On empathy and privilege

The last couple days, I'm turning my focus towards "How can feminism reach and more effectively communicate with those who don't outwardly associate themselves with the feminist movement, especially men." I don't think this should become a goal of the movement as a whole, for reasons which I might get into. But I like to mix a little practicality with my idealism and I'm willing to compromise in the service of more effective communication so other people don't have to.

[Side note, I cannot promise that this rant will be even as coherent as my masculinity rant. I'm jumping back and forth to different paragraphs and adding stuff.]

Today I'm thinking about privilege. Oh, wtf_sexism. Reading about racism is so much easier because I get to feel productive while I do it. When I read about sexism I think the results are that I might be able to step in and try to educate if I see someone being stupid, I might learn better ways to do that in the future, and. . . I make myself angry? I mean, it is good to be seeing the way sexism functions so I can, again, better educate. I mean, all those also happen when I read about racism but I also feel more like I'm learning to better correct my own behavior and understand the perspectives of others.

Anyway. I have this thought about when you're in a discussion of some sort of privilege/inequality in which you are the privileged person, and someone says something you don't agree with. And you say "Pssht, I don't have that privilege," or "I don't think that's actually about racism," or whatever. It seems like the only way to actually process what's being said is to try to work from the assumption that it is accurate. Like, just temporarily pretend that you completely accept it as truth. And then critique it from the inside. And then you can go back to critiquing it from the outside. You don't have to actually accept it as truth, you just have to pretend it's true while you think about it.

Because, I don't know, it's like the only way you can understand why someone might say something like that? So it's the only way you can actually evaluate the statement, in the reality of that person's life. In your life it might not seem to be accurate, but your life is only one small slice of the world as a whole.

Basically, entertaining the possibilities that ideas we don't agree with are true is the only way to expand your mind in any way, I guess.

I'm looking at some discussions of privilege right now and a lot of people basically go into these discussions flat out thinking "Privilege does not exist, I have no systematic advantages over any other people." And then when they're shown those advantages, they just sort of reject that they could possibly be caused by privilege, because privilege does not exist.

( self reflection )

Speaking of default positions, male perspectives! In addition to an unwillingness to recognize and take responsibility for one's own privilege, (side note, I saw someone yesterday who, when told that men had more privilege and therefore needed to take responsibility for it, seemed to be interpreting that as "Men need to take responsibility for more aspects of life than women do and also need to take responsibility for women's actions." Dude, not what was being said.) I think a lack of empathy is a HUGE problem - in gender relationships, race relationships, and general human relationships. You can really see this in discussions of rape (I was involved in one yesterday). Some men just don't understand what it is to have to be thinking about this, to feel vulnerable to it. They can't really imagine what it would be like, it seems. It's weird. Cos I've never been raped, and haven't really been in situations where I felt seriously threatened by an individual who I thought might assault me. But I can still imagine how horrible it would be and would never make light of it, or compare it to mugging, or COMPARE IT TO CUCKOLDRY. . . and now I lost my calmness. ::deep breaths::

Male anti-feminists tend to minimize rape, and try to assert that it is not a gendered problem. This (and a HIGHLY questionable study, not that rape is a complicated issue that you would have to have a full understanding of before you were able to analyze it in a serious academic way) is what leads to people thinking that false rape accusations are as big a problem, if not bigger, than rape. (I also notice that I have never seen anyone say "if that guy didn't want to be falsely accused of rape, he shouldn't have slept with someone he couldn't trust." Women choose to end up single mothers and make poor decisions that lead to them being raped, but men are always absolute innocent victims who aren't responsible for anything that happens to them. This assertion wouldn't bother me so much if the people who believed it weren't constantly accusing feminists of preventing women from taking responsibility for their actions. CHARMING.)

( on a fairly sane critic of feminism and his lack of empathy )

OK, I have an entire other post that I'm writing that goes into where that lack of empathy comes from, and also explores the idea that feminism should not be female-focused because both genders experience sexism and other gender-based problems.

SO CLOSE TO BECOMING PATRICK CHAN

GUYS. TODAY I ICE SKATED! For the first time since a girl scout trip when I was like 10. It was HILARIOUS. I am not athletic, and in particular I lack balance. Oh my god, though, it was fun. And embarrassing! But fun. Luckily the place was not at all crowded and luckily it was NYC so everyone just left us alone to shuffle along the wall.

So yeah, when we first got onto the ice we were like (we being Katie and I) "What the fuck, how does anyone move on this?" Like, the people who were skating just normally, propelling themselves forward, it looked like sinister magicks. We literally just stopped and stared at them and were like ". . . whut." So we yoinked ourselves shuffling along the wall, just sort of pulling ourselves into the corner. Then we regrouped, stared at what people were doing, and started trying to lean into the skates a bit.

Katie got really good at a sort of shuffling technique, but I was pretty much clinging to the wall until eventually I started managing to push off and glide a bit on two feet while keeping my balance. Starting to fall backwards was a big thing. We both just fell once each but if we had not been near the wall it would have been a lot more! But I figured out if I concentrated all my attention on balancing, I could stay upright without hanging on! By the end I was pushing off and gliding and pushing off and going a bit faster than I had been and barely ever reaching out to steady myself!

Still looked ridiculous, and I cannot for the life of me push off or lift my left foot at all. So I basically am like a skateboarder. I guess they're both skating? :D But we got WAY better at the whole thing than at the start. Of course, there was no where to go but up! Still, we looked at it, we thought about it, we practiced, and we improved! Enormous sense of accomplishment!

Also enormous sense of amusement at how ridiculous we were out there! And also pretty significant sense of tired. For me skating involves basically keeping your calf muscles tense the whole time, so they're a little tingly. Afterwards we were all OH MY GOD MUST SIT.

I am really glad I went with Katie this first time, and not someone I'm less comfortable with. We were both exceedingly awkward and able to laugh at ourselves the whole time. I need to learn to pick up my left foot, generally get smoother and more comfortable with picking up my feet, and improve my balance. Even as I got better, there were plenty of moments where I would feel myself going backwards. And falling is fine but if I fell away from the wall I don't see how I'd be able to get back up?


Friday night from midnight to 7 AM is Williams Trivia. Katie says I should go over to her place to do it but I don't know. It's my last weekend before roommate gets home and I want to chillax and do a massive vacuuming, and I have plans with friend!Charles on Sunday so I don't want to be spending Saturday night at Katie's and after doing trivia you just sleep all day Saturday. On the other hand, I love Trivia. Big T and little t trivia. Katie can't come to my place because of the cat. It is a dilemma.


EDIT: Oh my god, I totally remembered what I was going to say, jeez I'm dumb. I saw The Princess and the Frog yesterday with friend!Corey and it was AWESOME. I loved it. I thought it was adorable and funny and I liked the songs. And most importantly, I loved the visual look of the film. I thought it was gorgeous. One of the most attractive animated movies that I've ever seen, I think. I'm a pretty visual person, so a movie being aesthetically pleasing to me is a major, major factor in my enjoyment of it and I just loved looking at this one. More conventional animation please! If it's pretty! Oh my god, the scene with the fireflies. And the art deco song about the restaurant.

My main issues with the movie are that I loved the way Tiana was animated, I thought she was super-pretty, but then she spent most of her time as a frog and the frogs were cute and expressive enough, but I didn't really like the way they looked thaaat much, especially Tiana (cos she was skinny and skinny frogs are weird). And then I also thought they hit pretty hard with the "You have to work hard *_* !!!" thing. A little bit less singing about it would have been good.

Apart from how pretty it was, my favorite part of the movie? Raymond! At first I was like "ewww" but they did such a good job giving him facial expressions that he was so cute!! And i don't know cajun accents so maybe it was cringeworthy but to me I thought the VA did a great job. Raymond is awesome.