#debigotizer

[antinahottub]

There's this odd idea in the posts debigotizer has covered recently, where "one can be racist without being hateful" is a pervading theme.

Extensively, I suppose, "one can be ____ist without being hateful" too.

The thing is, this sort of writing misses the point. While we certainly care about the actors of racism, sexism, or elitism, we do not observe them as being "hateful" or "not hateful". Rather, we look at whether the effects of their oppression generate hateful attitudes toward those who are oppressed.

Historically, this has always been the case.

The spirit of separate-but-equal may have been to allow racism without hatred, but it allowed people to perpetuate double standards, which in turn allowed a sense of superiority in one race over the other. That in turn translated very quickly to hatred.

The spirit of the Han absorption of ethnicity in China was one that not only wasn't hateful, but was about inclusiveness. In practice, it eliminated a lot of the cultural diversity of China, banishing ethnic groups who wouldn't conform to the "Han lifestyle" to little corners of the country. It perpetuated the idea that Han was superior, and thus promoted and excused existing paradigms of racial hatred.

Many slave-owners may have been fair to their slaves. "I am a just man, therefore my racism is not malicious," could have been how they excused their own contribution to slavery. However, they still put a cap on their slaves' worth and development, and whether that cap is motivated by actual hatred or simple apathy regarding the status quo, it is unfair, unjust, and hateful.

I bemoan the failures of an impact-over-intent consequentialist ethical system when dealing with semantics, but it applies here. In spades.

[antinahottub]

So in class while my students made resumes I got bored and decided to make a debigotizer-themed resume to show them different formatting techniques.

I realize it looks like I just had a field day, but they did actually learn a lot about formatting and theirs were...more professional. And used smaller font.

[cassandra-calls]

looks like logicd owned your stupid ass

Yep, you got me. Logicd is now the proud owner of my stupid ass, just the right cheek as the left cheek is quite smart (it has a doctorate in theoretical sarcasm) and now sitting down has become somewhat awkward.

So did you read what was written and go through the links or just look at the wall of text and think ‘Wow, so many words! That must be an amazing argument!’? If you are interested in reading a rebuttal then debigotizer did a fantastic job. Read it here.

Or, you know, don’t bother, just continue to send insulting messages to strangers about things you either haven’t read or know nothing about.

Have fun!

Love Lloyd.

[mouserinchief]

I'm currently writing up a big long rebuttal to taylor-rin-official's transphobic rant and holy Moses, I've written about 1044 words, with citations from RAINN, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, amongst others.

I've officially put more work into something I know this woefully horrible person isn't even going to read through than I did my English paper on Medea.

[apocryphascribe]

Oh boy, ya'll didn't handle that well at all.

WOO Your Fave Is Problematic is good for a lot of things but I don't think I'll ever completely be 100% on their side for their sarcastic responses to generally harmless inquiries. 

Like, as an individual on this site personally, I'm not obligated at all to explain why something is racist/sexism/transphobic/etc. and I may even respond negatively or sarcastically to questions about it but at the end of the day, this is because I'm an individual and it's incredibly easy to tell when someone is asking something in bad faith, especially when it's something I'm knowledgeable about.

That said, there's a viral trend in some of these social justice tumblrs that are expressly and specifically set up for the purpose of informing others about shit wherein those tumblrs will say or do things that are undermining their very cause. And I get stingy about this because a lot of my criticisms of "Tumblr Brand Social Justice" are kept under wraps because people take it as a cue for them to voice their own grievances (which are 100% of the time completely baseless i.e. "social justice is dangerous" and "social justice tumblrs are the worst ever"). 

Basically, if the purpose behind your tumblr is an educational one (see medievalpoc and all the occasions they're proven wrong or underinformed about something and how quick they are to correct themselves) or one of critique (see debigotizer and how frequently they have open discussions about topics they don't have a place to speak on), the way you respond to innocent (and I mean truly innocent, not that fake ass shit assholes like to ask to try and set you up or lead you to an answer they want to hear) inquiry will speak a lot about how well you're doing what you insist you're doing.

Also (and this may just be me, I don't know if others have looked at it from this standpoint) it seems a bit classist to me to assume that literally everyone on the internet has access to all the information on the internet. Access unfortunately is not the same for everyone. There's information behind paywalls, not everyone knows how to use Wikipedia properly (use the sources, not the page itself), not everyone knows how search engines work and how they can get the results they're looking for quicker if they search using certain keywords while leaving others out; sometimes the only time said person has access to a computer is at a library or other public area, and a lot of these things are not taught in school or at home.

Most of the time I see resources provided to questions the asker will either ignore them or attempt to invalidate them so I completely understand the urge to sarcastically respond to every silly question you get considering the majority of the questions you get could easily qualify under anon hate.

It's just a little cringeworthy when that same response is given to one of the very, very few who needs the proper answer and asks for it in earnest. Just saiyan.

[imathers]

How do you differentiate between privileges and privilege? Because sure, some women may be afforded certain privileges by the patriarchy. I, for example, have extremely low spatial and mechanical intelligence, to the point that I have literally asked for help closing the dishwasher. Because I’m a woman, many people are eager to help me when I get confused, and often chalk my problems up to my gender. While irritating, this does benefit me--I’m rarely ridiculed for making L-shapes with my thumbs and index fingers to distinguish left from right, and when my bike chain falls off, bystanders often come to my rescue. But this stereotype doesn’t benefit women as a whole, and it definitely doesn’t help women trying to break into STEM fields. So while the patriarchy may afford me certain privileges, it does not give me or my fellow women privilege in the sense that men receive male privilege. Now let’s look at this from another angle. I have always been a very thin person; consequently, I receive the benefits of thin privilege. However, I’ve also had anorexia for about eight years, and people’s comments about my body, whether positive, negative, or neutral, can be extremely damaging. This is a disadvantage that I face, but it doesn’t constitute another side of, say, “size oppression”; if anything, it’s an example of thin privilege “backfiring” on me. That backfiring isn’t my fault, but it also doesn’t negate my thin privilege. Since the vast majority of people I see in a given day aren’t aware of my illness, they treat me like any other thin person, and while this sometimes works against me, it still benefits me in many ways. One of these benefits is, in fact, directly linked to my eating disorder: When I started anorexia treatment, my illness was taken more seriously because I was underweight. Not everyone with an eating disorder, not even a restrictive one, is thin--but because fatness is commonly associated with laziness and gluttony, fat disordered people are often ignored or accused of lying about their illness. ... What about other forms of oppression? Let’s take race. Because of white supremacy, many white women are afforded benefits and protections that women of color are not. This is why, for example, Black men accused of rape by white women are more likely to be punished than white men. (And while false rape accusations are incredibly rare, men of color, and Black men in particular, are more likely to be falsely convicted of rape.) White women are not privileged for being female; rather, we receive white privilege, which can intersect with our gender in certain ways. Another example of white privilege intersecting with gender oppression is the wage gap. It’s true that women make less money on average than men overall, but white women actually make more than Black and Latino men. White men, unsurprisingly, make more than everyone.

I'm a fan of debigotizer, but I thought these comments (from her assessment of a really awful post about "fourth wave feminism" found here) were an especially clear, helpful example of what privilege actually is and (one aspect of) how intersectionality works.

[antinahottub]

is "apparently female ass-backwards" an insult? is it a gender?

[thousandhourcloset]

just-smith is a feminist.

Relax, cupcake. I never said he wasn't. Just-smith has written several posts about how masculism and feminism are meant to be compatible movements, right? Boy, it sure is kind of confusing that he apparently believes that and yet now seems to be acting as though they’re mutually exclusive, huh?