Listen, I'm mostly with you. I sympathize, as I am white and I grew up presenting male. Believe me when I say that I know exactly how it feels to be the "weird loner kid".
The narrow definition of "mainstream" hurts everyone to a degree. Even people who are white, heterosexual, men with the interests expected of men still have pressure to conform to all the ideals that go along with those labels. It is the nature of a human shitheap that there will be many people on the bottom and few on very top, and unless you're at the very top there will always be someone above you, and it will suck. This is why so many people choose to focus on the people below them.
But here's the thing: without knowing you, I can say that you do engage and participate in and reinforce the systems I'm talking about. You do. I do. The guy in the video up above does. No one's an island. No one's a rock. No one's immune.
It's like the risk of skin cancer from the sun: you can be an "indoor" type person and be really careful to limit exposure when you go outside, but unless you live a life completely cloistered in darkness you are being exposed to the sun and you are being affected by its radiation.
And this is why it's a problem that we've made the great sin admitting to racism (and sexism and any other ism), because now we can't examine ourselves and the ways in which we participate in these systems without feeling like we are signing up to be social pariahs.
I could make a whole series of posts about the racefail I've perpetrated in my own writing and how I would like to improve in the future. I sometimes start to and then I delete it. Why? Because I know the response I'll get... supporters telling me, "Oh, but you're not that bad. We know you're not racist. Some people are just oversensitive." And other people going so far as to say that I'm letting myself be sabotaged by the "PC" movement.
My analysis of my own behavior would be seen as an accusation against myself... an accusation that cannot stand because it seems to impugn anybody else who's doing similar things.
Eh, you know what? :P I've just convinced myself to make that post anyway. It'll be interesting.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2009-12-22 04:07 pm (UTC)The narrow definition of "mainstream" hurts everyone to a degree. Even people who are white, heterosexual, men with the interests expected of men still have pressure to conform to all the ideals that go along with those labels. It is the nature of a human shitheap that there will be many people on the bottom and few on very top, and unless you're at the very top there will always be someone above you, and it will suck. This is why so many people choose to focus on the people below them.
But here's the thing: without knowing you, I can say that you do engage and participate in and reinforce the systems I'm talking about. You do. I do. The guy in the video up above does. No one's an island. No one's a rock. No one's immune.
It's like the risk of skin cancer from the sun: you can be an "indoor" type person and be really careful to limit exposure when you go outside, but unless you live a life completely cloistered in darkness you are being exposed to the sun and you are being affected by its radiation.
And this is why it's a problem that we've made the great sin admitting to racism (and sexism and any other ism), because now we can't examine ourselves and the ways in which we participate in these systems without feeling like we are signing up to be social pariahs.
I could make a whole series of posts about the racefail I've perpetrated in my own writing and how I would like to improve in the future. I sometimes start to and then I delete it. Why? Because I know the response I'll get... supporters telling me, "Oh, but you're not that bad. We know you're not racist. Some people are just oversensitive." And other people going so far as to say that I'm letting myself be sabotaged by the "PC" movement.
My analysis of my own behavior would be seen as an accusation against myself... an accusation that cannot stand because it seems to impugn anybody else who's doing similar things.
Eh, you know what? :P I've just convinced myself to make that post anyway. It'll be interesting.