the post I promised on Friday
Nov. 29th, 2009 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
harborshoreWriting about white straight male privilege here is very much preaching to the choir. But I need to make something real and worthwhile out of the fail that was last week but especially Friday. I'm furious, so I got lengthy, and it is perhaps very incoherent at points. If I fail anywhere, please tell me.
This post is about the perceived threat to white male heterosexual privilege that lies in, well, a lot of things about our modern existence today. And thank fuck, I say, because I actually don't think a world where I don't have the right to vote or decide when I want to have sex (or who with) or what I want to do with my life is somewhere I want to live. And a world where my best friend is read as a charity case because she happens to be from Zimbabwe--when she earned that medical school fellowship—well, it's a dumb world, but one of the reasons it's so threatening to see her in the school is because she will be a black female doctor. Doctors have power. Of course they're going to think of things to say about her that makes her place there less of a threat and more about them being nice.
But I digress. I do that when I'm angry. See, I'm very tired of having white straight men push their ideological positions on me, and last week was so full of that, I barely even know where to start.
Let's start with the perceived threat, again. Most of you probably know Adam Lambert kissed a guy on stage last week? I didn't see the performance, but I've seen the pictures, and I DID notice ABC cancelled his appearance on Good Morning America (for the children? Or something?) whereas they're going ahead with Chris Brown's appearance (because obviously what he did was less offensive—it's not like he was convicted of beating up his girlfriend—oh WAIT). And this makes so much sense (if you live in white straight male privilege-land, anyway), because Adam's performance represents a serious danger to the equilibrium of the male gaze (if he was forcefully kissing a woman, that'd be a different story, but he's dominating a man, as it were), whereas Chris Brown, well, perpetuating patriarchy is the least of what he did. So having him on Good Morning America reestablishes the "appropriate" world order, as it were.
(The next post I'm making about issues like this one will include how fucking offensive I find it that my sexuality is basically porn for straight men. Not that I mind porn, obviously I don't, but hey, I'm not a fan of being asked to a threesome because the guy thinks it would be hot, especially since his girlfriend is straight and therefore he doesn't have to worry about losing her.)
And speaking of threats. I had my weekly philosophy seminar on Friday (for those of you not around for the earlier fail, it hasn't been very great in terms of progressiveness so far), and my professor puts up a picture on the over-head. The topic is interpretation. Now, as anyone who has ever done anything sort of academic knows, most of academic disciplines are in the business of interpretation, most notably the vast majority of academics in Humanities, because there are very few "correct" answers. I am, of course, generalizing—if you want to argue the semantics of this, you're more than welcome to. The point is, you might expect a professor of scientific philosophy to have a lot of examples to choose from.
But he goes with this picture.
In case you're not up on your missionaries, this is dr Albert Schweitzer. We weren't told who he was, but someone happened to know in the class, and so there we were, discussing colonialism on a level that had me so fucking frustrated and inarticulate. Guys, according to my professor it's "natural to read this image and see a threat". Natural, right.
He didn't go anywhere with that, he just sort of let the discussion keep going, and I just—it's natural? What? Why? Because the world where white men represent everything enlightened and unnatural, and black men are threatening, yes, that's a natural one. Newsflash, darling professor, it may be the one you think you're living in, but a) it is changing and b) there is nothing natural about it. Nothing.
Also, I don't see a threat in this picture. I mean, what?
So there we are, we're back to the threat again. An implied physical threat that is read out of nothing but prejudice. It still feels intensely ironic to me that we were discussing interpretation, and yet no one thought to talk about the interpretation of the world that the photographer made when he created this picture (it's a combination of two negatives). No, I lie, a couple of us attempted to go there, but that was apparently not "relevant". Because god forbid we discuss the actual reality of any situation, especially if the reality is likely to get into anti-racist discussions about the evils of colonialism—it's not like the white male assumption that their way is Natural and Right is relevant to a course on scientific ethics? No?
Continuing the streak of illustrating his lecture with inappropriate examples , the last one he brought up during the class was that of rape trials. He was trying to figure out a way to illustrate the idea of taking a relevant whole instead of looking at everything when doing your analysis (as my sister put it, "you mean every scientific study ever? It's impossible to look at the whole whole, you have to look at part of the whole.") and hit on the example of rape trials. Because "you look at a relevant whole there." Like the entire sexual history of the victim? What do you mean, professor?
Except I didn't have time to ask him. He said his bit about a relevant whole, told us rape trials were an example of "being convicted because of what you thought you were doing" and then class was over. And before we even think about discussing the fact that in many ways, it is not a relevant example (how does any analysis generally made during a real rape trial count as taking a relevant whole? And right, the perceived intention of the attacker sometimes becomes important, but it often shouldn't.) let's remember that it is also a deeply inappropriate one. Statistically speaking, in a class where there are fifteen female students, at least three will have been victims of some kind of sexual violence, and even for the women who haven't, we've all grown up in a world where rape is the greatest threat we face, where we get to be frightened when out late at night alone, etc. etc. ad nauseam (you all know this part).
So for my professor to just offhandedly bring it up, merrily generalize about it, be very wrong, and then end the lecture before we can even discuss it, well. It was one of the more blatant expressions of male privilege that I've been directly exposed to for quite some time. He can talk about rape trials like they're nothing; I cannot.
So let's recap. We have a form of censorship, trying to control the general public's exposure to alternative sexualities (trying to maintain the status quo as far as the male gaze goes—sexuality should always be expressed in a way straight men can look at and be turned on by—after all, the kiss between Britney and Madonna was a-okay), we have missionaries in Africa (and I don't pretend to know everything about this, but the way Albert Schweitzer presented himself was very much as a helper of those poor underprivileged and ignorant peoples—which, okay, thank you ever so much, white man) and we have rape (gotta keep those women down, right?). The comedian I saw Friday night was on a similar track: he insulted every group in the audience—except for the white straight men.
Hi, white straight male privilege, I am impressed by the lengths you go to in order to keep the world functioning in a way that you can handle. Here's your problem (and I'm quoting![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
colouredmango): "You are dying out. You are losing the war of attrition for our bodies and minds and rights to love. We have already won."
There is something deeply, deeply triumphant and true in that. It echoes what was said when Iowa passed their gay marriage law, it echoes what I do see, sometimes. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be furious (there are so many things that are so fucking wrong with the world in terms of sexism and violence and homophobia and racism that sometimes I want to set things on fire or scream loud enough that everyone, everyone would hear) but you know, We're here, we're talking about it, we're not fucking crawling to anyone, that is something. No one laughed at the comedian Friday night, that is something else. And I'll quote Mango again—if sometimes it's hard to see that we're getting there, we're winning, "it's just that the victory party is planned for a time when you and I will scoff about girls these days, when no one will have told us what to do for so long we will be confused what we're celebrating."
I will see all of you at that fucking party; I'll be the one dancing, I don't care how old I am when we get there.
This post is about the perceived threat to white male heterosexual privilege that lies in, well, a lot of things about our modern existence today. And thank fuck, I say, because I actually don't think a world where I don't have the right to vote or decide when I want to have sex (or who with) or what I want to do with my life is somewhere I want to live. And a world where my best friend is read as a charity case because she happens to be from Zimbabwe--when she earned that medical school fellowship—well, it's a dumb world, but one of the reasons it's so threatening to see her in the school is because she will be a black female doctor. Doctors have power. Of course they're going to think of things to say about her that makes her place there less of a threat and more about them being nice.
But I digress. I do that when I'm angry. See, I'm very tired of having white straight men push their ideological positions on me, and last week was so full of that, I barely even know where to start.
Let's start with the perceived threat, again. Most of you probably know Adam Lambert kissed a guy on stage last week? I didn't see the performance, but I've seen the pictures, and I DID notice ABC cancelled his appearance on Good Morning America (for the children? Or something?) whereas they're going ahead with Chris Brown's appearance (because obviously what he did was less offensive—it's not like he was convicted of beating up his girlfriend—oh WAIT). And this makes so much sense (if you live in white straight male privilege-land, anyway), because Adam's performance represents a serious danger to the equilibrium of the male gaze (if he was forcefully kissing a woman, that'd be a different story, but he's dominating a man, as it were), whereas Chris Brown, well, perpetuating patriarchy is the least of what he did. So having him on Good Morning America reestablishes the "appropriate" world order, as it were.
(The next post I'm making about issues like this one will include how fucking offensive I find it that my sexuality is basically porn for straight men. Not that I mind porn, obviously I don't, but hey, I'm not a fan of being asked to a threesome because the guy thinks it would be hot, especially since his girlfriend is straight and therefore he doesn't have to worry about losing her.)
And speaking of threats. I had my weekly philosophy seminar on Friday (for those of you not around for the earlier fail, it hasn't been very great in terms of progressiveness so far), and my professor puts up a picture on the over-head. The topic is interpretation. Now, as anyone who has ever done anything sort of academic knows, most of academic disciplines are in the business of interpretation, most notably the vast majority of academics in Humanities, because there are very few "correct" answers. I am, of course, generalizing—if you want to argue the semantics of this, you're more than welcome to. The point is, you might expect a professor of scientific philosophy to have a lot of examples to choose from.
But he goes with this picture.
In case you're not up on your missionaries, this is dr Albert Schweitzer. We weren't told who he was, but someone happened to know in the class, and so there we were, discussing colonialism on a level that had me so fucking frustrated and inarticulate. Guys, according to my professor it's "natural to read this image and see a threat". Natural, right.
He didn't go anywhere with that, he just sort of let the discussion keep going, and I just—it's natural? What? Why? Because the world where white men represent everything enlightened and unnatural, and black men are threatening, yes, that's a natural one. Newsflash, darling professor, it may be the one you think you're living in, but a) it is changing and b) there is nothing natural about it. Nothing.
Also, I don't see a threat in this picture. I mean, what?
So there we are, we're back to the threat again. An implied physical threat that is read out of nothing but prejudice. It still feels intensely ironic to me that we were discussing interpretation, and yet no one thought to talk about the interpretation of the world that the photographer made when he created this picture (it's a combination of two negatives). No, I lie, a couple of us attempted to go there, but that was apparently not "relevant". Because god forbid we discuss the actual reality of any situation, especially if the reality is likely to get into anti-racist discussions about the evils of colonialism—it's not like the white male assumption that their way is Natural and Right is relevant to a course on scientific ethics? No?
Continuing the streak of illustrating his lecture with inappropriate examples , the last one he brought up during the class was that of rape trials. He was trying to figure out a way to illustrate the idea of taking a relevant whole instead of looking at everything when doing your analysis (as my sister put it, "you mean every scientific study ever? It's impossible to look at the whole whole, you have to look at part of the whole.") and hit on the example of rape trials. Because "you look at a relevant whole there." Like the entire sexual history of the victim? What do you mean, professor?
Except I didn't have time to ask him. He said his bit about a relevant whole, told us rape trials were an example of "being convicted because of what you thought you were doing" and then class was over. And before we even think about discussing the fact that in many ways, it is not a relevant example (how does any analysis generally made during a real rape trial count as taking a relevant whole? And right, the perceived intention of the attacker sometimes becomes important, but it often shouldn't.) let's remember that it is also a deeply inappropriate one. Statistically speaking, in a class where there are fifteen female students, at least three will have been victims of some kind of sexual violence, and even for the women who haven't, we've all grown up in a world where rape is the greatest threat we face, where we get to be frightened when out late at night alone, etc. etc. ad nauseam (you all know this part).
So for my professor to just offhandedly bring it up, merrily generalize about it, be very wrong, and then end the lecture before we can even discuss it, well. It was one of the more blatant expressions of male privilege that I've been directly exposed to for quite some time. He can talk about rape trials like they're nothing; I cannot.
So let's recap. We have a form of censorship, trying to control the general public's exposure to alternative sexualities (trying to maintain the status quo as far as the male gaze goes—sexuality should always be expressed in a way straight men can look at and be turned on by—after all, the kiss between Britney and Madonna was a-okay), we have missionaries in Africa (and I don't pretend to know everything about this, but the way Albert Schweitzer presented himself was very much as a helper of those poor underprivileged and ignorant peoples—which, okay, thank you ever so much, white man) and we have rape (gotta keep those women down, right?). The comedian I saw Friday night was on a similar track: he insulted every group in the audience—except for the white straight men.
Hi, white straight male privilege, I am impressed by the lengths you go to in order to keep the world functioning in a way that you can handle. Here's your problem (and I'm quoting
colouredmango): "You are dying out. You are losing the war of attrition for our bodies and minds and rights to love. We have already won."There is something deeply, deeply triumphant and true in that. It echoes what was said when Iowa passed their gay marriage law, it echoes what I do see, sometimes. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be furious (there are so many things that are so fucking wrong with the world in terms of sexism and violence and homophobia and racism that sometimes I want to set things on fire or scream loud enough that everyone, everyone would hear) but you know, We're here, we're talking about it, we're not fucking crawling to anyone, that is something. No one laughed at the comedian Friday night, that is something else. And I'll quote Mango again—if sometimes it's hard to see that we're getting there, we're winning, "it's just that the victory party is planned for a time when you and I will scoff about girls these days, when no one will have told us what to do for so long we will be confused what we're celebrating."
I will see all of you at that fucking party; I'll be the one dancing, I don't care how old I am when we get there.