Cat Rambo ([info]catrambo) wrote,
@ 2007-04-18 11:19:00
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Current mood: excited
Current music:Jean Redpath - I Will Make You Brooches

What She Said
I wanted to point to this post by [info]velourmane, because it says very intelligently a number of things that people should think about before talking about sexism or racism, in SFWA or any other community.

And I think I'll stop posting for today, heh, that's plenty.


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Amptoons analogy
[info]geek_chorus
2007-04-21 04:12 pm UTC (link)
Velourmane wrote:

*Remember that someone saying something is racist or sexist is not the same as saying that whole individual is evil. If a woman or person of color calls you, or anyone else, on something that is racist or sexist, it's more like saying, "You have a booger showing." The polite response is grabbing a tissue, saying "Oh, sorry," and moving on. There doesn't have to be any personal insult involved. [analogy stolen from Amptoons]

While most of what velourmane says is valid and useful, this particular analogy doesn't work for me. Having a booger showing is not something I associate with centuries of oppression and genocide; racism is. Having a booger showing does not connect me to people who beat their spouses, intimidate their students, and discrminate in hiring and job advancement; being portrayed as sexist of misogynistic does. Or have I missed the point?

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[info]catrambo
2007-04-21 04:24 pm UTC (link)
I believe you have. It is possible for people to say racist, sexist, classist, etc, things without realizing that they are damaging because they don't know any better. There's a degree of difference, I would argue, between the person who earnestly tells me that women can't be firefighters because they're physically weaker, and the man who beats his wife because he feels he has the right to.

What Velourmane is referring to is a kneejerk reaction that many people have to someone pointing out that a thing that they have produced is racist/sexist/whatever, which is to assume that the second person is telling them they're a racist. This is, imo, a defensive thing, because if one makes enough fuss about having something called sexist, then people are less likely to try to point that out, and simply abandon the person to slide further into their own convictions, which is kinda sad.

There is an enormous difference between someone saying "This is racist" and "You are racist". Racism is not a simple binary, where you are or aren't, as with all the other isms, and making it into one (imo) only bolsters and reinforces it.

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