when the civil rights debate comes to you (or: privilege denying dude and me)

[cimorene]

So, this conversation happened today with one of my oldest (though no longer closest) friends, as soon as I got online this morning and before I even had a chance to eat my breakfast:

X: so, remember when I told you i say stuff like "that's gay"?
X: welp. I have a friend in SF and somehow we got on the topic and of course I got a speech about how I shouldn't say that.
Cim: You shouldn't
X: well yes. i know how you feel about it.
X: but also I happened to counter with the notion that it was hypocritical of her since she probably does the same thing cept with some other topic like jews or something.
X: so today she made a jew joke in front of her best friend who's a jew
Cim: ...people still make jew jokes??
X: yeah lol. they've been friends a while so it's like fair game. he makes asian jokes, she makes jew jokes.
X: anyway, she happened to do it and some other girl happened to be jewish, which was the point of my story :D
Cim: Is that the end of your story? I didn't really wake up today planning to be helplessly enraged and reminded that I'm lacking civil rights all over the world.
X: :/
Cim: Gay jokes not as funny to gay people in the middle of losing battles over marriage and DADT. Protip
Cim: So nice to be told being offended over it isn't valid by straight people, btw!
X: ...
X: that wasn't my point

Oh my fucking Gaga, that wasn't your point?

Obviously I possess the reading comprehension skills to get your "point". You thought it was oh-so-cute and ironic to catch out someone who, like me, dislikes gay hate speech accidentally offending someone with hipster racism. It's you who's missing my point, which is that when you make a point of exercising your privilege to say offensive things to someone across the privilege barrier when you know that they find those things to be offensive, that is by definition offensive.

Like, surely even a privilege denying dude (and this is a dude of color btw!) should realize that there can't be any way to champion the use of "gay" as a slur which isn't offensive to someone who is on the record as being offended by that usage? Because the mere fact that you're slapping me in the face every time you say it and I can't do anything about it is bad enough, but if you acknowledge that you already know how I feel about the issue, then you're basically saying "I could have the courtesy to not talk about X in front of you since I know you're offended by ablist language/not amused by rape jokes/gay, but I choose not to do so! You're not upset that I deny your marginalization, are you?"

Yeah.

And then I got on Dreamwidth and saw this! ontd_political: Governments remove sexual orientation from UN anti-discrimination resolution (includes itemized list of the 79 nations who voted to remove homosexuality from the list - including China, Cuba, Haiti, South Africa, and Russia - and the 17 who abstained - including Colombia, Fiji, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand).

Comments

[bluesbell]

Ugh, how enraging. >:(

Last week I had to ask one of my oldest friends not to use the word "faggot" ("homppeli" in Finnish).

z: "But I don't mean anything by it!"
me: "Well, lots of other people do."
z: "I guess I'll try to remember not to use it anymore...around you."
me: :(

[herlander_refugee]

Thank you for this post! Oh, and I just have to say I LOVE the phrase "Oh my fucking Gaga!"

[ilyena_sylph]

This is a great post.

And I gotta say, "Oh my fucking Gaga!" is about wonderful.

[vass]

That does it. I am constructing a blanket fort. I may or may not emerge by tomorrow.

[scy]

OMG YES. I had to explain this to somebody whose comics I edit. I had to use the SMALL WORDS, and not verbally beat him over the HEAD.

GAY JOKES=NOT FUNNY. His counter was that his gay friend wrote some of the material therefore ALL gay people would find it HYSTERICAL.

I disagreed. Strongly. I mean, a lot of the time, as a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender person, one IS marginalized or unacknowledged, and then to be, as you say slapped in the face with it? I am loud and eloquent on WHY it is not okay.

And in the meantime, I will be over here writing slash.

[anatsuno]

Governments remove sexual orientation from UN anti-discrimination resolution .... Wait, what.

Fucking UN bullshit. WTF.

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

Jesus tapdancing Christ! Even if you just don't get why your friend finds something offensive, once you know they do, you STOP DOING IT around them or defending it! It's called basic human decency. (The fact that he doesn't get it is a whole different kettle of fish.)

I ran into this with Brynnan in high school. She didn't like that I "took the Lord's name in vain", so I made an effort to stop saying "Oh my god!" around her - yet she refused to stop saying "That's so gay!" around me, because somehow that was different. Still pissed off about that one.

Also: seriously, UN? SERIOUSLY?

[isilya]

UGH. THAT WASN'T THE POINT. UGH.

I'm sorry you had to hear this bullshit from someone who is supposed to be your friend.

[cimorene]

RAGEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

At that point I would probably acknowldge that I can't do anything about it but make clear that I regard it as both a personal insult and a categorical failure of intelligence & ethics.

Of course I've made those points to Privilege-Denying Dude before, but because he's privileged he just thinks it's lol cute that disadvantaged women think his lolchoices are sexist, discriminatory, insulting, and unethical.

[cimorene]

Wow, does he also think that all women/black people/jews/lawyers/polish people find the same sexist/racist/anti-semitic/anti-lawyer/polack jokes funny?

[cimorene]

Fucking list of 79 African and Middle-Eastern countries plus China, Haiti, Russia, and Cuba.

Other than in the latter cases which I mainly know of as poor and/or tourist destinations and/or repressive regimes, actually, there's basically a 1:1 correlation with highly misogynist states.

[cimorene]

Every time something like this happens, it gets harder to retain my determination to not cut off people that I otherwise like for one offensivenessfail. The fact that I'd have very few friends left and even fewer family members that I still speak to is tough to keep in mind.

[scy]

He hadn't made that connection. His rationale was that if a gay guy thought it was funny - it was okay, and it wasn't MEANT to be hurtful. There were also some jokes in there about women that I objected to. *twitches* Yeah, that was a FUN discussion.

[cimorene]

"Not MEANT to be hurtful"! Intentionality means a lot less when any idiot would know it was potentially offensive. Ugh.

[scy]

Yeah. *sighs*