![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Recycling my electrons (and why it's not really about intent and taking offense)
I made this post on a mailing list, but it got rejected for being off topic (which was reasonable) so I thought I would recycle it here for the benefit of the choir. :)
Context: Someone announced a dating event. Some people criticizing the event because it was open only to people looking for opposite sex dating partners (plus the original announcer didn't mention this). Then other people called the criticizers PC. One of them complained that many people these days go out and look for things to be offended about, and they don't pay attention to intent, and intent is what really matters.
So I said,
Intent isn't as important as you think it is. And neither is offense. You are confusing "assuming malicious intent and taking offense" -- an individual response to an individual behavior -- with the broader situation of trying to change societal norms that are wrong and harmful.
If something is normal but harmful, then a person don't need to feel malicious in order to cause harm. They just have to go about their business, unaware of the harm they are causing. In order for society to change, people have to be made aware of harm they are causing and bepersuaded to change. That's uncomfortable because no one wants to change unless it was their idea. But if you believe that a fairer society is a good thing, then it is necessary.
Also, a person who calls out a pattern of harm isn't necessarily offended. They might just be trying to do their part to make society fairer.
Just to make it crystal clear: It is no big deal that this particular event excludes queer people. But it is part of a larger pattern where queer people are excluded from other things that matter a lot, such as marriage rights. It's a good thing for people to stand up and say "Hey, look at the pattern," when they see it. Because otherwise a lot of people won't realize it's even there.
Context: Someone announced a dating event. Some people criticizing the event because it was open only to people looking for opposite sex dating partners (plus the original announcer didn't mention this). Then other people called the criticizers PC. One of them complained that many people these days go out and look for things to be offended about, and they don't pay attention to intent, and intent is what really matters.
So I said,
Intent isn't as important as you think it is. And neither is offense. You are confusing "assuming malicious intent and taking offense" -- an individual response to an individual behavior -- with the broader situation of trying to change societal norms that are wrong and harmful.
If something is normal but harmful, then a person don't need to feel malicious in order to cause harm. They just have to go about their business, unaware of the harm they are causing. In order for society to change, people have to be made aware of harm they are causing and bepersuaded to change. That's uncomfortable because no one wants to change unless it was their idea. But if you believe that a fairer society is a good thing, then it is necessary.
Also, a person who calls out a pattern of harm isn't necessarily offended. They might just be trying to do their part to make society fairer.
Just to make it crystal clear: It is no big deal that this particular event excludes queer people. But it is part of a larger pattern where queer people are excluded from other things that matter a lot, such as marriage rights. It's a good thing for people to stand up and say "Hey, look at the pattern," when they see it. Because otherwise a lot of people won't realize it's even there.
Hmm...
often excluded from events.
However, there is another aspect that people often overlook: practicality. In this case, which is rarely so, there is a valid reason to narrow the eligible attendees: trying to create an environment conducive to matches. If you know everyone has the same sexual orientation, whatever it is, then it's easier to find mates than if you have to guess as in ordinary life.
This is why there are queer singles events too, where heterosexuals are not admitted. In a few rare instances, segregation actually works better. And if you really don't like it? You can mate-search in an unfiltered everyday context.
Re: Hmm...
Although I really don't know why it matters that everyone be the same sexual orientation. E.g., why exclude bisexuals from an event for meeting other-gender people?
Re: Hmm...
acceptance than most other people. For
whatever reasons, many people of many other
orientations don't want a bi partner. Most
hets want another het and most homos want
another homo. It's when you get into the
bi/omni/pan and genderfluid subset that
you find the ones who are more attracted
to people than to meat. Go figure.
Re: Hmm...
to people than to meat.
That's... pretty insulting towards monosexuals.
Re: Hmm...
Also, without more context, I wonder what other groups of monosexual people are being filtered out by that group. If I can't be trusted to disclose that I'm bi, can someone else be trusted to disclose that they have herpes, or a past DUI conviction, or children they are paying child support for? (Race is a larger issue, but people with those biases do their own sorting, mostly just by looking at people.)
Re: Hmm...
Re: Hmm...
That's a perspective I hadn't thought of before. Interesting.
Re: Hmm...
(Anonymous) 2013-06-06 09:30 pm (UTC)(link)I'm a cis woman who used to identify as bisexual and now identify as pansexual. I'm married to a straight cis man. So if people don't know me, they assume I'm het.
Graymalkin (posting anonymously because dw is objecting to my password)
Re: Hmm...
This is an insult to homosexual/heterosexual people. I am not OK with insults against groups of people, including groups with privilege, in my journal. Please don't do it again.
no subject
This valentine I attended a performance and interactive art show themed around love and loss, and a lot of the mostly heterosexual attendees were commenting on the high ratio of women to men.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
-J
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
When someone has the good intentions of providing a space in which people might find some version of love, but decides, on purpose or by default, that some love is better than some other love, their intention is perfectly clear to other people if not to themselves.
Everyone has a point of view through which the world appears as real. For them, it is just that way. The world is how they see it at least in the default when we aren't paying mindful attention. It is part of us. We shape the world around us while earnestly believing that the world is shaping us.
I'm just never interested in someone's intentions. I am also not interested in someone's offense. People are routinely offended by my very existence and often by my opinions. The offense, however, is theirs to have. I wouldn't deprive them of their reactions for the world.
Just as you can't make someone happy, you can't keep them from being offended. It's like teaching a pig to sing.
About the event that excludes queer folk: I don't want to be a member of a club that would have me. (paraphrased Groucho Marx.) I wouldn't attend, but it would not stop me from pointing out their bias. Whoops, there I go again (oh god, quoting Reagan) causing offense.
Well, it's my job. :) Just about the only activism I still engage in.
no subject
Yeah, I think intent should be taken into account on a person-to-person level, and to some extent by the legal system, but it's not important at all once an event is being talked about by random third parties.
I am also not interested in someone's offense.
I sometimes want to know about their offense because I'm curious how they think. I'm also puzzled by how many people find it easy and maybe even pleasant to take offense at a lot of things, because to me taking offense feels unpleasant and I try to minimize it.
no subject
I think there are two main drivers for why some people are easily and often offended and express it. 1. They feel a need to be right about something and make someone else wrong.
2. They want their community to validate their positions. I've noticed that folks who express offense in a group not offended by event are usually unhappy that they seem to be standing alone.
They aspect of being offended that I find the most interesting in the insistence of the offended party that I change to accommodate them.
no subject
Right, so intent might matter less if there is physical damage. But in terms of individual relationship behaviors that contribute to emotional damage, I think it does matter in two different ways. If the offending behavior is new, discussing intent can help in figuring out what behavior might be more helpful in getting the desired result in the future. If it's a pattern, knowing intention can help in figuring out what changes might need to be made to the relationship. (I would move away from someone who hurts me over and over again unintentionally, but I'd move farther away from someone who hurts me over and over again intentionally.)
They aspect of being offended that I find the most interesting in the insistence of the offended party that I change to accommodate them.
Why is that the most interesting to you?
no subject
I think it is entirely human to believe that some of our opinions aren't opinions but represent fundamental truths. Some people will even acknowledge that what they expose is opinion and in the same breath insist that everyone should hold that opinion. And many will look at a solidly proven fact and call it opinion because it disagrees with some cherished belief of theirs.
I like watching people go through the whipsaw of realization when they get that some truth of theirs isn't really the truth. I like watching "Ah ha!" moments almost as much as I like having them.
For instance, right now the US (and a lot of other places in the world) is struggling with same-sex relationship issues. Some folks on both sides of the issues are absolutely convinced that their side has the one true and correct view. In reality, though, there is no correct view. "Same-sex marriage rights" assumes the rightness of marriage. And we say we practice marriage in the US, that assumes the rightness of life-long pair bonding. And, that leaves many of us on the other side, mostly invisible and occasionally harmed. It is a social conversation that is being challenged and folks are having a very hard time coming to grips with a differing point of view.
It is all social construct. I find the whole of the social web interesting and I am fascinated by the unexamined lives that many people insist on leading. An ownership, if you will, in Thoreau's "lives of quiet desperation."
"Check your privilege"
After someone has said "this is exclusionary" or "that's offensive to people of X" or whatever, does the original actor start their response with "I'm sorry" or "I didn't realize that", or do they start with "No it's not" of F--- you!"?
Because it is indeed easy for "normal" people (along whatever axis, from gender presentation/preference to carbon footprint) to go about their daily lives completely messing up the lives of others. Without intending to or noticing that they are. The moral/ethical choice comes once the effect of their lifestyle is brought to their attention.
(One of the pieces I saw takes it all the way back to William Lloyd Garrison, who was fulminating against other men's "what about our delicate hurt feelings at being mentioned in the same breath with misogynists" a century and a half ago.)
Re: "Check your privilege"
I try to take a long view...it took me a couple of decades to get past defensiveness about hearing such things (I'm not claiming to be completely past it, but I sometimes have less closed-down reactions now), so I keep hoping that repeating "this is exclusionary because..." will eventually get past other people's defenses, but I don't necessarily expect any particular reiteration of it to get through to a particular person.
Re: "Check your privilege"
I'm interested in this, too. I think it partly depends on morality/ethics, and partly on perspective and communication. I think being dismissive of others' being offended or sticking with sweeping generalizations/stereotypes in the face of counterexamples/facts is much less defensible than just not getting it. For instance, in the more attracted to people than to meat slur against monosexuals above, my outrage quotient is rather weak*. I get how it's a stereotype, but I'd be much more bothered if someone called me a breeder (different insult axis, I know), possibly b/c I think for many (not all, and I place no bets on "most", either) monosexuals, it *is* about the body. For others, it may be that they're attracted to people who've been socially conditioned as stereotypical members-of-the-opposite-sex.
* maybe my offensensitivity here is n/a, though, since I have had occasional flashes of attraction to people of my own gender, so I may not count as strictly monosexual. Sometimes I use "heteroflexible" to describe myself, but even that's more in theory than in practice.
Re: "Check your privilege"
I agree, but I think certain number of people don't get it because they don't make any effort to get it, and I don't feel that's defensible either.
Re: "Check your privilege"
Re: "Check your privilege"
Re: "Check your privilege"
Re: "Check your privilege"
no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-06-06 09:36 pm (UTC)(link)Graymalkin
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject