Interesting Links for 15-01-2014

[andrewducker]

• Behold, the first photos taken from the moon in over 40 years!
  (tags: moon china photos )
• Disney's Frozen Is Headed for Broadway
  (tags: musicals disney )
• Sales of electric cars near double in 2013. (To 1% of all UK cars, but it's a start...)
  (tags: cars electricity )
• Man Poses As Woman On Online Dating Site; Barely Lasts Two Hours
  (tags: dating

Comments

[marrog]

In support of Erin's comment with anecdata, as someone who gets into a shit ton of Facebook arguments, I've noted that straight white able-bodied (etc) guys are demonstrably and repeatedly far worse equipped and far less likely to understand what marginalised groups go through than people who belong firmly in one or more of marginalised group.

I admit that I'm only talking about what I've seen (though the body of evidence is literally everywhere I look), but on the web ANY post about ANY KIND OF privilege tends to immediately be followed by a string of comments from white (etc) guys taking exception to it in some way or decrying it or criticising it. This doesn't just apply to articles or discussions of gender but also, overwhelmingly, the subtler issues of (for example) race, like media representation and cultural appropriation.

Now, my wider circle is predominantly white, but you basically never see the white women piping in refuting these articles with their god-given opinions. I would posit that this is because women Get It (at least, on some level - we can never REALLY Get It, not fully, but we understand that and that helps), because they belong to a marginalised group. The only other explanation is that all the men I know are stupider or more argumentative than the women, which is just a ridiculous concept.

And it isn't just race either. I've seen it with mental health issues, physical disability, (more rarely) sexuality and even issues like class and minority issues relating to creative processes. Every. Single. Time. it's the white (etC) dudes who are piping in saying there's no problem and people should get over themselves, NOT, as you suggest, the 'humans'.

[andrewducker]

I agree (as upthread, with Erin), that the problem is with a lack of empathy. And I'm not defending that (nor, I think, is Joachim) - just trying to discuss/understand where it comes from - which is, I think, a position of both never having been discriminated against in that kind of way, and (presumably) not consciously discriminating.

Certainly, it took me quite a while, coming as I did from a lovely family, and only ever having been bullied for being _personally_ odd to come to terms with the idea that there was systemic awfulness going on. Because it seemed (and still seems) so barkingly odd that I cannot empathise with it at all.

[momentsmusicaux]

I seem to remember that of the people in question, one was a black guy, two were women of whom one had been the women's officer the year before, and the college staff member was a woman too.

[marrog]

Well, that's the problem with anecdata, of course; you have no excuse to disregard outliers, consider variables (here, say, the pressure to find reasons not to spend money vs the pressure of being in a discussion on the internet), or argue about sample sizes or data cleanliness.

What I will say is that Andrew has the 'thrust' of Erin's argument a little wrong above. It's not really about empathy - I don't have to empathise with a black person to support their stance. It's about trust. It's about trusting that when a marginalised person reports their lived experiences to you, says "This is something I see every day" they are telling the truth, even if it's not a truth you understand. It's about saying "Okay, I don't see how that can be, but I'm going to trust that you are telling the truth because this is a world I do not see."

Making a metatextual analysis of this comment thread pretty funny :-P

[momentsmusicaux]

My point was precisely about empathy.

The people in my anecdote said to us afterwards that they'd never realized just how bloody hard it was to get from one side of campus to the other. They'd heard about it, but it didn't actually register until there was an element of experience.

So the OKCupid guy probably had heard how awful it was. But the sheer volume and intensity and impact of every damn message only really registered when he actually felt it.