(no subject)
Sep. 18th, 2007 06:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_fantastic_ms_fox6 am and awake since 4:40 ish.
Woken up by a variant of an earlier dream: I'd been a negligent pet owner and the sickly abandoned rodents bred and bred and bred until they produced too many sick offspring to count - and it was my fault.
Hard to get back to sleep after that.
When I'm awake, what swirls around in my head like nothing else - and what has, for years, swirled around in my head like nothing else - is this feeling of being unable to speak.
The most common form of this is my tendency to run into bands of old-fashioned lefty discourses that tell me (usually indirectly but occasionally to my face) that I have no right to be saying what I'm saying - that my mouth is selling us out. Might as well write it out.
1. - The CFS
Who will claim that we need them because, on our own, we're not doing enough for students - when they're wasting our time trying to deal with them, stifling non-CFS campaigns, blocking attempts to disagree or change the organization (let alone leave) and screwing around with our money. And we can't say what we know to be true because they'll spin our words as reactionary to students who don't want to spend six hours learning about why the CFS is toxic. They may sue us. They will definitely try to silence us.
Questioning the CFS does not make me "lazy, crazy or stupid," but they will try to paint me as such.
Right. That explains why I don't like them.
2. - Contemporary pop/crypto-second-wave feminism
I don't think that the fact that two people share the birth sex or even a gender identity means that they then have a damn thing in common in terms of identity-based social activism. Having similar a gender identity and gender expression and nationality and class and ability and age and ethnicity and religion and so on means that you have something in common in terms of identity-based social activism.
Also: common-identity-based social activism, while valuable and emotionally enlivening, will not build the alliances you need to make change in the world.
But if we were to take a look at gender oppression on its own, then we should do away with the idea that gender-normative women are somehow the focus of men's wrath. Yes, our society is rife with sexism. But first, it's not "men vs women." It's everyone vs everyone else and themselves. Second, if we insist on having an oppression olympics, then in the gender-only event, "Team Gender-Normative Straight Women" will probably place second-last.
I am finding out first hand that there is a lot of privilege that comes with passing as female, even as a queer female (at least here in Vancouver). I'm also finding out that there are uncalled-for disadvantages. From my background in feminism, I was totally ready for the disadvantages, and can walk into any feminist library and take a dozen books off the shelves that will explain their whys and hows - which is awesome. But the privileges were and are barely mentioned. I think it was because people were and are afraid that acknowledging that normative-women-appearing are generally privileged over the obviously genderfucked, and sometimes privileged over men, that they would and will lose the ability to agitate.
It was Northamerica in the 1970s and social issues, and how people talked about them, were different then. I'm not angry. But it's 30-odd years later now. Saying "sometimes we're advantaged and sometimes we're disadvantaged" does not mean that you lose the right to protest or mend disadvantage - rather it helps build alliances, and it help you check your own privilege.
Just because someone appears male does not mean that they are privileged in dominant masculine environments. Just because someone appears or identifies as female does not mean that they are comfortable in "women's environments."
While we're at it, my female identity and androgynous presentation are not the product of super-special socialization: they are just how I am. The same goes for most people when they're in a position to express themselves despite the fear.
Just because there is a difference between women and men's lived experiences does not mean that women are being oppressed.
For me or someone else to state these things does not mean that we are ignorant of, or trying to undermine, the women's movement.
Thank you.
3. - Progressive or lefty angles that unquestioningly value old-school top-down means of changing the world
I am pissed off at the unions that think that exploiting their power equals worker's rights.Remember public school, where the teacher couldn't plug anything in because that would be theft-of-work from the janitor? Have you tried to move folding tables or fix anything at SFU? It requires one-week notice to Facilities Management who may or may not get your order right - failure to go through them may result in a grievance. I do not like seniority systems that punish outside interests, changing careers and seasonal staff. I do not like wage-ratchets that dictate that the minimum contract keeps pay up with inflation, and the maximum is considerably beyond that - leading to escalating wages over time until people are getting paid $20 an hour plus benefits to do basic tasks, (whose wages often come out of the taxes of people who are doing harder jobs, with larger student loans for less pay and with fewer benefits.) I do not like how the BCTF and other unions clamber for more money instead of putting an equal amount of funds into better working conditions (which would make their jobs more pleasant, and make public-school students' lives easier and get parents to support the strike).
And while I can see some problems with publicly-funded private clinics (as in the government funds them just like it would a hospital, and they can't charge anything on top of that so healthcare stays free), I can see some advantages too. Not saying they're a good idea, or the solution, but we should be able to consider it publicly.
Saying this does not make me against public health care.
Woken up by a variant of an earlier dream: I'd been a negligent pet owner and the sickly abandoned rodents bred and bred and bred until they produced too many sick offspring to count - and it was my fault.
Hard to get back to sleep after that.
When I'm awake, what swirls around in my head like nothing else - and what has, for years, swirled around in my head like nothing else - is this feeling of being unable to speak.
The most common form of this is my tendency to run into bands of old-fashioned lefty discourses that tell me (usually indirectly but occasionally to my face) that I have no right to be saying what I'm saying - that my mouth is selling us out. Might as well write it out.
1. - The CFS
Who will claim that we need them because, on our own, we're not doing enough for students - when they're wasting our time trying to deal with them, stifling non-CFS campaigns, blocking attempts to disagree or change the organization (let alone leave) and screwing around with our money. And we can't say what we know to be true because they'll spin our words as reactionary to students who don't want to spend six hours learning about why the CFS is toxic. They may sue us. They will definitely try to silence us.
Questioning the CFS does not make me "lazy, crazy or stupid," but they will try to paint me as such.
Right. That explains why I don't like them.
2. - Contemporary pop/crypto-second-wave feminism
I don't think that the fact that two people share the birth sex or even a gender identity means that they then have a damn thing in common in terms of identity-based social activism. Having similar a gender identity and gender expression and nationality and class and ability and age and ethnicity and religion and so on means that you have something in common in terms of identity-based social activism.
Also: common-identity-based social activism, while valuable and emotionally enlivening, will not build the alliances you need to make change in the world.
But if we were to take a look at gender oppression on its own, then we should do away with the idea that gender-normative women are somehow the focus of men's wrath. Yes, our society is rife with sexism. But first, it's not "men vs women." It's everyone vs everyone else and themselves. Second, if we insist on having an oppression olympics, then in the gender-only event, "Team Gender-Normative Straight Women" will probably place second-last.
I am finding out first hand that there is a lot of privilege that comes with passing as female, even as a queer female (at least here in Vancouver). I'm also finding out that there are uncalled-for disadvantages. From my background in feminism, I was totally ready for the disadvantages, and can walk into any feminist library and take a dozen books off the shelves that will explain their whys and hows - which is awesome. But the privileges were and are barely mentioned. I think it was because people were and are afraid that acknowledging that normative-women-appearing are generally privileged over the obviously genderfucked, and sometimes privileged over men, that they would and will lose the ability to agitate.
It was Northamerica in the 1970s and social issues, and how people talked about them, were different then. I'm not angry. But it's 30-odd years later now. Saying "sometimes we're advantaged and sometimes we're disadvantaged" does not mean that you lose the right to protest or mend disadvantage - rather it helps build alliances, and it help you check your own privilege.
Just because someone appears male does not mean that they are privileged in dominant masculine environments. Just because someone appears or identifies as female does not mean that they are comfortable in "women's environments."
While we're at it, my female identity and androgynous presentation are not the product of super-special socialization: they are just how I am. The same goes for most people when they're in a position to express themselves despite the fear.
Just because there is a difference between women and men's lived experiences does not mean that women are being oppressed.
For me or someone else to state these things does not mean that we are ignorant of, or trying to undermine, the women's movement.
Thank you.
3. - Progressive or lefty angles that unquestioningly value old-school top-down means of changing the world
I am pissed off at the unions that think that exploiting their power equals worker's rights.Remember public school, where the teacher couldn't plug anything in because that would be theft-of-work from the janitor? Have you tried to move folding tables or fix anything at SFU? It requires one-week notice to Facilities Management who may or may not get your order right - failure to go through them may result in a grievance. I do not like seniority systems that punish outside interests, changing careers and seasonal staff. I do not like wage-ratchets that dictate that the minimum contract keeps pay up with inflation, and the maximum is considerably beyond that - leading to escalating wages over time until people are getting paid $20 an hour plus benefits to do basic tasks, (whose wages often come out of the taxes of people who are doing harder jobs, with larger student loans for less pay and with fewer benefits.) I do not like how the BCTF and other unions clamber for more money instead of putting an equal amount of funds into better working conditions (which would make their jobs more pleasant, and make public-school students' lives easier and get parents to support the strike).
And while I can see some problems with publicly-funded private clinics (as in the government funds them just like it would a hospital, and they can't charge anything on top of that so healthcare stays free), I can see some advantages too. Not saying they're a good idea, or the solution, but we should be able to consider it publicly.
Saying this does not make me against public health care.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 01:47 am (UTC)