“We’re All the Same Everywhere”

(I forget sometimes that no one here knows what I’m reading unless I link to it.)

So, before the hiatus, brownfemipower responded to my post (among several others) over at her blog:

I most certainly appreciate that piny has at least acknowledged the racism that Kevin talked about in his post, but at the same time, I also felt that this “apology” lacked any real commitment to change behind it.

The discussion in comments resulted more words about responsibility and purpose:

I think that what seems to be coming out of this dialogue is that we as feminist bloggers need to better define our reason for our blog…is it to get hits and get a lot of readers, or is it to be a tool of liberation? In other words, if we use our blog as a tool for liberation, wouldn’t we do what we can to create a “new world”–one that we want our liberated world to look like? and wouldn’t our new world at least have a strictly adheard to policy of, we may disagree, but we aren’t going to do it in an agressive, violent, demeaning, insulting, threatening etc etc way? it is possible to have conversations about touchy issues without a total meltdown happening–women of color build alliances all the time with those who hate them (thinking of native women in wisconsin working with white racists)…it is possible, but there has to be strictly enforced understandings of when and how to talk…ya know?

And there was a brief exchange between Jay and me about intersectionality (which, just so we’re clear, is a theory that contradicts the idea that any given experience is the sum of its parts; being a gay white man who uses a wheelchair is not reducible to “gay” plus “wheelchair-using” plus “male” plus “white”).

Briefly, the “I don’t want to offend anyone by my ignorance, so I’ll just keep my head down here in the sand, thanks,” ethos of respect that isn’t has compromised my analysis of (trans)male-presenting privilege as it may apply in conjunction with racism.

This is what I wrote when Jay mentioned the tendency on the part of white ftms to assume that this privilege is uncomplicated, to whitewash:

That’s a big one. I’ve been leery of posting about it because it seems to give white ftms an opportunity to use intersectionality to deny the existence of the privilege that _they_ enjoy as people who move through the world as white men: because “male privilege” is complicated for ftms of color, it does not exist for any ftms. They point to racism both to deny their race-dependent privilege and to obfuscate the way in which racism functions to regulate privilege.

I, of course, have been pointing to this racism to divert from my obligation to write about the issue at all.

Jay responded over on his blog:

What piny describes, I think, is part of understanding how race functions within the lives of white FtMs. I would also add that white FtMs point to racism to underscore the transphobia they experience.

…and he mentions a white-queer tendency I’ve noticed and followed before: the tendency to appropriate the problems we don’t have, particularly those problems connected to racism. Take, for example, the oft-used immigration metaphor. If our audience sees national, geographical, and cultural position as fraught on a hundred different levels, then maybe it’s not so far off. If they’re locked into the hierarchical/aspirational picture of immigration, we wind up trivializing both groups. But whether we praise the terms offered or condemn them, we obliterate those people in the service of us: our legitimate citizenship, our legitimate fury. Me, me, me.

Anyway. More later, hopefully. There’s some stuff on ignoring male privilege itself, because hey: why insult just some people?