Is there a point here? I'm not sure.
Aug. 16th, 2013 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emmagrant01One of the things I really struggle with on Tumblr these days is the hypersensitivity of the collective Tumblr community to being... well, politically correct is the best way I can think of to phrase it. I will frequently find myself composing a post and then have to go back and edit my language and add in disclaimers and trigger warnings, and I finally just delete the whole thing in frustration. It can be exhausting to have discussions on Tumblr, frankly. People seem so often to be more concerned about the way something is said rather than what is actually being said.
And I do totally get that language is important, and that the ways we use language have historically excluded and marginalized and erased various groups of people. I understand that, and I really, genuinely, try so hard. But after a while, it actually has the effect of making me not want to participate in the conversation. And maybe that's the desired effect, now that I think about it. Maybe the idea is to make people in privileged groups feel marginalized and erased.
Tangent: When I was in college, I had an experience that stuck with me for a long time. I was with a large group of people who were about to go out for an activity for the day, and we met in a theater in the morning to get organized. When we arrived at the theater, the staff told us to sit either downstairs or upstairs. I was with a good friend, and we'd planned to sit together, but she was told to sit downstairs and I was told to sit upstairs. I wanted to sit with her, so I ignored this and went on to sit downstairs anyway. The staff began their announcements and then asked if there were any questions. After a few questions were asked and answered, there began to be a strange rumbling of voices from upstairs, which I immediately thought was rude. Couldn't they see we were in the middle of something important?
I raised my hand to ask my question, and the staff member standing near me suddenly became angry and shouted, "You should be upstairs! You can't sit down here!" I was completely stunned, and didn't know how to respond. I thought, "They can't be serious!" So I said, "Why?" and the person repeated, with more anger, that I had to go upstairs. I stood and left the room, and went upstairs, where there was a riot brewing. It soon became clear that the entire upstairs was being ignored by the staff, except for the occasional shout to tell us to shut up and listen.
I finally couldn't take it anymore and left, planning to skip the whole thing and just go home. I mean seriously, fuck this, you know? I got chased down by a staff member who was nearly in tears, and she explained the whole thing to me. It had been a simulation to show us how it felt to be marginalized, segregated. Everyone with blue eyes had been made to go upstairs, and everyone else was sent downstairs. I had to sit down on the curb, I remember. I was so stunned that I hadn't figured it out, and that it had hurt so much to be made to feel that way. It had only gone on for fifteen minutes, and it was more than I could take. I realized that in my entire white middle-class existence, I'd never been made to feel like I was less than a full human being.
It was a revelation to me, and even now I remember it so well. It was a particularly poignant lesson because that day our group was going to visit a concentration camp (we were in Germany at the time). I realized that even though I'd had many experiences of feeling discriminated against as a female in a male field, I couldn't claim that I knew what it felt like, that my experience was in any way equivalent to those of others. I realized that all of the layers of privilege I had in my life had given me so much more of an advantage than I'd ever known.
But my point (and I do have one) is that I'm finding myself at a point where I'm choosing not to engage rather than to get in there anyway. Am I afraid of making mistakes and being criticized? Maybe. Am I just too lazy to make the effort? Possibly. I have this classic Southern white female please-everyone complex, and I hate the idea that something I say or do will make anyone else feel bad, so I often choose to say or do nothing instead of taking the chance. And that is ridiculous and cowardly, I know, but I feel stuck right now.
I don't even know what I'm hoping to get here. Commiseration, possibly, or reassurance that it's really okay to say stupid things occasionally and learn from your mistakes. Only, the culture of Tumblr is such that mistakes are amplified and mocked and passed around as an example of how not to do it, and that makes me less likely to want to make them in the first place. :-/
And I do totally get that language is important, and that the ways we use language have historically excluded and marginalized and erased various groups of people. I understand that, and I really, genuinely, try so hard. But after a while, it actually has the effect of making me not want to participate in the conversation. And maybe that's the desired effect, now that I think about it. Maybe the idea is to make people in privileged groups feel marginalized and erased.
Tangent: When I was in college, I had an experience that stuck with me for a long time. I was with a large group of people who were about to go out for an activity for the day, and we met in a theater in the morning to get organized. When we arrived at the theater, the staff told us to sit either downstairs or upstairs. I was with a good friend, and we'd planned to sit together, but she was told to sit downstairs and I was told to sit upstairs. I wanted to sit with her, so I ignored this and went on to sit downstairs anyway. The staff began their announcements and then asked if there were any questions. After a few questions were asked and answered, there began to be a strange rumbling of voices from upstairs, which I immediately thought was rude. Couldn't they see we were in the middle of something important?
I raised my hand to ask my question, and the staff member standing near me suddenly became angry and shouted, "You should be upstairs! You can't sit down here!" I was completely stunned, and didn't know how to respond. I thought, "They can't be serious!" So I said, "Why?" and the person repeated, with more anger, that I had to go upstairs. I stood and left the room, and went upstairs, where there was a riot brewing. It soon became clear that the entire upstairs was being ignored by the staff, except for the occasional shout to tell us to shut up and listen.
I finally couldn't take it anymore and left, planning to skip the whole thing and just go home. I mean seriously, fuck this, you know? I got chased down by a staff member who was nearly in tears, and she explained the whole thing to me. It had been a simulation to show us how it felt to be marginalized, segregated. Everyone with blue eyes had been made to go upstairs, and everyone else was sent downstairs. I had to sit down on the curb, I remember. I was so stunned that I hadn't figured it out, and that it had hurt so much to be made to feel that way. It had only gone on for fifteen minutes, and it was more than I could take. I realized that in my entire white middle-class existence, I'd never been made to feel like I was less than a full human being.
It was a revelation to me, and even now I remember it so well. It was a particularly poignant lesson because that day our group was going to visit a concentration camp (we were in Germany at the time). I realized that even though I'd had many experiences of feeling discriminated against as a female in a male field, I couldn't claim that I knew what it felt like, that my experience was in any way equivalent to those of others. I realized that all of the layers of privilege I had in my life had given me so much more of an advantage than I'd ever known.
But my point (and I do have one) is that I'm finding myself at a point where I'm choosing not to engage rather than to get in there anyway. Am I afraid of making mistakes and being criticized? Maybe. Am I just too lazy to make the effort? Possibly. I have this classic Southern white female please-everyone complex, and I hate the idea that something I say or do will make anyone else feel bad, so I often choose to say or do nothing instead of taking the chance. And that is ridiculous and cowardly, I know, but I feel stuck right now.
I don't even know what I'm hoping to get here. Commiseration, possibly, or reassurance that it's really okay to say stupid things occasionally and learn from your mistakes. Only, the culture of Tumblr is such that mistakes are amplified and mocked and passed around as an example of how not to do it, and that makes me less likely to want to make them in the first place. :-/
