Personal post incoming, take cover!
There are some parts of who I am that I am not sure are parts of who I am. (I know this doesn't make logical sense, but I don't know how to express it.) And I am afraid to admit these maybe parts of me and my experience. On the one hand, if I disclose, then I will have to deal with the shit that comes along with that, regardless of its being maybe not so. And on the other hand, if it isn't so, am I being an appropriative, me-tooist asshole by acting on this belief that it might be so?
I don't know, but I know that not admitting these possibilities hasn't been doing me any good. I'm not going to describe things in detail. I don't want you to judge and decide whether these things are or aren't. In most cases, you wouldn't be qualified to.
I might be a survivor.
I might be queer.
I might be trans*.
I don't fucking know.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Accepting Anger
Sometimes the oppressed are angry -- when the capacity for anger hasn't been crushed out, when the lies told about the oppression fail to placate. And sometimes the oppressed express this anger -- when they speak to one another, when the need overwhelms the fear of reprisals. And when the oppressed give voice to their anger, the oppressors need to listen.
Upon hearing the anger, oppressors often act to deny the anger. Feigning bewilderment, raising anger in response, condescending with claims that the anger is counterproductive -- anything to neutralize the anger, defang it. Anything to silence the oppressed.
Some oppressors react differently. Used to feeling hated -- due to insecurities, due to mental illness, due to being oppressed -- these oppressors take in the anger and transmute it into feelings of guilt, into self-hatred, into a gnawing cross to bear. When this self-hatred can be held no longer, it is released as hatred against the oppressed. And the cycle begins again, out of a need for self-hatred, and nothing gets accomplished.
Both of these responses are wrong responses. They misunderstand the purpose of the anger. The anger is not for the oppressor -- the anger is not for anything, it just is. It doesn't demand response, it doesn't demand self-flagellation. But it does demand acceptance.
When hearing the anger of the oppressed, sort through it to determine what is true -- the anger is always true. As a white person reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, your (our) chief concern shouldn't be in discrediting the theory that white people's wickedness is due to an ancient genetic experiment, and it shouldn't be in accepting that you (we) are the result of an ancient genetic experiment. As a man reading the SCUM Manifesto, your (our) chief concern shouldn't be in defending yourself (ourselves) as a complete and whole human being, and it shouldn't be in accepting that you (we) are a "biological accident" and a "walking abortion". As a cis person hearing the phrase Die Cis Scum, your (our[?]) chief concern shouldn't be in fighting as though your (our[?]) life depended on it, and it shouldn't be in committing suicide. The chief concern in all of these things should be examining your (our) role in the systems of oppression the oppressed are angry about.
Addendum: It is not okay that Valerie Solanas uses heterosexism and cisexism to express her anger in the SCUM Manifesto, but men should not use this to discount the anger. That is all.
Upon hearing the anger, oppressors often act to deny the anger. Feigning bewilderment, raising anger in response, condescending with claims that the anger is counterproductive -- anything to neutralize the anger, defang it. Anything to silence the oppressed.
Some oppressors react differently. Used to feeling hated -- due to insecurities, due to mental illness, due to being oppressed -- these oppressors take in the anger and transmute it into feelings of guilt, into self-hatred, into a gnawing cross to bear. When this self-hatred can be held no longer, it is released as hatred against the oppressed. And the cycle begins again, out of a need for self-hatred, and nothing gets accomplished.
Both of these responses are wrong responses. They misunderstand the purpose of the anger. The anger is not for the oppressor -- the anger is not for anything, it just is. It doesn't demand response, it doesn't demand self-flagellation. But it does demand acceptance.
When hearing the anger of the oppressed, sort through it to determine what is true -- the anger is always true. As a white person reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, your (our) chief concern shouldn't be in discrediting the theory that white people's wickedness is due to an ancient genetic experiment, and it shouldn't be in accepting that you (we) are the result of an ancient genetic experiment. As a man reading the SCUM Manifesto, your (our) chief concern shouldn't be in defending yourself (ourselves) as a complete and whole human being, and it shouldn't be in accepting that you (we) are a "biological accident" and a "walking abortion". As a cis person hearing the phrase Die Cis Scum, your (our[?]) chief concern shouldn't be in fighting as though your (our[?]) life depended on it, and it shouldn't be in committing suicide. The chief concern in all of these things should be examining your (our) role in the systems of oppression the oppressed are angry about.
Addendum: It is not okay that Valerie Solanas uses heterosexism and cisexism to express her anger in the SCUM Manifesto, but men should not use this to discount the anger. That is all.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Oppressor Guilt and Rapist Ethics
Oppressor guilt is a common reaction in oppressor groups to having privileges challenged. The most writing on this subject has been on the form known as white guilt, but it is far from unknown to anti-oppression activists in other fields. Andrea Dworkin, in a speech titled "I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape", later published in Letters from a War Zone, spoke to a group of anti-sexist men about why they hadn't done more:
As a character trait, oppressor guilt is harmful enough in its own right. It is, however, always only a step away from being used as a weapon to actively harm the oppressed group whose plight spawned it. When men whine about the guilt they feel over the oppression of women, and when oppressor groups do so more generally, it is not simply an expression of distasteful feelings -- it is an attempt to shift the moral responsibility.
I feel so terribly about oppression. You make me feel so terribly about oppression. It is better to be wronged than to wrong, and as such my part is the worse. I am the victim here. And who does that leave to be the perpetrator?
This is an act on the spectrum of what John Stoltenberg calls "rapist ethics". In Refusing to be a Man, Stoltenberg defines rapist ethics as a "definitive and internally consistent system for attaching value to conduct [ ... in which] the one to whom the act is done [is] responsible for the act." [Emphasis original] The one who whines about his man guilt is like the abuser who tries to further burden the abused with his pain as well as hers. In the case of the abuser, it serves the function of preserving the abusive situation. In the case of man guilt, it serves the function of preserving the status quo.
"Hiding behind guilt, that's my favorite. I love that one. Oh, it's horrible, yes, and I'm so sorry. You have the time to feel guilty. We don't have the time for you to feel guilty. Your guilt is a form of acquiescence in what continues to occur. Your guilt helps keep things the way they are.
"I have heard in the last several years a great deal about the suffering of men over sexism. Of course, I have heard a great deal about the suffering of men all my life. Needless to say, I have read Hamlet. I have read King Lear. I am an educated woman. I know that men suffer. This is a new wrinkle. Implicit in the idea that this is a different kind of suffering is the claim, I think, that in part you are actually suffering because of something that you know happens to someone else. That would indeed be new.
"But mostly your guilt, your suffering, reduces to: gee, we really feel so bad. Everything makes men feel so bad: what you do, what you don't do, what you want to do, what you don't want to want to do but are going to do anyway. I think most of your distress is: gee, we really feel so bad. And I'm sorry that you feel so bad--so uselessly and stupidly bad ..."Oppressor guilt is self-indulgent. It re-centers the anti-oppression activism so that it is all about the oppressor. It casts the one who feels the guilt as some kind of tragic hero, wrestling with their sins, which are, of course, all about them. It makes him (in the context of man guilt) able to think of himself as Angel. Don't be Angel.
As a character trait, oppressor guilt is harmful enough in its own right. It is, however, always only a step away from being used as a weapon to actively harm the oppressed group whose plight spawned it. When men whine about the guilt they feel over the oppression of women, and when oppressor groups do so more generally, it is not simply an expression of distasteful feelings -- it is an attempt to shift the moral responsibility.
I feel so terribly about oppression. You make me feel so terribly about oppression. It is better to be wronged than to wrong, and as such my part is the worse. I am the victim here. And who does that leave to be the perpetrator?
This is an act on the spectrum of what John Stoltenberg calls "rapist ethics". In Refusing to be a Man, Stoltenberg defines rapist ethics as a "definitive and internally consistent system for attaching value to conduct [ ... in which] the one to whom the act is done [is] responsible for the act." [Emphasis original] The one who whines about his man guilt is like the abuser who tries to further burden the abused with his pain as well as hers. In the case of the abuser, it serves the function of preserving the abusive situation. In the case of man guilt, it serves the function of preserving the status quo.
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