lol @ boys who disagree with feminism because it doesn’t acknowledge the issues men face
lol @ WoC who disagreed with feminism because it didn’t acknowledge the issues WoC face
lol @ trans* people who disagreed with feminism because it didn’t acknowledge the issues trans* people face
Erasing people isn’t something to laugh about, it’s something to feel deeply ashamed for. Grow up.
Trayvon Martin, Obama, and the persistence of bias | The Great Debate (via robot-heart-politics)
anti-blackness is a form of logic, an epistemology
(via so-treu)
Keep that in mind next time you think to yourself, “But I’m not racist!” You most likely are and don’t even know.
(via amydentata)
Agreed. I’d also like to see this study done with gender.
Why do people keep doing things that historically have only ended in disaster?
Like, is it really that hard to go “Okay, so killing people is a Pretty Bad Thing, so let’s not do that anymore, ok?” And then you make the logical conclusion that War is Pretty Bad.
But, nope. Someone killed some people, so that means we need to go kill even more people to kill the guy that killed some people, so that he won’t kill any more people. The oops, they declared war on us. Why would they ever do that? We were saving them!
Logic is hard for some people, apparently.
So we come to the Feminist movement. You know, that kind of sounds familiar. I want to think some other minority recently had to fight for years to get their civil rights.
Oh yea, that’s right. It was the Civil Rights Movement. When black people were still basically considered slaves. Certainly feminists are taking notes from this movement. Violence, hatred of white people, screaming things like KILL ALL WHITES, and general all-out riots.
What? Oh, my mistake. It looks like the Civil Rights Movement did not progress in that fashion.
It seems that civil rights were won for black people by peaceful protest. Sit-ins. Marches. Formal legal procedures. Following teachings of Gandhi and the Buddha.
The radical idea of non-violent protesting CERTAINLY would NEVER work, right? The ONLY way to fight oppression is to attack and marginalize the oppressors, right?
Oops, no. Violence does not bring peace. That is actually one of the most insane thoughts a person could have.
PEACE brings peace.
If you don’t give the oppressors something to fight, if you don’t do anything, they can’t oppress you.
Duh.
If you protest violently, then they have every excuse they need to justify to themselves violent oppression of you.
Does this make sense? Or does it still seem like I’m saying 2+2=5?
Let me make this very clear: Violent protesting is the WRONG way to do ANYTHING.
If you’re non-violent, peaceful, and civil about it, you’re not giving them anything they can attack you for.
If, on the other hand, you walk past a man, and say something about him being a pig, and you get called worse things, or hit over the head, you’re pretty much asking for it.
If you were to be polite, say a black man thanking his hostess and leaving a good tip, whether or not she made racial slurs and openly hated him, what’s she gonna do? Probably say something crude, to which he would reply with some apology and a “have a good day”.
That probably wouldn’t change her mind, but it certainly weakens any sort of racism. Maybe it leaves an impression on the other people in the diner.
Now, say every black person in the country were polite and cordial to everyone they meet, especially openly racist people, imagine what that’d do to the general societal racism.
There is violent opposition, yes. Say, turning fire hoses and dogs loose on protesters marching down the street. They would get up, dust themselves off, and keep going.
Whites have nothing to fight against. There simply is no opposition. How can they combat equality if it’s not even putting up a fight?
Take your lumps, and keep going. March on the capitol. Sit-in a restaurant. Lead a line down the sidewalk singing songs of equality.
The Feminist movement is no different than the Civil Rights Movement.
Women aren’t special. They’re not allowed to just ignore history. They are not exempt from the repercussions of violent protesting. Peaceful, non-violent protesting is the best, and maybe only way to really achieve equality.
You can’t just ignore what history has to teach you. You can’t ignore what the generations before you have accomplished and think you have the only solution.
You are wrong. That’s it. You’re wrong.
Read a history book. Take notes. Learn.
If you can’t take lessons from history, you are doomed to failure.
This is tone policing! You can’t tell an oppressed person how to react to their own oppression!
But you can explain what course of action will actually remove some of that oppression, and which course of action will make it work. You can tell an organised movement, dedicated to fighting that oppression, how to fight it if they want it to work.
You can’t tell an oppressed person how they should react to their oppression, but you can tell them how they should react if they want it to go away. The choice is theirs:
- React peacefully. Work with the oppressor. Force yourself to act calmly and be the better person. Educate them. Advantages: actually makes the oppression stop. Disadvantages: you shouldn’t have to play by their rules.
- React violently. Don’t conform. Stand in defiance of your oppressor. Advantages: able to express your feelings and get some satisfying revenge. Disadvantages: fighting fire with fire doesn’t help anything, and is actually likely to make the fire worse. You’re also likely to get in the way of people choosing option 1.
You can’t tell them what to choose, but you can tell them what each choice entails. As this post points out, if you want to deal with the oppression, you should choose option 1.
The issue is about priorities. If you’re complaining about oppression, what do you care about more: stopping oppression, or being free to complain about it? If you stop complaining about the problem, you can fight it effectively, and so soon there won’t be a problem to complain about. If you would rather protect your right to react however you see fit, then the oppression is never going to go away. You shouldn’t have to conform to solve the problem, but - if we look at past successes and failures - you do. That’s a fact. You can protest that, because you shouldn’t have to, but that will only make the problem worse. You can accept it, and make some progress. You can either be a martyr, or forget about being honourable and instead work to stop being a victim at all.
I mentioned something similar when it came to victim blaming:
In an ideal world, yes, it would be nice if pathogens and thieves and rapists didn’t hurt us. It would be nice if they were moral. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and they aren’t. So it is pretty damn impractical to act as if they are. Maybe lions shouldn’t be vicious. Maybe if they bite your head off it’s their fault, and not yours. Maybe instead of saying ‘don’t put your head in their mouth’, we should be telling the lions ‘don’t bite their head off’. But the thing is, the lions won’t listen. So if I care about you, Iwill tell you not to do the risky thing and stick your head in there. That doesn’t make me in support of lions crushing human skulls, it means that I don’t want you to come to harm. Okay? So don’t put your head in their mouths, and don’t tell others that it’s okay to put their head there because it’s ‘not their fault’. Blame is not the only important factor here.
Even though you ‘shouldn’t have to’ take precautions in an ideal world, few people would prioritise that defiance over their actual safety. Even though you ‘shouldn’t have to’ be polite to oppressors in an ideal world, few people would prioritise that defiance over actual progress.
Dignified suffering seems beautiful in a fantasy world, but on Earth no suffering at all is always to be preferred.
SJ-ers seem to have those priorities confused. You could beat them and lock them in a cell, and say that they could come out only once they’ve said ‘please’. SJ-ers are the sort of honourable people who would stand up to that sort of injustice. They’d say “I shouldn’t have to say ‘please’ - you’re in the wrong here”, and so they wouldn’t say it. They’d rot in their cell rather than escape. They’d rather suffer than lose dignity. In relation to victim blaming, they’d rather a woman went out alone one night and got drunk with a group of strange men then take any precautions, because she ‘shouldn’t have to’. They’d rather that she was raped as a defiant martyr than lost her dignity by conforming. In this context, they’d rather that oppressed group reacted violently rather than worked with the oppressor, by the latter’s rules, because they ‘shouldn’t have to’. They’d rather that they continued to be oppressed as defiant martyrs than lost their dignity by conforming. They stick by their principles, and are happy to let real suffering continue as a result.
We don’t like in a perfect world, and we all have to compromise. We all have to do things that we ‘shouldn’t have to’, if we want to be safe and happy and successful. Life isn’t fair. Holding out for life to be fair, whilst those around you suffer, and not protecting them against injustice because you ‘shouldn’t have to’, is ridiculous. ‘Victim blaming’ and ‘tone arguments’, then, have their place. We live in the real world, and sometimes we have to act like it - even though it might not be pretty. Not everyone is going to have our principles, and so sometimes we have to be the better person. If an oppressor isn’t going to back down, and they hold the power, then we’re going to have to compromise. Refusing to back down ourselves, due to some misplaced sense of honour, would just prolong our own suffering. We shouldn’t have to play by their rules, but we do. For people who live in the real world, what is practical is what is important. At the end of the day, we can either score an ideological victory, by not doing what we shouldn’t have to, or a practical one. Refusing to say please to our captor is an ideological victory, but it disadvantages us in the real world. Being the better person and saying please when we should have to is a compromise, but ultimately it is in our own interests. It’s the grown-up thing to do. Don’t sit and scream that life isn’t fair: acknowledge what has to be done, and be a pragmatist about it. That’s what’s going to get you places.
I’ve discussed tone arguments, and why real activists do what they shouldn’t have to, here, here, and here.
So, STFUSexists was blogging about Tone Arguments again. You know the idea: “you can’t tell an oppressed person how to react to their own oppression”. That’s why ‘racism’ against white people is okay, because white people are the oppressive ones. That’s why misandry is a justifiable reaction to the oppression of women. That’s why misogyny is a justifiable reaction to the oppression of men. Because every reaction is justifiable, because it’s the oppressed group’s right to react how they see fit.
In this case, it was trans people telling cis people to kill themselves. This is okay, because trans people are oppressed, and so it is up to them how they react to this oppression. We can’t tell them to ‘control themselves’ or ‘play nicely’ in their reactions. It’s like when terrorists bomb us because we’ve invaded their country, and we have to side with them because they’re allowed to react however they want.
Or not. But why not? Is it because that involves violence? But ‘die cis scum’ is violent. Verbal harassment can be violent: violence doesn’t have to be physical. If you’re going to launch a mental attack against somebody for being born in the wrong body at the wrong time, you don’t know what effect that’s going to have on them. You don’t know if the person you’re calling a worthless asshat, the one you’re telling to go and die, is struggling with a lifetime of depression. You don’t know if you’re triggering them, or preying on somebody with a mental disability. They might not be the oppressed group on this particular issue, but that doesn’t make them immune to harm. One type of privilege does not suddenly make their life perfect. It doesn’t stop them being human.
See, I’ve studied civil disobedience in some depth. This includes which forms it should take, and what is justified: a topic of some relevance to this discussion of a different form of rebellion against authority. Assuming that civil disobedience is justified at all (in an SJ context this is reasonable) you get arguments from the likes of Gandhi and Rawls saying that civil disobedience must be a peaceful last resort. Tone arguments, in other words. But then you get objections from Muste (saying that going through the legal process first shows a tacit acceptance of the evil machine), King (saying that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’), and Marx (saying that violence is necessary to overthrow an established power, because they won’t listen to peace). Firstly, none of these arguments are very relevant in this context. Shouting at a stranger about how worthless and repulsive they are is not going to cause a revolution and end all oppression, and neither is it going to speed anything up. In fact, Tone Arguments are frequently based around the fact that civility would be a faster path to equality - that this is rejected as ‘derailing’ says a lot about the true priorities of these supposed social justice workers, who would rather the deontological right to vent their anger than the teleological end of having less to be angry about.
Secondly, these objections can be dealt with in any context. It is conceded that, for a truly righteous cause, violence may be necessary to bring about less suffering in the long term (teleological) or may be the right for an oppressed group anyway (deontological). However, there is no objective way of deciding which causes are sufficiently righteous. That’s why peace is usually proposed as a blanket guideline by the Gandhi and Rawls school of thought: damage limitation. If you react violently, and you turn out to be wrong, you’ve caused suffering for nothing. If you react peacefully, and you turn out to be wrong, you haven’t. Because we can’t assume our own infallibility, we have to impose this sort of limitation. You might be very sure that you’re right, but you can never be sure enough that it’s okay to become violent. That’s why peaceful protest will always be preferred to terrorism. Terrorism could be justified if it is for a righteous cause, but because we aren’t so arrogant as to believe that we are necessarily right in supporting that cause (and those opposing it are necessarily wrong), we don’t do it. If everyone is allowed to be violent when they feel they have a righteous cause, then we would have civil war. Attempts at peaceful co-operation aren’t perfect, but at least they respect all human beings as having the right to be treated as such. That’s got to be the most fundamental rule a social justice worker can enforce.
I could add that if acting violently leads to progress, then acting peacefully could lead to progress, but with less suffering along the way. I could add that if acting violently doesn’t lead to progress, then acting peacefully would only have an equal level of failure, and with less suffering along the way. But I won’t, because we’ve already established that the outcome is not what you care about. You just want free reign to attack anybody you see as offensive, but will then condemn anybody who finds you offensive, and will get incredibly angry if they return the attacks. You want certain rights for certain groups of people, and you want to be able to assign the groups based on your own subjective view of who deserves it. That sort of attitude is why we need to make the infallibility point, and talk about damage limitation. I’m not therefore going to tell you to ‘calm down, dear’, but I am going to ask you to start showing a little humility and respect. You are not infallible, you are not perfect, and you are not the only one with feelings. Suffering is part of the human experience: everybody does it at some point, to some degree. It’s been established that adding to another’s suffering does not help your own, and may even increase it in the long term, and so there is no way that such violence can be justified.
You’re allowed, if not encouraged, to disagree with somebody or challenge their opinions, but don’t tell them to go and die. You’re allowed, if you don’t feel able to reply calmly, to ignore them. Tumblr has a handy ‘block’ feature, if you want that. But don’t tell them to go and die. That’s not helping them be better, and it is just going to make the long term problem of the bigotry worse, whilst adding some short term suffering. It’s not helping you, either, because both of these things will come back to bite you. If you want to educate them, educate them properly. If you don’t want to educate them, fine; you’re not obliged to. But you are obliged to not harass them, trigger them, target their vulnerabilities, body shame them, sex shame them, use racial or sexual slurs, threaten them, defame them, or anything else which contradicts their right to be treated as an equal human being. If you don’t just care about your own right to rage, and if you genuinely care about social justice at all, then that’s the right you ought to be respecting. Not the right to terrorism.
Okay. I’m not going to open the ‘can a black person be racist to a white person?’ can of worms here, especially seeing as I’ve addressed that elsewhere. Instead, I’m going to ask a different but related question: ‘can a white person be racist to a white person?’
When that other can of worms is opened, people answering ‘no’ will typically respond that black people cannot be racist against white people, because there is no history of oppression against white people and because black people do not hold institutional power. They define ‘racism’ as ‘prejudice + power’. Everything from believing national stereotypes to having a deeply rooted belief in a master race can count as prejudice, but for it to become racist it needs to be enforced: it needs some sort of institutional power behind it. So a black person believing that black people were intrinsically superior to white people is not racist, whereas a white person believing the reverse is. A white person who thinks all black people are stupid and only good at physical tasks is racist, whereas a black person believing that all white people are weak and only good at mental tasks is not.
Now, I’m not condoning that definition, because it is not widely held and is full of flaws (see the above links, if you’re interested). But, because it is the most thorough definition, we shall use it when determining whether or not an act is racist, because our results will then be agreed upon by all.
In the society I live in, any sort of racism against black people or Jewish people is met with zero tolerance, because it is recognised as racism. This includes even the most tame of stereotypes, because we know that although such generalisations seem harmless, the balance of institutional power, the fact that these groups are isolated minorities in this country, and the historical oppression that has been enacted against them combine to make it thoroughly racist, and thoroughly unacceptable.
To contrast, mocking an Irish person about potatoes, or calling all Americans fat and stupid, isn’t seen as an issue.
But, as a Briton, I know that my country and race have oppressed a lot of people throughout history. These people include white nationalities, especially the Irish (and partially the Americans). Irish people in this country therefore face a similar history of oppression. They are also a similarly small minority. They also hold a similarly small amount of institutional power. So is it racist?
I have no idea. I’m not a member of these groups, and so I’m not going to try to dictate which of their experiences are valid. I’m actually just going to leave this here. Enjoy.
~Anonymous
In short: no, and I oppose that equation anyway.
But this is a very good point, and it’s one I’ve been meaning to address. Institutionalised misandry in the education system is a big deal, but it’s something that largely slips by unnoticed.
Personally, I had female teachers throughout compulsory education. In nursery (up to age 4) I was looked after and reared by an exclusive staff of women. In the three years I spent in infant school (4-7) all three of my class teachers were women, as was the headmistress. In junior school (7-11) I again had four consecutively female teachers, spent breaks under the eyes of female dinner ladies, and attended various clubs run by women both in and out of school. In secondary school (11-16) it was mandatory for me to take 9 full GCSEs, and in seven of these I was taught overwhelmingly by women. In college (16-18) three of my four subjects were taught by women, with female heads of departments and a female Principle. So yeah, we can conclude that there are a lot of women in education and childcare. A disproportionate number.
Is this going to have an effect? Mixed classes of boys and girls being brought up and policed almost entirely by women, and thus being taught everything from a female perspective? It’s certainly institutional power, and it can definitely be misused.
Here I talk about the ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’ stereotype much beloved of carers for young children, and the effect it had on my childhood. The message I received from these female teachers was overwhelmingly that girls were nice, tidy, clean, hardworking, quiet and peaceful, whereas boys were naughty, messy, dirty, lazy, loud and naturally violent. That’s the message I, and hundreds of peers, were raised on, and it doesn’t seem to be an uncommon one: friends from different upbringings have similar experiences, and children’s’ books and TV shows supplemented the teaching.
One of the ways this misandry was expressed was in influencing the way teachers disciplined students, in a way eerily similar to how the same stereotypes lead to men being disproportionately arrested and convicted whilst women are frequently left to walk free. From being given detention age 9 for being near to a girl who had fallen over with no evidence that I had touched her, with even her own protests that I hadn’t not enough to sway a woman fixed in her belief that the nearest dirty, messy boy must be the cuprit, to watching a girl play a prank on a teacher at age 15 and see the teacher assume that a clean, tidy girls could not have done it, instead preferring to blame a boy who was so far away that it was physically impossible for him to have. There has been a constant trend of administering more punishments when ‘slugs and snails and puppy-dog’s tails’ boys have been the perpetrator or when ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’ girls have been the victim; again, this is a worrying echo of bias in the adult court system, with the difference being that here it is linked to the fact that women have all of the institutional power (whereas a jury is statistically 50/50).
The bias might be more subtle, with teachers just favouring lesson structures which will appeal more to girls, or more likely to reward a typically female response to a task. It is often noted by feminists that girls do better than boys academically at school, but seem to be less successful than men in later life. They ask: what is this bias in later life that is stopping them from continuing to be successful? I would like to look at it the other way around for a change. I would like to ask: what is this bias in early life that is stopping them from starting to be successful earlier? Because when you look at the success and intelligence of adult men, and then look at their unfavourable performances in women-dominated schools, you have to wonder whether there was something holding them back.
As you say, sometimes an anti-male or pro-female bias is not only enforced but taught. The ‘naughty, messy, dirty, lazy, loud and naturally violent’ stereotypes mentioned earlier were definitely mentioned and constantly alluded to in my early education, almost certainly influencing not only my classmate’s respective academic performances but also how they felt about each other, and themselves. It now seems a scandal that women with these sentiments and biases should be allowed to raise young children as an authority figure, but from what I’ve heard you will find this sort of thing everywhere. It’s not only the young ones, either: as I’ve noted, the disproportionate institutional power continues throughout compulsory education, and the stereotypes come with it. Some subjects, such as English, are especially bad. From 15-17 we had to learn and analyse the work of Carol Ann Duffy, who is a self-confessed misandrist. In a number of her poems she talks about how vulgar men are, jokes about mutilating their genitals on multiple occasions, and talks about how the ‘average penis’ is ugly. We were taught that, as a lesbian who had a brief affair with a man but was then repulsed by what she had done, her misandry was justified. We were told that it was ‘brave’ and ‘clever’. Many of my English teachers, by the way, have been just as fauxminist. I was one of the only boys in my year to overcome this and put in the top class, where I had to listen to this sort of thing outnumbered 10-1. Fortunately a number of the girls around me were also quietly shocked, but we were marked down if we spoke against the anti-male sentiment in our essays. I eventually became unable to continue, and dropped English when it became optional despite otherwise enjoying it, though I was informed by girls who hadn’t that the anti-male and pro-fauxminist sentiment did not abate in the presentation of authors from Bronte to Mansfield. This sort of experience really made me think whether there wasn’t a reason that other boys weren’t as successful at English, and whether their under-performance across the board couldn’t be explained through a similar method of enforcing stereotypes (after being told that girls were neat and clever on a daily basis, it’s remarkable how many more of them turned out to be; and vice versa) and outright discrimination. It seems like your experience is a similar one.
This culminated for me in an A-level exam, when I distinctly remember a supposedly independent invigilator joking that, because a boy had forgotten his calculator, that it was lucky that ‘the female race are always prepared’. Now, I know I’ve seen feminist research proving that the maths ability of girls dramatically decreases when they are in the presence of somebody who thinks that girls can’t do maths. It’s been proven that this is a psychological effect that happens. So when I combine this premise with the premise that young boys are constantly told that they are crude and dull and careless, that young girls are constantly told that they are nice and sophisticated and bright, and the premise that young boys tend to do worse in exams than young girls, it doesn’t take a genius (or a girl, as my teachers would have said) to draw some conclusions.
You can see how it would work with any other group. Let’s say that the invigilator was right, and men really were a race. Imagine if all I’d said above was not about boys, but about black children. Imagine it was black children being told that they were naughty, messy, dirty, lazy, loud and naturally violent, whereas white children were praised for being nice, tidy, clean, hardworking, quiet and peaceful, all under the gaze of exclusively white teachers. Imagine if black children were blamed for everything on principal, and if nobody cared when two black children got into a fight or were hurt by a white child, because it was only an issue if a white child was hit by one of the crude and violent black children. Boys go through all of that. Now imagine that black children did disproportionately worse in exams than in later life, exams before which they may have been told that the black race is intrinsically not as organised, after being taught that their race was inferior throughout their whole childhood. Given those facts, almost everybody would conclude that institutionalised racism was causing that poor performance. We should do the same for institutionalised misandry. Racism, by the way, probably does do these things to black children. You probably don’t need to imagine that world, because we live in it. I am by no means suggesting the misandry is the only bias that this system has, only that it is one affecting a massive amount of people, and one which nobody is looking out for (whereas racial equality is very much regulated). Poor perfomance in exams could completely change these boys’ lives, but even if these stereotypes aren’t causing the discrepancy their wider effects will still leave even deeper scars. It is our formative years when we are most vulnerable to bias, and most affected by it, but it is the time where it is least regulated: not least because a small child is not going to realise that they are being victimised, let alone report it to a greater authority.
The response to this analogy will be that boys aren’t like black children in that women don’t hold the same level of institutional power in wider society, and therefore there is escape from the bias: but show me a 6 year old who fully appreciates the idea of a wider society. To a 6 year old, their teacher is the law, and the only crimes are the breaking of school rules. This institutional power, then, is just as potent as if boys would be discriminated against in wider society. Finally, I’d like to note that they are. These are stereotypes wider society does hold, and you can see them all over the media. They are also institutionalised, as the statistics on frequency of arrests, frequency of convictions, length of sentence for the same crime, and frequency of death penalties show: men face the exact same misandry as boys do, just on a wider scale.
For the record, I’m also not just bitter about exam results: as I said, I was one of the few boys in my year who had consistently done very well. I am, however, bitter about the repression and self-doubt that these stereotypes have given me throughout my developing life. I’m allowed to be. The institutionalised power and prejudice in the education system is frightening, and it has been left unchallenged for long enough. You are absolutely right.
Tonight my friend was talking about how certain breeds of dog were good for certain things. Some are faster, some are better at smelling, and so on.
Luckily, I was there to call her out on her racist stereotyping.
In all seriousness though, why does nobody accept that races are different? If something can be scientifically provable, if a difference is factually true, then it cannot be racist. It’s only racist when you generalise or enforce or discriminate, or when you prevent the truth with a stigma.
The same goes for gender. Sexual dimorphism is a thing, and it is a thing in our species. Men and women have different bodies and different capabilities. It cannot be sexist to say what is scientifically true, and so it is ridiculous to contest fact simply on the basis of equality. Mathematicians and logicians may understand it as the difference between 
and 
.
Men and women are equal, in that we value them equally, but this does not mean that they are identical. Likewise, it does not mean that they cannot be unequal in certain areas, such as the frequently discussed one: strength.
I’ve seen it argued that evidence that women are on average physically weaker than men is due to the sole fact that these people were brought up as women. It’s all society, nurture rather than nature. Women are told that they are weak, by sexists who fail to understand that men and women are biologically identical, and thus they become weak.
Obviously this isn’t true. Even women who are raised from an early age to be Olympic athletes end up competing over shorter distances and with much lighter and smaller equipment than their male colleagues, and yet the male athletes continue to out-perform them. If nurture was the dominant force behind this, it would take just one woman out of the entire world’s population to be raised without being told she was weak before this gap could be completely destroyed; and yet this has never happened.
Saying that men are stronger, then, is not sexist. Strength is not even the inherently good thing that feminists make it out to be (and yes, it is feminists doing this: ‘but these stereotypes can’t hurt men, because they suggest that men are strong’). Men have suffered a lot due to being considered strong, whether from facing higher expectations to work harder for longer and financially support their families, or being seen as fighters and sent to be slaughtered on the battlefield, disproportionately targeted for assault and disproportionately scapegoated and convicted for violent crime. Being better at sport, as well as facing much higher expectations to be good at sport (I doubt that a girl with my dyspraxia would face anywhere near the level of bullying that I did), is just one facet of a dimorphic characteristic. It’s not an inherently good or bad stereotype: it has advantages and disadvantages, like all stereotypes, and it restricts its subjects into those specific roles. Saying that average women are physically weaker then average men is about as sexist as saying that they grow less facial hair.
It might be nice for equality if we were all one gender, one race, one sexuality, but we’re not, and it’s harmful to pretend otherwise. By all means remove the stigma - in a world where men are no longer expected to fight to survive (historical sexism for you there) they no longer need to be strong, and so the objectification and body-shaming of muscular and non-muscular men is become a serious issue akin to that of female body-policing (with male eating disorders more common than you may think), whilst the policing of men’s emotions for ‘strength’ and ‘weakness’ are just as damaging - but this doesn’t change the truth. ‘Real men are strong’ is sexist, ‘men are on average stronger’ is not; and neither is ‘women are on average weaker’. Being less physically strong than somebody else does not make you their inferior. When feminists talk about stereotypes in this regard, substituting ‘physically weak’ for ‘lesser’, they are not only erasing the suffering of men for being considered strong, but they are adding the stigma which converts truth to sexism themselves. The truth alone is not sexist, but their patriarchal interpretation makes it so.
A true egalitarian can realise this, and realise that true, biological facts about differences in races or genders can not in themselves be racist: it is only how we use them. Those who take offence, then, are those who are using them wrongly. When I say ‘women are typically weaker’, I don’t mean ‘women are typically lesser’. But when feminists take it as such, they are the ones equating the two concepts, and so they are the ones degrading ‘weak’ women (feminist anti-femininity has long been established as a problem; strong independent women are no more ‘real women’ than weak, dependent ones, and pressuring women either way is equally as harmful). Being physically weak is nothing to be ashamed of, and although it can be used as an insult, it should not universally be taken as such. This dimorphism, like racial genetic differences, is natural; and we are fools if we try to deny it.
You know when we talk about racial profiling?
Black men are always being unfairly targeted. Black men are always being disproportionately prosecuted. Black men recieve harsher sentences. Black men are more likely to recieve capital punishment, even when all other factors are taken into account.
You know how we always conclude “this is obviously because we’re racist against blacks”?
We’re missing a factor there. These victims all share another characteristic: they are men. You may be interested to know that even when race is controlled for, men are just as unfairly targeted in all of these areas. So yes, this is sexual profiling as well. In fact, a white man is more worse off than a white woman than a black woman is worse off than a white women. The effect of gender in this injustice is massively underacknowledged.
Black people suffer in court, men suffer in court, and black men suffer most of all. They are more likely to be prosecuted than if they were white, a woman, or both. What’s more, they are more likely to be prosecuted if their alleged victim is a white woman, than if they were another black man. This is easy to explain away as racism, but again controls show that sexism is just as much a part of this. To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel about racial injustice, but a black woman wouldn’t be so easily falsely prosecuted of raping a white man, so such cases are every bit about misandry as well.
So why do the stereotypes align so well? Men are degraded as rough and crude and violent in a similar way to black people, whilst women are seen as dainty and elegant and innocent just as white people are. I’ve noticed a trend to call white animals female and black animals male.
In fact, there was a study a while ago that suggested that statistics showed black women to be seen as the most unattractive. This was seen as racist, but the study showed that black men were if anything seen as more attractive than white men, so if it was racist against black people on the female result it was equally and oppositely racist against white people on the male one. Regardless, it’s interesting the way these patterns overlap. Do we see attractiveness in this way because of the way the stereotypes fit, with black and male as good a match as white and female?
Black is supposedly the colour of power, and men are certainly expected and pressured into being powerful - in fact, they are objectified on their status and this is a primary factor in how attractive they can appear. White is seen as a more sophisticated colour, and so our racism may well join with our sexism in suggesting that it therefore suits women. Let us not forget that women are expected and pressured into being graceful and innocent, and so these stereotypes do not fit with the black ones, which are better suited to the cruder but more powerful men. Our society reflects this: even on their wedding days women are expected to wear white and men are expected to wear black. There really does seem to be some sort of subconscious link in our minds as to what seems ‘right’.
The net result is that black men get a double dose of being percieved as more likely to be violent and aggressive, whilst white women get let off on both counts. Likewise, white women might experience misogynistic stereotypes of being weak and so on more than black women do (I’ve certainly heard that they recieve much more chivalry). So we can see that sexism and racism feed off each other where they fit, combining two injustices into one, although we must be careful to note that both biases also continue independently (so although black women may experience less misogyny in certain areas, other aspects of racism mean that this does not make them less oppressed).
Thoughts?
These people have obviously never left their village. White people are not the majority everywhere, and they do not hold all of the power or authority everywhere. Institutional racism has existed before White culture emerged, and continues an independent existence in many other cultures worldwide. If you go to parts of China you will be stalked and pointed at to being White, and even in some closed off parts of England I’ve been stared at. The privilege of being the norm is not a universal one, and pale skin has not been intrinsically seen as better. White cultures have oppressed each other and been oppressed, whilst plenty of other oppression goes on with no White interference. Learn some real history. For supposed anti-racists, you do have a habit of thinking in a White-centric way. White people aren’t oppressed in this country today, but please open your mind and realise that this does not mean that they have always held the power everywhere. They haven’t, and so to say that racism is only a White thing is absurd. As FFF notes, skin colour discrimation even amongst the same cultures has been going on since the dawn of humanity, and in some parts of Africa being a race of light skinned black people, or being born a White albino, has still gotten many killed. This is not the only country in the world, whites are not the first civilisation in the world, and if you truly respected diversity then you would remember that.TW for amputation?
(a submit to FFF) Honest to GOD I am utterly confused with all the hub-bub regarding “cracker” not being as much of a derogatory word as any other racist slurs! It’s like comparing the degree of effect of amputation based on if its on the leg or the hand (Apologies for triggering anyone, was the only example I could think of at the moment)!
I belong to the sub continent whose people were oppressed by the colonizing British for 200 years. Once I started to read the history… the thing that stood out to me was that trying to define any group of people based on a number of factors like skin color, religion, gender, cast, orientation and a whole lot more is disturbingly common among people. Be it the ones who were oppressed or the ones doing the oppression….
(reply below from FFF to the submit)
I agree. People who say racism against white people doesn’t exist are as bigoted and racist as British imperialists who rationalized their paradigm by “teaching the poor silly black people.” (Africans were gadding about daily life quite well tyvm.) I’ve lived as a white minority in my hometown. I’ve been to (real) Mexico. That feeling of being out of place and targeted with silent hostility and otherness is precisely what people talk about.
Racism can be applied to every race. Categorically saying white people don’t experience it is just as racist because you’re still basing it on race. I’ve experience racism. I’m white.
seriously FFF, let these topics go, you’ve already shot yourself in the foot 5,000 times.
A) trigger warnings can’t come AFTER you write something triggering or allow someone to submit something triggering. If you do think you have “a triggering example,” point it out before, not after, or it defeats the purpose of identifying it as triggering. And no, that amputation example made no sense. It was, at best, a really bad comparison since amputation is not the result of society, and at worst, still completely false because amputees certainly don’t all feel the same way about their amputations? And one type of amputation doesn’t have a history of being oppressed, while the other amputation has the history of being the oppressor?
B) there is no such thing as reverse racism. Can black people say racist things about white people? Yes. It’s not “good” or “right” to call someone a cracker. But it will never operate the same way as racism does (towards People of Color) because white people have institutionalized power. People of color do not. You’re not taking the moral high road by declaring “all racism is bad, there are no distinctions.” All the history and realities in current society make obvious that there are reasons these things are not equal to each other.
You’re buying into white privilege denial. Going to Mexico does not change things. Racial discussion isn’t some topic that just exists in history textbooks for lofty/idle discussion. You do not experience lifelong oppression the way a black person does and you never will. Your individual experience is real but as a white person, your experience will honestly never be invisible. Even if you’ve gone to a place where you’ve been the minority and people have made you feel uncomfortable by staring, that doesn’t negate the fact that you still belong to a group of people that systemically/statistically/has always had more power, money, opportunities, and benefits than all other groups. Using the word cracker against you will never be as historically and oppressively rooted as the N word used against a black person. So using the N word and other such derogatory things will always be worse.
Well, then. You won’t mind if I do it 5,001 times.
Well, those are pretty hefty stereotypes too. Wake up, FD, of course there is reverse racism. Of course there is racism against white people. You’re attaching certain characteristics to people based on their race. That’s textbook racism. This isn’t a concept that’s incompatible with institutionalized power, but rather inextricably intertwined with it. And it’s not a, air-tight theory you can just throw over the world, because this has global implications.
There was already a trend in societies to associate pale skin with power. This has been the case for the past 3000 years. The example I can think of off the top of my head is Asian cultures. Pale skin was associated with class, power, and even royalty. It’s an extremely desirable trait even today—especially in women. So this notion of pale skin color and power didn’t just appear with the rise and expansion of European cultures. This has been around for thousands of years and is now taking on a negative stereotype as not only being a sign of power, but bigotry. A badge for white nation-slaying overlords. This isn’t just about America or North America or even western culture. This concept stretches back in our collective cultural heritage to far before that and has been evolving and changing ever since—especially with globalization.
I’m not buying into privilege denial. That would either me rationalizing it away as class or colorblindness. White people in the western world have incredible predominance. White empires have influenced nearly every civilization on the planet. But never mistake that visiting the same racial generalizations on white people as anything other than a different mask for the same beast. The fact that I had life experiences rather than cultural indoctrination to teach me about racial “otherness” is proof of the pudding, I think. Yes, being white is a tremendous sociopolitical advantage in western culture, especially being a white, heterosexual, cis, rich, conservative Christian man in America. But that presents problems with your definition, as not all white people live in the western world and not all governments are run by white people. In those scenarios, white people are painted as the inferiors justified by the bumbling colonial history of their ancestors. Do you really want to be a white person in Africa—with all the stereotypes and discrimination that goes with it? Personally, no.
The reality for people who aren’t white in our so-called first world culture is a sham. Absolutely no denying that. It’s a disgrace. The fact that Americans elected themselves a black man as president and call themselves liberal for doing so is the best example of that. That doesn’t mean the bigotry and resentment that festers under that oppression is any different when it’s directed back at white people. It’s more understandable. More sympathetic, certainly. But the victims of victims are still victims.
No, I have not enjoyed all the benefits and advantages. As an Irish person, I also inherit 800 years of oppression based on what I am, not who I am. It’s not racist, but it is prejudice. Being called a terrorist and a Mick while in England leaves a bit of a sour aftertaste in my mouth. There’s also a patronizing sense of being seen as a prop rather than my own person. Irish people are of tremendous sentimental value, but that is also a stereotype, and quite an irritating one at that. And in terms of whiteness, we’re seen as the white version of the old world view of blacks. So yes, as a white person I’m not going to be that patronizing jerk who simpers like I know exactly what it’s like to live in a culture functioning on white hegemony. I don’t. But I come close. Much closer than many other intellectual elites. And my response, limited as it is by my racial niche, is to avoid becoming the monster you’re fighting against.
Ultimately, this comes down to sameness. To being a majority, not just in skin color, but in culture, religion, and political views. In my small town, I was not part of the majority and therefore I was subjected to the ostracism and derision based on my whiteness. It was not institutional, but it was the norm. The same trend happens everywhere. In America, it’s against PoC. And yes, I agree that the N-bomb is one of the worst words, never mind slurs, we have. I remember it being stated that the N-bomb was one of, if not the most, offensive words in the English language. Hands down. What I’m saying is that calling me a racist cracker has the same denial of individual characteristics as old imperialism. It’s a ploy used to dehumanize others, in power or not, and it works. The European powers used it to great effect and we’re seeing it here, but on a microcosmic scale.
If you call me racist names, you’re being racist. That doesn’t mean I can’t be (unintentionally) racist towards you based on social conditioning, or that society has stacked the odds against you based on race. These injustices not only coexist, but thrive on each other.
TW for amputation?
(a submit to FFF) Honest to GOD I am utterly confused with all the hub-bub regarding “cracker” not being as much of a derogatory word as any other racist slurs! It’s like comparing the degree of effect of amputation based…
To begin: I do not believe that White people are oppressed in that way. I have never said that. All that I said was that advocating genocide against an entire racial group would be racist. In every meaning of the word but one, it is. This therefore isn’t me trying to redefine words to benefit me, because I use the common sense and historical and academic definitions, the ones the words were invented to mean and still mean to the vast majority of people today. Besides, being able to stick up for myself against somebody who wants me killed because of my skin colour is not a ‘benefit’, it should be a basic human right. Are you seriously suggesting that it would be okay to deprive me of that right because of my race? On the other hand, twisting definitions so that you can say such offensive things and get away with it most certainly is an undeserved benefit. You took the bait and even put a cute little trigger warning for whitesplaining? So when I say “it’s not cool to want all of my people dead”, and a black person comes in and attacks me, that’s me speaking over them or claiming non-existent authority over their issues? I’m pretty sure that this was a discussion amongst whites, about whites, and proposing nothing new. If you want to come in with your ignorance and be violent, you can, but I did ask you not to derail it by making it about you. I won’t ask again. On that note, what is with referring to me as ‘whitey’? You’re the third in the row. I wonder if you’d be less hostile if I too referred to you with racial slurs instead of making logical points about my own harassment that you just keep misunderstanding. Maybe I should sink down to your level. Oh, and yes these are my own personal experiences, as well as my experiences as a White person. I can’t whitesplain over my own experiences, unless you’ve completely failed to get the point and gone off attacking a straw man. Which you have. Oh dear. On a more basic level we’re talking about language, and so you seem to be suggesting that my whiteness is interfering with the way I understand a language created and mostly spoken by White people. No. My race is irrelevant. The fact is that the word racism means one thing, and racial oppression is something else. If you want to say ‘racial oppression doesn’t hurt dumb whiteys like you’ then that’s fine. But that is not the same as saying that racism (you know, the real definition) can’t be anti-white, because it so obviously can. Saying that you want all White people killed is racist, and no matter how much you try to squirm out of that definition, it won’t make what you said right or ‘healthy’.[TW FOR WHITESPLAINING, MENTION OF GENOCIDE, PRIVILEGE DENYING]
So recently this has been getting pretty bad. I see somebody posting a quote and saying ‘I agree with this quote, but I almost didn’t post it because it’s from a white guy’. I see ‘I hate white people’ posts, people suggesting all white people are ignorant or filling some sort of offensive stereotype, people getting upset when a white person reblogs them on an unrelated topic because ‘white people are invading my safe space’, people harassing others for being white, and then laughing at the typical ‘dumb whiteys’ when they get offended.
This has all been allowed to happen because somebody decided to say ‘black people can’t be racist’.
Let’s get this straight. If you say ‘white people all deserve to die’, there is no way in hell that this isn’t racist. Everybody is racist at some level, it’s a natural human flaw, and you are no exception. You aren’t perfect because you aren’t white. You don’t get a ‘get out of jail free’ card to bully and offend whomever you choose. You are as accountable as anybody.
I know I’ll probably be accused of ‘whitesplaining’ (because white people can’t have a valid opinion when it comes to their own harassment), and told that ‘black people can’t be racist’. But why is this?
Racism = Prejudice + Power
Behold: the racist’s trump card. A definition that does not fit with the original definition of racism, with it’s etymology, with any current major definition, or with the common usage of the word. This is a definition that has just been invented as a cop-out, which has no real validity and which doesn’t even make much sense.
Racism is the belief that different races have different intrinsic characteristics, which can make them superior or inferior to each other. All sorts of generalisations and stereotypes come under this, no matter which race they are aimed at. Any sort of prejudice based on race comes under this definition, and therefore counts as racism. So all of the statements above count, no matter who said them. Racism can therefore be defined as follows:
Racism = Prejudice + Race
This actually fits what the word means, and what it is has always been generally understood to mean.
So why the confusion? I have a feeling that the racists are getting confused with oppression. Oppression is where power comes into it - it is the use of power in a cruel and unjust way. Unjust can mean double standards, which can mean prejudice. So we could define oppression to fit the gap:
Oppression = Prejudice + Power
Oppression can be race-based, and the racists above would have a point here. They would be able to say that white people have typically held more power, and therefore been the racial oppressors. They could say ‘black people can’t racially oppress’. But this is in no way the same thing as ‘black people can’t be racist’, because racism in itself doesn’t involve power.
Racial Oppression = Prejudice + Power + Race
Racial Oppression = Oppression + Race
Racial Oppression = Racism + Power
The racists might also be interested to look at things from beyond a black and white perspective. They might like to realise that racial oppression, including slavery and genocide, has been going on long before Western powers emerged and continues to happen around the world today. White culture has just been the most powerful and thus the most prominent enforcer of racism, but nearly every culture throughout history has been involved in some sort, and nearly every person has been guilty of holding prejudices.
This is not a white thing, and it is offensive (and racist) to suggest that it is. It is also offensive to be racist, to mock somebody when they have the courage to call you out, and then to derail them by coming up with some nonsense definition which paints them as the eternal villain. I can’t get off being charged for murder by saying “ah, but I define murder as killing + smearing my face in custrd, and there was no custard in the house”, and you are no different. If you are going to be racist, no matter what colour you are, you deserve to be held accountable. No more racial immunity.
Yes, you are “whitesplaining” not “because white people can’t have a valid opinion when it comes to their own harassment”, but because you demonstrate a lack of understanding of why racism is an “-ism” (a systemic oppression) and not just people being jerks to each-other (which is pretty much what it is when someone says your opinion on race doesn’t matter “because you’re white”).
You try to discredit the “oppression = prejudice + power” metric because it doesn’t suit you, basically. This isn’t something that People of Color came up with so we could “oppress” whitey; it’s a definition that takes into account all the effects of racism that make it ‘oppression’ & (again) not just people being jerks to each-other. Moreover, it’s not something that was devised glibly or without serious consideration & intent and, once you truly understand what this means, you’ll also understand that there is absolutely nothing to support the idea that white people are oppressed at a systemic level because of their whiteness.
They might like to realise that racial oppression, including slavery and genocide, has been going on long before Western powers emerged and continues to happen around the world today.
You’re on the right track here, but you still miss the mark by a wide margin.
First, the idea of “race” that we, in the US & Western Europe, have is something very specific to our cultural heritage. Also, it was devised by people of European heritage to justify their systems of mistreating people who were not of European heritage.
Once you understand this, you should be able to understand that instances of genocide in other parts of the world were not related to “race” as we understand them. They weren’t committed against people of origins from a very different part of the world; most cases were one ethnic group against another—people who we’d think of as being the same “race”, but who exist in different spheres of cultural history. The same is true of historical slavery—which wasn’t usually anything like the history of slavery in the US. In most cases, slaves could be of any cultural or ethnic group and were often the same “race” as their slave-masters. In addition, most cases of historical slavery were truly more like Indentured Servitude, by our current understanding of the idea.
There were some exceptions that were less kind & more cruel (ie, more like slavery in the US), but to say that the history of slavery around the world was exactly like it was in the US is ignorant & lazy.
White culture has just been the most powerful and thus the most prominent enforcer of racism, but nearly every culture throughout history has been involved in some sort, and nearly every person has been guilty of holding prejudices.
This is true, but race-based prejudice, in itself, is not the same as racism, which is a systemic oppression whose purpose & goal is to maintain a one-way system of mestreatment which results in a difference in access to resources.
I can’t get off being charged for murder by saying “ah, but I define murder as killing + smearing my face in custrd, and there was no custard in the house”
It’s true, you can’t. But you’re also just being absurd. And showing how unaware you are of the role of white privilege (among other things).
When someone says they’re discrediting what you’ve said ‘because you’re white’, most likely, that phrase is shorthand for: “…because your experience of being part of the oppressor group in this equation has made it very difficult for you to understand the oppressions we are discussing—and it shows.”
While there’s no reason to believe that racism is inherent to whiteness, the current social structures we live in have made whiteness an essential part of enforcing race-based oppressive systems. Therefore, there is no way to support the idea that white people are oppressed on the basis of their whiteness. There are simply no examples of ways this is occurring at a systemic level—because it’s not.
In the end, what you’ve been describing & attempting to rail against is Healthy Cultural Paranoia, which is a horse of an entirely different color. You should meet said horse. It will only help you in your journey in learning how to be less of an asshat.
(Background: We were talking about barbecues in Harrisonburg and our hometowns. Apparently people will stand on the side of the road and sell barbecued half-chickens for $3 in Harrisonburg, so Person 1 was going to drive around later looking for them.)
Person 2: Just look for (whispered) black people.
Me: Huh?
Person 3: He said look for black people.
Person 1: [Person 2], you dumbass, black people love FRIED chicken, not BARBECUED chicken.
Me: I don’t get it.
Person 2: It was a joke.
Me: Uh….I didn’t see anything funny.
Person 3: Well, all black people love fried chicken, watermelon, and Kool-Aid.
Me: I still don’t get it.
Person 4: Think about the innuendos.
Me: A…watermelon is like a vagina? That’s the only thing possibly sexual I can see around that.
Person 4: No, not innuendos like that.
Person 1: It’s just a fact of life that black people like those things.
Me: I’ve met some black people who don’t like those things. I don’t get why it’s funny that some of them like those things, though…
Person 1: It’s all about stereotypes.
Person 2: Yeah, stereotypes are hilarious.
Me: Uh, not really. See, I’ve been educated about racism, and -
Person 1: Are you calling me a racist?!?!
Me: Well, it’s the mentality that you have that leads you to say that -
Person 1: I am not a racist. I’ve grown up with black people, I have a bunch of black friends.
Me: Well, you can still be racist…
Person 1: I really don’t appreciate being called a racist, and you’re overanalyzing this so we need to just drop this conversation.
(this guy is about 120 pounds heavier than I am and much better built, so I was kind of afraid to say anything more)
[awkward silence]
Person 1: Hey, look, I’m sorry. I just don’t appreciate being called a racist.
(fuck it)
Me: Yeah, I can understand how one person’s feelings is more important than the fact that you’re stereotyping an entire group of people.
(everybody left soon after that)
Fucking. White. Privilege.
Fuck.
Because everyone at that table was white, he felt comfortable making that “joke”.
The fact that he whispered it and looked around for black people in the area is a CLEAR FUCKING SIGN that he knew what he was saying was offensive.
He said it anyway.
If I hadn’t said anything, they’d still be thinking that it was ok to make those kinds of “jokes”.
They probably still think it’s ok to make them.
Fuck.
Loved this line: “Yeah, I can understand how one person’s feelings is more important than the fact that you’re stereotyping an entire group of people.” I will be using that.
(Source: theonetaylordetroye)
All white people are racist. For the most part it’s not their fault, it’s just the way we as white people are brought up and conditioned. So, when someone tells you, white person, that you are being racist you are and if you refuse to acknowledge it you continue to perpetuate the ignorance and racism that you claim to protest so much.
This goes for myself too, obviously.
That’s a pretty gross generalization.
@lawlspy: no it is not. white people ARE racist.
@feministdykeslut: um, i agree except maybe for “For the most part it’s not [our] fault”. i dunno what you meant my that exactly. but it is certainly ALWAYS our fault when we commit racist acts.
Every white person is racist? That is a very racist generalization. Everyone from every background can and at one time is racist according to the aforementioned criteria. White people are dominant and often feckless about doing so, but most of the institutional racism has been dismantled. (The USA is a notable exception in my view.) After all, the white culture you’re referring to consists roughly 1% of the global population and while it contains 90% of the financial clout, there’s only so many people to enforce that white racist attitude.
Everybody is racist.
Our brains have developed to see patterns and make assumptions based on them, and that is how we learn. We are instinctively primed to form stereotypes and generalisations. As social animals, we also have an in-built tendency to in-group loyalty and hostility to those who are different.
Society isn’t the reason for our stereotypes, it is just the reason that all of our stereotypes are the same. We all have stereotypes anyway, whether we realise them or not. Nobody is perfect. We are all racist and sexist and all types of prejudice you can imagine in our way, because prejudice is a natural thing. That doesn’t mean that it is a good thing, but it means that we all have it and we all need to work on fighting it.
Want to know what else is racist? Lumping the blame for all of this racism on one group, simply because of their race. Seriously. White people are not the devil. White society may give them some stereotypes, but non-whites in that same culture will be conditioned in the same way, and will hold some similar stereotypes (including some about white people). You’ll find plenty of cultural racism in non-white societies as well. The difference is that historically white cultures have had the power to enforce their particular breed of racism, leading to the oppression of others. But don’t kid yourself that it wouldn’t have happened the other way around, had fate chosen differently. It did happen amongst non-white races anyway, and still does to this day. There is plenty of oppression that is not to do with white people, and it is not white people who invented it.
Everybody is human, and therefore everybody is racist. No need to single one group out.
I don’t agree.
I do not think everyone’s “racist”, regardless of their ethnicity.
Everyone’s prejudiced is the term I find more accurate.Our minds simplify things because it’s faster and easier.
Which can and does create a systematic malice against minorities (and if of a different ethnic background it’s called racism).Prejudice is, by it’s definition, any preconceived notion we have which isn’t based on reason or actual experience.
Whenever we look at a person and assign a stereotype to them, judging them at first glance, even if that judgement is benign in and of itself, we’re being prejudiced. Even if that stereotype comes from experience of other people we lack the actual experience of the person we’re looking at now.It’s an assumption.
We all do it, all of the time.
We look at something and our mind automatically connects it to what it’s encountered in the past, fictional or true, and we form a “first impression” which is hardly ever more than a prejudiced assumption of what it is we’re looking at or experiencing or who we’re meeting.There’s one other thing we all do too.
We all have some cognitive bias, one of ‘em being the confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is usually a subconscious bias that makes you notice what fits your theory, or presumption, or prejudice, more clearly than what contradicts them.
Which means, if you hold the view that all Asians are good at math (a “non-hostile” or “non-negative” prejudice based on a racist stereotype) then you’re more likely to notice when an Asian person displays skill at math than noticing an Asian person pulling up a calculator to do basic addition. Not because you’re consciously ignoring it, but because your brain draws your attention to what it’s familiar with and/or what you are emotionally attached to and/or what you’re thinking about and/or what you think is true or want to be true, etc.
(Ever notice how everyone’s pregnant whenever you’re thinking about kids at all? Or how everyone’s smoking if you stop smoking or are trying to convince someone else to stop smoking? It’s not cause the world changes to bring you what you’re thinking about, it’s because you’re thinking about it that you notice it more than the alternative.)Being prejudiced and having confirmation bias is a part of being human.
It doesn’t “make” you racist as a default, but it does undeniably contribute.Being aware of human frailty, human flaws of the mind and of the body, can help us try to compensate for them.
We can never be completely without them, but we can remind ourselves how often we’re wrong, how often we assume, and remind ourselves of the importance of doubt.
We can also fight to eradicate stereotypes (which I doubt will ever be possible) or alternatively, try to get the world to understand why there’s no such thing as a true stereotype (which might be even harder still…. )Okay, I rambled, and drifted all ‘round the topic, but… I hope I make sense.
Not at all, you make perfect sense. I agree with most of what you’ve said there, I just used racism at its basic level as a particular type of this universal prejudice. Our disagreement is just down to whether or not holding racial prejudices makes you racist, but we agree on the main thing: racism is not some white-exclusive sin, and we shouldn’t treat it as such. White people did not invent racism, it is something which arises naturally in all of us due to the way our minds are built, and so to point the finger at one race is just wrong. You can’t generalise white people are bad and everyone else as an angel, because we are all humans together. We all have flaws, and we all need help working on them.
All white people are racist. For the most part it’s not their fault, it’s just the way we as white people are brought up and conditioned. So, when someone tells you, white person, that you are being racist you are and if you refuse to acknowledge it you continue to perpetuate the ignorance and racism that you claim to protest so much.
This goes for myself too, obviously.
That’s a pretty gross generalization.
@lawlspy: no it is not. white people ARE racist.
@feministdykeslut: um, i agree except maybe for “For the most part it’s not [our] fault”. i dunno what you meant my that exactly. but it is certainly ALWAYS our fault when we commit racist acts.
Every white person is racist? That is a very racist generalization. Everyone from every background can and at one time is racist according to the aforementioned criteria. White people are dominant and often feckless about doing so, but most of the institutional racism has been dismantled. (The USA is a notable exception in my view.) After all, the white culture you’re referring to consists roughly 1% of the global population and while it contains 90% of the financial clout, there’s only so many people to enforce that white racist attitude.
Everybody is racist.
Our brains have developed to see patterns and make assumptions based on them, and that is how we learn. We are instinctively primed to form stereotypes and generalisations. As social animals, we also have an in-built tendency to in-group loyalty and hostility to those who are different.
Society isn’t the reason for our stereotypes, it is just the reason that all of our stereotypes are the same. We all have stereotypes anyway, whether we realise them or not. Nobody is perfect. We are all racist and sexist and all types of prejudice you can imagine in our way, because prejudice is a natural thing. That doesn’t mean that it is a good thing, but it means that we all have it and we all need to work on fighting it.
Want to know what else is racist? Lumping the blame for all of this racism on one group, simply because of their race. Seriously. White people are not the devil. White society may give them some stereotypes, but non-whites in that same culture will be conditioned in the same way, and will hold some similar stereotypes (including some about white people). You’ll find plenty of cultural racism in non-white societies as well. The difference is that historically white cultures have had the power to enforce their particular breed of racism, leading to the oppression of others. But don’t kid yourself that it wouldn’t have happened the other way around, had fate chosen differently. It did happen amongst non-white races anyway, and still does to this day. There is plenty of oppression that is not to do with white people, and it is not white people who invented it.
Everybody is human, and therefore everybody is racist. No need to single one group out.
So feminism now addresses all “intersections” such as racism and cissexism etc. Ok!
Problem for you is that sadly this makes a ton of feminist “arguments” redundant.African Americans being treated far more harshly by police (more stop and searches, longer sentences etc) amounts to oppression, going by feminist rules. They equate ethnic minorities being treated worse by police with oppression so why don’t they apply this to men too? For example, they say that the disproportionate amount of POCs in jail must mean the police are systemically racist and yet they never accuse the disproportionate amount of men in jail with systemic sexism.
Care to explain this, feminists? Or is this merely another “wat about teh menz” strawmen that you don’t want to properly address?
I just get a ‘how dare you compare the privilege of men (who aren’t oppressed) to the suffering of POCs (who are)’ derailment, which uses the typical anti-masculist circular logic: assume men aren’t oppressed because there is no evidence, dismiss evidence because men aren’t oppressed. Hoping you fare better.
