Reposted from DW where it sadly failed to cause any drama
I liked America. It has a lot to recommend it. There is a culture of generosity of spirit and "can-do", of passion and ambition which are overlooked by a lot of Europeans; curiosity and a thousand, million cultures which have arisen and blossomed in the economic and geographic space. And the parts I saw at least - the west coast, from Seattle to Portland - were breath-takingly beautiful, both urban and rural. I shall for the purposes of this essay gloss over the fact that America repeatedly tried to poison me with its food, because I'm sure that was just an accident really.
America's government has done some awful things and some wonderful ones, both in the eyes of the citizens of the country and of the rest of the world. The vastly-differing peoples of the country, like every other country, range from "awful human beings you would rather drink bleach and amonia cocktails than associate with" to "borderline-angelic individuals who restore your faith in humankind's ability to be kind". There is a laudable movement to ensure and acquire equal rights for every subset of citizen, contrasted against those who want to do whatever it is that requires no one who isn't a white Christian baptist heterosexual cisgender able-bodied married man ever being allowed to do anything ...
It's that laudable movement who lead to my gratitude for being European, alas. You see, there is an oft-lamented tendency in The Rest Of The World to bond over, when we have nothing else to bond over, "how much we hate Americans". This usually boils down to three specific things:
1. American foreign policy, which certainly only encompasses a fraction of the population of the country; many Americans are frustrated by their country's foreign policy if not outright opposed to it.
2. Tourists, which in fairness also incorporates tourists from other places. No one likes tourists, be they American, Japanese, British, French, Chilean, Nigerean... etc.
3. Which is relevant to this post: Americans on the internet who cannot seem to shake free of the idea that America is the only country on earth.
This is subdivided into "gung-ho flag-waving morons" who we shall waste no further words on, and "social justice crusaders who have identified every privilege but this", who cause endless frustration by aiming for greatness with sincerity and quite frequently a lot of shouting, but fall short of the mark by refusing to consider this last ingrained stronghold of unexamined privilege.
The vast majority of feminist, disability rights, anti-racism, trans rights, queer rights blogs and noisemakers are either American or so indoctrinated with the American social justice paradigm that they overlook its inapplicability to the society they are in. American commentators are of course right to focus on the failings in their own backyard; American commentators' interest in the American paradigm is wholly understandable: we start at home, with the societies we're in, cleaning up the water of our own goldfish bowls before turning to the living arrangements of others. I have no problem with that.
What is causing me considerable ... how shall I put this ... a hostile reaction boiling up in a lot of discussions - is the inability to recognise that the American paradigm is not the only paradigm, and that it is not suitable for anywhere but America. On the one hand, homophobia and racism and sexism and cissexism and ableism are phobias and isms regardless of where they occur; on the other hand, their expression, symbols, and solutions are different depending on the cultures in which they take place.
American values are not universal, and many people the world over consider adopting them to be an erosion of their culture identity of the kind which is already happening with every passing day. Throughout the world the same old issues crop up in different ways, and our responses are moulded by our cultural backgrounds, our individual and wider values, and by the form which those issues take; demanding that everyone follow the same model is not just pushy and invasive but outright erasure of other cultures.
The troubling detail is that while a good proportion of supporters of SJ in fandom are perfectly capable of remembering that US Culture incorporates fusions of cultures from everywhere else, capable of decrying the absence of US-specific cultures from US cultural entertainment, they fall victim to a blind spot. Not everyone you speak to on the internet is from any form of US culture. A lot of the cultural signifiers of prejudice/racism which are taken for granted by SJ bloggers from inside the US make no sense to those of us outside that cultural context: for example, for countries who have had no link to slavery in the US and its cultural depiction, the idea that someone of African origins eating a watermelon is racist is confusing, the equation of "African-American" with "fried chicken" is not a stereotype everyone is aware of.
Assuming that everyone is cogniscent of the history and culture of the United States is insulting cultural imperialism. When the interlocuter complains that one "should know better" but is completely opposed to the idea of learning anything about the cultural norms of Finland or New Zealand, imposing their own ideals of normality over a nation and culture which is not theirs, is it any wonder that American-paradigm social justice crusaders are met with hostility? The refusal to even consider that transliterated terms which sound offensive in English have no offensive value in their original language is intellectual laziness from people who pride themselves in contemplating all the potential -isms of every situation.
To say that "all social justice crusaders in fandom" behave in an aggressive, culturally imperialist fashion is inaccurate. But it is the loudest voice which we hear most often, and that voice is dedicated to the assumption that American values are universal, that the social justice paradigm of the coastal universities of America is the only social justice paradigm available; it is the voice which dictating the form and features of discourse on subjects which affect everyone, it is the voice which defines, for the most part, what shape prejudice and privilege are perceived to be in readings of popular culture, and it is a voice which condemns cultures to which it does not belong without gaining any internal understanding of them.
And so while this voice, which is incapable of even seeing that "insults as friendly interaction" is a cultural norm in some places and that when it is subjected to examination it will be subjected to examination by members of that culture, not by external moderators of discourse, while this voice which is completely blind to the arrogance and imperialism of "you should do things our way because our way is right" and the context which has lead to "our way" being formed, this voice which has buried in the very core of it the assumption that America = Freedom and America = the Way and the Light ... while this voice continues to shout down any other form of discourse, I go on feeling pleased about being European.
Because while I am from Europe, as opposed to America, or from Africa or South America or Asia or Australia, as opposed to America ... I have the opportunity to bond with people from around the world over how sick we are of being told to do things your way. I can hang with Norwegians and Belgians, with Xhosa and Zulu bloggers, with folk from Turkey and Libya and Korea and Peru, and we can all sit here and talk about how fucking intensely annoying it is when a bunch of red-white-and-blue pricks declare themselves the One True Way and piss on our own attempts to salvage ourselves.
[And you know, as a British person I don't get that option very often, since everyone's very aware that most of the current problems in the world are down to my country running roughshod over other civilisations].
America's government has done some awful things and some wonderful ones, both in the eyes of the citizens of the country and of the rest of the world. The vastly-differing peoples of the country, like every other country, range from "awful human beings you would rather drink bleach and amonia cocktails than associate with" to "borderline-angelic individuals who restore your faith in humankind's ability to be kind". There is a laudable movement to ensure and acquire equal rights for every subset of citizen, contrasted against those who want to do whatever it is that requires no one who isn't a white Christian baptist heterosexual cisgender able-bodied married man ever being allowed to do anything ...
It's that laudable movement who lead to my gratitude for being European, alas. You see, there is an oft-lamented tendency in The Rest Of The World to bond over, when we have nothing else to bond over, "how much we hate Americans". This usually boils down to three specific things:
1. American foreign policy, which certainly only encompasses a fraction of the population of the country; many Americans are frustrated by their country's foreign policy if not outright opposed to it.
2. Tourists, which in fairness also incorporates tourists from other places. No one likes tourists, be they American, Japanese, British, French, Chilean, Nigerean... etc.
3. Which is relevant to this post: Americans on the internet who cannot seem to shake free of the idea that America is the only country on earth.
This is subdivided into "gung-ho flag-waving morons" who we shall waste no further words on, and "social justice crusaders who have identified every privilege but this", who cause endless frustration by aiming for greatness with sincerity and quite frequently a lot of shouting, but fall short of the mark by refusing to consider this last ingrained stronghold of unexamined privilege.
The vast majority of feminist, disability rights, anti-racism, trans rights, queer rights blogs and noisemakers are either American or so indoctrinated with the American social justice paradigm that they overlook its inapplicability to the society they are in. American commentators are of course right to focus on the failings in their own backyard; American commentators' interest in the American paradigm is wholly understandable: we start at home, with the societies we're in, cleaning up the water of our own goldfish bowls before turning to the living arrangements of others. I have no problem with that.
What is causing me considerable ... how shall I put this ... a hostile reaction boiling up in a lot of discussions - is the inability to recognise that the American paradigm is not the only paradigm, and that it is not suitable for anywhere but America. On the one hand, homophobia and racism and sexism and cissexism and ableism are phobias and isms regardless of where they occur; on the other hand, their expression, symbols, and solutions are different depending on the cultures in which they take place.
American values are not universal, and many people the world over consider adopting them to be an erosion of their culture identity of the kind which is already happening with every passing day. Throughout the world the same old issues crop up in different ways, and our responses are moulded by our cultural backgrounds, our individual and wider values, and by the form which those issues take; demanding that everyone follow the same model is not just pushy and invasive but outright erasure of other cultures.
The troubling detail is that while a good proportion of supporters of SJ in fandom are perfectly capable of remembering that US Culture incorporates fusions of cultures from everywhere else, capable of decrying the absence of US-specific cultures from US cultural entertainment, they fall victim to a blind spot. Not everyone you speak to on the internet is from any form of US culture. A lot of the cultural signifiers of prejudice/racism which are taken for granted by SJ bloggers from inside the US make no sense to those of us outside that cultural context: for example, for countries who have had no link to slavery in the US and its cultural depiction, the idea that someone of African origins eating a watermelon is racist is confusing, the equation of "African-American" with "fried chicken" is not a stereotype everyone is aware of.
Assuming that everyone is cogniscent of the history and culture of the United States is insulting cultural imperialism. When the interlocuter complains that one "should know better" but is completely opposed to the idea of learning anything about the cultural norms of Finland or New Zealand, imposing their own ideals of normality over a nation and culture which is not theirs, is it any wonder that American-paradigm social justice crusaders are met with hostility? The refusal to even consider that transliterated terms which sound offensive in English have no offensive value in their original language is intellectual laziness from people who pride themselves in contemplating all the potential -isms of every situation.
To say that "all social justice crusaders in fandom" behave in an aggressive, culturally imperialist fashion is inaccurate. But it is the loudest voice which we hear most often, and that voice is dedicated to the assumption that American values are universal, that the social justice paradigm of the coastal universities of America is the only social justice paradigm available; it is the voice which dictating the form and features of discourse on subjects which affect everyone, it is the voice which defines, for the most part, what shape prejudice and privilege are perceived to be in readings of popular culture, and it is a voice which condemns cultures to which it does not belong without gaining any internal understanding of them.
And so while this voice, which is incapable of even seeing that "insults as friendly interaction" is a cultural norm in some places and that when it is subjected to examination it will be subjected to examination by members of that culture, not by external moderators of discourse, while this voice which is completely blind to the arrogance and imperialism of "you should do things our way because our way is right" and the context which has lead to "our way" being formed, this voice which has buried in the very core of it the assumption that America = Freedom and America = the Way and the Light ... while this voice continues to shout down any other form of discourse, I go on feeling pleased about being European.
Because while I am from Europe, as opposed to America, or from Africa or South America or Asia or Australia, as opposed to America ... I have the opportunity to bond with people from around the world over how sick we are of being told to do things your way. I can hang with Norwegians and Belgians, with Xhosa and Zulu bloggers, with folk from Turkey and Libya and Korea and Peru, and we can all sit here and talk about how fucking intensely annoying it is when a bunch of red-white-and-blue pricks declare themselves the One True Way and piss on our own attempts to salvage ourselves.
[And you know, as a British person I don't get that option very often, since everyone's very aware that most of the current problems in the world are down to my country running roughshod over other civilisations].