Dora ([info]sigelphoenix) wrote,
@ 2006-12-11 20:16:00
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Current mood: tired
Current music:"Spica," Sakamoto Maaya
Entry tags:anti-oppression and the evil *isms, anti-racism and racial privilege, in the news, queer rights and homophobia

Oppression is not a zero-sum game
I have a ton of blog reading to catch up on, due to the fact that the last five days were jammed full with getting all of my Christmas shopping, writing all of my final papers, and doing all my winter-time celebrating (i.e., holiday party and my birthday). But here's the first thing to jump out at me:

Via Jenn at Reappropriate, Rosie O'Donnell makes a racist (anti-Chinese) joke. And surprise, surprise, no one does a goddamn thing about it.

One of the reasons this pisses me off so much is that I recently heard about O'Donnell having a public spar with Kelly Ripa over Ripa's homophobic comment. Ripa insisted she didn't intend to be homophobic, and O'Donnell replied, "I'm just saying from where I sit as a gay person in the world that I have to tell you, that's how it came off to me." In other words, as the non-privileged person, she (rightly) has the broader perspective concerning what is privileged or bigoted. However, when O'Donnell says that her racist comment "was not meant to mock," and Asian-Americans try to assert their perspective, we're told that we just don't have a sense of humor.

Bigoted "humor" is one of the things I hate most. Because when you try to call someone on their privilege, they always use the chickenshit response, "hey, it was a joke, get over it." Instead of taking two seconds to see what's wrong with what they said, they just carry blithely on. And what ends up as a throwaway comment for them is usually the 600th repetition of the oppression I have to face every damn day.

So, Ms. O'Donnell, let me tell you - being a lesbian who knows a lot about queer issues doesn't give you a free pass concerning other forms of oppression. Yes, white women can be racist too - that's kind of what one of the giant schisms in Western feminism is all about.

You know what? Just like I'm tired of sexism in the anti-racist movement, it's also really fucking tiresome to have to deal with racism in the queer movement, feminism, and everything else.

And while we're at it, you know what's not okay? This whole "nobody's racist anymore, but sexism is all over the place" whining from white women who don't have a clue what it's like to deal with both. Or any other form of "my oppression is the only one still out there, so you shut up about yours." We're all stomped on in different ways, so stop trying to be the special snowflake whose hardship is the worst.

On another topic, go take a look at Hey Hetero!, a public art installation in Australia that highlights straight privilege. Which I've got in spades. (Because, you know, being yellow and female doesn't mean I get to forget that I'm a straight person who doesn't get harassed for the gender of my partner. Who'd've thunk?)


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[info]jennifergearing
2006-12-12 05:13 am UTC (link)
Woah, I don't envy you that workload. One of the things I love about our calendar down here in Australia is that I've never had to worry about school over Christmas because everything stops for summer in December (or mid-November, in the case of university).

Urgh. I think what really gets to me about the O'Donnell thing is that it's the same damn response. It's like, seriously, fucking CLUEBAT. *seethe*

This whole "nobody's racist anymore, but sexism is all over the place" whining
Bzuh. I know this shit shouldn't surprise me, but just ... what the fuck. *headdesk*

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[info]sigelphoenix
2006-12-12 07:24 pm UTC (link)
Luckily, I finished with everything class-related yesterday - our winter break always leaves us at least a week or two before Christmas. And also gives us New Year's Day off, which is a benefit.

I wish O'Donnell was an anomaly, but I see it all the time - feminists dismissing concerns of racism in the same "I didn't mean it like that" way that they see their own accusations of sexism dismissed. Then there was a post on Reclusive Leftist a few months back that sparked a minor kerfluffle when she said that sexism is acceptable, but racism isn't. *rolls eyes*

To be fair, sometimes it can be illuminating to compare an instance of sexism with a parallel instance of racism, because the two oppressions do work differently, and something that is obviously offensive in one case isn't so obvious in the other. (Like the fact that racial slurs are generally unacceptable, but gendered slurs less so.) It's just that usually it ends up as a comparison of the oppressions themselves, and one always 'wins' over the other. :/

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[info]slashpine
2006-12-12 08:33 pm UTC (link)
WORD. Thank you for making that point, and would 2,000,000 other people working against sexism but not racism, or racism but not sexism, please magically stumble across this giant roadblock to resolution of all such dominations?

Whew, did I write that in one breath? Yeah. Comes from having to try to teach this *way* too often. And in that light, *many thanks* for the "Hey Hetero!" link -- lovely. A good companion piece to Peggy McIntosh's "Unpacking the Knapsack of White Privilege" and the Guerilla Girls's work on sexism.

I will add that I have a similar experience as you mention in your reply above, that my college students (at all ages, alas) avoid publicly saying anything that sounds racist like the plague (even when their avoidance of the topic is completely stupid), but have little hesitation at slamming "feminists" and "feminism." Note, they're not sexist ZOMG NO they just think feminists are stupid hostile unpleasant ... you know. All those misogynistic things. This year, I'm teaching film, and of course it's the lone woman film-maker (the amazing Marleen Gorris, IYWTK) who gets criticized the most. Second most criticized are the men who made "Salt of the Earth" (1953), which strongly foregrounds issues of gender and class bias.

When I taught Environmental Philosophy (including ecofeminism, and thus a ton of feminist theory), women authors's articles got slammed more consistently. Amusingly, those who mistook an author's name for the other gender followed this trend - those who mistakenly thought an author was a woman were more critical, and those mistaking a woman author for a man had a surprising tendency to praise the "logic" and "truth" of "his" arguments.

For example: India's Ramachandra Guha, who strongly critiques the Western saving-the-wilderness fetish as a colonialist privileging of the pleasures of the urban middle class over the traditional use-rights of rural people, and Andy Smith, a woman lambasting those white women who "go native" and usurp Native American religious and other customs to feel "closer to Nature" or worse yet, market new age dream-catchers, etc., for profit. Students who dislike Guha's critique often deride "her" as being hostile, vague, jealous, and other sexist epithets. Students praising Andy Smith often called "him" smart for calling those stupid white women feminists on their greed and racism.

I'm seeing the same trend in my freshmen film students. Not ok to be racist in public (private and unconscious racism are of course, still common) even when color is the most salient factor for critique. Example: we practiced analysis of mise-en-scene with the first scenes of Mike Leigh's "Secrets & Lies," which takes a very frank but loving look at class and race stereotypes in England. Students noted more than 50 features of setting, props, costumes, color, sound, and even hair style that establish the characters, style, and theme - without mentioning that scenes alternately feature white people and black people in a way specifically meant to make you wonder what they could *possibly* have to do with each other in this story! I and my co-instructor (a bi-lingual Mexican-born American) had to point-blank ask the class (which includes Asian American, Hispanic, and black students) if they ... duh... noticed????

But when it comes to gender and just women in a film, OMG. The "anti-feminism" flies fast and free. I'm so glad to know others notice this! Thank you!

I'll just raise this one other tiny point about blind spots among people against oppression: the appalling tendency of both feminists and anti-racists to feel free to consume and kill all other life on our planet, including whole ecosystems. In my graduate film seminars, whether focused on gender, race, class, or political oppression, somehow no one seems to see any connection between the exploitation of their pet group of humans, and the exploitation of the entire rest of the planet. I'm trying to work on a paper (today! heh) on ecological awareness in feminist film and ... damn, there aren't many good examples.

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[info]sigelphoenix
2006-12-13 03:33 am UTC (link)
Thanks for sharing those stories - the response of students to course material can be so revealing.

Good point about the lack of ecological awareness. That's definitely another form of activism that crosses swords with feminism and anti-racism. Economic depletion, especially when tied to capitalist development, often gets overlooked. On the other side, I remember a hideous PETA advertisement a while back that labelled a (sexually posed) naked woman with the various cuts of meat. *sigh*

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