#interrogating givens

[cool-yubari]

any exploration of relationships to power that don’t fit the traditional paradigm has the capacity to reorganize social space in a way that undermines the ability of powerful people to be powerful.

--Maymay

[cool-yubari]

I think what marginalized groups have in common, the pattern you’re seeing that gets plurals and asexuals (and a lot of other people) targeted, is that they’re all making choices mainstream culture disapproves of. The “inherently [sic] mockable identity” thing is a smokescreen for “I want you to stop making this choice I don’t like, and if you refuse I want you to suffer for it.” Society tolerates these people being attacked and holds them up as acceptable targets because it wants these deviations from the norm to carry a high social cost. It benefits from people being afraid to identify in certain ways, and in agreement about who the losers and monsters are. I think the fear with multiples, and especially fictives, is that their perception of reality is so different from a singlet’s that they may not really care about the world outside their head (not because it works like that at all, but because binary thinking leads to a lot of irrational, selfish “but where do we fit in?” on the part of the dominant group). The thing with asexuals is that adults aren’t supposed to choose whether to have sex. It’s acceptable to not want to have sex with a particular person, or at a particular time, but … “I’m never interested in sleeping with anyone, stop asking and leave it be” isn’t. The latter, as a life choice, makes some onlookers very angry. How dare you do that, you think you’re so special, and so on. I’d suspect they’re singling out asexual women because some of the harassment has the same undertone of offended rejection that lesbians used to get from men; the part of it that isn’t accusing all asexuals of being immature children who will inevitably change their minds about this silly idea, anyway. Society tacitly approves of asexuals being bullied, because “what are they doing for us?” That’s … sort of the crux of it. The unspoken assumption that you should be making choices that the dominant group sees some benefit for itself in. Individualism my foot, these are the limits of what society’s willing to tolerate. And when you surpass them, for whatever reason, it will try to ridicule, attack, gaslight, and invalidate you into conformity or hiding. I think a lot of the maligning of hateable groups (I understand why that term has gained currency but I don’t like it) is more productively analyzed if you turn it inside out. Being special is not an attribute that humans should be accused of fraudulently claiming. The same way being a man, woman, or adult shouldn’t be something you have to prove you are and qualify for, uniqueness and basic, innate value isn’t something to hoard, dole out to the few, and revile anyone else for thinking they deserve. Plurals aren’t claiming the identity they claim “to be special” because they are special, with or without this stigmatized trait. And if you’re paying attention to a person because they’re different from you in a significant way (particularly if you’re hassling them) it’s pretty self-centered to believe that they’re doing it “for attention.” Attention is only a reward to people who like it, and whether they like it or not, it’s sick to assume by default that non-normative people don’t deserve to be seen or heard. Now, about oppression. As best I can tell, oppression exists on a number of spectrums, and admitting that oppression against any group exists is something that society is very reluctant to do. The groups that most people believe are oppressed have fought hard to get that acknowledged. Unfortunately, a lot of SJ seem to think that human rights are a zero sum game, and if they acknowledge identities that are less organized, politically active, and conventional as oppressed, their cause and the smaller one will be thrown under the bus. This is part of the conflict between feminism and trans* people. Society at large at least acknowledges women as a real thing. Another liminal group that’s edging towards being taken seriously is the fat acceptance movement. Many people are still reluctant to see fatness as a stigmatized physical attribute, rather than “a bad choice” that they’re totally entitled to disapprove of. And make no mistake, things that society wants to punish are always presented as choices, whether they are or not. Remember when being gay was portrayed in the mainstream media as a destructive choice? And women are still getting this shit from rape culture – it’s not that anyone hates women, oh no, but what did she expect, drinking and partying? [sic] Anyway, my point is that oppression is justified as something that would stop happening, if minorities just stopped pissing ordinary people off. The trouble is that they aren’t being targeted for something they’re doing, unless you consider existing an active offense. And that is more or less the definition of oppression. Being bullied is not as bad as being murdered because society doesn’t like you. But fearing for your life is the extreme end of a spectrum, and even for people who are facing that much violence, most of what they deal with on a day-to-day basis is what your quote called shittiness. That’s oppression too. That’s the aspect of oppression that wears you the fuck down. And groups that everyone agrees are oppressed don’t have the corner on it. Activists and minorities desperately need a more nuanced understanding of abuse and victimization, and society is fighting tooth and nail to make sure they don’t develop one. On the contrary, it’s working to manipulate SJs into policing everyone from a less established cause into disavowing the idea that they could possibly be oppressed. Even when the alternative implies that the bigots kicking you around must have some right to. If there’s abuse that goes unchallenged, because of who it’s aimed at, the real message is “abuse is not always wrong. We object when it happens to innocent people who don’t deserve it.” That’s the problem with arguing that some attacks are trivial. You can’t cheapen mistreatment by acknowledging that it’s endemic. But you can make society look really bad by recognizing how many groups it paints targets on, and you can find out exactly who’s more invested in believing that the status quo is good (and just needs a little minor tweaking!) than they are in facing facts. Those people are willing to assert some suffering doesn’t count, often because they believe their group can be accepted by society if they just act normal enough. And it really doesn’t work that way. Stable members of marginalized groups need to find a way to say “we respect your struggle, and we expect you to respect ours, even if it’s different,” instead of fighting about who can legitimately claim to be oppressed. Oh, you know what else? Often the people who get the most hate spewed at them, people that the whole group is stereotyped as consisting entirely of, have important things to contribute to the whole. Teenagers have every right to be plural. Whites have every right to be plural. People who don’t work for whatever reason, or don’t worry about money have every right to be plural. Privileged groups that intersect with stigmatized ones can be a huge asset to the stigmatized group.

The better part of a comment I made elsewhere on the net, in relation to a post about how very different identities are criticized in similar ways. 

The only thing I'd add to what I said then is that when society is convinced a certain set of beliefs are illegitimate, it will find reasons to discredit everyone who holds them. The whole "only privileged people get into this" is especially devious because it

-categorizes rejecting the boxes society puts you in by default as a frivolous luxury

-distracts members of the marginalized group with a specter of irrelevant privilege (these things don't cancel each other out)

-and tempts vulnerable people to prove the accusation wrong by drawing attention to other things about them that society considers illegitimate or inferior. Attributes that signal "my voice is worth listening to" in social-justice conversations do exactly the opposite in wider society.