Controversial opinion, apparently: Don’t hit children.
It teaches them to obey out of fear, instead of for good behavior’s sake.
Even then, it has mixed results and often makes defiant children.
It causes long-lasting psychological issues that follow them to adulthood.
It ruins your relationship with that child because they will not trust you.
To everyone in the notes and my messages defending hitting children because I’m “spoiled” or from a different culture, I am a legal adult and my mother still spanks me. If I sleep in on accident she has no problem picking me up out of bed and hitting my butt with a shoe. She says this is strong discipline that I need to mature.
If you think what my mother does is wrong, what is different between my and a small child’s rights to bodily autonomy and a home without fear?
I would also like to say to everyone in the notes that was hit as a child, for or against:
You did not deserve it, under any circumstance, and I’m sorry you were hurt like that. Parents should not hit or otherwise physically harm their children and I hope you are okay, and if you aren’t, I hope you recover.
I can’t believe that in the Year of Our Lord 2017 there are still people who not only spend significant time on SJ Tumblr/Twitter but even claim to have a cultural studies background, who believe that “I have gay/black/autistic friends” is a legitimate and complete rebuttal to accusations of bigotry
I… kinda think it is, though?
I mean, I’m sure there is context here I don’t know, but honestly… taking the SJ thing that says “your friends are not an argument” too seriously leads to a REALLY unpleasant thing where members of the group who disagree with SJ are treated as if they are not real members of the group.
With POC, I’ve seen people demand they post selfies because “only a white person would think that’s ok”
I… I’m tired of seeing people treated this way, so my mind changed about “never ask your friends. Who cares what your friends think?”
Me! That’s why I’m friends with them.
I had a big long response until I realized we’re talking about completely different things here.
You’re talking about “I don’t think that’s homophobic. I asked my gay friend and he thinks it’s ok” or “My black friend doesn’t think I’m racist.” Stuff that actually takes into account the opinions and agency of those friends. And yeah, I think those arguments can be valid.
But that’s not what I was referring to in this post, or what most people are referring to when they complain about the Black Friends Argument. It’s the one that’s literally just “I can’t be a racist because I have black friends.”
I don’t think I should have to explain what’s wrong with that? Like, I’m bi and I had homophobic religiously-conservative friends growing up. I’ve had POC friends who’ve dated people who turned out to be pretty racist. In both cases, these opinions were voiced, but even if they weren’t, it’s pretty fucking shitty to assume “person of a marginalized group enjoys my presence sometimes” absolves you of all bigotry. That denies the agency and complexity and variety among people from marginalized groups.
I know in the specific context too that this is a person who has received flack from their LGBTQ+ friends for their homophobic opinions, so using them for “how dare people accuse me of homophobia!” is gross.
Ahhh okay. Yeah. “My friends complain about this sometimes, but they’re still my friends so it doesn’t matter” is gross. And not the thing I read this as.
When I’ve seen “don’t say ‘but my x friend says it’s ok!’” it’s usually been on LJ, which means in SJ dedicated communities, in a context like:
Long standing member of community: Drag is ~so transphobic~ Newbie: I… thought a lot of trans people started in that community? What do you mean? LMC: lol I’m not here to educate you. Newbie: …wtf. I went off and asked my bestie Kaylee, a trans woman, about this and her response was “omg lol! half my friends are queens!” LMC: Your friend Kaylee is just putting up with you. She’s lying to suck up to the cis.
I do think there’s something of a point here–just because your friend isn’t offended by something doesn’t necessarily mean most people aren’t. But i feel like it gets made in ways that set up hierarchies that equate “most offended” with “most representative” without checking the facts.
Yeah, my perspective on this is similar to @fierceawakening’s. There’s different things people mean when they say “my autistic friend” (or whatever…), some of which are positive and some of which are defensive and tokenistic.
If a neurotypical person wants to know what it’s like to have ADHD, say, they need to learn that from people with ADHD. So, who are they going to ask? The people who are both most available and least scary to ask will be their friends with ADHD. So of course their first step will be to consult their friends. That’s good! Especially if they don’t stop there.
The other positive consequence is caring about people affected by an issue will make it seem more personal. So Bob the Straight Cis Dude can realize, “wow, it sucks that my gay friends can get beaten up and fired for who they love. I want to help change that so they can be safe and happy.”
Problems happen when:
1) Relatively privileged person treats having friends in x group as enough, and doesn’t try to listen and learn from them.
2) said person assumes without evidence that their friends are representative.
3) said person engages in selective listening. They listen to and support their friends when the friends agree with them. They ignore it when their friends disagree. Similarly, they only listen to others in the friend’s group when it supports their own point of view.
Also…Odds are, people from marginalized groups who become friends with clueless folks will probably be relatively thick-skinned and hard to offend. They might well not be representative. That doesn’t mean they’re not “real” members of their group or their opinions don’t matter, like the Discourse says. But it does mean it’s worth challenging people to do more than just make One Gay/Black/Autistic/etc. Friend.
I guess I’m trying to say, having autistic/LGBTQ+/etc friends doesn’t prevent someone from saying or doing something bigoted, but it might suggest they’re trying to do better. /Rambling
Spectrum brains: Takes in details, eventually arrives at context. Infodumps are HELPFUL.
Non-Spectrum brains: Takes in context, eventually absorbs details. Infodumps are OVERWHELMING.
When infodumps happen, for a lot of allistics, it’s like trying to fill a glass of water with a FIREHOSE.
They want a faucet. Low flow. Drink some water, then go back for more.
A lot of things that we complain about regarding allistics is that it looks like you take the conversational equivalent of two bricks, a wire, and some metal siding… and you somehow MacGyver a phone charger.
#that makes no sense #we can’t read your minds #WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS THING?
Disclaimers: Allistics have different rates at which they get overwhelmed by infodumps (especially after factoring in other ND disorders). Autistics have different rates at which they arrive at context. Some of this info might be useful/relatable to people not of the demographics explicitly stated. Some of this might be cultural as language/culture can affect such things as spatial and temporal processing.
further lightbulb:
WHAT THIS MEANS WHEN I TEACH
Me, Spectrum, teaching people at my dojo: SO, here is this combo, you do this and this, punches go like this, and place your foot here, and your body here, and your weight does this and this, your arms are here, and it all looks like THIS.
Class: OVERWHELMED WTF? (with the exception of a couple neuroatypicals who come up to me after class like YOU ARE MY FAVE TEACHER)
WHAT THIS MEANS WHEN I LEARN
Sensei: So you just do This! I just explained it!
Me: Uh… I need more details? OVERWHELMED WTF.
Sensei: Just do it! You gotta just try it!
Me: But… I don’t even understand the movement? Or what’s even happening?
Sensei: Ok watch again.
Me: RAPIDLY TRYING TO TAKE IN ALL THE VISUAL INFO SO I CAN MIMIC, I am great at mimicking unless there’s rotational movement. Thankful that my sensory processing disorder is audio not visual.
Also?
The natural way I write paragraphs: write the details, then come to the conclusion, then go back add in the first line
The natural way that people who say ‘read the first line of paragraphs to speedread’ think? maybe? (which never worked for me?): read the first line, read the details if still confused
Which is. possibly why they teach everyone to do both:
summary
detail
detail
detail
conclusion
That explains my whole life ever. (Although, I do have trouble with other people’s infodumps but then I have a kid on the spectrum and a kid and spouse with adhd so there tends to be a lot of infodumping in our house. That makes my overwhelm happen quickly if it’s all going on at once or in quick succession.)
This is really interesting!
Personally I find I learn best if it’s a combination of both approaches. If I’m given too many details without time to process them I get overloaded, but if I’m not given enough detail I get confused and have to push for more.
What works best for me is: Detail (”Foot here, like this”) Time to process detail (”Like this?” *Mimics*) More detail (”Yes. Now hands here. Like this”) Etc.
That way I’m being given all the details, but not all at once, so I still have time to process them without getting anxious about forgetting something. Actually using the details by practicing them or otherwise manipulating the information helps me process it better, too.
I do find that I tend to need more details than allistic students in classes, though. I try to ask questions to provide myself with context, but the instructor might say that he’s just trying to “give a high-level overview” so he doesn’t want to get into the details.
So I just have to remember the few details I have and forego the broader context I was aiming for.
in all seriousness though I do think that we have a general problem of like, Left ideas being great and people generally agreeing with them, but Left terms being something that has long been demonized and even when it hasn’t, it’s been obscured by a century plus of theorization.
in that way frankly it’s like a lot of other struggles- activists have to overcome the hurdle of people not even knowing what they’re talking about, and there’s a struggle for basic vocabulary to express the ideas.
richard wolff is just about the only anticapitalist activist I can think of who actively works to define his terms, and rephrases classical theory into modern, comprehensible language. in the spirit of that, here’s a few subsitutions I’ve found effective in my own conversations.
don’t say “worker”, say “employee”. not all workers are employees, but in a US context the lion’s share of them are. Similarly, don’t say “capitalist”, say “employer”. "the workers are exploited by their bosses" is a sentence from 1920. “Employers routinely find ways to screw over their employees” is just a basic fact everyone knows.
you gotta define what capitalism is. most people hear “capitalism” and they think “Free market”. While they’re related as of late, they’re not the same at all. Capital-ism is a system of resource production defined by capital-ists, who are people who own capital. What’s capital? It’s anything that can be used for production. A factory is capital. land is capital. Money generally isn’t capital, unless you’ve invested it
you also gotta distinguish between the market and capital. The market, on the other hand, is a method of resource exchange. Markets exist independently of capitalism: slave societies used markets to buy and sell slaves and other goods, despite the fact that slavery isn’t capitalism. Slavery has master and slave, not employer and employee.
you gotta distinguish between capitalists and the merely wealthy. i’ve met a lot of leftists who miss this one for some reason. a heart surgeon might be wealthy but they’re not necessarily a capitalist- they work for their income, and are highly compensated for that work. A landlord, on the other hand, is a capitalist (though not necessarily an employer), because their income comes from land that they own & the rent that they charge the people who live on it.
you gotta define what socialism and communism are. "the workers own the means of production" is vague and stale. “the employees of a company have just as much of a say in production and profit distribution as the CEOs and the shareholders” is better. Talking about “democratically-run enterprises” is another good way to phrase it.
you gotta be able to point out real-world examples of socialism. the mondragon corporation is the ur-example of course, but credit unions and food cooperatives are also good examples. there are many, many examples of socialist firms existing and thriving in competition with capitalist ones- all the while, treating both the employees and the communitiies they live in better. (Yes, you can have socialist and capitalist firms existing side-by-side!)
you gotta find ways to work with terrible definitions of socialism and communism. everyone and their dog has a terrible definition of socialism and communism, including actual governments which call themselves communist. the USSR, for example, called itself communist- but in its case, they considered the government to be a proxy for the people. so by the government owning all of the capital in the country, it was just as good as every individual citizen. in reality of course it was something closer to state capitalism- a handful of government bureaucrats owning and controlling all of the capital.
holy fucking shit THIS
In all seriousness – this is really useful advice. Get to the words that mean what you’re trying to say but don’t have a whole crapton of bad associations. So you can argue the actual point instead of getting distracted.
One of the hardest things about being a trans man was coming
to terms with the fact that I’m unlikely to ever pass as male. Even after 4+
years on hormones, with a crop of chest hair that will soon rival your hairy
uncle’s, I’m still consistently misgendered by strangers. It’s something that trans
male support spaces never acknowledge, because no one wants to start HRT if
they’re afraid they’ll end up… like me. It’s also not acknowledged in activist
spaces, because trans men who continue to experience misogyny are an
inconvenient snag in the anti-TERF discourse that says identity is everything. However,
I’ve found a lot of support from trans feminine people who also think we need
to deal better with nuance! Trans inclusive feminist is strong enough to cope
with our messy lived experiences, and it needs to do so if it wants to survive!
For a long time I just shut up and dealt with this alone. I was afraid to post
about my experiences on Tumblr because things can get nasty when you get called
out for bucking dominant social justice narratives. I certainly wanted to be aware of my
privilege! Maybe I just needed to shut up, to listen. So I did. And eventually,
I learned that the popular narratives are just too simplified to be useful for
folks like me. My existence is too messy, too complicated, and so I’ve been erased. This isn’t ok.
Sometimes I tried to talk about my problems it in trans
spaces, but trans men by and large don’t have the tools to talk about the
psychological effects of not passing. We don’t teach each other these skills because it requires us to confront extra layers of internalized transphobia. Instead, I just got unsolicited passing
tips and instructions to just “wait a bit longer.” Eventually, after years of
transition, I was too ashamed to show up to trans spaces and admit how long I
had been transitioning. It caused me a lot of pain and isolation. It still
does. Feeling excluded from cis society, feeling shoved under the rug in trans
spaces like a “failed” trans man, having my perspective erased in community discourse. And all the while, I navigate public space knowing that people
see me as a “woman” with obvious male secondary sex characteristics. Even with
my various other privileges, it limits my ability to travel and to participate
in public life.
So here’s a bunch of tips based on my experiences. It’s geared toward 1)
transmasculine people who don’t “pass” and 2) cis people and “passing” trans
men. (I’m not addressing transfeminine people mainly because I’ve not had major
problems with transfeminine people re: this stuff, plus it would be kind of
fucked up to ask them to do emotional labor for trans men when they are already dealing with an intensified version of this problem themselves.) Some of this is
applicable to AFAB nonbinary folks generally, but I’m focusing on my own
experience as a (nonbinary) trans man because I have never seen this issue
talked about from that perspective.
**Also, disclaimer! I know the word “passing” is
problematic. Not only does it have connotations of deception, but it also implies
that people like me are “failing.” I’m aware of this.**
So my words to trans men and transmasculine folks in similar situations:
Not every trans man will pass after a certain
amount of time on T.
This does not have to be the life-ruining nightmare
you think it is. I promise. You can have a job, you can make friends, you can
learn to look strangers in the eye, and it will become easier to deal with
misgendering over time. Various other life circumstances and intersecting
oppressions will affect this, of course, but please don’t underestimate your
ability to deal with this particular problem! You deserve better.
Despite the obvious drawbacks, there are some pros
to not passing! Even if you really
didn’t want to end up this way, it’s still freeing to realize that this is your
life now. You don’t have to wait for some distant post-transition day to start
doing the things you want to do, such as dating or making new friends.
Other pros: It means you never have to worry
about disclosing to your friends. It also makes it really easy for other trans
folks to recognize you, which can be great for building community. Plus, a
recognition nod on the train is sometimes really reassuring.
You may end up passing in the end! Maybe you can’t
let go of that hope, and that’s ok.
Don’t get too hung up on Tumblr discourse, most
of which is oversimplified and unnecessarily polarized. Don’t let people, especially cis people, tell you that you
are not experiencing shit that you are Measurably Definitely Experiencing, such
as sexist harassment.
At the same time, pay attention to the ways in
which your life is getting easier. For example, compared to when I presented as
a femme woman, (or even a pre-T gender nonconforming person,) I’ve noticed that
people perceive me as more confident—and therefore take me more seriously—just
because my voice is lower. I’ve also stopped experiencing sexual harassment
entirely.*
While male privilege has a lot to do with how
people see and treat you, don’t forget about the psychological impact of
identifying as male, and how that affects your experience. It was easier for me
to go through transition knowing that people perceived me as transitioning into
strength, assertiveness, etc. Trans women don’t have this. On the other hand, don’t let people gaslight you into believing that this psychological impact is the same as the privilege cis men experience.
And—this should go without saying—work on being
a better ally to trans women. Though trans men experience violence at higher
rates than cis people of either gender, trans women experience more. LOTS of
trans women have experience with this not passing thing, too! Trans men and
trans women can have strong friendships and learn from each other.
Also do as much as you can, learn about
other intersections of privilege and oppression. Race matters, class matters.
Listen when you are called out.
Advice for cis folks and “passing”
trans men:
Do not give unsolicited passing tips. A trans
man talking about his feelings re: passing is not necessarily looking for tips
on how to change his appearance!
Try not to make assumptions about how long
someone’s been out as trans based on how well they pass.
Be careful with narratives that assume all trans
men can be read as male with HRT. Bodies don’t react to testosterone the same
way. Older trans people exist, as do people who can’t tolerate long-term HRT
for health reasons.
Related to #1: Don’t assume that being visibly
trans either is a 1) temporary or 2) desired situation for trans men.
Do not deny the lived experiences of non-passing
trans men in order to win an argument. It’s simpler and easier to argue that trans men are men and men have male privilege, period, but it’s not
entirely true. Flawed logic like this does little to further trans rights in the long run.
Related to the above: don’t assume that trans
men and trans women’s experiences are opposite. Trans women have male privilege
violently stripped away from them when they come out as trans, and frequently
experience shame and marginalization before that. This does not mean that trans men never internalize misogyny, or that we
stop experiencing it the minute we come out as male. The patriarchy is more
interested in keeping people out of privileged positions than it is in welcome
people into them.
This is a post I would appreciate people
sharing, because even though I’ve been out as trans for over 5 years, I still
haven’t been able to connect with many trans men of similar experience. I’d
love to make those connections, even online. I know this is not a common
outcome of medical transition, but people like us don’t need to be shoved to
the background or made to feel ashamed. We deserve to have our voices heard.
I’m also interested in feedback from folks who have points to add or points of criticism. Like I said, I’ve been isolated in my ability to talk about this, so I’m sure my thoughts are not perfect. However, I won’t engage with personal attacks, especially not from cis folks.
*Note: this gets into the “masculine privilege” argument
that is another Tumblr mess. While I think masculinity is privileged, gender
nonconformity definitely isn’t, so you can’t neatly apply these concepts to
people who are read as women. But that doesn’t mean you can’t notice and speak
about patterns. Your contributions to this can be valuable.
Ohh, this is really well written, op! It also makes me sad how we fail each other and fail people in our communities, when they fall outside the well-beaten road 😦
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 