AN OPEN LETTER TO CRUSADERS

[channonyarrow]

Dear SJ crusaders:

Fuck off. Thanks!

See, here's the thing, and here's why you're really not getting the places you'd like to think you are, at least in my world.

1) You're making assumptions based on no evidence.
- I can, in fact, claim that something proves someone is a "real boy" without ever having in my thought process the contents of their pants. Because guess what, I don't care in the slightest what's in your pants. I can, in fact, be referring to Peter Pan, or to simply the humour found when someone who is godlike-pretty (Geeface, I heart you!) does something stereotypically "boy", or even using a sarcastic grammatical construct for humorous effect.

2) You're asking people to prove a negative.
- What would it take to prove that I'm not "a transphobic creep"? Do I need to get a letter signed by graeae's partner stating that I'm not? What about my friend J who's not on LJ? What about the coworker I had at my last job who was trans? What about the person I knew in college who was trans? Will it suffice if I contact everyone I've ever had any sort of social relationship with, ever, and get a sworn statement indicating whether I'm a good person or a bad person in their minds? Should I talk to a counsellor about the periods of gender dysphoria I have and get them to state that I don't hate myself, therefore I don't hate trans people? Basically, until and unless you catch me in my KKK robes, please refrain from making unfounded accusations, particularly since whatever provoked this person was not me saying "OMG THERE IS NOTHING BUT CIS EVERYTHING ELSE IS HORRIBLE AND AGAINST GOD." And I can say that with categorical certainty because I have never said or thought that.

Do gay people count to prove that I'm not an asshat? There's a reason that McArcus was my token straight minority for a while - how many gay people in my social circles prove that I'm not actually queer unfriendly? Or can I just state that I'm bi and canvas LJ for anyone who remembers my relationship with srichard for proof that this is true?

But there's the rub: there is no way whatsoever for me to prove that I don't think that thought, because ... you're firing from the hip without waiting to find out whether I'm actually sending out emails about the n****r in the White House to claim that I'm racist. You're not asking me about my stance on social issues - you are, instead, coming in with an accusation. And you don't know me.

3) There's a world of difference between "this bothers me" and "this is what you are".
- I made a comment a while back in theferrett's journal about how I frequently feel third-sexed because I don't behave like "a girl" but I don't feel like "a boy". roniliquidity pulled me up short by pointing out, politely, that doing that is a way of avoiding the issue of demonstrating that "femininity" is beyond simply what the religious right would have us believe, and she was right to do so. I haven't made that claim since.

Strangely, however, when someone takes the time to contact me off-thread and make accusations, I'm a lot less inclined to listen to your bullshit.

4) No one speaks for anyone else, even if you are a member of the group. Frequently, you are not.
- This was most pronounced with Racefail a few years back, where a bunch of white people critiqued other white people about not including characters of colour in their works (and yes, I am very well aware that there were participants in that who were not white; I'm only speaking of a section of the population that had that argument). I don't, actually, think that it's your business to come riding in and tell me that, as another white person, I'm using terms you, as a white person, don't like. Tough shit. I pick terms of respect with the best information I have, and I will alter them if I find that people in the group I'm speaking of don't like them, but I find it twee that you think I'm not being PC if I say, for example, that someone is black rather than someone is a person of colour. Are you, then, the sole arbiter of what people in that group prefer to be called? I should tell you right now that I utterly dislike being referred to as Caucasian, but have no problem with white, and think that, in my particularly mutt-genetics case, "Scandinavian-American" or "Italian-American" are misleading, particularly since they are the least true about my genome. "White American" makes me want to throw up a lot. So there you are, that's the term to use for everyone who shares my skin colour!

However, and this is key, I won't actually kill you if you call me Caucasian. I'll just point out that I don't like it, but I won't die, and nor will anyone else.

Because it is not possible to find out what every single person in the group being spoken of would prefer to be called, I find it utterly offensive that people try to define other people's language for them. This isn't so much the intention argument as it is the respect argument. Unless I start hauling off and calling trans people chicks with dicks or whatever the fuck the insulting group terms are (I literally have no idea and I cannot possibly be arsed to google for it) maybe you could do me a favour and step the fuck down until I do something that egregious? You're not going to get me to adopt your standard if you come at me with "OMG BIGOT" as your opening salvo, and personally, I don't think I or anyone else deserves it until and unless you have an actual pattern of behaviour to work with.

I am also fairly sure that the people who know me would, in fact, not hesitate to yank me up short if there was something I was saying or doing that gave the wrong impression of me, and from them, I'll listen to it, because they actually KNOW ME.

5) Whatever happened to living it?
- I cannot, literally, fathom the mindset that says "If I just yell loud enough, frequently enough, everyone will change their minds!" First: no, they won't. Second: if I really were shopping for a new thought system, what about yours is more compelling than anyone else's? I don't really like shouting at total randos about the impurity of their thoughts, and I also like having the asshats self-identify by continuing to espouse their anti-Semitic bullshit or whatever - I don't actually believe that anyone's going to change their mind if I just shout at them for a while, and certainly not if they're actually a bigot.

But here's the thing: you can do a LOT more to help your cause if you cultivate relationships with people first. Or if you just LIVE it - I've said for a long time that the one factor that makes me want to be Catholic is the priest that I had as a child at Catholic school. It certainly isn't the current Church leadership, and it certainly isn't the evangelicals - it's seeing that man live his faith, and I really mean live it. It was a far more compelling argument in favour of faith than, literally, anything I have seen before or since.

Coming around and levelling off-thread insults at me won't change my mind about anything (except that not only are you a crap writer, in my professional judgment, but you're also a crap human as well) and it certainly wouldn't make me change my mind if I really were a transphobic creep. Maybe my problem is that I don't have enough white guilt and whatever else guilt to care that everyone thinks and speaks exactly the same way I do?

WAIT. Maybe my problem is that I don't assume everyone else is a goddamn dick! Yes, I think that might be it!

No love whatsoever,
Cass

Comments

[graeae.livejournal.com]

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

HEY. Remember how we were talking about fannish misogyny? I figured out where the transphobic comments came from, from that picspam I did for swear_jar and apiphile (here) and you should read it - because dude, if you walk away from THAT with the thought that the ONLY wrong thing I said there was that Panic at the Spambot wears pants tight enough to show their dicks ... you really fail reading comprehension FOREVER. Or, you know, you just hate women. SO MUCH SURPRISE HERE.

[graeae.livejournal.com]

I... am still not processing the transphobic comments or where you'd pull that out. But yeah, I confess that I'm so baffled by the whole thing.

[swear-jar.livejournal.com]

LIKE THUMBS UP HEART BUTTON. If LJ had one of those, I would have pressed it for this.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Quoting from my reply to Del, because it is relevant to your interests:

"The extra hilarious twist to this is that the comment came out of my Thursday-verse picspam from FOREVER ago and I reread it, and DUDE, if the only problem you have with that commentary is that I pointed out that Panic Interrobang At The Spambot wear their pants so tight you can see their cocks then you are not reading, because there was so much in there to consider offensive if you are inclined to take it that way."

OMG LEAVE ME OUT OF THIS WEIRD WORLD OF BIG BROTHER THOUGHT.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

No one speaks for anyone else, even if you are a member of the group. Frequently, you are not

Yeah this business with the SJ Shout Collective is beginning to bother me, because not only does it assume Hivemind and reinforce the idea that All X People Think The Same and keep up the stupid, oppressive ideal that a shared label means everything else matches up (I mean it's not like I vehemently loathe most polyamorous people at all-- oh, wait, that's exactly the case...), but it ostracises and isolates people who have that damn label and don't agree with the position, and teaches us/them/whoever that we're "bad queers" etc. Nothing like seeing a friend of mine during that racefail incident being called a RACE TRAITOR because she suggested maybe "don't dogpile this author and give her a chance to think about what you've said" and they couldn't call her a shitty oppressive white person on account of her not being white...

Coming around and levelling off-thread insults at me won't change my mind about anything

This is the other thing. Apparently objecting to a sudden slew of "FUCK YOU AND DIE" is a tone argument, refusing to engage is privileged, and basically doing anything other than grovelling apology (for which you will not be forgiven) is UNACCEPTABLE MORALLY. IDK about you but I was finished with unwinnable social situations by the time I finished high school, and if people put me in them now I make the executive decision to block their asses and never speak to or of them again.

[My tumblr block list is ... oh, roughly the length of a phone book]

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

I REALLY dislike the apparent fact that SJers are so omg!correct that they can't live in a world where we all don't agree on every little detail. Have you ever read Harrison Bergeron? It's a dystopian future where legislation is designed to make everyone equal (so, ballerinas have to perform wearing lead weights so they're not more graceful than anyone else, beautiful people have to wear clown noses, etc.) and I just really have always thought that Shout Collective is that, except with a nasty element of Big Brother thrown in.

The extra hilarious twist to this is that the comment came out of my Thursday-verse picspam from FOREVER ago and I reread it, and DUDE, if the only problem you have with that commentary is that I pointed out that Panic Interrobang At The Spambot wear their pants so tight you can see their cocks then you are not reading, because there was so much in there to consider offensive if you are inclined to take it that way.

So, you know. There is certainly the possibility that you could take my statement as me being transphobic. There is also the possibility that if that is the only thing that bothers you about that commentary, you are trans-positive but queer-unfriendly, misogynistic, probably racist, and certainly poverty-phobic. Christ knows, it certainly bothered ME to reread the statement I'd forgotten from Travie about how fat chicks are like all-over-print hoodies to the scene. Like, really dude? And if I had any sense of SJ, I would totally have left that statement out because it is so very misogynistic as I interpret it.

But no, trans is the only thing that matters, and I hate 'em. You can totally tell, right?

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Ah but *you're* accessible and might react, and Travie ain't, and won't. There's a segment of SJ - unfortunately indistinguishable from the rest most of the time, whom K knows from previous days as hardcore trolls. Basically SJ allows them to troll with impunity, because it comes with a wonderful set of phrases and stances designed to make you the bad guy if you have any kind of reaction or even NO REACTION AT ALL. Like I said, unwinnable social situation? Bannination.

(Also really, "I can see their cocks" is not transphobic... you literally can see their actual cocks.)

I no brain today

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

I get all the points you make, but I can get over my lack of knowledge in this case. What's an SJ crusader?

Re: I no brain today

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Social Justice is SJ; my insulting add-on is crusader. If you want to see this shit in action, I would recommend checking out sf_drama or a post a while back on customers_suck (If you really want to see it I can find it) where the mod stepped in to insist that it's not possible to be racist to white people because of white privilege. Look for the one about other currencies in New Zealand if you're curious.

Basically, it's the school of thought that says that if you just shout at me about what a terrible person I am, rather than getting to know me, or keeping your mouth shut, or not worrying about whether we all live in a hivemind of pure, overly-politically-correct thought, the world will be a great place, and it's best achieved by making sure that there is no deviation from the thought-program. I had a private message encounter with one of these morons yesterday, accusing me of being a transphobic creep because I once said something demonstrated someone was a real boy and it's not possible that there could be any humourous intent behind THAT sort of statement at all - I must have meant that I hate trans people!

My rage, let me show you it.

Re: I no brain today

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

can

can't

Apparently, I also couldn't type this morning. Really, reading and responding to LJ posts first thing in the morning before coffee isn't my best move in life.

Also - GAH! I cannot understand how you can choose to read those communities. Then again, I also can't wrap my brain around why some people LOVE to read comments to articles. I enjoy having a discussion with someone about things (as, for instance, I did enjoy reading your post and all your points being made), but going into the dredges and scooping up the bottom feeders is not really my idea of a good time.

Re: I no brain today

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

I actually don't read sf_d BECAUSE of that - it's all a pissing contest to see who's the most into SJ and that is nauseating. I do like a good snark comm, so my rule of thumb with c_s is to never, ever read the comments especially if there are a lot, because the mods of that comm are so incredibly, unbelievably horrible.

However, I have, unfortunately, been wanked on sf_d in the past by an asshat with a grudge who, if I recall correctly, wanked my lj layout as proof that I am terminally stupid, so it sort of, for a while, was a periodic check-in with the comm.

But yes - there's absolutely no grounds for a discussion if you're busy arguing about who's better than anyone else, and that's not a conversation I have ever found at all interesting, so leave me out of it!

Re: I no brain today

[sioneva.livejournal.com]

sf_d wasn't always that way - it's become quite tedious, however, in its constant OMG PRIVILEGE wankery.

And I'm not denying the existence of privilege or anything like that (you know me). Just saying that...gah. It used to be funny.

Re: I no brain today

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

I don't deny privilege either, but endlessly wanking about who's better at not being privileged really doesn't advance the discourse, and that's where sf_d has really gone. But you're right, it did used to be funny and cool, and now ... it's Hivemind Groupthink.

[koemiko.livejournal.com]

...

Posts like this are the reason I came back to LJ.

Ha!

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

I'm going back through and typing down ALL of the underlined passages that I liked in The Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships, and I just now came across this line:

"Also, NO ONE ever changed their mind because someone yelled at them."

Hm - that sounds familiar...

Re: Ha!

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Sweet Jesus, I'm going to have to look for these, because that is like the First Rule Of Arguments or something. Are they all that good?

Re: Ha!

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Well, it's not that kind of book. It's geared toward people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or those who deal with people on the spectrum, or those who would like to know more about those who are on the spectrum, or... heehee, that was all just fun to write. But seriously, it is geared toward ASD and NT (neurotypicals) alike in order to help the latter understand the former and for the former to start fitting in better with the rest of "normal" society with all of it's stupid (yet we follow them anyway) rules. I have a couple minor gripes with a couple sections of the book, but that being said, it's an amazingly intriguing book that I do actually recommend to anyone and everyone, because most people have never actually given two-cents' thought to the rules that we unknowingly (should) follow.

"Successful social relationships require a healthy ability to take another person's perspective; in most cases, it's teaching the person with autism to take the NT perspective. Within the pages of this book we sought to reverse that trend by explaining our perspective on social relationships to the reader."

Most of the things in it aren't what I would call zingers, but just basic, common sense rules that MOST people should learn inherently while being socialized into our society growing up, but because of lack of Theory of Mind and/or generalized social experience, people with ASD have a much more difficult time learning them. For instance, "honesty is different than diplomacy." It's sort of a, "well, duh," kind of thing, but Temple Grandin and Sean Barron go into some really good details about how our society expects us to somehow figure that one out after force-feeding us "always tell the truth."

Here's some of my most favorite lines, all Temple Grandin quotes:

"The first thing I tried to get him to do was to take his emotions out of the situation and look at it logically. Use your cortex, I told him, not your amygdala."

"Sins of the System (SOSs). These are rules that must never be broken - although they may seem to have little or no basis in logic - because the penalty is so severe it may have life-changing repercussions."
[i.e. drug offenses; the bold is mine]

"Whenever I saw something that didn't make sense to me, like my roommate rolling around on the floor in elation after seeing the Beatles, I'd say to myself, "interesting sociological phenomena." I used to call it ISP. Then I'd try to figure out why she was doing what she was doing.
[I would be calling most people's actions ISP, I believe.]

"For me, lying is never about personal gain at the expense of another; most of the time it's about circumventing some of the bureaucratic rules that our society imposes on us that are actually really stupid."

"Do you think that television shows like Jerry Springer's would be so popular if people knew how to act and interact successfully all the time?"