the_fantastic_ms_fox (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_fantastic_ms_fox) wrote2006-08-23 09:47 pm
the_fantastic_ms_fox) wrote2006-08-23 09:47 pm
Anxiety and justification: "There are technological solutions"
Note the special filter: not everyone can see this. I don't like springing things on people via LJ unless I have reasons to belive that they'll be cool, or I've spoken to them first.
[edit - the filter is gone]
I don't like it when people get attention by kvetching about their health. Asking for help, or community or understanding, is another matter and one with which I am largely unfamiliar but am giving a try.
Last couple of weeks, I've realzied that a lot of social justice theory is a way for people to justify themselves. It's regretful and dangerous that our society requires one to express emotion only if one has an intricate theoretical mobile to back it up. One cannot say "I find this behaviour to be rude" and be taken seriously. One says instead "I find this to be an example of a dangerous worldwide imperial... blah... blah... blah."
Case in point: me and gender. I had not appreciated the possibility that my feeling that gender was irritating and pointless might be a product not of my sophisticated mindset, but instead, my innate cognitive predispositions. In other words, the reason that otehr people are fine with conventional gender assumptions is not because they're miseducated, but because itn works for them.
My feeling of gender incongruity grates at me and, while it cycles, is getting worse over time. It has been most prominent when I'm distressed, or short on sleep, but now it's coming up more often. I'd dismissed this feeling as being the product of other partially unearthed psychological factors, but it seems that the reverse may be true.
OCD (and I assume healthy-brain anxiety though I'm not well aquainted with it) works like this. One thing causes anxiety, so one has obsessive anxious thoughts about that thing but in a different light. If one has obsessive thoughts about burning down a friend's house, it may very well be that one is bothered not by fire or arson or the possiblity of being an arsonist, but because the house makes one anxious and the mind, seeking a reason to justify this, spits out "you're an arsonist - bad!."
Gender then: while extreme gendered behaviour irks me, it seems that I'm not bothered by masculinity as a whole, but the expectations that apply to me though it. I'm not actually worried about coming across as demonstrating negative male behaviours - I just hate coming across as male.
More on this to come.
[edit - the filter is gone]
I don't like it when people get attention by kvetching about their health. Asking for help, or community or understanding, is another matter and one with which I am largely unfamiliar but am giving a try.
Last couple of weeks, I've realzied that a lot of social justice theory is a way for people to justify themselves. It's regretful and dangerous that our society requires one to express emotion only if one has an intricate theoretical mobile to back it up. One cannot say "I find this behaviour to be rude" and be taken seriously. One says instead "I find this to be an example of a dangerous worldwide imperial... blah... blah... blah."
Case in point: me and gender. I had not appreciated the possibility that my feeling that gender was irritating and pointless might be a product not of my sophisticated mindset, but instead, my innate cognitive predispositions. In other words, the reason that otehr people are fine with conventional gender assumptions is not because they're miseducated, but because itn works for them.
My feeling of gender incongruity grates at me and, while it cycles, is getting worse over time. It has been most prominent when I'm distressed, or short on sleep, but now it's coming up more often. I'd dismissed this feeling as being the product of other partially unearthed psychological factors, but it seems that the reverse may be true.
OCD (and I assume healthy-brain anxiety though I'm not well aquainted with it) works like this. One thing causes anxiety, so one has obsessive anxious thoughts about that thing but in a different light. If one has obsessive thoughts about burning down a friend's house, it may very well be that one is bothered not by fire or arson or the possiblity of being an arsonist, but because the house makes one anxious and the mind, seeking a reason to justify this, spits out "you're an arsonist - bad!."
Gender then: while extreme gendered behaviour irks me, it seems that I'm not bothered by masculinity as a whole, but the expectations that apply to me though it. I'm not actually worried about coming across as demonstrating negative male behaviours - I just hate coming across as male.
More on this to come.
no subject
Last couple of weeks, I've realzied that a lot of social justice theory is a way for people to justify themselves. It's regretful and dangerous that our society requires one to express emotion only if one has an intricate theoretical mobile to back it up.
That was actually bothering me today. One of my coworkers took me aside and told me that I had come across as sexist because I made a joke about her bringing a couple of fashion magazines back from her lunch break...basically I said "Oh gasp, the estrogen!" or something along that line, and I have made other comments like this before - nothing specifically negative or degrading about women/female traits, but separating myself from them. She decided to take me aside and tell me that I should watch out on "defining other people's gender cues" for them because it's sexist. I was pretty confused for a while, trying to work out how much of the problem was me being in the wrong, and how much of it was her trying to justify the fact that it offended her (none of my other coworkers were offended - the coworker I joke with the most about it will start the jokes by saying "You're gonna hate me, Erin, I was so girly today" before a story about shopping or something else stereotypically feminine).
It really is a shame, I think, that people do things like this. I value clarity a LOT, and because of what she said, I'm very confused about how much I'm in the wrong and how much of what I say I need to change, whether I'm wrong, or if she's just being overly-PC.
I've completely lost track of what I was trying to say now. XD