![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrThis is a somewhat vague ramble through various "basic" ideas which underlie my attitudes to feminism and anti-racism etc. It started as a reply to this comment and then grew out of my control :D
When I say I'm against sexism and racism and classism and all that, I am not saying that I am against men, and white people, and the rich etc. These predjudices and oppressions are the result of society wide power imbalances, not individual people being inherently nasty. I don't think there's any relevant inherent moral etc differences between people of different genders or ethnic groups or whatever, the power imbalances are a somewhat arbitrary accident of history combined with human nature. The problem is that they are self sustaining for reasons which have nothing to do with the individual groups involved, and can only be corrected by people making a concerted effort to work against them.
Now I know the usual day-to-day definition of racism or sexism etc is just "being prejudiced against people because of their race/gender". The definition I've seen used elsewhere and have been persuaded is more useful is "prejudice backed up by societal level power structures". Why make the distinction? Because prejudice which is not backed up by any society-wide power is the equivalent of some random guy who hates everyone called "George". He's still as much of a jerk as a racist, and it might be unpleasant for the Georges around him, but he's not contributing to any large scale oppression of Georges, and any nearby Georges can take comfort in knowing he's just one guy and noone else is a jerk like that. While, obviously, we shouldn't just let people get away with being jerks, there's not this big need to combat these individual prejudices.
On the other hand, prejudice which is backed up by power structures is inescapable. It skews everyone's perceptions (the human mind is very good at redefining "normal"), and makes life really unpleasant for those at the wrong end of the stick. As I said here this stuff is death by a thousand cuts, and so the issue is not the nastiness of any individual cut but the pattern of who gets cut more. The way we fight them is often cut-by-cut, but the real issue is in the unjust power structures.
If you live in a predjudiced society then you have predjudiced attitudes, and while you can try to fight against them and work to negate their consequences in yourself and those around you, they're still there. We are all racist and sexist and ablist and homophobic etc.
Fighting predjudice, therefore, is not about evenly dividing the world intosinners racists/sexists and saints non-racists/feminists. It's about getting rid of predjudice and negating it's negative consequences. It's not about proving how not-racist you are, or feeling guilty, or having oppressed people tell you how nice you are. It's about fighting predjudice.
It's not about finding some magic set of behaviours that makes you a "good" person who never has to worry about being predjudiced again and can get rightfully indignant if anyone accuses you of being predjudiced. We all sometimes do things which support or tie into predjudice, it can't be helped, the best we can do is try to minimise it and make a net positive difference.
We live in an unjust society. By doing nothing? You are supporting the status quo, and that status quo is unjust. Now we can't all fight against all the injustice all the time, and we all benefit from some sort of unfair privilege (whether based on race, class, gender, nationality...). But if you are aware that there is injustice then the least you can do is not get in the way when other people try to fight it, and not get all defensive when they point out that your behaviour (however unwittingly) is supporting injustice. I go into this a bit more in my post Why I am a feminist.
Now, all that said, while these predjudices are society wide and perpetuated by everyone, they are most significantly perpetuated by the more powerful group (be they white, or male, or whatever) This in part because, being in power, everything they do has more significant effects, even if it's no different from the behavior of less powerful people. But it's also because people are, at heart, selfish, and no matter how good our conscious intentions we tend to side with our own group subconsciously.
n.b. I had a somewhat socialist upbringing but no formal education in this stuff. But as I see it, when a group of people get into power they want to think of this power as earned. They mentally divide the world into "Us", the naturally good and worthy group who deserve power, and "Them", everyone else. Human beings have very little sympathy or objectivity when it comes to a "Them", and will quickly be genuinely unable to see anything unfair in their mistreatment, no matter how extreme, and build up subconscious biases which cloud our perceptions of Them. We also get very attached to the status quo in general, and have trouble overcoming attitudes we were brought up with. This is even true of "Them" who will tend to see their own, lesser place as natural too, though human nature being what it is they're more likely to notice their own mistreatment than "Us".
See for example The backpack of white privilege about all the little advantages white people have that we just don't notice and this post I wrote about the way predjudice clouds our judgement.
For this reason, the people in power cannot be trusted to judge what is right and fair for those with less power. Even if our intentions are good, we simply cannot empathise as well as we think we can. I've been against racism my whole life, and have been getting into it more deeply for a few years, and even so will look at something and just not be able to see why it's racist, and then a patient non-white person will explain it to me and I will go Oh.
You can't help being born into a more priviliged position, and you can't help having the associated predjudices. But you do have a responsibility to acknowledge them, and keep them in mind when dealing with those less privileged than yourself. This may mean giving them the benefit of the doubt when they criticise you, even though you don't feel you've done anything wrong. This isn't fair, but that's not their fault, it's the fault of the system and what it does to us.
Still, when I criticise "the patriarchy" I don't mean "I hate men". You can't help being born the more powerful gender, and sexism hurts you too. I mean I hate the system of injustice which hurts us all, men and women. Sometimes I get impatient with men when they unconsciously behave in sexist ways which upset me, but I temper my annoyance by keeping in mind how many non-white/GLBT etc people I've irritated by saying clueless things. If you're doing it on purpose then I don't feel so bad for being annoyed, since then you're just being a jerk :P
When I say I'm against sexism and racism and classism and all that, I am not saying that I am against men, and white people, and the rich etc. These predjudices and oppressions are the result of society wide power imbalances, not individual people being inherently nasty. I don't think there's any relevant inherent moral etc differences between people of different genders or ethnic groups or whatever, the power imbalances are a somewhat arbitrary accident of history combined with human nature. The problem is that they are self sustaining for reasons which have nothing to do with the individual groups involved, and can only be corrected by people making a concerted effort to work against them.
What is racism or sexism or any other -ism?
Now I know the usual day-to-day definition of racism or sexism etc is just "being prejudiced against people because of their race/gender". The definition I've seen used elsewhere and have been persuaded is more useful is "prejudice backed up by societal level power structures". Why make the distinction? Because prejudice which is not backed up by any society-wide power is the equivalent of some random guy who hates everyone called "George". He's still as much of a jerk as a racist, and it might be unpleasant for the Georges around him, but he's not contributing to any large scale oppression of Georges, and any nearby Georges can take comfort in knowing he's just one guy and noone else is a jerk like that. While, obviously, we shouldn't just let people get away with being jerks, there's not this big need to combat these individual prejudices.
On the other hand, prejudice which is backed up by power structures is inescapable. It skews everyone's perceptions (the human mind is very good at redefining "normal"), and makes life really unpleasant for those at the wrong end of the stick. As I said here this stuff is death by a thousand cuts, and so the issue is not the nastiness of any individual cut but the pattern of who gets cut more. The way we fight them is often cut-by-cut, but the real issue is in the unjust power structures.
What it means to be predjudiced, and what it means to fight against it
If you live in a predjudiced society then you have predjudiced attitudes, and while you can try to fight against them and work to negate their consequences in yourself and those around you, they're still there. We are all racist and sexist and ablist and homophobic etc.
Fighting predjudice, therefore, is not about evenly dividing the world into
It's not about finding some magic set of behaviours that makes you a "good" person who never has to worry about being predjudiced again and can get rightfully indignant if anyone accuses you of being predjudiced. We all sometimes do things which support or tie into predjudice, it can't be helped, the best we can do is try to minimise it and make a net positive difference.
We live in an unjust society. By doing nothing? You are supporting the status quo, and that status quo is unjust. Now we can't all fight against all the injustice all the time, and we all benefit from some sort of unfair privilege (whether based on race, class, gender, nationality...). But if you are aware that there is injustice then the least you can do is not get in the way when other people try to fight it, and not get all defensive when they point out that your behaviour (however unwittingly) is supporting injustice. I go into this a bit more in my post Why I am a feminist.
The unfair burden of being on top
Now, all that said, while these predjudices are society wide and perpetuated by everyone, they are most significantly perpetuated by the more powerful group (be they white, or male, or whatever) This in part because, being in power, everything they do has more significant effects, even if it's no different from the behavior of less powerful people. But it's also because people are, at heart, selfish, and no matter how good our conscious intentions we tend to side with our own group subconsciously.
n.b. I had a somewhat socialist upbringing but no formal education in this stuff. But as I see it, when a group of people get into power they want to think of this power as earned. They mentally divide the world into "Us", the naturally good and worthy group who deserve power, and "Them", everyone else. Human beings have very little sympathy or objectivity when it comes to a "Them", and will quickly be genuinely unable to see anything unfair in their mistreatment, no matter how extreme, and build up subconscious biases which cloud our perceptions of Them. We also get very attached to the status quo in general, and have trouble overcoming attitudes we were brought up with. This is even true of "Them" who will tend to see their own, lesser place as natural too, though human nature being what it is they're more likely to notice their own mistreatment than "Us".
See for example The backpack of white privilege about all the little advantages white people have that we just don't notice and this post I wrote about the way predjudice clouds our judgement.
For this reason, the people in power cannot be trusted to judge what is right and fair for those with less power. Even if our intentions are good, we simply cannot empathise as well as we think we can. I've been against racism my whole life, and have been getting into it more deeply for a few years, and even so will look at something and just not be able to see why it's racist, and then a patient non-white person will explain it to me and I will go Oh.
You can't help being born into a more priviliged position, and you can't help having the associated predjudices. But you do have a responsibility to acknowledge them, and keep them in mind when dealing with those less privileged than yourself. This may mean giving them the benefit of the doubt when they criticise you, even though you don't feel you've done anything wrong. This isn't fair, but that's not their fault, it's the fault of the system and what it does to us.
Still, when I criticise "the patriarchy" I don't mean "I hate men". You can't help being born the more powerful gender, and sexism hurts you too. I mean I hate the system of injustice which hurts us all, men and women. Sometimes I get impatient with men when they unconsciously behave in sexist ways which upset me, but I temper my annoyance by keeping in mind how many non-white/GLBT etc people I've irritated by saying clueless things. If you're doing it on purpose then I don't feel so bad for being annoyed, since then you're just being a jerk :P
