sometimes, i think,
we think
about perspective shifts
as changing focus
reframing the image before us
but perhaps
we can also imagine
that the world is wider than our narrow gaze can gather in a single glance alone
instead of closing your eyes
to what is in front of you
instead of trying to forget what you have already seen
maybe you,
maybe i,
could try
to expand our views
Happy Year of the Snake! Had dinner with family and friends at my aunt’s house last night, and we ended up going in a circle around the table introducing ourselves, then each sharing one fear and one aspiration. (Yes, this happened.)
Found out that my cousin sees herself as pretty conservative; she has a fear of taking risks, because she’s a perfectionist and she wants to be able to control things. Her brother has a fear of not living life to the fullest, so he actively tries to make the most of every day. And it all comes from the same place — wanting to succeed and fearing failure, and wanting to embrace possibility. The fear I shared was being held back by fear (a meta-fear, as it were) — I’m afraid of letting fear win and not experiencing new things.
Over the past few years, I have pushed myself to embrace failure, to see that not being good at something isn’t really that scary. Sometimes, you just have to do things that are terrifying. Important life skill. Every time I go on stage, I’m scared. And every time I finish a set, I get to have that moment right after when I realize that I’m still alive. And everything is going to be OK.
I did a few shows this week. Performed “native tongue” for my co-workers at our all-staff meeting, and I started by saying, “Wow, I didn’t realize I was going to be this nervous.” After, our CFO’s wife, who was facilitating a training on self-care for that meeting, thanked us (other co-worker covered a Taylor Swift song) for sharing something and being vulnerable. And then later that day, I got to hear from co-workers who connected with the piece and have gone through similar experiences.
Thursday night was [common ground], and I performed “23.” I knew it was going to be difficult; it has taken me weeks to get it to a point where it felt done. But a few other queer artists went before me, and then we had the Partnership of LGBT Organizations speaking about being excluded from Santa Ana’s Tet parade. I ended up revising my set right before I went on to include more love poems. It felt right, and it was what I wanted to share with the audience.
Saturday, we held a mini-TNC for students from the Claremont Colleges who were taking a day-long tour of Little Tokyo to talk about art and activism in our communities. The staff shared about our relationships to the space, and also our views on art. I said something along the lines of seeing poetry as a way to move beyond academic writing and to find a way to be more honest with myself. And I write love poems because I want to share a celebratory view of the queer experience. I want to celebrate love and being able to live fully, more honestly.
This feels like it’s going to be a good year. Thank you to all of the organizers and audiences who are providing spaces for people to share and heal. Here’s to a year of being honest, embracing love, and striving to take risks and push past fear. Gong xi fa cai, friends.
well,
it’s been a week now
since the world didn’t end
which means,
i suppose,
that we can get back to destroying it ourselves
or maybe
we can stop treating
armageddon as
some sort of personal and collective responsibility
or mutual goal
towards which we are all working
and maybe we
can start working on
some beginnings instead
i think i would like that
at 23
i believed
that if i could just forget the taste of my first girlfriend’s lips,
i might still turn out OK
that if i could just meet a nice boy,
settle down, start a family
i might not lose my family
that wasn’t so long ago
and some days i still forget that i’ve moved past that now
i am like cotton in an overstuffed couch;
i am always coming out
when i was 23
i spent 40 hours a week with middle schoolers
who did not quite understand the violence of uttering ‘that’s so gay’
kids who cleverly told me,
‘miss, miss, “gay” just means “happy”’
you know,
i wish it did
i really wish it did
try to explain that gay means happy
to the 12-year-old kids
who keep notes on the inside of their arms
whose wrists bear the scars of tally marks
of how many other 12-year-old kids called me ‘faggot’ today
the year i was 23,
i met a 17-year-old boy named James
when he was 14, James was shoved back into the closet
by too many locker room boys
a year later,
James tilted up his chin and strode back out
two years later,
James stood in front of vermont’s house and senate judiciary
and let them know
he’d like to meet a nice boy some day,
settle down, start a family
you see, James told me,
he’s a romantic
and one day, he wants to be proposed to under the stars
and we both knew then
and we both know now
we are fighting for so much more than wedding rings
matching tuxes
hers and hers towels
– but it’s a start
and maybe one day, all of this means that we’ll be one step closer to easing the tear-jerked pain of saying, ‘I’m gay,’ for the first time.
maybe one day, we won’t have trans kids bartering bodies for rocks on the corner
maybe one day, wives will be able to hold the hands of their wives as they’re wasting away in hospital rooms
maybe one day, wives won’t be wasting away in hospital rooms
[health insurance, etc.]
i’m not 23 anymore
but my mother still asks me sometimes
if i wish i were born a boy
for what it’s worth, i don’t
no matter how fucking amazing i look in a three-piece suit
but that’s not the point
because i loved a boy, once, who wished he were born a boy
who grew up girl
but still became one of the strongest men i know
– a good man –
some little boys grow up to be strong women, too
but we have to let them grow
so many of us may wish we were born into different lives
but please
do not take that next step toward reincarnation
please
do not take the razor blade to your kite strings
i can teach you how to fly
and bridges, you know,
were built for crossing troubled waters
not for leaping into them
stay, please.
this life needs you
James and I need you
please,
stay
bridges can be so alluring
when the world is screaming, ‘faggot, you will never learn to fly’
and maybe all of this is cliche
but I want to tell you this:
It gets better.
you get better
stronger
braver
less afraid to love
it’s gonna get better
we’re going to get there
some day
stay
please
stay
turn your back on bridges, on rope, on razors, on shame
stay,
please,
stay.
you learn,
eventually,
to shield yourself from pain
your toes,
they learn
– how to curl for balance
at those moments when you are poised on the ledge
your toes
will grip
for balance,
for staying
please
draw your limbs into yourself
water the roots of your own tree
please
grant yourself permission
to nourish your own dreams
pull everything you have into the safety of your own embrace
this is hard
i know.
it is still hard,
for me,
three years after 23
how
do we learn
to let go again?
but i am learning
that i am done with shields and walls
no more
cradling my heart
like bruised fruit
no more fear
or, at the very least,
no more letting fear win
i am here
to stay
stay here with me
and if you
are still crouching in the closet
please
use that time
to find sight in the dark
because i know a boy
who’s waiting for you
under the stars
someone I know is dying
actually, I guess,
everyone I know is dying
is hurtling, recklessly, toward the inevitable
we all are — falling — startling one another,
in moments, we collide
when we are young, beautiful, bright
and do not know to blaze
against the dimming of our light
have not learned
that we may fade
my grandfather, now,
hair thinning back
to downy head of babes
his fingers, still,
though growing stiff with age
he curls them still
— and still holds tight
friends of mine, too,
have met with some surprise
the flickers in their flames
breathe more deeply, then
to stoke the embers of their names
burn bright, young friends
the youth we shared
the days we spent
weep not now for unsaid prayers
for years that came and went
I’ve been kicking around ideas for a post for a few weeks now, some grand statement on coming out on the Internet, and what that means. As I’ve not gotten around to writing it (n.b. I choose to describe this not as procrastination, but as the deep, meditative period that is an essential part of the writing process), what I wanted to write about has shifted. On some level, I think, I wanted to write this post but was already bored by it. I have come out so many times, to so many people, and have read about so many other people coming out, that I feel like it’s a moot point.*
But it isn’t. Because I have come to discover another level, the one that is still holding on to fear, closets, shame, internalized homophobia, and privilege. I’m fairly certain that most people I’ve met post-college, those who are at least familiar enough to be considered acquaintances, assume or know I’m queer. I cut my hair last year, after I stopped working in middle schools, because I was tired of passing. As straight. The unexpected consequence, one that I’m still getting used to, is that now I don’t always pass (or, more precisely “read”) as female.
A few weekends ago, I was in line for the women’s restroom at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Little Tokyo. A woman tapped me on the shoulder and informed me, “The men’s restroom is on the other side.” In that split second, I experienced not anger and frustration, but confusion and violation. (Don’t worry, anger and frustration came into play later.)
A few days later, as I was still figuring out my reaction(s), I brought up the incident with a queer friend who has a different relationship with gender and passing. I was trying to explain why I was upset, and our conversation centered on the moment of misunderstanding. My friend suggested that the incident was upsetting because the woman in the bathroom made assumptions about how I identify and tried to determine and impose where I belong, and not upsetting because of the gender policing, per se. I disagreed, but couldn’t articulate why I found both problematic.
The next day, my friend brought the conversation up again and said that one thing I’d repeated stuck out: “I identify as female.” His experiences with gender, sexuality, passing — and danger — are different than mine, and, he said, he was interpreting my experience through his own.**
Having that second conversation helped crystallize what I was feeling. In the moment, I felt violated — to have been touched, labeled different, confronted by someone else’s assumptions. And I also felt violated because I know where every bathroom in that building is; I stage manage in the courtyard outside of the Union Center for the Arts, and I drink a lot of water.
But I also felt that powerful mix of shame and fear that too many people in too many communities know far too well, in the moments when a dominant group, in the most subtle (or not at all subtle) of ways, leverages its reminders about who is in power, what is considered normal, acceptable, morally correct. I am almost certain that the woman who tapped me on the shoulder thought she was doing me a favor. In spite of the fact that I was in the middle of a very crowded line of very femininely-dressed women. In spite of the fact that the men’s restroom is closer to the theater exit, so we had both walked by it to get to the women’s restroom. And in spite of the fact that I was wearing heels and holding my clutch, oops, JK, that’s not my Saturday night outfit of choice. I felt fear. And I felt powerless. In that moment, the best I could come up with was stammering “I’m female,” in something that was far closer to an apology than I care to admit. Because it wasn’t just about that moment. It brought back the first time I experienced transphobia in a very real, very public way and felt, to my bones, physically unsafe. It brought back the smirk of the man on the bus who took the aisle seat and kept edging closer to me as I shrank against the window, until I finally got up to stand by the driver, and the anger I felt when I took off running for my friend’s place, knowing that he had gotten off at the same stop and was nonchalantly, smirkingly, sauntering in my direction. It brought back the time I was in Grenoble with my friend Liz and we were surrounded by a group of teenage boys who wanted to know what kind of Asian we were, where we were from, where we were going, as they kept circling closer and taunting us, with just enough edge of threat in their voices to make me start trying to figure out which one looked weakest, how to edge closer to the wall to close off the circle and keep them all in front of us. It brought back the painful memory that the first time a girlfriend held my hand in public, my first thought was not about us, but about our safety.
People who don’t fit in to dominant culture learn how to make these calculations, learn how to identify escape routes and the quickest way to safety, learn to look for recognition and disapproval in the eyes of strangers. It is a violation when someone exerts their power over you, whether as a threat or as a reminder.
I’m putting in a subhead here to transition back to talking about being out
Originally, I wanted to write a version of this post because I needed to submit an artist bio for Common Ground OC, for their July 5 show. As the deadline approached, I realized that I had yet to announce on the Internet, “Hey Internet, I identify as queer!” And I hesitated. Not, like, got-back-in-the-closet-considered-dating-men-exclusively-grew-my-hair-back-out hesitated, but there was a definite pause. A moment of reflection, I suppose.
I was downloading Paintbrush for Mac, but then I got bored of waiting. Imagine that I drew boxes around my name and “queer” and added an arrow and something snarky. Also, sorry that all of my blog images are actually just screen caps.
My mind came back to the idea of “rational outness,” something one of my queer professors had brought up in class as a way of explaining that awkward moment when the practice of being out in some spheres (where it’s safe) and not being out in others (where it’s not). Funny thing is, those spheres kind of overlap a lot. At the time I learned the phrase “rational outness,” it was a blessing. It gave me a way to view coming out as a step-by-step process, one that I had control over and could share with people as I chose to.*** But now, here, four or so years later, I’ve realized that “rational outness,” for me, emphasis on “me,” and this being about my experience, is a copout. It’s a way for me to stay partly in the closet, because I’m afraid of losing something — safety, yes, but also privilege, authority, power, relationships.
One of my former co-workers, who identified as queer, sort of, but really chose not to identify, explained that she didn’t want to identify as queer, publicly, because she was able to make a stronger case for equal rights when people considered her a straight ally, just like she was able to do anti-racist work as a white person. Something about this, also, feels like a copout. And I recognize that I am viewing her personal decisions through the lens of my own experience, and my own decisions about when to be out. But for me, here, now, rational outness isn’t enough. I can’t help but think of the shared root in “rational” and “rationalize,” as in “attempt to explain or justify with reasons, even if those reasons are not true.” As in, find excuses to stay in the closet and benefit from heteronormative privilege.
To put it simply, and I am quoting from a wise, wise friend here: Fuck that. Fuck THAT.
I am done with hiding, with being 97.03% out of the closet, done with glossing over gender pronouns out of respect for elders, out of fear of upsetting people, out of wanting to protect family members from uncomfortable conversations. I am done with wondering whether I should keep my hair so I can find a respectable job. (Turns out, not a big deal. I have been dissuaded, however, from getting a fade with my nonprofit’s logo in the back of my head.) One of my mentors (“gay den mom,” really) asked, more than once, “Why would you want to work for a place where you couldn’t be yourself?” I don’t know, why would I? I wouldn’t. I don’t. Done with that.
I want to make this clear: I get to write this from a place of privilege. I am lucky to be able to work at a place that fully embraces women, people of color, queer people, people who stand in different places on the gender spectrum, people who have experienced mental health issues, violence, homelessness, and a system that has tried to break them. I am lucky to work for an organization that believes, to its core, in empowerment, at the level of every individual human who comes through our doors. I don’t have to choose between being able to be fully myself and being able to support myself. We should all be so lucky.
As important as it is to have straight allies, to have male feminists, to have white, anti-racist activists be part of our conversations and struggles for social justice …
It is absolutely critical that people speak for themselves. To stand up for their identities, whether as a quote-unquote marginalized voice, or as a member of a historically underrepresented group, or as an out, proud, queer, female-identified, Taiwanese-American (but ethnically Chinese), second generation poet/nerd/blogger.
Having a voice matters. Using your voice makes a difference. Embracing who you are and how you choose to express yourself is a way to live each day more fully human.
I am a poet. I write from multiple perspectives. Being queer, being Asian, being second-generation, being an English major, being really into puns, being human — and, sometimes, being deeply afraid — all of these perspectives influence my work.
They also inspire it.
* Although, of course, it’s apparently possible to be too blasé about coming out; once, I kind of just slipped it into a conversation with a friend while we were in line for the bathroom at a bar. She almost fainted. She claims it was the heat and her low alcohol tolerance. I think she got the vapors.
** For anyone taking notes on this kind of thing, I believe this is a pretty damn good example of what “decent human being” means. Like, for real, how many people that you know seek you out after having reflected on a conversation you had in passing to apologize for an assumption they later realized they made, and to make sure that you’re OK? Also, hey, now that you’re flipping through your mental Rolodex identifying those friends, how ’bout you give them a call and tell them they’re awesome?
*** Except, I guess, for the time when the news editor yelled across the newsroom of the Daily Bruin, “Audrey, are you a lesbian?” I am calling you out, Anthony J. Pesce, not cool. His justification: It led to dates (mine).
I was going to write a blog post tonight, but then I didn’t. Here are some poems I wrote on Sunday during a potluck/writing time session. (We did six 10-minute sessions, mostly with one-word prompts. It was fun; try it sometime.) N.b. These are first drafts.
1.
I tried to start a food blog once
played with the idea of calling it bitter/sweet
slashes in words are fun like that
can split a whole into smaller, fractured wholes*
2.
artichokes are like a metaphor
for … something
the way they condition your tongue for bitterness
making everything that comes after taste bright, sweet, whole
maybe heartbreak
or love, itself
the moment of finally finding sweetness again
Is like reaching the heart of an artichoke
3.
why are artichoke hearts
preserved in pickling liquid
they’re bitter enough all by their own selves
4.
chocolate melts on tongues
the way my heart puddles into my toes
when you flash your dimpled smile
and I try to remember recall how to speak
5.
espresso, dark, complex
bitter tang that lingers
inviting you to hold a sugar cube on your tongue
6.
lemons from my backyard
what a luxury
we found a house, here, that has a lemon tree
but the fruit doesn’t taste the same
not as tart, or bright
not like the lemons from home
I cut the lemon curd here with the juice of a lime
7.
bittersweet, as word
makes me think of lovers gone
and, also, lemons
Pick a favorite! Mine’s the haiku. Bonus points for posting a poem in the comments. (Bonus bonus points if you stick to the time limit.)
Update: Thanks to Colin for suggesting “recall” for No. 4. Poem,now less clunky!
The title of this blog post is a real-life excerpt from an e-mail I just received from Cara (whose chapbook, as I have mentioned, you should purchase). Does anyone have an answer I can borrow?
If there had only been, like, eight question marks, I would have tried to get away with an answer like “from my perspective,” but the 10th one really just demands that I try a little harder. I’m featuring at Common Ground on Thursday, which is all kinds of exciting. Except that I’m also a little anxious, and I thought the theme was going to be “growth,” not “perspectives.” Now I am all discombobulated and trying to figure out what my perspectives are.
Clearly, I am at an articulation peak and will have no trouble speaking in front of people. I’ve been working on edits for my chapbook, after having given myself the arbitrary deadline of June 30 a few weeks ago. Three times in the last week, I did this weird thing where I let other people read my work, which was nerve-wracking and vulnerability-causing, which I suppose could seem surprising, since I’m blogging about feeling vulnerable right now, as if I have absolutely no filters or sense of shame. But hey, I am just a mass of contradictions and feelings.
Making things more awkward and squishy, the chapbook has now become exclusively love poems, since there are so few poems about other things that they awkwardly stood out. (Thanks to Cara for reading the unedited collection of everything, and lending her perspective,* helping me to finish breaking me out of the not-editing slump of the last 10 or so months.)
Wow, this post has, like, no connecting narrative thread. I just wanted to say that I’m excited to be writing more, and even though I feel strange and vulnerable about letting people see all of my poems (and my one secret short story) as a collection, I have also felt completely energized over the past week, and more motivated to write than I have in … maybe the past decade. I’m learning how to get over the fear of being judged, and also learning how to push past wanting first drafts to work immediately. I think I actually prefer editing to writing, so having something to go back and tinker with is immensely rewarding, but it requires putting things down on paper (or in digital 0s and 1s).
Umm, artists. It’s nice to be around them. Also, incidentally, I think the universe is teaching me a lesson in dramatic irony. I bartered with a co-worker, that I would write her artist bio if she would let me take on a book-binding apprenticeship. We did a whole interview, and then I spent good chunks of the rest of the day narrating everything around me in her artist’s perspective. And then I went and checked my e-mail and discovered that I owe Common Ground a bio, too. And then I realized that describing your perspective on art is hard.**
* See, brought it back to the theme!
* Writing someone else’s bio, however, is fun! And my co-worker likes the one I wrote for her, even though I printed it out in Comic Sans, with her name in orange and blue Word Art at the top. I am kind of a jerk sometimes.
Oh, hey there. It’s good to see you again. I really appreciate the feedback on the last post; it’s led to a lot of great follow-up conversations, and I can’t begin to quantify the healing power of knowing that I can surround myself with people who understand both the stakes and complexities of social justice issues.
This post is decidedly more upbeat, as it’s about the joys of that surrounding effect — definitely a related topic. Whereas the last post was all about the distinction between being nice (and/or polite) and being good, it is quite nice to know that I get to spend a hearty chunk of my time with nice, polite, wonderful — and good — people, working for, toward, and through social justice.*
Last night I stage managed Tuesday Night Cafe (time-lapse!), fulfilling a decade-long dream of getting to introduce myself to people as “stage manager.”** I suppose I could introduce myself as anything, to anyone. And maybe I will. Anyway, it was a fantastic experience, learning and otherwise. I particularly enjoyed the moment where we were in our pre-show circle and I realized that one of the artists was missing — you know, one of those minor details that just magically works itself out. (He showed up, like, two minutes later.) This was our second collaboration with Common Ground, an excellent group of excellent people.
Look at all these beautiful artists! Posing post-show on May 1 in the JACCC courtyard. Sorry this is such an obvious FB screen cap. Not fixing it! Photo by Steven Lam.
As I was sitting back and soaking in the third set, Claudia (a totally dope poet, check her out with Duende!) caught me off guard by dedicating her second poem to me, because it was inspired by one of my poems. I will note that this is not a humble brag — it was an entirely humbling and inspiring moment, and it was exactly what I needed after all of the nonsense I mentioned in my previous post.
Two posts ago, I wrote about how excited I’ve been to be around live poetry and music, and to be spending chunks of time with artists who constantly surprise and challenge and inspire me. Two Wednesdays ago, I came home from a MidTones Open Jam at Bar Nirvana, and I could not go to bed because I was so excited about how excited I was to be alive at that moment in the exact place where I am in my life, having spent the day working at a nonprofit I love, followed by a meeting with the aforementioned surprising/challenging/inspiring artists, followed by a couple of hours of musicians rocking out and having fun. (I will also admit that I realized, “Wow, my life right now is cooler than I thought it would be.”)
Anyway, long digression. Back to poems. Also a few weeks ago, I was at LAnguage, a spoken word show at The Last Bookstore curated by Mike the Poet (co-curated that Sunday by Traci Kato-Kiriyama, of Tuesday Night-founding fame), and a bunch of poets I admire were reading poems about their fathers.***
As Traci was reading “Rain,” I started scribbling a few lines of what I hope will some day grow up to become a deeply personal account of my relationship to my own father. Right now it’s an awkward teenager and doesn’t want you to look at it. Unfortunately for poem, I need to share this part of it:
Two of my favorite poets read about their fathers today
with words that reached straight into some part buried within me
striking chords
reminders
echoesI panicked for a moment, felt guilty
When you go, what pieces of you will I hold tight to?
Claudia’s poem includes the stanza (among other, excellent stanzas, which I have! Because she let me keep the copy she read last night!):
I told my mom I heard a poem once
About a girl who was ashamed to be ashamed of her culture
I told her I felt like that was me
That’s why we have to keep it alive, she said
That’s why I still practice this language with you
This isn’t the same poem, but
Today my heart will send a postcard to my mother
Because love and apologies transcend these zip code barriers
The last three times I saw Claudia perform, I a) wanted to call people up and say, “Hey you need to see this!” and b) wished desperately that I had a teleporter so I could whisk people in to experience it for themselves. This time, I was just trying to keep it together, not just because I was moved by her dedication, but also because there is something profound about having another person articulate the secret parts of yourself that you are still searching for.
Art is a bridge, and a mirror, and a whole host of other metonyms about seeing self and others and connecting. It is also, wonderfully, a catalyst for change, dialogue, questioning, and more art. I have said it before, and I will say it again. I am so damn lucky to get to be part of this community of artists. Thank you for reminding me that I love people.
* I apologize that I keep lumping together complex, intersecting issues under the broad umbrella of “social justice,” without having really defined how I’m using it and my own relationship to the term. Topic for another post. (“Topic for another post” being a strong contender for tagline to this blog.)
** Once, in high school, I was offered a stage manager role for the spring musical, but then the drama teacher found out that I was also in mock trial. Sigh, art and law — never the twain shall sit down for a cup of coffee and hash out their differences.
***(Hey, also, you should buy Cara Van Le’s “A Roof & Some Refuge.” I can’t find a public link and don’t want to post her contact info sans permission, but maybe if you think really hard about chapbooks, she will appear in front of you with one in hand. Ordering information!)
Number of tabs opened while writing this post: 15. Number of references I decided to save for another post: 2.
“If racism is the punchline, I don’t get the joke.” – Julian Bond
I had a really frustrating afternoon today: It was an ignorant comment (the fourth or fifth in succession over the course of a week), one of those off-hand, throwaway remarks that might be a joke, but just really isn’t funny. Earlier in the day, I’d had another discussion about not using a slur as an insult, and the person I was talking to actually defended the comment by saying it might have been an accurate description of the people she was talking about.
I am seldom at a loss for words. (People who know me IRL, back me up.) But I was just, like, “I can’t even, what … no.” And then I was upset with myself, because, you know, teaching moments, environments of inclusivity, social justice and public education, etc. But also, take some responsibilty. I was describing this incident at home during a TN meeting, and Chris asked, “Was it racism by choice?” by which he meant, was it deliberate racism, or did someone just not know better? I think once you’re old enough to think for yourself (moving target for some people, true), all of it is by choice. It doesn’t matter how you were brought up or what you were told as a child — take some responsibility.*
In any case, I’ve been meaning to write commentary about this fairly excellent article for a few weeks, and now I just want to post huge chunks of it because it contextualizes a lot of today’s angst really well. You know, racism, privilege, oppression, etc. I think the commentary post was delayed by by not having much to add other than, “Yes, I think you argued that point excellently.” Sometimes we need to write things, and sometimes someone else gets there first, and I think you can just go ahead and be happy that at least it’s been articulated.
To that end, I am happy that this has been articulated, by Social Justice League: “Social justice is about destroying systematic marginalisation and privilege. Wishing to live in a more just, more equal world is simply not the same thing as wishing to live in a ‘nicer’ world. … [T]he conflation of ethical or just conduct (goodness), and polite conduct (niceness) is a big problem.”
I’m going to take some liberties and bullet-point summarize/excerpt some of the highlights, but I really would rather that you read the whole thing in its entirety.
The Revolution Will Not Be Polite:
I think the confusion of meanness with oppression is the root cause of why bigots feel that calling someone a “bigot” is as bad as calling someone a “tranny” or taking away their rights. You know, previously I thought they were just being willfully obtuse, but now I realise what is going on. For example, most racists appear to feel that calling POC a racist slur is a roughly equal moral harm to POC calling them a “racist fuckhead”. That’s because they do not understand that using a racist slur is bad in any sense other than it hurts someone’s feelings. And they know from experience that it hurts someone’s feelings to be called racist douche.
“So if you – the oppressed – hurt someone’s feelings, you’re just like the oppressor, right? Wrong. Oppression is not about hurt feelings. It is about the rights and opportunities that are not afforded to you because you belong to a certain group of people. When you use a racist slur you imply that non-whiteness is a bad thing, and thus publicly reinforce a system that denies POC the rights and opportunities of white people.”
*I have more thoughts about education and critical thinking, obviously, but that’s a topic for another post, or five, or twenty. Just started reading bel hooks’ “Teaching to Transgress.” Get me through this, Gloria!
** Including one of the most confusing tactics, accusing homophobic commenters of being secret closet gays. Which, I guess, yeah that makes sense to call them something they find morally repugnant, but your use of sexual orientation as an insult is reifying the norm that homosexuality is the worst thing ever.
