#like ‘gasp! i am also affected by white supremacy but I’m okay with it when it only affects Black people’

[whimsycore]

I actually hate advocacy work because I can see how much y’all don’t take that “activism starts in the home” statement seriously with how violently antiblack your communities are, how accepting of whiteness they are, and the way you don’t admit to yourselves the majority of your problems are because you lived most of your life being accepted by whiteness and now because of how racist the climate is you’re being affected NOW everyone’s gotta be about your issues? At the same time your family denies service to black people, yall will follow us around stores, yell slurs at us yet still copy us and I’m supposed to care?

[liskantope]

Hopefully this will be my last-ever post complaining about what someone said on social media, because current events are simmering down and once they’ve reached a moderate enough hum I’m going to redouble my previous efforts to stay away from it. But the particular interaction I’m going to describe seems to have furthered my progress slightly in understanding why so many people shout their views in the way that they do and how I should learn to better accept it.

One of my “closest” Facebook friends for over a decade, whose life’s passion nowadays revolves around anti-racist work (mainly in childhood education; she is white) posted a few hours after Biden’s victory was officially called last Saturday to preach that white Biden-voters shouldn’t claim any of the credit for his victory because it was BIPOC and particularly black women who carried this election (her justification for why they “carried us” was that as a demographic group most of them voted for Biden while as a demographic group a majority of white people voted for Trump), and that nothing will be better now except for who is in the White House because “whiteness and white supremacy have not disappeared” and that “your” responsibility is not diminished and “you” are not absolved as a good white person. She ended with an exhortation to bow down and “bend your knees” to BIPOC for “saving our asses”.

(Just realized looking back at her post to write this one that the phrasing was not “bend the knee” as I repeatedly misread at the time, assuming that it was a direct reference to Game of Thrones of which I know she’s a fan, and having recently listened to this insightful 8-minute Sam Harris podcast episode which used the phrase. This is slightly unfortunate since it was the obnoxiousness of that particular phrasing which tipped me over to acting against my better judgment in not just ignoring this like I have with so many dozens of other statements. I still find it obnoxious, though, and sanctimonious, and terrible messaging, and using poor arguments about causation, and reflecting an insistence on viewing as much as possible in terms of race at all times, and the epitome of identity politics.)

So yeah, after waiting a couple of days, I broke my usual silence and wrote a very polite but argumentative response that turned out to be enough paragraphs to make me feel a little embarrassed that I would take that much of my time on it. I knew there was virtually no chance of convincing her of anything substantial, but I figured just maybe some insight into how foreign and alienating this “you are responsible for what everyone of your color does and are never good enough and have to kneel in deference to those of a color which is” messaging is bound to be to anyone who’s less in an academic bubble than we are (which is, like, most people). I made the point that individual BIPOC didn’t contribute any more than individual white people did to Biden’s victory and that if we’re going to judge blocs of voters according to race we should be blaming Cuban-Americans for Biden’s loss in Florida, and that in fact Trump gained votes from among BIPOC and lost white male votes since four years ago. I wrote that implying that the only salient feature of us individuals is race is exactly what people complain about when they use the term “identity politics” and that the results of this election suggest that maybe we’re doing something wrong with our messaging.

It wasn’t a disaster. I got a very cordial response which completely avoided ad hominem and at least engaged the points I had made while clarifying her views. I didn’t find the supposed rebuttals of my points at all convincing, of course. For instance, my complaint about treating individual voters as merely people of a certain color was met with “It’s important in anti-racist scholarship to be able to analyze demographic trends in terms of race” (I would... never disagree with this?) and that focusing on individuals allows people to only look at their own actions and those of their friends and feel too good about themselves. She also expressed skepticism about my statistics about where Trump gained/lost support, which I was able to back up with a quick Google search which pulled up a Vox article among others (I thought it was only the insufficiently committed white liberals like me who sucked at Googling?). But her own views, while still resting on axioms I fundamentally differ on, just sounded a lot more reasonable when restated? E.g. “Moments like this shouldn’t be centered on whiteness” and “the ‘good white liberals’ should be aware that they aren’t as a big of a demographic in our race as they should be” (I don’t know any white liberal who would disagree or who doesn’t realize that white people vote majority Republican or is okay with that?) and that the bowing and bending the knee was not “a literal statement” but simply meant to convey that we should greatly respect how BIPOC voters contribute. She ended with providing a long list of anti-racist activists (the only one of whom I’m familiar with is Ally Henny, who I mainly remember for statements about how I’m encased in so many layers of racism that I would never be able to peel them off if I spent my whole lifetime doing nothing but trying) as a “starting point” of study.

I replied thanking her for pointing me to sources and agreeing with her implication that I should read more with a mind towards understanding what they’re saying before spouting off any more opinions. (Guess I have to make good on that promise now.) I made clear that I see a difference between her restatements and the way she worded things in her original post and suggested that some of this might even be on me for interpreting these kinds of posts more as logical arguments when they should be understood in a slightly more poetic manner. I gently gestured towards my suspicion that the current scholarship in this area might reflect a university culture (which I am very much a part of) more than the concrete priorities and concerns of the majority of people of color, although I’m in no position to positively claim anything about this. I got no response.

Anyway, in writing my last response, a little more clicked into place for me about a different lens through which I should process all the behavior that drives me nuts in a written context online (I mainly mean social media but am being even broader than that). This is going to sound condescending but ironically it might help me to have a less condescending attitude?

The fact is -- and I just have to accept this -- that making efforts to be nuanced and to “meet people who disagree where they are at” and to aim for the truth but no farther than the truth are simply not highly-valued principles for most people (social media -users and otherwise). They may kinda-sorta agree in the abstract with these principles, but in practice they hold a much lower status than the principles of conveying anger and strong words as a sign of commitment towards Fighting Evil. Some people I know do have an “argumentation value system” closer to mine, and I know who those people are -- it really shows in what they write online. But those people are a fairly small minority.

And this alien “argumentation value system” isn’t something that really shows in casual real-life interactions very plainly at all (which of course is what almost all human interactions were up until 10-15 years ago), while in contrast social media is an environment that augments its effect.

The sooner I accept this, the more moderation I’ll be able to manage in my negative reactions. I can remind myself that there’s less fundamental disagreement on most actual issues between me and the people I know: we instead disagree on a sort of meta-level issue of how one’s views should be presented. And that issue, taken by itself, seems somehow like something more minor. I wrote a few months ago about how knowing what so many people in my life write publicly oftentimes interferes with my capacity to view them as potential intimate friends/partners. Maybe I can be a little more accepting when I recognize that the things they write which turn me off perhaps don’t come from a place of such irrationality as I thought, that the differences in our ways of thinking might not be quite so fundamental (although this differing system of values for argumentation still strikes me as something that could badly affect a marriage, say). And in the practical short term, I can ignore things that bother me more easily in the future -- instead of feeling like I’m on a tilted playing field where everyone else gets to vent without inhibition while I have to carefully monitor and qualify everything I say, I can try to just round a lot of this off in terms of different preferred writing styles and somehow that bothers me less?

A similar underlying principle holds for the things that annoy me on dating profiles, what with the collective obsession with dogs and boasts of being “fluent in sarcasm” and so on. This probably doesn’t reflect much about the way the creators of these profiles actually are as humans in real life. Not that many single women really view their dogs as the most interesting thing that ever was or will be about their lives. They just choose to have a certain style of exposition about themselves because of peculiarities of the environment of online dating sites/apps, where showing enthusiasm and individuality in some way seems to pay and the topic of dogs would seem like a pretty safe place to direct this performed enthusiasm. Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t demonstrate some aspect of incompatibility with me or that I’m not going to be more instantly attracted to those with profiles that have more refreshing things to say than stuff about how amazing dogs are or of those who *gasp* actually prefer cats or *deeper gasp* prefer not to have pets at all. But it means that I can read the dogs-and-sarcasm-enthusiast profiles a little more charitably maybe?

This slightly altered mindset is a far from perfect solution, but I think it helps. A lasting three-quarters-of-the-way disconnect from social media entirely still needs to be a goal at this point.

[misssugarpinkshome]

Thank god for uncensored free written child porn I guess

OKAY so HERE WE GO now that I have an internet connection! Gonna put this in a read more because it’s long and rambly and also contains some personal stuff.

In my last post, I did mention that AO3 contains uncensored content. What content might this be, you ask? Why yes! There is child porn. It’s a fucking atrocious fact of life that sometimes, people... are disgusting.

You know what else goes uncensored?

LGBT content. Like. Hoooly fuck you wanna search for that gay shit on there? Guess what, it’s even in the fucking relationship take! F/F or M/M up in here. What’s that, you’re looking for polyamory fics? MULTI ROMANCE BITCH. And no, this is not me condoning “uwu look at my yaoi bois being adowable” culture. This is me saying “look at this website that doesn’t try to censor an entire group of people from existing!” Because you know, when Fanfiction.net and Livenet decided to do their massive purges of anything NC-17, it just so happened that they also cleared off a lot of LGBT+ content. Who would’ve guessed huh? It’s almost like people use censorship for bad things too. Wow!

I would love to go on for hours about all of the benefits, but this is the biggest one that is most applicable to me. Not to mention, you know, those websites that DO practice censorship tend to ALSO have free child porn (and, you know, WHITE SUPREMACY, hint hint, TUMBLR). It’s just that AO3 actually believes that freedom of speech should be a thing. It’s almost like. AO3. Treats fandom writers. As actual writers. And what you all are actually mad about is people. Feeling like they can write. Wow.

And just to head this conversation off before it starts: no, I am not saying child pornography is a good thing. Duh. But as some people have already decided to point out, I have a dark evil fanfiction history hurr durr. So let’s go into that shall we?

When I was about 14? I think? I got into MLP. oh gosh misssugarpink that’s a real toxic fandom with disgusting people. Oh yeah really? You know, being 21 now, I just maybe have figured that out by now. Just maybe. But when I was 14? Hell no that fandom was my inner sanctum away from homophobic, racist parents! It was my safe harbor. And then, when I was 16, and discovered oh wait I have feelings for people and things that are not platonic in nature oh fucking course I started writing porn. Duh???? I was a writer experimenting with sex in a safe way. What, did you want me to just. Start going out and fucking people at 16???????

So yeah, I wrote drabbles. And then I realized Oh I’m in an abusive relationship right now. So then I started actually reading smut and stuff and oh my god that’s what consent is??? YEAH I LEARNED WHAT CONSENT WAS FROM A MLP FIC. So then. Gasp. It’s like. I started writing healthy (yes sexual) relationships. It’s almost like. Fanfiction. Was a way. For me to explore my wants and desires. In a healthy. Way. Wow.

And then, 17-18??? It’s almost like I was discovering I was gay. Wow. Because everything around that time??? Centered??? On figuring out???? What gay ships I felt comfortable writing??? And realizing?? I liked? Being? Gay? This is why I moved to fandoms with actual gay representation. It’s why I started writing homestuck when I got into that ---- and yeah, the realization that the characters were underage was why I moved to OC Undertale writings. It’s almost like having access to the ability to write child pornography doesn’t make you suddenly become a pedophile.

So yeah. There we go. Rant is just about over now. If you’re interested in AO3 and censorship of Fanfictions and of Free Speech, I would suggest researching it some yourself. I know there’s so many more people affected by censorship when it comes to writing, and this is only one place that AO3 really shines. I have a shit ton of grading and lesson planning to do right now, so I physically don’t have the time to just do your research for you.