with their crooked stares
For the interested, jujuberry136 has good thoughts about those Season 6 Criminal Minds casting spoilers. Well, more like good rants. But I found them very articulate and thought-provoking and I agree with everything she said.
In her extremely excellent link round-up on the recent unfunny business, amazonziti said something in this thread (which is also an excellent ( Read more... )
In her extremely excellent link round-up on the recent unfunny business, amazonziti said something in this thread (which is also an excellent ( Read more... )
And I continue to say that that is not the point.
I agree that rational discussion is better, for lack of a better word, than anger and hostility. It might be more productive in the longer-term, easier to read and listen to. But anger has its place and I'm saying that we need to STOP telling people who are hurt and angry to shut up, to watch what they're saying, to think about what would be better in the long term, and to ask them if they want to be part of the solution instead of the problem.
When you step on someone's foot and they yell at you to get off, you don't stand there and tell them to think about what they're saying. You get off their foot. And hopefully apologize for hurting them, without making it all about how you feel soooo bad and you didn't mean to do it, maybe their foot looked like a rock or something, or you thought maybe they were one of those people who like being stepped on. You just stop hurting them. Period.
I've vented in this LJ before being hurt, about what happened to me in the past, about the doctor who made me feel worthless because I was fat. No one told me that I should be part of the solution instead of the problem. No one told me I should watch my tone.
I'm just trying to extend the same courtesy to others.
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This is probably a poor comparison, but I think about spats with friends and family. While I might be inclined to chew a friend's ear off about how my roommate has turned into a passive-aggressive psycho the moment she pisses me off/hurts my feelings/whatever, it'd be a very different thing if, a day later, that was the content of my conversation with my roommate. Forget for a second that it'd certainly make it easier for her to write off my feelings. That's not what I'm getting at. No, the point is that it'd be coming from a bad place. It'd be sheer vindictiveness on my part- I'd want to make her angry, make her hurt, the way she did to me.
I'm not saying that people don't deserve to be called on for their crap. I'm not saying people shouldn't be angry when someone pisses them off. I'm not even saying that people who have been pissed off by someone should feel obligated/required/forced to be martyrs who suffer silently in order to protect the person who offended/annoyed/hurt them or to gently edify them.
What I *am* saying is that no matter what happened, no matter what we're feeling, that it is quite possible that our reactions sometimes aren't coming from the...better angels of our nature. Sometimes it isn't just a pure discussion about an issue that is important to us. Sometimes we have more than one motivation.
This isn't a judgment, only an observation. I am not in a position to throw stones at anyone on this, because it is something I struggle with a great deal. Especially in arguments, internet or otherwise- when someone touches a nerve, I can be vicious. And it all ways feels so good, so justified as I find that way to turn that knife just a little bit deeper. So I'm always trying to get over that, and it makes me question my own motivations when things turn personal. Even though wronged, am I really living up to my beliefs? And for me, that's kind of a religious thing, but it doesn't have to be.
I must admit, my track record on turning the other cheek is extremely dismal.
I guess what I am trying to say, amid all this rambling, is that one can question if others' actions were the right ones without etiher questioning if their feelings and motivations were justified *or* bashing them for doing X or not doing Y.
"Was X really the right thing to do?" is different from "Obviously, Y is the only thing to do and she is a bitch for doing otherwise."
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I've been lurking in the overal BB racefail discussions, trying to educate myself and collecting interesting links. You're absolutely right that the subject of racism brings out the angry spitty wrath in people - but suggesting that the conversation would somehow be better if people were nicer about correcting the person who screwed up is called the tone argument, and it isn't a productive angle for discussion. It's also a show of privilege to suggest that someone who's hurt change their tone to make others more comfortable with what they're saying.
The reason people get angry when this topic comes up, and the reason they react with vitriol, is because it's worth getting angry over. I'm white, so I've never experienced racism firsthand, but I'm also female and queer, and I keep thinking about the sexism and homophobia I've experienced. When someone makes a stupid sexist comment around me ("Don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die, lol!"), I get PISSED, and rightfully so. When someone makes a homophobic comment around me ("Bisexuals don't actually exist, they're just looking for attention!"), I get PISSED, and rightfully so. And I deserve to be able to voice that anger in whatever way I see fit, even if it's capslocking expletives at the person who pissed me off. It's not my job to try to bring that ignorant person who hurt me to any kind of understanding - just like it's not a person of color's job to educate someone who's demonstrated racism.
It may not be productive to yell and insult someone when they say something ignorant and hurtful, but it is a valid emotional reaction, and it's a helluva lot better than staying silent. The point of these conversations is to raise awareness and express hurt. The onus is on the ignorant person to recognize that they hurt someone, asses why what they said was hurtful, apologize, and seek education for themselves to keep from doing it again.
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Hi random person! I just wanted to point out that that is not what I was arguing about at all. I was just trying to argue that it's valid to question whether an action was a 'right' one.
For example. I got into an argument with a guy friend of mine about sexism and rape. He touched a nerve, I went berserk, and said some really nasty things to him.
The nasty things I said to him? Were not really coming out of my disagreement, or my outrage over what he'd said. I'd stopped arguing about those things. It came down to, he said something that pissed me off, and now I wanted to piss him off. It came from a desire to wound him.
Another friend of mine was justified to ask me if two wrongs made a right.
To go back to an example upthread (or in the OP, I can't remember), if someone steps on your foot, you couldn't really be faulted for yelling at them.
My point is, though, that you might be faulted for kicking that person.
SO, to go back to my original point, I don't think it is necessarily wrong for someone to wonder whether there may been kicking rather than yelling. In this particular case, I have no idea, because I have no desire to go wading through it.
And the foot metaphor has been stretched entirely too much, so let me bring it back to something closer to reality:
Imagine two reactions to the fic in question. One is someone posting at the fic, or back on their own journal "grr, this writer made me really @%*&!*& angry! They're so _____" (insert one of the many appropriate words here)
and, the other- oh, let's go for the extreme - sending messages to the writer along the lines of "you *@%&*@%*! %@*&*@%*&@%*, I hope someone beats you to death."
We could reasonably question whether the second action is morally right, without implying that the first reaction is wrong, OR implying that the right reaction would have been to gently lead the offending writer down the path towards enlightenment.
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Like maybe two or three commenters called the writer misogynistic names in the first post, a long time ago, waaaayyy back at the beginning, and I agree that that was wrong. BUT. It is not wrong of people to call her racist. It is not wrong of them to call her thoughtless, or insensitive, or wrong-headed. Some of those things may be matters of opinion or YMMV, but they are not insults, per se. They are not meant to be hurtful so much as they are meant to point out that this behavior is inexcusable. And just because someone hurts or insults you does not mean that what they are saying is invalid.
If someone told me that I was being an asshole and I should stop, I would be hurt. I don't like being called names. But I hope that I would be able to listen to what they were saying and STOP BEING AN ASSHOLE.
And anyway, all of this is beside the point. We aren't talking to the writer anymore. I think people have said all they need to say to her. Now it's about talking amongst ourselves, and that is important and valid and necessary. And it should not be squashed, even if some of the language might be harsh.
That was the point of my post. I hope I was clear.
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In other words:
"And it should not be squashed, even if some of the language might be harsh."
Yes! I agree!
"Okay, yes, we can agree that it is also wrong to hurt someone else, even if they hurt you first"
Yes! I agree.
"If someone told me that I was being an asshole and I should stop, I would be hurt. I don't like being called names. But I hope that I would be able to listen to what they were saying and STOP."
I agree, with qualifiers! Because human relations and language can be damnable full of different meanings, there are situations and wording I would in fact object to. Hmm. 'An insult* being applied to a person and not to an action' maybe. The difference between "you're stupid" and "that was stupid." But that really has nothing to do with the issue of censoring people, and is just a preference. In a perfect world, we would all respect each other as human beings, be polite, and speak civilly, and none of this, all the way back to the original problem, would have happened.
ETA:
* And by insult, I mean, something said with the intent to demean/hurt another person. I am against demeaning other people. So! I'd draw a line between saying "you're being really bitchy" and "you're a bitch". Calling a Fascist a fascist is not an insult. But it would be an insult when used by a bratty teenager screaming at her mother because her mother won't let her get a tattoo.
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Because it's a matter of emotional reaction, I don't think it's anyone's place to say what's right or wrong - and I certainly don't want to have to draw that line. Morals are one of those big blurry gray areas, and it sounds like you and I might differ a bit on that already. (I've occasionally been known to kick shins and not apologize for it. Shins, and the foot metaphor!) If I had a magic internet wand, I'd wave it over fandom and make people stop discussing the nature of the reactions to racefail and focus instead on discussing why it happens and how to collectively avoid future fail.
(But if I had a magic internet wand, bizarre crossover fic would be running rampant and everyone's LJ icons would have sparkles to appease my magpie brain, so maybe it's for the best that I don't have one of those.)
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After a friend of mine was assaulted, I wanted nothing more than to cut the bastard's balls off and feed them to him. There was nothing wrong with that emotional reaction. But had I actually done anything like that, I would have quite rightfully ended up in jail.
And you are right, we all draw the lines in different places. That's just my point. Just because we do, doesn't mean the conversation shouldn't be allowed. Person A thinks it crossed the line. Person B doesn't. They're both entitled to their opinions, and to defend them.
And it's a valid conversation. How we chose to react (i.e. act, I'm not talking about the emotional reaction) to a situation is often the only control we have over it; that is, we control ourselves. In a sense, these kind of discussions are how we establish the framework for the discussions you mention.
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