys to say, paraphrased, “look, I don’t fucking care what effect it has on trans people, YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE, YOU DISRESPECTFUL DECEPTIVE PERSON.”
Ah, well.
Here’s another of those timelines of events which Pam and Autumn hate so much.
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 7:46 am
Yeah, but you’re not banned, you just can’t post comments!
As gudbuytjane put it the other day as we were walking down the street, “It’s fucking newspeak.”
I suggest you just remove some of the words from her reply, Kynn. Basically, Pam just doesn’t care about trans people.
algormortis
July 6, 2009 at 7:52 am
Still can’t comment there, even from work – so it’s not just my IP. Sent an email – no reply. I do understand that there are probably no few emails being sent, so I’m not really expecting anything super soon and I’m not taking a 24(ish) turn around on a email as a personal snub (yet).
I would like to mention that with all the hullabaloo going on – I frakkin’ amazed that people are STILL asking what “Cis” means in the middle of threads where it has been beat to death. I’m to the point that if I did have posting abilities I’d be tempted to ask “what is gay?” or “What is a Homophobe?” “Are they really AFRAID?” *grumble to self*
rioTgirl
July 6, 2009 at 12:36 pm
BTW.. what’s a girl gotta do to get a tea cozy? And.. I wonder if cafe Press could make a QT cozy.. the mind wanders after lunch….
rioTgirl
July 6, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Once you’ve declared “cis” to be “weaponized” terminology, you basically give the cis bigots free rein to condemn anyone who uses it, in any context — including the way Autumn did.
Karma’s sting is pretty wicked.
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I can’t post there either anymore and I don’t know why; no warnings, no explanation, nothing. Its not my IP either because my partner can post fine.
alang
July 6, 2009 at 3:01 pm
we know why that is, alang. they assumed that i was trans because i used the pronoun “we” without realizing it, and then when i apologized for going off on Kim for making that assumption (not because it’s somehow insulting, but because it’s the same damn thing as when people assume i’m black if i argue against racism), they then assumed that i was cis, and became very… very… polite. and suggested i post a diary (which i admit i found confusing).
and at the same time, they were busy booting all those identified trans people who dared argue with them.
nope, not a bunch of ‘phobes over at PHB, not at all :-p
bugland
July 6, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Hey, Kevinchi, if you’re still able to use Pam’s House Blend (because you’re not a trans person or supportive of trans people, apparently), can you ask Pam why she scrubbed a bunch of comments in order to protect Autumn’s friend Kim Pearson?
Actually, you might not want to do that — you may lose all posting rights, as alang, rioTgirl, and several others have found.
There’s a price for standing up against cissexism. The cis people (and whatever token trans person they can drag along) will make you pay that price, relentlessly.
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 4:32 pm
The scrubbing was done at Kim’s request.
She suddenly realized what she’d gotten herself into and asked they be stripped and her account at PHB erased.
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 6:10 pm
interestingly enough — I did not ask for my comments to be scrubbed, and yet an entire sequence was erased.
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 6:18 pm
some of mine are gone also.
I really try to be even tempered and try to see as many perspectives as I can. I used to mod a REALLY busy heated political MB and was fairly well respected for being fair and honest in my modding. I’m not one to pop off without a good explanation.
That said
This is really pissing me off.
rioTgirl
July 6, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I emailed them and just asked why I couldn’t post and suddenly hey, i can post again! And I got a email reply saying that if I had just joined in less than 3 days, that there was a 3 day wait period before one could post. Only I joined in june and had already made several comments. hmmmm.
alang
July 6, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Dyss, I have a copy of said page.
I wonder why comments are being deleted.
Lisa Harney
July 6, 2009 at 6:48 pm
…so much for the “free speech experiment”. Whoops.
z
July 6, 2009 at 7:00 pm
In following up, several of my comments in three sequences (that is, all my replies in a chain) were deleted.
The one you saw, Lisa, was part of a large chain surrounding Brandi Parker, and all of her posts int he chain were removed as well.
I suspect that since I was banned “officially” for having said I was cuter than her (which was not civil), and that I used her posts later to categorically establish that she is indeed a bigot (thus creating a potential for Autumn having defended a bigot) that it would be better if they simply vanished.
I haven’t had a chance to do anything today and read much (perhaps a total of 20 minutes online today), so I don’t know why this is happening, but its just furthering the sum total of mistakes.
If I could guess, it would be that they were working on setting things up for “civility day”, lol.
But, as my bf says, it appears the secret moderator is Mr Smith. Which is a reference to Winston Smith, the lead character in 1984.
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 7:16 pm
ok, in checking it out, it was kim’s removal affecting me.
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showComment.do?commentId=151432
I know the software — Pam’s not lying, that is indeed how it works.
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 7:21 pm
… you mean O’Brien — Winston was the “hero” of the novel.
z
July 6, 2009 at 7:22 pm
ah — to be frank, I don’t know what I mean — he’s the one who knows it, lol. I haven’t read any Orwell since 1982, and I’m glad of it. (I’ve often suggested a corollary to Godwin’s law regarding Orwell).
And I’ll go with yours :D
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 7:29 pm
hmm may have to reread the book again then
i did read it several years before 1984
was his response, lol
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Oh, Pam. Whatever.
Kim Pearson requested that her account be deleted from the Blend this AM (that is different from being banned; the account remains dormant). When an account is deleted, Soapblox’s software then deletes all of the user’s parent comments and nukes the nested child comments made by anyone else; that’s an unfortunate limitation of the software. When a user is banned, the comments are preserved. I confirmed Kim’s request with her this AM.
BTW, skeptics don’t have to believe me about the software platform issue, Paul Preston at Soapblox.net will confirm this.
What a trainwreck.
gudbuytjane
July 6, 2009 at 7:56 pm
I I I can’t seem to look away.
And note the silence on trans related issues. How, um, quaint.
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 7:58 pm
I think the all comments deleted when account is deleted is true, and I think it’s come up before.
It’s kind of regressive, technically, that it deletes all responses to the deleted comments, though. I don’t know how wordpress handles it, but LJ just deletes the comment while leaving everything else intact, and if you delete the account, the comments remain.
Lisa Harney
July 6, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Pam is right about the software – it’s pretty common on MB software that an account deletion will remove all traces of a user. Now that I look at the comments of mine hat are missing, they were all responding to Kim’s need for cookies and demands for “constructive comments”.
rioTgirl
July 6, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Yeah.
Also, there might be reasons to design it that way vs. designing it, say, like LJ.
Could see levels of deletion, and making deletion available to users (although the way it is on LJ can allow for extra drama, but also for temporarily taking your stuff offline to avoid it).
Lisa Harney
July 6, 2009 at 8:40 pm
From a design perspective, they were probably just thinking
“If the member is removed, then all the account links in the comments won’t work and broken links are bad. So we’ll remove those comments.
Well now these comments are pointing to another comment as the parent that doesn’t exist anymore. That’s likely to cause an error. So we’ll remove those as well”
For cleanliness, it makes sense. For practicality, it’s drama waiting to happen (already happening).
That being said, Pam likely already knew that the system works that way.
cere
July 6, 2009 at 8:48 pm
I’m pretty sure the software is designed that way because often when people delete their accounts on a site, they ask for all traces of their presence be erased as well. This would just make an admin’s job easier to not have to manually delete content – or if someone’s account was deleted for SPAM or trolling you can wipe out all the stupid in one action.
From a board admin’s perspective it is probably really useful 90% of the time it’s used and only rarely (like now) would it even be noticed.
rioTgirl
July 6, 2009 at 8:52 pm
@Lisa @rioTgirl
Oh, I don’t doubt that is a known issue with the software, I just don’t believe that her account wasn’t deleted for that very reason.
Why does Kim Pearson get to decide what stays and goes when PHB won’t take down information about a trans woman long after any point Pam might have wanted to make was made?
I’m not going to let this “technical difficulties” derail keep from the real point: Kim Pearson is the transphobic and cis-privileged things she said. She could have retracted or apologized, but she instead tried to have it erased.
gudbuytjane
July 6, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Err, typo…
Kim Pearson and the transphobic and cis-privileged things she said.
gudbuytjane
July 6, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I asked Spaulding if she would remove my account(s) if I asked, which would include her post outing me. She replied with this:
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 9:23 pm
And of course the commission of transphobic/cissexist comments by a leading cis activist for trans rights? That will disappear from the Internet and there won’t be any sort of update outlining what happened. They just silently disappear, without PDFs made.
Because Kim is a friend of Autumn, and I am not. (In fact, I’m inexplicably Autumn’s whipping girl for reasons that have never been explained.)
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Spaulding has redacted most of the information from the screenshot, after I chewed her out in email. No apology for her actions, of course, and hey, wasn’t Pam herself the one stating that once you put something on the Internet, you can’t un-put it?
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Here’s what she bitterly told me when she redacted the information:
Thing is, I actually changed my Dreamwidth profile like yesterday or something. It now says:
What was that again about a “sad straw man”?
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Oh, crap, didn’t close a tag.
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Re: Kynn’s identifying info snafu
I think Pam has been watching too much Bill O’Reilly… gaze too long into the abyss, and all that…
Claire
July 6, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Well, I was going to say anyone, but I shall now amend that to anyone who hasn’t pissed them off, is supposedly able to request deletion.
Now that I’m not only awake, but very well fed (lobster and steak. I cooked. Me and another trans woman. It was good. How can a man not like steak?), I can rise to the evening’s labors.
I was going to write this privately to Lisa, but I’ve thought better of that and so simply put this out in the open.
I am also a friend of Kim’s. Indeed, the day of the 4th, I was at a wonderful little celebration put on by Michael Brown (a transman) and his wife (a ciswoman) locally here.
Kim was there. As were several others who I think really highly of because they are all sharp cookies, lol.
Kim, however, had been sucked into this by the constant phone calls, texts, tweets, and other assorted stuff that were being hurled at her.
In short, she was being manipulated by someone who, in my *professional* (not personal) opinion, is in need of serious therapy in order to work on various aspects of passive aggressive behavior and co-dependency disorder.
I could, if pressed, delineate examples of such. They are quite available.
Given that Kim had only met this person at the beginning of June, I think that I can say, hopefully without fear of pissing her off, that she was not truly friends with them — at least not to the degree of friendship that I am with her.
I will say that Kim was fucked from the get go the moment she made a posting and it was under Said Individuals account. That created an impression of complicity at a point where emotional context is more relevant to this point that I am making.
I know, firsthand, as a result, that the request for deletion was made, and that the reasoning behind it was one of separation from and disavowal with said person.
Who, I should note, in light of my opening statement, has not actually fulfilled the intended goal, and, therefore, has not fully erased all of Kim’s posts.
I am not defending Kim’s words or her actions, I am merely stating what I do know. Given that my actions thus far are more related to calling the unnamed apostate individual various foul and unpleasant words under my breath, it would be wrong of me to do so within my own moral and ethical system.
And as a psychopath, my own moral and ethical system holds more weight with me than any other, lol.
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Kynn, I could be wrong, but I perceive it not so much as who is friends with who, but as the clear operation of power dynamics. Your actions are defined as this horrible crime, while the practice of transphobic/cissexist comments by a cis person claiming to be an ally to trans people is met with cooperation and accommodation.
I mention this because I see so much effort over there to spin this as a non-political trivial interpersonal drama rather than the operation of a deeply political transphobic/cissexist system played out in these interactions.
I suspect that the friendship patterns on display are likely another related manifestation of the overarching power dynamics, and less of a direct cause of the actions unfolding now … if that makes any sense.
Michelle
July 6, 2009 at 11:10 pm
dyssonance, my observation of Kim from my limited interactions with her in the now-deleted threads is that she displayed the “trans ally” version of the White Savior role. From what you perceive and know, was that a product of the manipulation you describe?
Michelle
July 6, 2009 at 11:17 pm
@michelle
yes. I realize this could be construed as an agency argument, but in taking my own feelings outof the situation and applying it strictly as a function of my professional efforts, I do see it as such.
That particular role doesn’t work well for her, or her son. I’m fairly close to both (decidedly closer than AS), and that’s not how she operates normally.
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 11:20 pm
@lisa — can you forward me a copy of it? I may need it in the near future…. lol
dyssonance
July 6, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Yeah, that’s true. Ultimately what it comes down to is that cis privilege protects itself; that’s part of how privilege works, of any kind.
Privilege is set up so that people who have it are not able to see the concerns of those who do not as “valid,” unless they put a lot of work into it.
I am really thankful for the cis people here and elsewhere who really do make an effort.
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Given that the PHB’s software removes not only the remarks of the person requesting the deletion, but the remarks of anyone who replied to that person, or to anyone replying to those, I think the only responsible thing for Pam to do in such a circumstance — rather than erase what might have been good, valid points made in good faith by other people because one individual decided to flounce off — is to simply decline to delete that individual’s account.
Kynn
July 6, 2009 at 11:57 pm
i hope this isn’t an incredibly obvious question, but as i haven’t a whole lot of experience dealing with the LGBT community (or any other community for that matter), i’m totally at a loss here.
is the current situation at PHB the result of cis privilege or of blatant transphobia? by this i mean that while the general atmosphere might be one of privilege, where most people might not know why they act the way they do, the folks “in charge” are being actively hostile (i am speaking of Pam here, to the extent that i’ve noticed more of what she’s personally said, but it may be other people too that i’m not aware of). algormortis said several posts back that Pam just doesn’t care about trans people. my impression is that she cares, all right, in the same way that John Avarosis seems to care- they really, really resent the fact that trans people are part of “their movement”. i realize that the word “deceptive” has been used in various contexts in this thread, but is it actually possible that someone who purports to be aware of trans issues would use that word as Pam did without knowing how it would sound? did it sound as bad to anyone else as it did to me?
i’ve been telling myself that there is, or ought to be, a difference between cisprivilege and outright transphobia. i’ve always thought privilege as being a matter of ignorance rather malice, except to the extent that society can be malicious. have i misunderstood the nature of privilege, or is the LGB”T” mainstream as transphobic as it seems right now, and if it is, how are trans people supposed to be part of that mainstream?
i’m sorry if this is off topic, offensive or just mind-numbingly stupid, but it’s been bugging me.
bugland
July 7, 2009 at 12:24 am
I would guess that it’s probably a mix of both, though probably slightly more cis privilege — it is hard to tell the motives of some people, but the effect is undoubtedly the same.
z
July 7, 2009 at 1:05 am
Changed to show 100 comments per page.
I’m not happy with it defaulting to newest, but no option to change that.
Bugland,
I personally don’t like to speculate on what’s going on in someone’s mind when they say and do transphobic things (or cis privileged things). Generally, it shifts the conversations onto things you can only guess and can’t ever prove, and it really lets people off the hook. I prefer to focus on what they said or did instead of what they might be thinking.
Lisa Harney
July 7, 2009 at 1:16 am
that’s a good point, Lisa
z
July 7, 2009 at 1:26 am
I would add to that statement of Lisa’s that you should never go outside a person’s post unless it is to another post in the same thread.
Focus entirely on what that that person is saying in that post with attention to the context of what the two of you are discussing and the overall context of the particular thread itself.
Tactically, this places you in control of the dialog, and allows you to give your full attention to the particular poster’s words.
One of the most common mistakes is to try and figure out what the poster “really” means. This is always an error, since you do not have the power to read the posters mind, and if you step outside of the bounds of the actual words the poster typed, you are immediately making assumptions.
When I get into a serious argument or exchange with someone, I pay very careful attention to strictly what they *say* — the words they fling at me. I do not pay much attention to what I think they are doing by flinging those words at me, or what sort of motivation they may have in general, because everything I need to be told is generally going to be present in the statement.
This then allows me to use their own words against them, which they cannot readily deny, and engage in active listening practices that allow me to either eviscerate them or to educate them more effectively.
I also follow a few basic rules that are really helpful, in my expereince:
1 – Always be open and utterly, ruthlessly honest (that is, never go in with ulterior motives, Fr one, that screws them up, since they will suspect it, and for another it allows you to avoid the usual ugliness that comes from being less than above board)
2 – Use examples from your own life to demonstrate points, never someone else’s. This creates an empathic relationship, and forces them to stop seeing you as an impersonal object.
3 – Ask questions if you do not understand something. This is the most powerful tool, and the manner of asking questions is somewhat important. Don’t ask rhetorical questions. Ever. They create presumptions, and you want to stay away from anything not established thus far. Don’t ask entrapping questions (“are you gay all the time, or just when it suits you?” or “on a scale of 1 to 10, how stupid are you?”). Ask genuine *why* questions. Why is the sort of thing that keeps them unbalanced. “Why did you say this?” or “Why have you said this part here?”
4 – Offer ways out. This one is downright evil if you are very good, but always important, since often someone will agree with you or have lost, but they are in a situation where they have lost face. You can offer them a way out that *you* select, thus forcing them into a corner a little more, or you can offer them freedom (which, at some point, you have to do) by suggesting some other way of looking at things that is close to their original viewpoint, but perhaps not quite where you want them to be.
5 – Be Friendly. Friendly is not the same as nice, but it does mean doing things like asking how they are, commenting on how they *might* be feeling (best done with a personal example), referencing personal events in their lives you are aware of that they hold as important to some degree. “Hi, Halfwit, how’s the kid?” This again keeps the off balance, as suddenly you are interested in them as people, and usually they will talk about their particulars openly and more relaxed. Often, you can spot inconsistencies in their life and their statements as a result, thus gaining greater leverage.
This set of rules will generally give you more of an upper hand, both in terms of the readers outside the immediate discussion, and in terms of allowing you to get your point across, regardless of what your intent may be.
Key active listening skills include rephrasing (When you said X, did you mean this?), structural parsing, and repeating (You said x, I said y).
If I could make one other suggestion, it is never attack people for piss poor typing skills or grammar. If you can’t figure out what they are saying, ask, rather than attack.
IT a passive tool, but allows for a cleaner and more effective approach.
Please don’t violate Godwin’s law, either. I would extend it to all of world war two.
dyssonance
July 7, 2009 at 5:37 am
why don’t flame wars ever wind up with someone being compared to Kaiser Wilhelm?
world war one never gets any love.
cigfran
July 7, 2009 at 5:56 am
@Lisa
I prefer to focus on what they said or did instead of what they might be thinking.
I agree, which is why I made a point of fixing my typo to “and the things she said.” I try to keep it about actions and words, but there is a point I think when you’re allowed to cut to the shorthand of a label. After saying a lot of racist things I’m going to call someone a racist, and not worry about framing it so they are only critiqued on points.
@dyssonance
I agree those are all valuable discussion points for a civil debate. I don’t think that is the only way to highlight the issues you are addressing.
I’m not trying to reach the majority of posters at PHB, and I haven’t tried for a long time. I don’t think the Fritzes or Pollyannas or any of the people vehemently shouting down the idea of cis* privilege are going to have a sudden paradigm shift, at least not on that thread.
The audience I think of when I am engaging people online in situations like PHB’s trainwreck aren’t the posters, but those reading. I will give the posters enough rope, then I will write about it. I have had quite a few people email me during the Pamsplosion; they see the dynamics playing out as they are, and they have become supporters of the position of trans women because of that.
You can disagree and say you don’t like my approach, but then we start down that slippery slope to tone arguments… :) Seriously, though, I think it takes all sorts of approaches, and I am glad to have your voice on that thread (as I am glad to have Lisa’s, and was glad to have Kynn’s).
gudbuytjane
July 7, 2009 at 7:47 am
I have been following this charlie foxtrot for a while and I don’t feel it is my place to comment one way or the other.
That said I’m going to be a hypocrite and while I really do not mean to offend I just want to get this out of the way, for Kim Pearson to start off her comments by including “Shut up and own up to your shit.” and then ending her involvement by having everything she said with that account deleted does not leave me with a high opinion of her in regards to that specific action.
Narcoleptic Kitty
July 7, 2009 at 8:46 am
Privilege or protection?
Between this situation and a very intense struggle in my day to day life related to violence and institutionally-granted power, I’m starting to question whether the term “privilege” functions to possibly obscure what is actually going on in the power dynamics. I’m posting about it here, here, but am not sure it will be of use, so apologies if it is functionally or otherwise OT.
It seems to me that the word privilege is used to sort of describe protection from a very violent environment. Lists about privilege seem to be about what kinds of violence/harm won’t happen to those who have privilege.
What I observe going on with “privilege” is that all of this takes place live inside an entity (environment) that is extremely violent as part of its essence. It offers certain deals for some inside it. It offers to provide certain protections from its own violence. In return it requires those who accept the deal to be intimate with it in certain ways and to act as its agents in doing violence/harm to those who are not under its protection on that particular axis.
Experiencing violence and harm at the hands of this entity is the default in what we’re in, because this is an intrinsically violent environment, at its core violent. Protection from violence/harm is deviation from that default — something has to be done for that protection to exist and maintain. Having some people/groups protected in some ways seems necessary because the thing needs agents to do its work.
But still, the protection is what requires something, while the violence is the default that happens if nothing is done.
So the question from this angle is: “What enables those who are protected to be and stay protected from the violence?”
I feel like in practice sometimes, the use of privilege to describe this protection makes those who are protected the norm or default somehow. This removes the necessity to see the underlying dynamics of these deals (because as used, privilege is something that just is, and the focus goes to privileged people’s ignorance of the privilege for example).
Also in practice the use of privilege as descriptor seems to leave no way to really look at the deep deep insanity that comes with a deal where the very thing that does the violence comes along to protect some people from its own violence if they agree to its terms.
From this angle, the dynamic isn’t so much ignorance as it is something deeper and more twisted (which of course won’t be something people will admit, but can still become visible when you are experiencing harm at their hands). Which I personally have found useful to understand in experiencing violence/harm at the hands of someone who has made one of these deals in a layer of violence where I do not even have the choice to make such a deal.
And PS I agree with Lisa and dyssonance that focusing on what may be going on inside someone’s mind is not a good thing to do. Better to focus on the actions.
Michelle
July 7, 2009 at 12:33 pm
@Michelle: I think you’re definitely on to something, given that civilization has, relies on, and is founded on, immense amounts of violence, and the further up various hierarchies you go, the more you’re shielded from it (and the more “tragic” it is if you’re exposed). I also think that your model would go into the ways that people actively, yet subconsciously, maintain their position in the hierarchy – Cis people keep their behavior legible in the binary, men perform masculinity, straight people go to great efforts to not seem queer, etc. It works for gender/sex/sexuality. If we generalize further, I think it falls down a bit for race – I don’t get privilege/protection because I’m white, I’m white because I get privilege/protection. But that gets into larger scale stuff about colonization and imperialism, and there have been societies that shielded themselves a bit (but not much) through “westernization”. Of course, I may not see the things white people do to maintain their whiteness, because I’m white, even as much as I can see how my ancestors became white.
It definitely works for maintaining class standing, though.
anarchafemme
July 7, 2009 at 1:07 pm
e-mailed to me by my 81 yr old grama:
Anger management
Husband says: When I get mad at you,
you never fight back. How do you control your anger?
Wife says: I clean the toilet…
Husband says: How does that help?
Wife says: I use your Toothbrush…….
(ps
rio Tgirl
if you want you can have my teacosy when it gets here…..)
j
javier
July 7, 2009 at 5:22 pm
[...] on June 29, Lisa at Questioning Transphobia responded to all this by posting Cis is hostile terminology? Really? In it she reminded people: Cis is a neutral term applied to people who aren’t trans. [...]
The Thang Blog » Are we really doing this again? (OR: The Great Trans Blogging Shakeup of 2009, pt 2)
July 7, 2009 at 10:30 pm
anarchafemme — whatever you are talking about in your comment (7/7/09 at 1:07pm) is deeply different from what I tried to write about that you responded to. I think that’s my fault/responsibility. I already knew before posting that for me, these topics are always a translation from vivid sense-perception into words that can very easily be changed into shapes and textures that are alien to me.
Michelle
July 7, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Holy whoa. I pop in and out of PHB, but I hadn’t seen this prat parade. How terrible to just shut down people who are being perfectly reasonable. :/
Privilege means not having to deal with the people who challenge your elevated, unearned, and largely unchecked status. Someone can hold it up to your face, but you’re free to turn your head and look away from the unpleasant truth. It’s sad that so many of these discussions turn into arguments. It’s so important to try to see things from another person’s point of view and remember that everyone deserves respect and validation. Some people are more concerned with being right/winning than actually getting along with their fellow human.
Tangential– anarchafemme, I’m not following your statement:
“I don’t get privilege/protection because I’m white, I’m white because I get privilege/protection.”
Can you please explain what you mean?
Samia
July 10, 2009 at 5:59 pm
@Samia: it stems from how every oppression functions a little differently – who is viewed as white by society has been expanded over time, and the way race works is that while stuff like gender, dis/ability are also social constructs, race is one defined by arbitrarily selected and constantly shifting traits (in a different way than other social constructs). People get defined as white because they are privileged in terms of race rather than people first being defined as white and then getting privilege from it (i.e., the ethnicities I come from and my appearance are privileged, thus they are white).
anarchafemme
July 10, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I think I understand where you’re coming from, but I have some reservations about the wording. I didn’t understand what you meant because people receive race privilege based on others’ evaluation of their physical features. So in a way, isn’t it true that people get privilege by virtue of being white (that is, presenting physically as a member of one of the ‘white’ ethnicities)? In real life, do people stop and ask if you’re privileged before referring to you as white? I promise I’m trying not to be dense. :/
Samia
July 12, 2009 at 7:17 am
@Samia: but physical features aren’t race (and are only a part of racial privilege). Basically, I’m receiving privilege because of my features, cultural traits, how I speak, etc., and then because I’m treated in a racially privileged way, I’m read as white.
It’s a little more apparent to me because I’m of Italian descent, and so I’m definitely white, but there are people out there who look a lot like me and other Italians who are not viewed as white (the lines in the Mediterrenean are pretty arbitrary). The ways they aren’t privileged are due to their ethnic background, cultural cues, etc., and thus they’re viewed as not white.
Race is different than other social constructs in that, unlike gender, whiteness doesn’t come from a sense of internal identity at all, just the arbitrary set of appearance, cultural, and ethnic cues. I kind of see it as I identify with the ethnicities I come from, because of those ethnicities, I’m privileged in society, and thus, I’m white.
It has a lot to do with the history of racism/white supremacy in that as ethnic groups have gotten more accepted, they’ve been redefined as white (most recent being Italians and Ashkenazi Jews) – white isn’t a list of traits, it’s more a list of “people from these backgrounds who look this way get privilege and we call them white”; it’s continually changed itself as an effort to maintain both white supremacy and to be used as a tool to keep society divided in the US, in ways that “man” hasn’t changed.
anarchafemme
July 12, 2009 at 11:59 am
Thank you anarchafemme for answering and Samia for asking – This little off shoot is very elucidating and when i really learn something on a blog like this its such a gift. This stuff is important if not critical to identifying the sources and roots/intersections slight variations of the mechanisms of power and oppression in its plethora of layed and ubiquitous manifestations.
proudprogressive
July 12, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Thank you anarchafemme for answering and Samia for asking – This little off shoot is very elucidating and when i really learn something on a blog like this its such a gift. This stuff is important if not critical to identifying the sources and roots/intersections slight variations of the mechanisms of power and oppression in its plethora of layers and ubiquitous manifestations.
proudprogressive
July 12, 2009 at 4:54 pm
anarchafemme, thank you for your reply. I think I’m having issues because people who benefit from white privilege must be read as white in day to day life in order to receive it. The way you present in real life makes it possible for you to experience white privilege, no? I’m not sure we’re disagreeing here, but your wording (that privilege confers the status of whiteness and not the other way around) only seems correct in a larger societal and political sense. Society has “decided” that a certain privileged status will be conferred upon the group of people we call “white,” yes. But individual people will read you as white first, then confer privilege accordingly. I feel it’s important to remember this, that’s all.
I feel like sometimes people make white privilege into this theoretical thing that doesn’t actually take place everyday in many ways large and small. I do apologize if I’m coming off as nitpicking.
Samia
July 12, 2009 at 9:38 pm
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