hey if you're white, don't go telling nonwhite women that they're racist when they're complaining about men of their own ethnicity
This might be a long-shot, but are you talking about this situation?
that is an example of whatvim talking about but i've heard mexican, black, and various asian women complain about being tonepoliced when complaining about men in their communities
hell as white trans/queer women we should be able to have some empathy for that given that we are tonepoliced for complaining about men in our communities, but so many of us are perfectly happy being white first so we don't afford nonwhite women the same space to vent about the men they deal with regularly
if i ws talking about that situation specifically i wouldn't have said nonwhite, i would have said SEA women
if i only was annoyed with you and/or the people in that thread, i would have either dm'd yall or said something in the thread
Thanks, I was just wondering if it was one of those odd moments of synchronicity where I see something swing back around onto my dash like a really weird tumblr boomerang.
I agree that tone policing is a problem. At the same time, it's also important to make sure that we're reacting to actual instances of tone policing. It's the uncomfortable flipside of the point that you're making. And the fact that you thought the thread I pictured is an example of tone policing is the reason I wanted to say this.
In the case of the thread I pictured, the person in question dropped a racist pun into a thread and that made people uncomfortable. She wasn't criticizing men of her own ethnicity, despite claiming that. And that only after thinking that people were assuming she was a white racist when they objected.
She wasn't being tone policed and it's important to learn to recognize those situations, otherwise we'll always misidentify tone policing versus people saying actually bigoted things. Her pun wasn't criticism of SEA men. It was a bad pun, a racist pun, and she didn't like that people found her statement upsetting.
It's the exact same thing as if I had said something transphobic about people in the trans community, only to defend my actions by saying I'm trans and therefore I'm allowed to criticize them. If it's transphobia, it's not criticism.
You're absolutely right that tone policing requires empathy. We shouldn't shut down other people talking about their oppression. People shouldn't go into someone else's thread and start telling them that their oppression isn't important or that they're being too disruptive.
But that also requires that we learn to recognize when it's actually tone policing. If it gets treated like a cheat code that people can invoke to absolve themselves from any criticism because of their identity, that's just recreating the same bigotry by saying it's okay as long as it's 'criticism' being pointed at the right people.
And that's a big problem with progressive communities. When people treat progressive like a badge to wear or a different team to fight for, instead of a practice one engages in, they create a blind spot. Those communities don't actually oppose bigotry, they just excuse it as long as we wear the right badges, while making people afraid to say anything about it lest they be called out.
This is the uncomfortable part of the work and I think we all have to learn to do it.
if a trans person is transphobic, i don't think it's up to cis people to call them transphobic in a public form
it is especially not up to people not belonging to that minority group to call out someone that is intersectionally part of that group venting about someone hierarchicly placed above them in society
if a trans woman says something over the line about trans men, let other trans women call her on that, i don't give a flying shit what cis women ever has to say to a trans woman about transphobia
sometimes its not our place to talk and i think you need to accept that and back off
That argument is the same thing as saying that bigotry is okay as long as certain people are doing it. It's like saying that transphobia is okay if it's coming from a trans person.
It would be one thing if we're talking about people intruding on conversations inside a community. In that situation, it's a discussion inside a community, not an open space. People inside that community will choose how to deal with it. But this problem happens everywhere.
The example I posted was from a thread about a person that helped popularize the term transandrophobia on tumblr, who in the years since had gone mask off TERF and had SS symbols in their header. Her comment wasn't in a closed space, talking about her issues. She was intruding into a closed space to add that comment and make it about race.
So, sometimes it's not our place to abdicate the responsibility to speak up when someone says something unethical or tries to say terrible things too.
I *do* want cis women who are willing to point out transmisogyny even if it's coming from a trans woman. You may not give a flying shit about it, but you should. If you create a space where some people are given a free pass to be bigots, you're just creating a space where bigotry can flourish.
That doesn't just fail to do anything about bigotry as a thing that all human beings can do, it actually helps protect it.
I don't think you should back off and accept that, but I hope you'll consider it and rethink your position.
