TW: Sexism, racism, homophobia, slurs,
So. Two things have happened lately that I need to talk about:
First let's talk about one of my English professors. He's a nice guy about 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time is spent picking apart my nervous rhetorical errors so that he doesn't have to answer me when I point out that he's kind of mansplaining to all of the girls in class right now, mocking me for saying "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!" and encouraging the sexist men in the class when they go off on tangents about how women are gossipy and boring.
He's also the professor who somehow managed to make Sassy Gay Friend videos relevant to 16th-centry English literature in every single class. ALL of them. ALL THE TIME.
First of all, let me say that those videos are everything I hate about both straight culture and queer male culture. They're all giant homophobic stereotypes that dehumanize queer people and reduce us to nothing but catalysts for straight characters' growth and they completely legitimize and encourage straight viewers to treat us as token minority friends and expect us to have no existence outside of them and devote ourselves mind, body, and soul to their growth. (Well, why wouldn't we devote our whole selves to the personal growth of straight people? Don't we realize that the privileged people are the important people?) This is shit that really happens, to queer men and queer women. Society teaches straight people that these incredibly fucked up and oppressive relationship dynamics are okay and even desirable, and then everyone acts shocked and tries to disown the problem when queer people complain about straight people repeatedly trying to force these relationship dynamics onto us. The media gives us the "Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride" treatment and consistently pigeonholes us into supporting characters in someone else's story, and as a result real straight people tend to see us as nothing more than supporting characters in their infinitely more important stories.
As for queer men, I am really sick of the prevailing societal opinion (Which those videos absolutely and undeniably encourage-How many times did he say "stupid bitch" in the ~5 minutes that make up all three of those videos?) that misogyny is alright or even cute when it's coming from a queer man. It is considered completely acceptable in society for queer men to verbally abuse women with misogynist slurs and even physically slap them in some cases, and that is not okay. Under absolutely no circumstances is any man, queer or otherwise, allowed to call me a bitch, even in a sassy-you-know-I-love-you kind of way (I can forgive other women for calling me a bitch in that way). Queer men do not give up their male privilege when they come out of the closet, and I am so over society behaving as though they do. Queer men are steeped in male privilege and it's high time they were held accountable for it at least to the same extent that straight men are (which is hardly at all. I'm asking that little).
So. Back to my professor. The first time he showed these videos in class, I allowed myself to be stunned into silence and just hope that he never did it again. The second time it happened, I mentioned it on his evaluation. That was at the end of last semester. So, this semester when there was a large group of his students in the English Study Room talking about the Sassy Gay Friend videos he'd shown in class, I was especially... not angry, exactly. These videos don't make me feel angry. Humiliated (and visibly so!), sure, but not particularly angry. As far as my Fight or Flight System goes, these videos are definitely more on the "Lock my doors and windows and never ever ever leave my house again" end of things. I was especially something. Whatever that weird feeling of wanting to completely shut down on the spot is. I had to reread the same short sentence about five times to fully comprehend it, I was so flustered and distracted by the homophobia going on around me and how little control I had over it.
I think my biggest problem is that I'm a teacher's pet by nature, and I really want to like my professors. I take pride in being pretty well-liked by them, in general, but that begins with me liking and respecting them, and when I'm pushed to this point where for my own good I can't respect them or have any sort of mutual relationship with them anymore, it bugs the shit out of me. Anyway, needless to say I'm sworn off his classes (which thankfully won't be a graduation problem) and probably won't be recommending him to anyone anymore.
And no, he's not the only professor I've ever had problems with. Even my favorite professor isn't always perfect. (He's a "male feminist" and just fucking ask me about slurs and James Joyce's An Encounter.) The thing is, though, this professor is the one that I'm having by far the most problems with, and he's also the only one that is consistently giving me the impression that he's not even trying.
The second thing that happened was a thirty second exchange with my aunt and step-dad yesterday when it came up that I was in the Black Student Alliance at school and they went off on a rant about how it's totally unfair that if someone started a White Student Alliance it would be racist even though soon white people will be in the minority. I totally verbally tripped over my own feet (as I often do when oppressive shit happens irl. I'm much better at taking people to task for their bull-shit in writing.) and just stuttered for a moment and then mentioned that, well, my school does have white scholarships, so-so-so-
I'm mentally kicking myself so hard for that response right now. I know what was wrong with what they were saying. White people don't need a White Student Alliance. Our advancement is society's top priority and we're so visible in the media and in all areas of life that we don't need any help building positive racial identities for ourselves. Frankly, as a white student I would be comfortable as Hell assuming that anyone who wanted one was extremely racist and avoiding them, because there is no non-racist reason for wanting to start or join a club built on racial privilege. As for Latin@s being the majority in this country in a few decades... so fucking what? First of all, this "statistic" is built on racist racial categorizing. It's one-drop-rule bullshit. White people are not being killed off in mass genocides and white people are not just magically disappearing. All that's happening is that certain ethnic communities have a slightly higher birth rate than we do,* and there are more multi- and bi-racial children being born, who due to racist racial categorizing are seen as fundamentally more non-white than white, whether they identify that way or not.
The thing is, I responded the way I did that because when I'm put on the spot like that irl, I often default to stock phrases and arguments that I've developed from my time on-line. And I don't have any of those for dealing with racism. I'm white. This isn't a part of my everyday life. I try to check my privilege and to call other people out on theirs when necessary, but the truth is that I will always have the privilege of being surprised by racism and not always carrying defenses against it with me everywhere I go. It's something I'm always working on, but experiences like this always remind me of how very far I still have to go.
*Icon for this line. North America becoming less lily-white? Baber approves.
First let's talk about one of my English professors. He's a nice guy about 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time is spent picking apart my nervous rhetorical errors so that he doesn't have to answer me when I point out that he's kind of mansplaining to all of the girls in class right now, mocking me for saying "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!" and encouraging the sexist men in the class when they go off on tangents about how women are gossipy and boring.
He's also the professor who somehow managed to make Sassy Gay Friend videos relevant to 16th-centry English literature in every single class. ALL of them. ALL THE TIME.
First of all, let me say that those videos are everything I hate about both straight culture and queer male culture. They're all giant homophobic stereotypes that dehumanize queer people and reduce us to nothing but catalysts for straight characters' growth and they completely legitimize and encourage straight viewers to treat us as token minority friends and expect us to have no existence outside of them and devote ourselves mind, body, and soul to their growth. (Well, why wouldn't we devote our whole selves to the personal growth of straight people? Don't we realize that the privileged people are the important people?) This is shit that really happens, to queer men and queer women. Society teaches straight people that these incredibly fucked up and oppressive relationship dynamics are okay and even desirable, and then everyone acts shocked and tries to disown the problem when queer people complain about straight people repeatedly trying to force these relationship dynamics onto us. The media gives us the "Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride" treatment and consistently pigeonholes us into supporting characters in someone else's story, and as a result real straight people tend to see us as nothing more than supporting characters in their infinitely more important stories.
As for queer men, I am really sick of the prevailing societal opinion (Which those videos absolutely and undeniably encourage-How many times did he say "stupid bitch" in the ~5 minutes that make up all three of those videos?) that misogyny is alright or even cute when it's coming from a queer man. It is considered completely acceptable in society for queer men to verbally abuse women with misogynist slurs and even physically slap them in some cases, and that is not okay. Under absolutely no circumstances is any man, queer or otherwise, allowed to call me a bitch, even in a sassy-you-know-I-love-you kind of way (I can forgive other women for calling me a bitch in that way). Queer men do not give up their male privilege when they come out of the closet, and I am so over society behaving as though they do. Queer men are steeped in male privilege and it's high time they were held accountable for it at least to the same extent that straight men are (which is hardly at all. I'm asking that little).
So. Back to my professor. The first time he showed these videos in class, I allowed myself to be stunned into silence and just hope that he never did it again. The second time it happened, I mentioned it on his evaluation. That was at the end of last semester. So, this semester when there was a large group of his students in the English Study Room talking about the Sassy Gay Friend videos he'd shown in class, I was especially... not angry, exactly. These videos don't make me feel angry. Humiliated (and visibly so!), sure, but not particularly angry. As far as my Fight or Flight System goes, these videos are definitely more on the "Lock my doors and windows and never ever ever leave my house again" end of things. I was especially something. Whatever that weird feeling of wanting to completely shut down on the spot is. I had to reread the same short sentence about five times to fully comprehend it, I was so flustered and distracted by the homophobia going on around me and how little control I had over it.
I think my biggest problem is that I'm a teacher's pet by nature, and I really want to like my professors. I take pride in being pretty well-liked by them, in general, but that begins with me liking and respecting them, and when I'm pushed to this point where for my own good I can't respect them or have any sort of mutual relationship with them anymore, it bugs the shit out of me. Anyway, needless to say I'm sworn off his classes (which thankfully won't be a graduation problem) and probably won't be recommending him to anyone anymore.
And no, he's not the only professor I've ever had problems with. Even my favorite professor isn't always perfect. (He's a "male feminist" and just fucking ask me about slurs and James Joyce's An Encounter.) The thing is, though, this professor is the one that I'm having by far the most problems with, and he's also the only one that is consistently giving me the impression that he's not even trying.
The second thing that happened was a thirty second exchange with my aunt and step-dad yesterday when it came up that I was in the Black Student Alliance at school and they went off on a rant about how it's totally unfair that if someone started a White Student Alliance it would be racist even though soon white people will be in the minority. I totally verbally tripped over my own feet (as I often do when oppressive shit happens irl. I'm much better at taking people to task for their bull-shit in writing.) and just stuttered for a moment and then mentioned that, well, my school does have white scholarships, so-so-so-
I'm mentally kicking myself so hard for that response right now. I know what was wrong with what they were saying. White people don't need a White Student Alliance. Our advancement is society's top priority and we're so visible in the media and in all areas of life that we don't need any help building positive racial identities for ourselves. Frankly, as a white student I would be comfortable as Hell assuming that anyone who wanted one was extremely racist and avoiding them, because there is no non-racist reason for wanting to start or join a club built on racial privilege. As for Latin@s being the majority in this country in a few decades... so fucking what? First of all, this "statistic" is built on racist racial categorizing. It's one-drop-rule bullshit. White people are not being killed off in mass genocides and white people are not just magically disappearing. All that's happening is that certain ethnic communities have a slightly higher birth rate than we do,* and there are more multi- and bi-racial children being born, who due to racist racial categorizing are seen as fundamentally more non-white than white, whether they identify that way or not.
The thing is, I responded the way I did that because when I'm put on the spot like that irl, I often default to stock phrases and arguments that I've developed from my time on-line. And I don't have any of those for dealing with racism. I'm white. This isn't a part of my everyday life. I try to check my privilege and to call other people out on theirs when necessary, but the truth is that I will always have the privilege of being surprised by racism and not always carrying defenses against it with me everywhere I go. It's something I'm always working on, but experiences like this always remind me of how very far I still have to go.
*Icon for this line. North America becoming less lily-white? Baber approves.