The best possible kind.
We’ve been hearing a lot about safe space and its necessary dimensions over the past few days and weeks (and, in macro terms, about as long as we’ve been wondering where all of us are). The latest incarnation has centered around dehumanization and respect.
Another big issue pertaining to safe space is community vs. isolation. Being the only one in the room, that is. Feeling like the people you’re talking to have never actually spoken with anyone like you and may not ever be curious enough to really speak with anyone like you again. Feeling like a committed yet despairing emissary to the laziest, ugliest superpower on the face of the planet. Worrying that the few messages you can carry with you will be mistaken for a library and then left unread. Wondering if there’s much point in talking at all, and wondering if you shouldn’t just stick with the people who don’t need your forbearance.
(And isn’t it just nifty how trackbacks make this idea of civility seem so…boring? Shallow?)
I have been guilty of maintaining that kind of space. I have been guilty of exclusion. I have been guilty of passivity. I have been guilty of racism. I have ignored a whole bunch of blogs of people of color, extremely valuable ones–if not because they were created and maintained by people of color, then because they were not handed to me. I failed to do the tiny amount of work–the thirty seconds on google that we’re always bludgeoning trolls over the head with–that would have opened up all of these spaces to me. I didn’t bother to look at the difficult and beautiful work these bloggers have been doing. And I didn’t care.
So, Kevin and everyone he mentioned, and everyone else, I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better. And thank you, thank you very much, for handing me what I was too lazy to get up and find for myself.
A queer transguy accepting the criticism that his preconceived notion of what a normal person should be is white and straight. Well well.
White, sure. Straight? Not so sure. Is that a reference to Kevin’s sexuality? Do you get the sense that this post has nothing to do with my own experiences along the lines you’ve just described?
Ah! I get what you’re saying. I just focused on what seemed to be most directly related to this thread here. Especially since, well, I’m not straight. I tend to sort in favor of other non-straight people when I’m looking for friends and perspectives.
Try the radical women of color webring
Thanks for addressing my concerns. I can’t speak for Nubian, but I agree with her that all too often people of color are silenced or ignored in these spaces. Hell look at the response to this post. The way Shannon was treated over at Hugo’s and then seeing her words completely misrepresented by TangoMan here is, I think, where Nubian is coming from as well. Fortunately Zuzu and Sally were quick to call him on his shit.
I believe that racist and sexist oppresion are intertwined. It bothers me to see the oppinions and experiences of people of color so often dismissed in otherwise productive forums. Is it fear? Are people afraid of offending us? I just don’t know.
But thank you, Piny, for doing your part to help opem up these spaces.
You’re very welcome. Thanks again for the wake-up call, and I hope you’ll keep contributing to the conversations on this blog.
This post was all about me and all about a discussion of safe/productive space that’s playing out on some other threads. I expect–I hope for–more dialogue in subsequent posts.
Speaking for myself and myself alone, I think that paralyzing masturbatory guilt could definitely be a factor. It’s tempting to stop at admitting ignorance rather than go on to, you know, attack it. Of course that’s no excuse.
I think that a lot of it really is just simple racism–maybe passive racism, i.e. the most insidious kind, but racism nonetheless. We don’t see because we don’t need to see, don’t care because we don’t need to care. It’s the same reason I have a good handle on trans/queer/LGBT issues and a reflexive tendency to think from them, but no similar habits around racism. I’m privileged in terms of the latter, and therefore oblivious. On the contrary, I have noticed and fumed over the exact same dynamic when it happens around transpeople, even to a much lesser degree.
I just found this over at Ally Work, categorized under, of all things, “safe spaces.” It’s an open letter to the blogosphere by BlackAmazon:
What is it you mean by “handed to me?” Made for you? For your issues? Or something else?
I had/have trouble with going to blogs that make race their main issue—I feel sort of like it’s their space and I don’t belong. Like I’d be interfering if I don’t avoid them. Like a troll, somehow. The same way that I know where the GLBT center is at my school, but feel as if I should be positive I’m bisexual before I go there and use their resources, or that I shouldn’t go at all because I don’t have problems with self-acceptance. Can somebody explain to me the protocol of interacting with blogs, movements, and so forth, where I am not . . . affected by the oppressions they’re dealing with?
Well, what Kevin was generous enough to do for me, again, still, some more: present them in as digestible a format as a bunch of links. He just drew me a map. It’s the same link platter that people have asked me for a whole bunch of times, the same one I’ve provided and been sick and tired of providing. There’s no excuse for needing someone to do that for you, not ever, certainly not when you’re both interacting through the most extensive, navigable communications network ever designed. It’s downright laughable, furthermore, to stick at that level and still insist that other people put up with you, take pains to include you in their discussions as an equal contributor, and refrain from calling you on your ignorance and bigotry. I should know better, and I’m ashamed.
Kyra, I can’t speak for every blog that deals in issues of race, but I will say that you are always free to come to my space and speak your opinion. I will also say that I think that’s the case for most of the blogs concerned with race that I visit on a regular basis. And really? Isn’t this what is needed. Yeah, you might find yourself called on some shit, but isn’t that really what educating ourselves is all about. I too can be racist, sexist, homophobic, and it finally occured to me that the only way to work against those ugly parts of me is to try to engage in spaces like this, to try to get more people to actually talk about these issues, and to call each other on this shit.
I think you are looking at this the wrong way. If oppression is happening, WE ARE ALL AFFECTED. We are (or should be) in this fight together. Just interact. Don’t be afraid. Seriously, we aren’t as vindictive as some might make us out to be. And just because you’ve been called on your shit does not mean that you are no longer welcome in the conversation.