Don't Be That Guy.
I keep thinking about the discussions that have come up in the comments to my post about sex-positivism and performative sexuality and the concept of bystander consent, and I keep thinking about all the subtle little cues and clues I personally use to separate Okay from Skeevy when people approach me. Talking in the comments there made me realize
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The absolute last words you should ever say in a discussion of sexual assault are "men can be raped too".
Or "but men can be falsely accused of rape". Or, well, pretty much anything that attempts to shift the focus of the conversation, subtly or not-so-subtly, away from women's problems and onto men's problems.This is where you lose my support. This is where I walk away. This is where I say, "Forget it ( ... )
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My point was not intended to be "men who are rape survivors should never mention this", nor "men are not welcome in discussion of sexual violence", nor "it is impossible to mention male rape in a discussion without getting dogpiled" (although in practice, it's very hard to mention male rape in a discussion without getting dogpiled, and I think that just flat-out sucks). In my experience, many of the people who bring male rape into a discussion of female rape aren't doing it because they are rape survivors and want their experiences to be heard; ( ... )
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This: I was aiming more for a generalized point of: when you're a person with a particular privilege, and you're in a discussion about that privilege, composed primarily of people without that privilege, it's a good idea to avoid mentioning ways in which, in your experience, that privilege isn't all it's cracked up to be.
explains the issue much more understandably for me. I keyholed in on the "male rape" issue and missed the point you were trying to make, because (obviously) I was triggered. Any time I've ever seen male rape mentioned, I've seen feminists dismiss it completely, as if it's either irrelevant, nonexistent or unimportant. As a male rape survivor, this is not okay with me.
Obviously if you're in a discussion about male privilege, then those who are male are excluded from participating in the discussion except as listeners. But when the topic shifts to something like rape, which is not gender-specific, then the kibosh on speaking must be lifted for it to be a truly equal discussion. That's the point that I ( ... )
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In a discussion of privilege, are the privileged people not allowed to say "I acknowledge that your experience is not the same as mine, but this is my experience and it's not the same as yours, nor is it the same as what you think mine is"? Or is it taken as read that the experiences of the privileged are all monolithic and identical (and identical to whatever image the non-privileged have of them)?
Gah. This is a question that I struggle with constantly, because -- like you say -- a particular something that one person's identified as belonging ( ... )
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Speaking for myself, I think it would. Most people will at least make with the clicky on the links, if nothing else... or you could add an [hr]-bar and an edit at the bottom of the post, without changing the post itself? That's what I sometimes do in my own Threads That Eat My LJ: "ETA: It has been brought to my attention that in point Blah, I myself did something that point Foo says shouldn't be done. To sum up: [summary]; the thread in question is [here]."
As for this: Gah. This is a question that I struggle with constantly, because -- like you say -- a particular something that one person's identified as belonging to "male privilege" might really be (in someone else's eyes) part of class privilege, or etc. Perhaps that might be a question put to your friends list (and mine?) in new, separate posts? My partner asks: why is it so important to know what ( ... )
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I think that the reason we can't just address the issue, a lot of the time, is that there is this seething mass of context to any sort of discussion. There's a really strong tradition, on the internet, of Objectivism/libertarianism, the idea that we should (and that we even can) discuss one issue at hand, in a direct one-on-one sort of fashion, and the problem that comes in is that none of us operate in a vaccuum. The playing field can't be even, because of the systematic biases inherent in what everyone brings to the table ( ... )
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Yes, that. Exactly.
Do you mind if I riff on this idea in my own LJ? I think that among us in this thread, we've hit on some important points about why these kinds of discussions often degenerate into partisan flamewars, and getting the ideas out there into the blogosphere might help to alleviate some of that (except, probably, among the most polarized persons who can't acknowledge any view but their own).
My view of the friends list is that it's really an I-am-reading-you list, and I never mind anyone adding me. Welcome. (And thanks again for giving me the chance to explore this.)
I have added you; feel free to add me back if you want to :) And you're more than welcome for any assistance I might have provided. I'm glad that my initial anger didn't degenerate into a flamewar.
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