i think that your analysis is spot-on, with one exception, which i will get to in a minute.

Thanks – glad to hear it seemed basically OK.

(fyi, i don’t know if you know me from previous comments, i am a trans woman.

Yeah – I don’t generally read Feministe but I’ve “seen you around” @ QT.

and a fairly mouthy one at that ;o)

::grins::

the inheritance of the beliefs that happened *was* intentional. the intentionality was unconscious, such that miriam and cara were unaware of it, but believe me, the intention was there. privilege seeks to defend and center itself, and since it is so pervasive, it influences everything we do, say, write. i don’t exclude myself from this – how often have i done *the exact same thing* when i write about racism (i am white)? probably nearly every time, despite my best conscious efforts to make it not so.

that intention is there, it’s part of our fabric and being, and one has to consciously fight against it. and we slip up.

Hmmmm yeah. This is very interesting.

What I hear in what you’re saying (which may or may not be what you originally meant :-) ) is about a human tendency towards ignorance / obliviousness / self-centredness, which we all have and either take responsibility for or don’t.

I’m thinking now about the nature and experience of that.

E.g. maybe like “Oh surely I don’t have to learn even more. Do I really have to stretch my comprehension to encompass yet another issue which doesn’t have all that much effect on me personally? Can’t what I know already be enough? Can’t I just go on as I was?”

or sometimes “You mean I have to just be quiet and listen, and my views on this aren’t actually that important?”

or, the version possibly most familiar to me from living it and noticing it, “Oh no, not another really depressing story about people’s inhumanity to other people, don’t know if I can face that today”. (whereas some people don’t have any choice but to face it, because they’re in it.)

which all have in common a resistance to leaving what’s comfortable. (though both curiosity and compassion can overcome it sometimes.)

Does that sound to you like the same kind of thing as what you’re talking about?

and yeah, if so, I agree it deserves attention. And I could imagine some value in describing and cataloguing more of its flavours and payoffs, so that people have more chance of recognising when it’s “running them”.

-

But then I have a whole other train of thought about the word “intention” and the connotations of that, versus calling it, say, a “drive” or “drift” or even “human nature”.

I can easily imagine a conversation which started off with “you did that intentionally” quickly devolving into a not very useful debate of whether it was or wasn’t intentional, and to what degree it was conscious or unconscious. (along the lines of ye olde “But I didn’t meeeeeean it that way!”) And I’ve often seen it argued that you don’t have to intend to do harm for it to happen, and you don’t have to intend to be complicit in some dubious situation in order to be part of it – which is true.

So although I agree with you that humans are often run by considerable resistance to new awareness, I’m curious about why you’re stressing the “intention” angle here, unlike all those other “intent is not the point” arguments. Why is that important here (not saying it isn’t important), or what am I missing to understand where you’re coming from?

-

Also thanks for the food for thought – this has kept my brain busy through two swimming sessions so far, as well as prompting some daydreams of blog articles I might write one day :-)

looking forward to replying more properly later…

other than that, yes i agree that it is *absolutely* how those articles were framed such that they wound up centering a cis viewpoint. i think miriam’s article was worse in this regard – she bought the fof bs hook line and sinker, even if she was not conscious of having done so, to such an extent that i was confused as to whether she even supported the legislation that fof is foaming about.

i think cara’s article did get to the point of how the author dehumanized Diamond, but took an unnecessary and confusing detour to get there, one that was big enough to encourage other cis women to participate in the detour.

the one point that i want to make is about your use of the word “unintentional” @35. i am not making this point out of anger, i’ve been able to take care of that; but i still think this needs to be said: the inheritance of the beliefs that happened *was* intentional. the intentionality was unconscious, such that miriam and cara were unaware of it, but believe me, the intention was there. privilege seeks to defend and center itself, and since it is so pervasive, it influences everything we do, say, write. i don’t exclude myself from this – how often have i done *the exact same thing* when i write about racism (i am white)? probably nearly every time, despite my best conscious efforts to make it not so.

that intention is there, it’s part of our fabric and being, and one has to consciously fight against it. and we slip up. miriam and cara slipped up. miriam has gotten very defensive about it. cara is making a significant effort to understand what happened and change it. speaking only for myself and not for any other trans / gq folk, this is all i am asking for (well once i get past the anger, anyway), is for cis people to keep working at it, chipping away at it bit by bit.

Of course it’s not surprising. That doesn’t make it excusable. The entire point of being aware of privilege is so that you step back and think before you pull that kind of shit.

No disagreement there. Sorry I wasn’t clear.

My purpose isn’t to excuse the commenters from responsibility – more, wanting to investigate AS WELL the responsibilities/power/influence of the original writer… if that makes sense.

This last week or two, I’ve seen a LOT of discussion of the above two threads, and little or no discussion of how their main content was framed by the original post. That seemed to me like a missing link in identifying ways that comment threads can be made to work better.

There’s something else which I realise now I should have acknowledged already as context, which is that to the best of my knowledge neither Miriam nor Cara identifies as trans. So this is a different type of analysis from the “We don’t like how you told your own story so we’re not listening till you tell it our way” type of sulk.

I.e. if there’s a post along the lines of “Here’s something most people don’t wanna hear, told true from someone who’s lived it”, and it attracts some unsatisfactory comments, then I wouldn’t be saying to the original poster “Well you see you brought it upon yourself by telling people something they didn’t want to hear”. NO WAY! But M and C weren’t in that position when it came to the trans stuff.

I’ve learned something from their experiences (see my bit number 5 which hadn’t gone up when you commented) and I thought it was worth reporting on.

hope that’s clearer – thanks for your comment and the opportunity to clarify.

And then to extrapolate from that to slightly more general terms, what I’m thinking now in terms of “Things to remember in the future” is something like:

If there’s a trans person (or indeed anyone else in relation to whom I’m in a privileged position) in a story, make very sure that they aren’t just an accessory to the “main” story. Insofar as I’m capable of it, think about how the story looks “with them in the middle”, and how the story’s events might affect them in their life. Insofar as I’m not capable of that, acknowledge it, and (depending on the context) perhaps show a draft to someone who can give me that perspective, and ask for feedback.

(I say “depending on the context” because of the also-problematic “who educates whom” dynamic, and because e.g. me getting it wrong on my blog with like 10 readers is, in practical terms, not as big a deal as, say, if you were writing for a major newspaper or something.)

Those are my thoughts. No apologies for it being long, ’cause I don’t think I could have squashed that down into a few lines. But if anyone – especially trans women – wants to tell me where I’ve gone wrong, you’re very welcome :-)

Given that framing, it doesn’t surprise me (to say the least) that the comments thread doesn’t centre the trans stuff!

Of course it’s not surprising. That doesn’t make it excusable. The entire point of being aware of privilege is so that you step back and think before you pull that kind of shit.