Whoa

[chocolatepot]

Owen just quit his dishwashing job. They were already being illegal by refusing him breaks or dinner during 9hr shifts, but he found out that he was expected to stay tonight for 13hrs and would be fired if he didn't. So he quit. I'm trying to get him to report them to someone.

Okay, since this is a serious post, I know it's not really the done thing to bring things from an anon meme, but - I'm reading this thread on a post made recently to call out an incredibly toxic SJW. The incident that poster is referring to (also referred to here) is this. It just ... it just burns me up that multiple people, especially catvalente, can participate in these threads and still think they're the ones who've been offended and hard done by. And it makes me wonder, what is the point of trying with any -isms when there are so many people who quite clearly don't actually believe in their supposed principles? Because the fact that someone can say, "Really? You're really going to slap the hand of someone who loves what THEY'VE taken from an experience in a place that's foreign to where they came from [and which is less privileged on a global and local scale]?" and nobody bats an eyelash, in the same thread that someone saying, "I apologise if this seems unkind, but we are real, we are more than our myths and our past, we are more than a fantasy trend that's over and all the other things. ... But today you made a number of us feel deeply elided and uncomfortable. I'm sure this was an accident, but I'm not sure some of the commenters realise the cumulative effect they are having," gets repeatedly and viciously jumped on for attacking an innocent (American, whiny) woman - that tells me that no, really, there are plenty of people who are ... I want to say "lying", but that implies a kind of deliberateness that's not there. They are both

- not interested in considering the principles they're supposed to be upholding, but are completely ignorant about any situations that do not fit into the ones they've decided Count, and aggressively defend not having to consider those situations

and

- frighteningly happy being as vicious, insulting, personal, and/or weepy as they can think of, ignoring those of their own privileges that they've decided Don't Count (generally, class privilege and US privilege)

All of this is old news, really, but sometimes it just hits me like a ton of bricks how completely fucked-up the social justice discourse is. I'm sure it will pass, especially given the uptick in people publicly criticizing it, but for the present it makes me deeply unhappy.

Comments

[chocolatepot]

I should have specified - la_marquise_de was talking about Wales at some points, which is where being locally un-privileged came into it. But it's not quite relevant right there.

The thing about US privilege is that, while there are of course downsides to living in the US vs. many other Western places with better healthcare, better employee protection, etc., it's still there. I didn't believe in it for a while because it seemed like people were always either talking about anglophone privilege or Western privilege or first-world privilege, but then I kind of sat back and watched more and a few threads came along about pointing out the specifics of US privilege, and it was interesting. They pointed out that we don't have to worry about other countries invading us or strong-arming our government into taking part in a war, for example. This post looks like it has a pretty thorough list, although I don't know if I agree with all of them (although I guess if you think about them as "the ability to" instead of "all Americans do this" it does work). And the thing about it is that the cultural issues sound (to an American, anyway) rather petty, so it's easy to brush them aside and say they don't matter, compare it to things like "dog-owning privilege" or "musical-ability privilege" ... but once I started paying attention to discourse at ONTD_F or any of the SJWy spaces, it started becoming really apparent that the entire model of racism/oppression that SJW insist on is completely US-centric, and that the fact that pointing that out often leads to a huge jeering dogpile about deflection, that a group "accused" of having privilege can make such a big stink about it and deny it, means that it actually exists. And then every time someone assumes that everyone in a discussion on FFA or similar is American - either refers to Americans as "we", or takes a general statement about laws/government/food/etc. to mean "American etc." - it's like a bell clangs, because, wow. And this isn't to say that I think it's bad for people to have it or that Americans should be constantly apologizing for it (my understanding of privilege being that everyone should have the same benefits, not that people would privilege should lose theirs), but that when SJW go after a non-American for bringing up a white-on-white oppression they should probably consider it for a moment. (That said, the woman who went after her the hardest is not American. But she does cling to the very US-centric view of oppression.)

Re: appropriation - in general, I take it on a case-by-case basis, because there are so many nuances and I don't really understand how, eg, cooking another culture's food is taking it. But when it comes to the sort of thing in Valente's post, it is a massive squick. Blerg, I'm finding this really hard to articulate right now, but basically, there's a huge tendency for Americans to latch onto a foreign country and decide it's the best thing EVER they feel such a CONNECTION based mainly on a) not interacting with actual modern people from the country and b) media they've consumed that may have very little to do with the actual country right now. Especially when it comes to the UK. And I used to do that, I think! But the post I linked to does it hard, and then because in the comments when someone says reasonably, "gosh, it feels like you're turning my country into fairyland and ignoring what it is actually like," she avows no understanding at all of what the commenter's saying, it reads to me like a huge lump of US privilege being actively defended. And then she goes on to make out like Americans are actually the ones who have it the worst:

Every time I open my mouth and people hear my accent, I get to be the focus point for all the horrible things people think about Americans, no matter who I am or what I might think or know--it doesn't matter. I'm an American. I'm a piece of shit. I'm the worst of everything, and stupid to boot. I've been in a fight in a bar because someone heard my voice and decided he wouldn't have some fucking American in his pub. ... I'll be sure to remember that no matter who I am or what I do, I will never, never be welcome here. Silly me. I'd managed to forget.

It's revolving an entire country around one person, and it's messed-up. And then when la_marquise_de points out that she gets similar things, because everybody thinks of myths and fantasy when they hear her accent, RH starts attacking her because she'd know real oppression if she were from a non-white country! (Never mind that she doesn't take Valente to task for the same thing.) She also says that marquise would never know what it's like to have her country marginalized as she's British and therefore does all of the non-marginalizing, which is where Wales came in, though, I think, elsewhere in the thread.

tl;dr, I can understand doing the "ooh, fairies and goblins" thing in the first place, I can't understand defending it and telling someone ARE YOU HAPPY YOU'VE RUINED BRITAIN FOR ME, I especially can't understand allowing someone in your comments section to get attacked for doing nothing different than what you are, and I can't understand acting like you have no idea why anyone would think you ought to have taken the attacker to task when someone brings it up later. (Which happened.)

[lliira]

I totally don't think RH's post was good or that her subsequent actions were okay. I guess I'm uncomfortable with the word "appropriation" there, considering the connotations. I think there are better words for "you just wrote a post that makes it sound like you think my country is a fairyland of wonderment and that's annoying" when the country in question is not underprivileged. Using terms that were meant to apply to the way first-worlders were interacting with, say, Haiti, rubs me the wrong way. This is gonna sound silly, but it feels to me like that's appropriating the word appropriation!

Basically I think they were both wrong. The suicide threat and the "you upset me horribly for weeks!" stuff really grossed me out. I have someone in my life who often threatens suicide he's crossed, and it is so not okay. It looked to me like passive-aggressive meets aggressive and each of them was trying to prove they were more hurt by the other, and nothing but unconditional surrender would be accepted by either side, and ick.

[chocolatepot]

I don't think she called it appropriation. I probably should have used "fetishization" instead. Although I'm not sure about "underprivileged" - I don't like the idea that there's a line where something counts, because that's part of the problem in general, where it's magically okay for someone to be dogpiled because they said that something not supposed to be beneath the line has it bad (which I'm not saying you condone, it' a problem in general). I prefer thinking about privilege in terms of relationships, the US as a country is privileged in relation to basically everyone else, a Welsh person is privileged in relation to a non-European but an English person is privileged in relation to them.

I don't think it was a suicide threat, it was her offering herself up as an example in response to someone going, "why are you saying RH drives people to suicide?" with the implication that it's a lie to make people dislike RH., because it was about RH, not so much Valente. The response that "well, you made ME feel bad for weeks!" does sound like a competition, very awkward. From reading her responses in both posts, la_marquise_de seems like the sort of person who very much wouldn't use "I attempted an overdose" just as a way to score points, and imo the fact that it happened means that people do need to talk about RF and her friends who harass people on Twitter and LJ.

[chocolatepot]

I was thinking about all of this more last night after I went to bed and wrote down some kind of jumbled stuff, which I'm going to try to sort out.

I'm starting to think that for "appropriation" to be a useful concept, it's more about intent than privilege. It does need to be about taking something from a less privileged culture, whatever degree of less-privileged-ness, but intent might actually be a larger part of it. It is possible for someone to take up, say, a religion from a less privileged culture and believe in it sincerely and treat it in a respectful manner; when people actually call appropriation, it tends to be because a person or group is taking up something in a disrespectful way, ignoring the context and warping it to fit their needs and desires. Which would make the post fall under both appropriation and fetishizing. The view of it only being appropriation if it's a specifically underprivileged culture, which I think is a relatively common one, is part of a somewhat toxic emphasis on determining which groups are underprivileged enough to count as oppressed.

I suspect part of my problem with the original post and her later comments is also that it does not line up with my experience of the UK or Edinburgh at all. I judge it more harshly than someone else might because I was there for a significant period of time and spent barely any of it musing over fairies and goblins, and literally never had anyone be hostile to me because I was American, ever, in any of the places I went, from London to the highlands, from Cardiff to Bath. The opposite, actually. (On occasion I had a little tiff with a flatmate which I ranted about on my LJ and probably came off like an embarrassing, clueless American, and I think it added up and I lost an flister over it. But it was more because she was a never-compromise sort of person and not because she had a beef with me over American politics. The flatmate, I mean.) So it especially seems ordinary for anyone to make la_marquise_de's points, which especially makes them not an attack worth going YOU'VE RUINED BRITAIN FOR ME over, or leaving them out in the cold while RH spits viciousness at them.

The US has a history of distilling countries into myths and stereotypes, all countries. And then selling the fake versions back. And American tourists have a tendency to travel in those countries and act like the myths are true, and then write more about the myths when they get back. I just don't see the point of deciding it's okay to perpetuate that as long as it's the "right" countries.

[lliira]

(I'm taking twice as many painkillers as I have been. I hope this comment has any coherency at all.)

The US has a history of distilling countries into myths and stereotypes, all countries. And then selling the fake versions back.

Yes. But so does Great Britain, which I think is where it started to bug me, whether or not my feeling bugged was justified. (Plus my personal issues with someone saying they were going to commit suicide because someone else upset them.) Great Britain sort of perfected doing that, and then we picked it up and did it, because that's what the U.S. does. The trope of the "Ugly American" used to be a trope of the "Ugly Englishman", tourism-wise.

Basically, I think whoever's the biggest turtle in the pond is going to do that. Rome did it. Japan does it. England still does it. France does it. I wouldn't be surprised if in about 25 years, Americans start complaining about how Chinese people do it to them.

I think it is particularly complicated when it comes to the British Isles, because during their most powerful period on the worldwide stage, the government was also severely oppressing part of what they claimed to be their own people, i.e. the Irish and, to a lesser extent (as far as I was taught), the Welsh. Those countries and Scotland have only recently separated from England, and haven't entirely, and part of Ireland is still officially part of England, and things seem to be changing incredibly rapidly. When I was in middle and high school, it was drummed into our heads that you don't say "England", you say "Great Britain". So it's hard for anyone who hasn't been talking about this stuff forever and doesn't have a lot of familiarity with it to figure out what words to even use. I can't even figure it out half the time and I've had a lot of high-level British history classes taught by an Irish woman who is the best professor I've ever had. I think there has to be patience on all sides, and patience is something the social justice movement is very short on.

[chocolatepot]

Basically, I think whoever's the biggest turtle in the pond is going to do that.

Oh, definitely, I wasn't trying to say that it's an inherently American thing that nobody else has ever done or will ever do. Whoever it is that's on top is the one that needs to tread more lightly.

When I was in middle and high school, it was drummed into our heads that you don't say "England", you say "Great Britain".

But that's because people were referring to Great Britain but calling it England, right? (Which is something I still see.) Not that you shouldn't think of England, Scotland, Wales, and NI as separate entities within the UK?

part of Ireland is still officially part of England

(The UK, I think you mean.)

patience is something the social justice movement is very short on.

Yes, but I think that's part of where my frustration comes in. RH is considered a social justice activist online and has less than zero patience for this kind of thing (as evidenced by her OTT response to la_marquise_de), and a lot of people follow her lead. The online social justice movement doesn't have to be this way, it does it because the loudest people have insisted that there is only one way to respond and if you object to it, you're terrible. But there was nothing at all impatient about what la_marquise_de said, unless mentioning discomfort at all is considered impatient. She was very patient, and responded multiple times to try to explain why she was hurt without telling Valente she was a bad person or stupid or anything.

I'm not trying to say that everyone should know these things about the UK. But if someone does very, very gently point out to you that you're contributing to an ongoing problem re: their culture, one doesn't need to go into fits and insist that they've ruined it for one. (Or make bogus claims about anti-Americanism abroad.)

To be honest, and I don't mean this in a dismissive way (as it's kind of my fault for not giving enough background detail), I think that if you're not familiar with some of the personalities involved, it looks different. RH has been semi-famous within fandom even before she got involved with social justice for ranting and screaming at people. Since she did get involved, I've seen her take down whole communities intended for social justice purposes through her behavior. She has a long history of being dreadful to people who talk about oppression as anything other than white/non-white. And Valente has a long history of being the ultimate sensitive, misunderstood soul.

[lliira]

I think that if you're not familiar with some of the personalities involved, it looks different

I think that is very true. And they both just showed up unfunny_fandom. Apparently winterfox has gotten involved in this now? Or was involved in something else somehow related? Idek, I haven't read the links, because just thinking about that gives me a headache.

Wait, is RH winterfox? Oh god. I had no idea.

[chocolatepot]

Yup, she is. I wasn't sure how many people were aware of her or I'd have mentioned that earlier.

[lliira]

I see her randomly all over the place, and have for years. She's fouled up gaming communities, book communities, feminist communities, and who the heck knows what else. I don't think she cares one bit about social justice; I think she just likes making other people feel like shit, period. She's one of those people who makes me wonder if she's in this to make all the rest of us look bad. And by "all the rest of us" I mean "human beings". When I see her posting comments somewhere, I don't post there, and I've never even had a personal run-in with her.

ETA: All of which is to say I obviously didn't read all the stuff you linked clearly. I have this annoying word problem because of Tramadol, or maybe because of my spinal cord being compressed all the time, where I think I totally understood something but didn't really. Anyway... yeah. I think Winterfox isn't an example of SJW rampaging, because I think she is basically a troll (iirc she didn't give a fig about social justice when she was rampaging through gaming sites years back), but the fact that she has so much support definitely highlights problems within SJ culture.

[chocolatepot]

It's okay, I understand! There were a few points when I was going "... am I not making much sense or did she not read what I linked?" but pain medication is an excellent reason.

[lliira]

The fact that we're now supposed to be okay with death threats over fiction shows how utterly toxic the atmosphere has become. There are still places that don't allow winterfox's kind of toxicity, but she's an example of how one nasty piece of work can destroy huge numbers of sites. I think the "tone argument" argument is a valuable one, but it's misused as often as it's properly used, and so many people use it as a shield for things that are completely unacceptable. Imo, there are too many rules in SJ that are applied with no subtlety or understanding of circumstances, and that creates a perfect atmosphere for trolls. And too many people get away with a holier-than-thou attitude, and think they and their friends are smarter and more sensitive and therefore better than everyone else.