violent-darts:

the-void-people-scream-into:

shinelikethunder:

You want to know how we got Conservative Protestantism in a Gay Hat?

We got it through “shut up, check your privilege, listen, and amplify.”

Through “you don’t get an opinion on this” and “educate yourself on why I’m right before you dare claim the right to participate in this conversation.”

Through “any expression of marginalized anger is ipso-facto justified, hdu tone-police it.”

We got it by refusing to allow anyone to question the conclusions that people–fallible humans raised in conservative societies–drew from the events of their individual lives, as long as they threw the words “lived experience” around and claimed the relevant group memberships.

We got it through every single social norm put in place to silence criticism of minority voices. To automatically boost the credibility of anyone claiming to speak on behalf of the oppressed. To dismantle every vector through which that credibility could be thrown into doubt. To pressure people into taking credible speakers on faith and becoming enforcers for views they hadn’t even been fully persuaded of.

We got it because we stopped tolerating doubt of anything dressed in a legit-looking gay hat.

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So how can we do this better? I mean no malice or anything, but all of your quotes came from well meaning spaces to make us listen to marginalized people instead of speaking over them, so should we replace them, and how?

“Shut up, check your privilege, listen, amplifie” was made to make people less likely to go into the defensive immediately and making themself the victim, without considering what other people know and have gone through to make such claims in the first place.

“You don’t get an opinion on this” and “Educate yourself on why I’m right before you dare claim the right to participate in this conversation” came about because marginalized people are near constantly being over-talked in debates, arguments and conversation by people with more cultural and constitutional privilege, regardless how little or how much they know of the subject at hand. This (and other factors) makes us stepping over the same basic step over and over again instead of being able to move forward and being able to come to new conclusions and understandings. It’s like if a group of trans people disgusted their research and experiences regarding healthcare through their hormone treatment, but they would have to stop everything they talked about because a cis person came and said “Why does this matter when trans people don’t even exist in the first place???”. It’s a bad example I know, but I hope you understand where I’m coming from, and if not let me know and I’ll try explaining it better.

“Any expression of anger of marginalized anger is ipso-facto justified, hdu tone-police it” comes from a mix of 2 points.

1. How different cultures de-humanize specific marginalized groups, like black people and latin americans in usa and rromani people in europe, by correlating them expressing strong emotions to “animalistic” or “monstrous” reactions; subconsciously or consciously. At best it makes people around them not take these marginalized groups seriously and at worst can result in people of these groups getting in danger because people around them feel like they need to defend themselves and their communities, like through police brutality. English isn’t my first language and I hope I’m making myself clear, but if there’s any confusion about what I’m trying to convey, feel free to ask!

2. The other reason this way of thinking came to be is just how this site is build. Tumblr is a mix of a social site and a personal blog site, with no clear line between the two. So if someone wants to treat this as a personal blog that they feel comfortable ranting in and they write lets say “Fuck this week cis fucking sucks!!! 👿👿👿”, they can’t control if someone that follows them sees this post social site-ish and reblogs. All it takes is one reblog and then the ranter have no control over who sees it or how it’s seen.

You likely already knew all of this but what I’m trying to get at is that, in contexts of this site with our personal and collective knowledge, these were the best least harmful social rules we could agree on. So what social rules should we use instead that acknowledge these points problems I just described while countering this wave of conservative Protestantism? How do we make sure these new social rules will be abused as little as possible, or at very least make sure the abusers of the new system are as easily spotted as possible?

I don’t want you to feel like you have to have all the answers; I don’t think only one person can have all the answers. But I also think criticism without solutions can only take us so far. I truly don’t mean to hurt anyone through this respond so if anything I said made it seem that way or was just confusing, please let me know so I can explain and/or apologize as needed

So one of the big things that needs to be grappled with is there isn’t one, single, rigidly-consistent, universally applicable social rules that can Always Be Followed with no problems. 

These don’t exist anywhere. They don’t. There is no area of human endeavour and interaction where this is even possible, and where seeking this doesn’t end up with, well, basically the problems we have. 

Trying to replace even those currently identified as Causing Problems with NEW rigid, unified, rigidly consistent, universally applicable social rules will simply cause new and different problems. And that includes rigid, uncritical adherence to a universally applied ideal of “tolerance” or “nuance”. 

There’s no situation wherein people get to opt out of making an actual, thoughtful decision about what you’re engaging with and what you believe. 

This is really stressful to realize, mind you? For one thing, a lot of the OTHER reason that we’ve gotten here is that most people really want to be good people? So they want nice clear simple consistent Rules about How To Be Good. 

For another, the implied flipside of this is that we never get to opt out of being aware that both we and other people exist within a matrix of continually changing circumstances and situations, we all have to make judgements based on our best guesses, etc. 

The things OP described are seductive because they are nice hard, fast rules. How do you Be A Good Person? You identify your Position on All Axes of Privilege-Vs-Oppression, and then you identify where the other person is. If they are More Marginalized, you shut up, don’t argue, support, and accept what they say as Truth, accepting all behaviour on their part. If you are More Marginalized, they have to do this for you or they are a Bad Person. There! Solved it! 

In order to get out of this kind of binary-rigid stuff where we just flip things and maintain the same toxic dynamics you have to, well. Engage with the fact that the universe is not a rigid simple binary. 

Where people usually go wrong with THIS is that they then go “okay so everything is nuance and no judgement can be made???” which is … just a different hat for a rigid application of one-size-fits-all Social Rules. IRONICALLY. 

The practical upshot is that while you CAN’T have Hard Fast Rules, you CAN usefully have “everything else being equal” rules. 

Everything else being equal, the tendency of society is to suppress marginalized voices (that’s what “marginalized” means), so everything else being equal, if you’re not a member of a marginalized group you should probably err on the side of listening to what they have to say, stepping hard on your own defensiveness, make sure you’re not playing a “gotcha” game where you decide you don’t have to listen to anything if it’s not “nice” enough, and that you’re not talking over insider voices. 

You can make guidelines like that. You just have to be aware that sometimes, all things AREN’T equal. 

Sometimes, even if someone is a member of a marginalized group, they are also wrong. Or a dick. Or selfish. Or self-focused to the point of narcissism. Or … any number of things, including sincere to the best of their understanding but that doesn’t mean OTHER people of the same identity don’t passionately disagree. 

And you’re always going to have to bring your JUDGEMENT to every situation to figure out if all things are equal or there’s another factor. And you’re gonna have to do the best you can, and sometimes you’ll be right and sometimes you’ll be wrong. And that’s being human.