I want to highlight this comment by Mandisa Thomas left on my post “On silencing anger to silence minority voices”:
Greetings,
Mandisa Thomas here – the person to whom the Black on Black crime question was directed.
My talk on the day in question was about how the Freethought community can learn from the Hospitality Industry – which was well received by the audience. I touched on my organization briefly, and I did not speak on the problems in the Black community that particular day. So for this woman to come out of left field and ask a question that wasn’t related to the subject at hand was not only rude, but it also implied that just because we are an orgainzation that focuses on Blacks that we are supposed to take on such a gigantic problem on our own. It also seemed to imply that I should ONLY be speaking on issues relating to the Black community. She may not have been meaning to come across as insidious or oblivious, but I also don’t think she was paying attention to my presentation, or even cared much about the issue at hand. She certainly did not speak with me afterwards to either clarify, or even offer assistance on such efforts. I certainly did not go off on her, but she receives no sympathy from me either.
Bria has my full support with this matter. I also think there should have been a better effort to involve the primary organizer of the convention if JT, Mark, and this woman were truly concerned. This obviously didn’t happen, and it is disappointing.
Funny how JT didn’t think to mention that in his post. It makes the whole situation even more blatantly racist, and his reaction even more problematic. But seeing that he has already doubled down and is painting my mere disagreement with him as a toxic evil attempt to destroy him, I expect this revelation won’t change much either.
It’s a sad day when you have the blinders of friendship ripped off.
Clearly he tested it against the JT Eberhard Official Appropriateness Scale and found it to be not..
It WAS a fairly energetic disagreement and I completely understand why he feels uncomfortable and defensive, but while I’ve been side-eying a few of the arguments I’ve seen made against him, I think, yeah, he’s basically in the wrong here. This must suck, though. :(
I’m sorry Jen. It so sucks to find out someone you considered a friend isn’t who you thought they were.
What has struck me after reading Jen’s comments and JT’s blog is that he admonished a black person for her reactions to the question but did not admonish the white person for asking an inappropriate question. In fact, he goes out of his way to defend her and worried about her being embarrassed. This would be a good time for him to think about his semi-conscious biases. (I am not seeing he should admonish either person). So he is guilty of a special kind of “white” knighting.
In the comments to the new JT post (which I’m not sure are worthy of perusal, by and large) Heina notes that Bria said she had permission and support from the speaker whose Q&A JT claims she highjacked.
And Mandisa notes that JT made the issue public by tweet before he first spoke to Bria – and the twitter conversation by itself is elucidating enough. Also, she posts the answer she gave JT when asked in its entirety, and it clearly shows JT quotemined her to make it seem she agrees with him. -_-
How could you possibly know JT’s views on race unless you had spoken specifically about it? I think we typically become friends with someone based on shared interests/views, but only on a subset of issues: you can’t know a person’s view on every (important) subject. My point is I don’t think you should be too “sad” about your friendship with JT: you just never really know another person, and I think JT is young enough that with time his views about race may evolve to something less reactionary. At least I hope so.
Hi Jen,
The only good thing about this blow-up that I can see is that the commentariat on his blog seems to be responding to Mandisa and realising just how much framing JT has done. Maybe they’ll treat him with more caution, and that will make him realise how he’s not actually the arbiter of tone in all discussions. We can but hope.
I also noticed that Dan Finke has a post up defending JT. Honestly I find Dan’s focus on civility does more harm than good, he’s too handwavingly philosophical for me, as evidenced in this quote from his response to Crommunist’s reply
The only people who seem to be supporting JT’s take on this don’t seem to be the people in the trenches fighting for equality, but people who are comfortably detached from these specific axes of oppression.
The fundamental disconnect, it appears to me, is that Jason seems to think that by saying over and over, “I’m not dismissing Bria’s anger, my post isn’t silencing, I’m not being condescending, I’m acknowledging that the question was racist, all of these people disagreeing with me are just toxic haters, I’m being mischaracterized and demonized,” it makes it so.
I think this comment at JTs is a good summation of the way things always seem to go:
Bolding emphasis mine. That’s where the hurt comes in – that the other person is willing to go nuclear and sever everything over criticisms of that one point, as if not admitting they were wrong is more important than everything else about the relationship they have with the group (or with individuals in the group). That even if they still disagree, that they’re not willing to see the harm it’s causing the other person and back down for the sake of the relationship. That’s what JT is doing here.
Is it any surprise that Dan Fincke would rush to the defense of JT, considering that Fincke is the world’s leading expert of telling women and POC that the white man’s definition of civility is the only one that matters?
@Improbable Joe
No, it’s not even remotely surprising. I had an inkling he’d do something like this, with all the talk of civility in both of JT’s posts. Talk of being uncivil is like catnip to Dan Finke. And I flat out think Finke is wrong. The thing that has most often gotten through my privileged skull are the emotional, passionate, heck, down right “uncivil” words of people who have lived through oppression. Civil debate primarily serves to maintain the status quo.
Taking a peer aside to scold is downright uncivil.
Exactly. I don’t see how he can even think that pulling someone aside to critique them, unasked, is in any way a polite way to act.
Kevin Schelley wrote:
That’s Dan Fincke and JT in a nutshell, and one of the biggest underlying problems in the community in general – ‘this isn’t what I care about so stop talking about it’ is the attitude of a significant number of people involved; they just want to hear how they’re smarter and better than those dumb ol’ Christians and Muslims and not that the community they’re part of needs to change its attitude.
@Wowbagger
I agree, and I also am not someone down in the trenches. I’m a white, cisgendered, middleclass male living in Vermont, one of the whitest states that ever did white. They both seem to condesplain to people who get angry about oppression that doesn’t affect them how they should go about it instead of listening to the experiences of those who have to deal with racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
@Kevin Schelley
Their definition of “civil” is entirely based on seeing “college educated upper-class white men in formal settings” as “normal” and everyone and everything else as “uncivil” if not “deviant”. So they take their privilege, pretend that it is an unbiased, pure, entirely unimpeachable standard, and then have an EXTREMELY CIVIL tantrum when anyone violates their very narrow cultural norms.
After all this time, they still don’t understand that their position is just as culturally biased as anyone elses.
@Joe
“He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.”~Shaw
@Wowbagger
so true, sadly =(
The main political wedge that is used in the freethinker movements is the idea that people can engage in all sorts of implicit bigotry: statements, actions, shunning, etc, and the moment the person being oppressed cries against it, they’re merely accused of being “uncivil”, told to “get over” themselves, and then the oppression is redoubled upon. It’s a joke. Take for instance, transphobia: most everyone in the freethinker movement is very astute at avoiding direct and crude transphobia, limiting themselves at the very most to direct but sophisticated transphobia, and residing the vast majority of their transphobia in indirect and crude, indirect and sophisticated, tangential-crude and tangential-sophisticated transphobia. It’s like with my landlady and roommates, one of whom indirectly threatened to murder me-I’ve lived in terror ever since because he did this, and still blockade my door- and my landlady, who claimed it was “purely business” when she kept threatening to evict me. Once the fair housing center got involved, she stopped threatening to evict me and my roommate’s hostility went way down. But it was PLENTY terrifying, and all the while my roommate put me in fear for my life (I still blockade my door) using indirect/implicit statements suggesting he and his friends were going to basically murder me, and my landlady engaged in tangential-sophisticated form of transphobia: claiming that it was “strictly business” but I had to leave. Well once the fair housing center people got involved, my landlady quickly changed her tune, as it’s apparent they told her she was discriminating against me and had no business doing that. Her bullshit act were she coyly pretended to not be discriminated vanished, and instead was replaced with a conciliatory tone. Regardless, she never apologized for her discrimination towards me, they rarely do.
So the point is that discrimination is almost always something that is kept to the categories of direct-sophisticated, indirect-crude, indirect-sophisticated, tangential-crude, tangential-sophisticated, with bigoted assholes acting coy, like they have no idea they’re being discriminatory assholes and they have the purest of intentions they will swear, when the effect of their behavior is discrimination, so they try to focus efforts on their intentions rather than focusing on the consequentalist position of their behavior, because that might mean they may have to change their behavior, and were acting evil. God forbid some of the egos in this movement ever do that. as well, avoiding any kind of direct-crude bigotry and discrimination is used as a wedge, because then if they engage in, say, rabid transphobia, but it’s indirect or tangential, or direct-sophisticated, even given the severity of it, these types of people will accuse the VICTIM of a “disproportionate” response, all the while purposefully acting coy and stressing ‘magical intentions’ rather than apologizing. It’s all a show, and these people are bullshit artists.
These things are why I stay far, far, far away from the freethinker movements; I’ve been on the receiving end of way too much intersectional discrimination: ableism of various sorts, anti-autistic neurotypicalism, transphobia, classism due to being lower class, racism due to being PoC. People in freethinker movements are highly skilled in using implicit discrimination and then coyly behaving as if they’re still magically not discriminating because they’re being super polite assholes to you all the while engaging in rabid bigotry that avoids being direct and crude as part of the strategy. It’s a joke, these people are a really bad joke. It’s hilarious they think they’ll ever be getting anywhere close to people like me, hysterical even.
Wow Kevin, it’s great to see a white middleclass dude with the understanding you have. That’s really incredible. I almost feel like I spotted the Loch Ness Monster and it turned out to be real or something.
Thanks MaoistAnchoress, but I’m still just starting to learn about all this. For example, all of the classifications of discrimination are totally new to me. I just know how horrible it is to be discriminated against on the few areas in which I am not privileged that I try to empathize with those who are more oppressed than I am. I know that I have some issues with unconscious racism, sexism, etc. so I just try to stay quiet when those things come up, and try to take note of when discriminatory thoughts cross my mind and evaluate them to see if they actually hold up to the truth. Most of the time I’d rather keep my mouth shut and risk being though an idiot than opening it and removing all doubt.
@ MaoistAnchoress… your opinions…. x1000. That is probably exactly how lots of minorities, in general, feel about the secularist movement in its current incarnation – with racist anti-Muslim ass hats like Dawkins and Harris, leading the way.. who the fck would want to go within 100 miles of these conventions?
The ones leading to reform and leading to lurking minorities like myself thinking about coming near it are the people at FTB… and even they need some work, but at least they are fcking trying. Without them this lilly white straight male movement would stay lily white strait male… and fckem for that too. You can not attract minorities of any kind to a movement if you are not willing to listen to what they are saying and are not willing to notice how bigoted the movement looks for them. As far as I am concerned, I got way bigger worries than secularism…. that is not even the tip of the iceberg.
You know what pisses me the fck off though besides idiots like JT with dey white privileged scribbles on racism? It is people like Dan Fincke. The others hit the nail right on the head… the absolute irrationality of that position is frustrating to deal with. How the fck can you not understand that the word “civil” has a long history of being used in colonial times as a way to marginalize people of color? Do they really think the word civil is not almost irrecoverably tied to a racist colonialist time mindset that seeks to undermine the values of cultures other than the white western and European one? Are they that fcking ignorant? How can they even look at people of color with a straight fcking face when they are using highly racially charged language that follows a very clear pattern of racial oppression? These guys are so god damn dense… they values can not be separated from the culture that values it, and if that culture is a racist culture.. then guess what fools? Those values are going to have racist undertones and if you don;t know that… then you don’t know dck.
Dan Ficke… the fcking fool.
JT… the damn fool.
Let those two best friends be as white as they like with each other… just keep that whiteness way away from minority issues.
I mean did you see Fickes defense of JT…. Just horrible.
1) He can not be a hypocrite because in my experience he is listens to me.
2) He intends to be of help and he is “civil”, therefore….
You literally can not draw any meaningful rational conclusion from those two points. When cromm pointed this out he responds by saying he does not really care about that issue he would prefer to have an intellectual circle jerk about abstract notions of “civility.” How incredibly insensitive can you get? You are talking about an issue where racism is being called out, and you are defending someone against racist charges, and it is known his comments are touching an issue of sensitivity… and… and you say that you only want to talk about some abstract intellectual garbage… not the real issue at hand? MY FCKING GOD MAN!!!! ARE YOU BLIND!
This guy in a post before… is doing some passive aggressive heavy handed insult that “minorities are so angry and extreme they are pushing people away.. and they get off on it!”… He is basically saying we are slaves to our emotions and can not know better how it effects, specifically white allies. He may as well call me a fkcing savage, tell me he must teach me the ways of the oh so civil slave masters and mass murder western/European culture he seems to so gracefully look up to. This guy is such a fcking airhead.
Who gets to decide what is the “extreme” position? Oh yeah… he and his white privileged culture get exclusive copyrights to that. Fcking loons… I am glad they are not here on FTB anymore… cause straight up, if they were still here.. I would not even come here. I don’t need to be lectured by ignorant fools like that, no one does.
@dezn_98
If you had a blog I would read it… or if you do, could you provide a link?
So… Dan, who has argued repeatedly that his calls for civility could not potentially serve to disenfranchise people angered by oppression, just supported someone who HAS USED a call for civility to berate a person angered by oppression.
I just… argh… fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck….
@dezn_98
What you summarized is basically my position as well and pretty standard prereqs for other PoC’s to even come here, but you laid it out here quite elegantly and succinctly, thanks for doing that =~) Also, I have not read Dan Fincke’s stuff, I don’t have the stamina for that =( Thanks for summarizing it though.
@Kevin
I have a blog, it’s not really about politics though, and I change the name a lot…
http://seductivenchantress.blogspot.com/2013/06/cave-of-shadow-erotic-poetry.html
Also @Kevin
Your humility and honesty is noted and refreshing, thanks again :+)
The rank hypocrisy is mindbogglingly sickening, I agree =(
Also @dezn_98, I would follow your blog too. As well I live in like Boston area, so if you’re up here and know of any underground freethinker PoC communities or get togethers, maybe we could correspond. even if you don’t know of any up here, I’m looking to make my way to Scandinavia/Iceland/Canada/Europe, so if you know of PoC freethinker communities elsewhere it could be beneficial for me as well.
Regardless, thank you so much for your post, and it’s good to see you here c:
Also @Kevin
If you want to learn more about transgender people, since you said you are learning just now about the categories of discrimination, here are 1st tier resources for you to do so:
http://pastebin.com/Ge8sAT2i (I’ll expand the link below):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A3C4ZJ7HyuE
taken from this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOY3QH_jOtE&feature=youtu.be&t=1h23m52s
AMA and APA statements on transpeople and medically necessary surgeries (hard statistics referenced):
http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/12-36-apa-position-statements-on-transgender-1.pdf
http://www.gires.org.uk/assets/Medpro-Assets/AMA122.pdf (<—-I fixed this link)
Hard empirical statistics pdf, some of which are referenced in the above two pdf's:
http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/reports/ntds_full.pdf
http://gallae.com/cathy/essay12.html (explains differences very well, but I do not condone TS separatist while I am TS myself)
http://www.transadvocate.com/extreme-pressures-faced-by-trans-people.htm
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/p/transsexual-and-intersex-gender-identity.html (peer review articles, many of them)
————————————————————————————————
Now you can learn about one more category of oppressed people: transgendered people. =)
Thanks MaoistAnchoress, I will check those links out. I’ve been trying to increase my knowledge of trans issues by following Natalie Reed and Zinnia Jones. I’m watching the first youtube video now. As someone who has had to deal with Epilepsy, Clinical Depression, and ADD I’m always fascinated about neuroscience.
I find it utterly hilarious that JT insists that Mandisa agrees with him when… clearly… she doesn’t.
I would love to see JT’s response to Mandisa… personally…
I’ve had to deal with and am still dealing with all three of those, in addition to Complex PTSD/DESNOS. I was dx’ed as suffering from major depression when I was 16 years old, and was put on full strength anti-depressants and anti-psychotics for years and years, which I got off of eventually around eight years later due to them being ineffective to address the issues I had.
I had petit mal seizures in childhood. Recently I went to a neurologist to get an EEG scheduled again, and was told to goto cognitive behavioral therapy instead, which I spent probably 3 and a half years going through over the last few years, and quit, because it was largely ineffective ultimately. CBT had an amazing placebo effect though, and was semi-therapeutic in that respect, but, like the pills, ultimately, it didn’t change things long term and eventually lost it’s short term efficacy. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was five years old, and took Depakote for the seizures from 4-7 years old. I took Ritalin for ten years: from five to 15 years old, and haven’t taken it since. Anyway, I am going to bug another neurologist until I get one that will schedule me an EEG again (I missed the last one I had scheduled).
I am well acquainted with mental illness personally, and my life has been a living nightmare as a result of it in conjunction with the C-PTSD/DESNOS caused by various oppressive traumas throughout my life (oppression), starting in early childhood with my dad viciously beating me for being trans, until I would bleed through nose, see stars, inner ear off kilter, etc.
Now I know I’m supposed to say something cliché like life is wonderful or life is suffering, but, for me, personally, I’ve found life to be a continuous living nightmare ever since I can remember: one long living hell with no relief, no letup, no respite. Transitioning enabled me to cope with this living nightmare way better, and brought intense psychological relief, but the living nightmare persists.
I love neuroscience too, I have several books on my shelf, one is called: Healing ADD: The breakthrough Program That Allows you to see and Heal the 6 types of ADD. Another is called The Brain that Changes itself. Yet another is called Introvert Advantage. I have read all three, and they were somewhat helpful and mildly interesting.
You can totally borrow my ADD book if you ever want to, I think you live close enough (you said Vermont right?). It’s a good book. Regardless, thank you for striving to learn more and be supportive and humble, your attitude is very important in these respects, and greatly appreciated.
:+)
Nate, I noticed he hasn’t replied directly to Mandisa in either of his posts and has been mysteriously silent in the latest post.
Also @Kevin, sorry if I seem floatey/bouncey/spacey or whatever. I think I’m still having absence seizure activity, but getting to an EEG is, as I explained, proving to be rather difficult. I’ve had cars like run up on me all of a sudden when I cross the street and almost hit me after I’d zone out. Well I’m still alive ok. I knew several people growing up with other forms of epilepsy, it’s all bad stuff. You have my condolences =( Depression is horribly sapping too and ADHD is maddeningly frustrating to deal with. All of this in conjunction with the DESNOS/C-PTSD meant that in the two semesters I totally flunked at community college, I just spent hours reading the same paragraph over and over again: read the paragraph five times, can’t understand it properly due to ADHD, on the sixth time have an absence seizure, come to, read it 10 more times, another absence seizure, read the paragraph 20 more times, then start to dissociate due to the C-PTSD/DESNOS. Come to from dissociation and spacing out 15 minutes later, staring off past the book as if to the other side of the earth, wash, rinse repeat. Sometimes I spent like two hours on one paragraph. Fun stuff =/
Anyway ((hugs)) because I hate mental illness too ugh.
Also, regarding Mandisa, I didn’t see that. I only read bits of what JT said, I didn’t have the stamina for more of this whole crisis =(
Er, I read the Mandisa stuff at the top that Jen quoted, I meant to say I didn’t read anything from the links, doh. I feel stupid :|
Anyway, this whole crisis and a bunch of oppression and suffering I’ve been put through in these freethinker “communities” is basically why I don’t touch any of the freethinker movements with a 39 and a half foot pole (as the Dr Seuss saying goes). I stay far far far away, and very rarely interact with people.
I feel too terrified to actually goto conferences or like even meetups or get togethers with people in freethinker movements. It’s scary the amount of bigoted assholes that hide behind smooth veneers in these movements. =(
No.
Easy answers to easy questions.
It’s especially striking how JT seems to think that he’s the ultimate arbiter of when display of anger is justified and when not. It’s not like minorities have been dealing with that for a while (some millenia) now…
I am reminded this (probably fictional) exchange between Mahatma Gandhi and a journalist:
Journalist: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a great idea.
I’m not as well traveled in the atheo-skepticism community as many here but what I’ve noticed with regard to civility is this:
1) A lot of people steadfastly refusing to “get” whatever it is they’ve been criticized for howling about how nobody ever listens and/or learns unless people coddle them.
2) A lot of people who started out clueless and credit the metaphorical hammer to the skull they got in response to something harmful they said for being exactly what they needed to turn the light bulb on for them.
What I haven’t seen:
People saying they were shaken out of their privilege blindness by people who showed them deference and tiptoed around their feelings.
Sadly, that sort of thing is still decades away for cisgendered people as regards transgender people who’ve been severely abused in early childhood (not just simple beatings even). Hammer to the skull is usually what I got for being an oppressed minority and privileged dipshits not getting the abuse I went through.
It’s good to see there are some here who take the time to at least try somewhat.
Usually, in my experience, the only way some people can be shaken out of their privilege blindness is by a physical crack to the skull, especially when they ignore and negate trauma others have suffered, but that usually takes some kind of revolution to happen I think. Cisprivilege especially dies very, very hard, especially considering it’s been the norm in freethinker movements going back to Ingersoll and well before that. In fact, it’s usually cispeople giving me that metaphorical hammer to the skull, simply cuz they can.
I know…I must have been to 10 freethinker community “get togethers” over the last six years, something I am very proud of. There’s no way I’m going anywhere near some of the privileged shitstains in this movement, just so they can give me the metaphorical hammer on the skull because they can’t pull their head out of their ass and realize their privilege. That’s an extremely hard thing for people who’ve had it good in life to do, especially when doing so means recognizing that people they’ve assumed had it good in life too, or maybe even better than them for some superficial reason, actually didn’t, and actually had it far worse than they can even fathom. I’ve had cisgendered people tell me (implicitly) that being traumatically coerced to pretend to be an entire identity I never was and being severely beaten in early childhood (starting at three) until I bled from the nose, saw stars, and my inner ear went off kilter, beaten savagely hundreds of times in early childhood by my father for being trans, until I was constantly suicidal by age five, and all of the bullying I later experienced in school as well for being trans, was some kind of “privilege”. I consider most cisgendered people to be a very bad joke, for very good reasons. Maybe one day cisgender people will recognize their privilege, but it sure won’t be due to any metaphorical hammer to the skull in a world dominate by cisprivilege. It’s usually the other way around…
I love my distance from freethinker communities, as it enables me to avoid being traumatized by their callous disregard for my entire humanity due to being transgendered, autistic, disabled, PoC, lower class. I’ll take the trauma of extreme isolation any day over showing up to a get together with a bunch of privileged white cismorons with degrees from elite universities who are all talk and not about to help the very minorities they base their bullshit white liberalism on in the real world/offline.
@dezn_98
As someone who has always ever been, over the last seven years almost, on the outside looking into freethinker movements, I think I can say that something I’ve learned too is that being inclusive online, etc, challenging privilege offline, etc, has a very limited effect: I have needs that don’t center around going to some stupid conference, and while fighting privilege at those conferences is good, it’s effect is, ultimately, going to be very marginal regarding people like me. It’s one thing to understand and make space for people online and at conferences, it’s quite another to visit them personally and relieve their suffering, in communal ways. The former is something that is being done marvelously in freethinker movements through FTB/Skepchick, the latter is something that is woefully absent. I don’t have a family or extended family, I was disowned twice in a seven year period by my family, the 2nd time finally, and in that same seven year period, I only saw one member of my family once, physically, and it was my dad telling me that, if it wasn’t for my mother, he would have killed me (in childhood) when I asked him if he knews I was transgender and that’s why he beat me as he did. I got two physical letters and two emails from my mom and one phone call correspondence from my dad outside of that, in SEVEN YEARS. People in freethinker communities have such a ridicuous struggle to see people who are being traumatized by extreme isolation, and DO something to help them; one can create bourgeouis “safe spaces” online, etc, but social justice is something that needs to happen primarily offline/realworld. So far I’ve yet to see that happen, even given FTB/Skepchick, etc. Sure, it’s a nice thought, but it’s not even close to happening….That said, again, it’s a great effort on the part of Jen/Greta to combat prejudice and privilege online and at conferences, certainly needed, but I think, you know, they’re fighting an uphill battle where the hill is mount everest and they get 3 inches of terrain fought and won for every half a year or something like this….At this rate I’ll be 90 in a nursing home by the time people come to visit me and get me social programs to help me better my life and find some sense of community.
Freethinker communities, online, for me, is a very real thing, but offline, well….I just..I don’t think so. The very few times I went to any freethinker “get togethers” it was like I was totally invisible for the most part when I was there at the get together, and no one reached out to me afterwards due to prejudice, time and time again, like I was just a ghost.
Pretty sad, but then you know how that’s like in some ways I’m sure of this.
Also:
I think, for me, personally, I’m not sure I would even want to goto a convention even if it wasn’t full of racist white cisgendered privileged shitstains; for me, conventions with “speakers” is the opposite of close knit, local, involved, hands on, community.
I dunno, but something tells me the Democratic party and Republican party (financiers) fund lots of freethinker conventions/movement stuff, and for them that’s part of their political strategy of representing lesser people while doing squat to help us irl.
Honestly, once I transitioned, I became more of a ghost and invisible in the very few, handful of meetups/get togethers I did goto, but it wasn’t like this huge jump or anything. People just don’t care, and will obsessively argue on and on that they do, when they actually don’t. That’s life, and I’ve learned to avoid such people, even the ones who care more than the others…when all the care is shallow…If the choice of care is this freethinker group over here that has little toe deep care, and this freethinker community over here with real brains but ankle deep care, I’m sorry but I’m gunna have to opt out of the system of bullshit artistry. That’s my metaphorical “hammer to the skull” to quote someone else here.
MaoistAnchoress…… damn man… I actually wanted to avoid this topic because, in all honestly, I feel as if these people.. are just not ready. Many are in the baby steps/101 stage, and honestly, I and many others won’t wait for them to step up – we just either keep our distance or join a group in real life that actually meets our needs.
Now, before anyone gets up in arms, I am exclusively talking as a POC, about my perception of what this specific community does to fight racism. Which is… well not fcking much at all – which I would not mind (after all they have a right to concentrate on whatever social injustice they want and have my full support) if, they were not filled to the brick with fcking privileged dck holes while simultaneously asking for diversity. So, honestly, I put my energy elsewhere, and the nearest I will ever get to any form of the secularist movement… is posting online like this. In my meatspace life, I deal with issues that surround my community. I do my activism elsewhere, and I got no energy to “teach” this movement how to deal with people of color. Crommunist did this already.. and the reaction… it was virtually nonexistent – and he still gets ignored by a lot of white leaders in this movement. I am not a better wordsmith than crommunist and his knowledge warps mine.. so if he could barely smash through, I am not ganna try. Why? I can spend my time elsewhere with people who already fcking get it.
As far as transgender issues go, and issues of women in feminism… I could be wrong here, but I actually think that the very people’s blogs you have been commenting on actually do real life work for transgender people and women, and I know crommunist does real life work for POC too. The unification of these peoples meaningful work is not present at this time in the skeptical community as a whole – but FTB is the first big step in building a community, and the people who have these blogs are ACTIVE in their activism – on and off line. So I would not say they have not done anything in real life.. I think they have, and they have done a lot considering how small this group is.
They have also been spending their energy, rightfully so, changing the community from the inside – which is fcking hard for any minority. The amount of sht you have to put up with and stay on the inside is insane… and JT had one thing right, these people are no holds barred warriors. I think maybe you should email the person in “blag -hag” she probably can help you out with the meatspace part of the things she talks about – certainly more than me! I can only really talk about racism…. I extend my feminist tendencies through the lense of fighting off racism, and as far as transgender goes… I am ignorant and probably bigoted on that one. I think you should send an email to one of the blogs you commented on, because I think they are very capable of backing up their words.
The problem is.. however, more general. In general someone who has a triple threat of being transgender, a person of color, and a woman.. my god.. modern movements, sadly, are not ready for such a huge clash of intersectionality. Even well worn movement organizations like the NAACP still have a lot of work cut out form them when it comes to intersectionality.. it is a pretty new field. So sadly, your resources are limited from the outset in any movement. Most movements do not that I see do not have the tools yet… for a complex nuanced view such as the world you live in requires. Saldy, I think it has to be left to people of such an underrepresented intersectionality to speak up so smack people like me in the face and make up wakeup to the needs of others besides our own. I am actually of the impression that one can build an online community around a need, and then when that online community is ready to strike it can be built up in the real world to. I am pretty sure there is the underground online movement for people like yourself, that can look into.. but for the life of my my privilege prevents me from having a pulse on where that movement is – I do have a feeling they are getting bigger though. I think the people here can help you find support… but sadly, I suck at being one of them. My pulse is on racism and modern western colonialism – and sometimes feminist – not on this.
What I can say is this.. the only reason I have not given up on these people is because… FTB was made. If FTB was not a strong force here… hah this movement would have been long dead to anyone who is not white straight male. FTB is where is starts, not where it ends.. and I KNOW the people here at FTB know this because they have proven this to me as I followed them since the website was born. In fact, the only reason I am speaking now is that there have been some changes in the atmosphere enough such that I have the ability to speak and not be ignored. They still need a lot of work. but, for now, it seems to be on the right path – in my judgement. It is not moving fast enough for people like you or me, that is for sure…. lots of them have catching up to do (this blog, gretas, the black skeptics, cormmunist, skepchick…. and others are a saving grace through). I would not count them out so easily… in fact, most of these people are ahead of the game. It is the rest of the secular movement in general that is stuck in like the 1990’s.
Improbable Joe @17:
It’s even worse than that. If they saw, for example, a corporate board room as the norm for civility they’d be much more at peace with “fuck you”s and overt anger. They see debate clubs as models of actual real world argument, when all debate clubs really are are models of masking bad faith devil’s advocacy and piss-poor arguments in so-called polite words that conform to a judging standard. They see anyone who actually deigns to engage them in good faith argument as impolite and use that as an excuse to dismiss whatever they have to say.
dezn_98 @40:
FWIW, I don’t see how anyone would read the posts you’ve been writing and remain stuck at the baby steps/101 stage. I don’t know with any certainty where I was before, but I certainly feel and hope that I’ve graduated to the next level after reading what you and other atheist POCs have had to say on this affair.
I just checked a few facts (thanks for the pointers, quanticsakura!) and then posted the following as a comment on JT’s original “Outburst” (sic!) blog post (the later one’s comments were closed). Needless to say, I’m pretty damn pissed off now, and I wasn’t too happy before the fact-checking, either. Supportive *hugs*, if they are welcome, to Bria, Mandisa, Jen, and everyone who wants/needs some.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wwjtd/2013/08/on-the-bria-crutchfield-outburst-at-the-great-lakes-atheist-convention/#comment-1013227498
What I am saying is 101 level stuff.. that is the thing.
These issues are WAY more complicated than I am letting on. I just stick to the simple stuff because I know privilege is a problem.. trust me. You all have a LONG way to go. But it is nice to actually be heard and not talked down to once in a while…
Oh no, for sure, FTB is the only “game” in town, I have no doubt of this, I agree. I’m just rather skeptical in many ways….The intersectionality of Transgender, PoC, Woman, Autism, Disabled, and Lower Class, is pretty much Nightmare mode in life. It’s no longer my problem others can’t see this due to cisprivilege or other reasons.
My problems are staying hidden, staying safe, because that’s how I stay alive. I am a ghost either way, shunned, marginalized, isolated either way, but I’ll stay outside of earshot of people who are just dying to convince me they care with everything but token behavior and amazing words spoken offline and online. I’ll stay far away in the desert hundreds of miles in the middle of nowhere, metaphorically speaking.
Also, as far as what kind of woman I am, that’s pretty difficult for people to ascertain online, as I am far more butch online than in real life: in real life I am pretty femme stuff (mannerisms are ridiculously femme even), rarely butch in any meaningful way.
That’s me: http://pastebin.com/ZpBkCCXf
http://imgur.com/a/80tMs#0
http://imgur.com/a/7Xign#0
http://imgur.com/a/bZlB8/#0
and this is my blog: http://seductivenchantress.blogspot.com/2013/06/cave-of-shadow-erotic-poetry.html
That’s pretty amazing in my view that someone like me can live in the isolation I do given how I look. It just goes to show the rank cisbigotry in freethinker movements….These privileged white straight dudes don’t want anyone to know they’re attracted to me because they think people will think they’re guy (hilariously stupid and untrue), and always and everywhere expect me to be totally invisible so they can have access to me without their friends or family knowing….It’s SO funny and horribly oppressive at the same time but guess what? I’ve not allowed ANYONE in freethinker movements any meaningful access to me over the last six years, pre or post transition (and I fully transitioned minus surgery, two years ago). TO me, personally, with how I looked pre and post transition given the conventional view of beauty, that’s HILARIOUS. SO FUNNY. Why would I allow people who aren’t going to help me better my situation, politically, or only help with marginal, token steps, meaningful access to me? LOL.
People can’t just like expect this kind of stuff, like it’s their right to marginalize and shun me and at the same time spend time with me under the table where no one knows. Good things I’m mostly attracted to other women…I’m still trying to go for guys though, or non-gender binary people too, but that’s usually never happening =/ I’m not a Lesbro, but I feel like it’s something close at times =(
I mostly just stay away from freethinker communities offline and online, I just don’t see any real resources for someone like me in any of them. I’m sure one day, decades from now there will be, yes. But now? LOL no. Not a chance. Given all this however, FTB is still the only game in town: everyone else is stupid and cruel by comparison. It should be quaint to watch from the sidelines as the decades go by…I’m sure I’ll continue to sustain trauma, of course, in this heavily enlightened society where liberal bullshit artists actually help people magically without really DOING anything other than gabbing their mouth. Hey, for what it’s worth, it;’s light years ahead of the Republican progressives and Conservative Dems, but lights years ahead is still light years behind what I need, that’s the cold, hard, truth.
dezn_98
Oh I know…Did you see the smackdown I gave Mark Ferris under an alias in the other thread on here, and then linked to a bunch of other RATM songs?
Sometimes it’s just SO fun to get online in freethinker spaces and pretend laying the smackdown (which I did) on privileged idiots will have an effect that will only come in the real world/offline for people like me decades later…..
Yeah, what I’ve found is that no such groups in real life that actually meet my needs exist, which is why I live in extreme isolation. Typically I’ve been isolated even amongst support groups for homeless transwomen because I’m an Atheist and Autistic. They shunned and marginalized me there too. In fact, I know of only one person in the very small trans circles I frequent very casually once a month or every other month when I goto see my nurses, I know of only one other who is an atheist. Most of the transwomen I know are heavily religious, and quite neurotypical. When they found out I was Atheist and had Autism, they wouldn’t touch me with a 39 1/2 foot pole. It’s like I didn’t even exist to them.
I stopped the posting online bit for the most part. I pop in every now and then at FTB, every so many months, etc, but I’ve only done that like a couple of times, before that my involvement with atheist movements, even online, for years, was even still more scarce if that’s imaginable.
It’s nice to post online of course, but in a way it just adds to the alienation and isolation…..
I’m glad to see people like you here though, it’s needed =)
MaoistAnchoress…. I can not even imagine the world you live in. Just listening to what you go through makes me want to STFU about racism. That sht is crazy.. I won the birth lottery in comparison, and that sht stinks.
As far as protecting yourself.. I can dig it. I stay anonymous because in the industry I work in… the sht I say? I would be fired. I gatta protect meself to. Lots of people do not get that part… when speaking out as a minority.. that sht is dangerous – not just emotionally, but economically and physically dangerous.
As far as smacking up some white people…… I can’t really take joy in that. As a rule for myself, in order to protect myself from racism.. I only express my opinions about this stuff in an effort to affirm my humanity from the culture that wants to take it away. I do not express my views on racism, feminism, sexuality, and transgender issues to smack down the privileged folks.. in my experience that is a recipe for disaster because privilege folks are not effected by discrimination like we are and as such their stamina is hight, and the social support the get for being bigoted is higher… it is a game that is not winnable. It will, IMO, bite you in the end… cause privileged views can devastate and trigger you. After years of talking about this sht… the only way I stay strong is to speak for the purpose of affirming my humanity, nothing more, nothing less.
I think we should all affirm our humanity by talking about the discrimination we face… as for me, I do not make a habit of making it my purpose to teach any privileged person anything. I merely speak, they can take it or leave it… and I reject the notion that many privileged people have that conversations have to hover around their feelings and the purpose of dialogues are to remove their privilege blinder… no.. I am sorry.. it is not about them, and I won’t make it about them. I make sure to center the subject about the ones who are discriminated against – even when I am calling out privilege its not an effort to teach, its an afford to grab my human dignity back from someone who has the power to steal it with stereotypes.
That should have read:
Ok, time for electrolysis, I enjoyed the conversation with you dezn_98, take care for now, good luck in the ongoing struggles with this crisis. I may be back later, but I doubt I’ll be posting for some months again. /waves.
Oh yeah totally it’s no big deal: a bunch of other people were laying the smack down on Mark Ferris long before I showed up posting anti-racist and minority made music. It’s just fun to see these assholes squirm when you get a group of them. As far as going after white people in general, I just stay far away from them, and let them imagine I’m this huge threat to them, War starts in the mind you know ;)
MaoistAnchoress
I think you and I are threats to them. We are threats to their dominance… this is why they react negatively to us – because we threaten one thing.. their privilege. We do that.. simply by existing and talking about discrimination.. it is sad, but true.
god I hate this world.
It’s very sad and very true, I just, you know, don’t have the emotional resources/supply to engage people in freethinker communities but very rarely, even FTB. It’s just…it can’t happen: I don’t have the emotional resources for it but very very rarely, it’s simply impossible to happen with any more frequency. I lost my family and extended family twice, once for getting out of a cult we were in and escaping, and then again years later due to transphobia, and that time was final disowning.
My life is a living hell/living nightmare, but I comfort myself with the fact that I’m under a Glass Jar made of thick walls of glass, everyone watching from the outside. Some marveling at me, some pointing and laughing, none with meaningful access…
There’s a certain satisfaction, a cruel satisfaction, to be had by taking the attitude (towards privileged people) of “Well, you sure you want to shun and marginalize me? You insist hunh? Ok, I’ll most certainly oblige you, but don’t complain when you’ve got no meaningful access to me…”
I only express my opinions about this stuff in an effort to affirm my humanity from the culture that wants to take it away.
Bottom line for me: trying to take away someone’s humanity from them, or hold it hostage up on a high shelf and make them beg for it using only words on the polite list CAN NEVER BE “CIVIL” !
For me cruelty is unnecessary harm… and fighting back against privileged people, no matter their intent, when they something dehumanizing. Is not cruel…. rather, it is what must be done to mitigate the harm discrimination does to us in general.
Having the stomach for what must be done… is a different story. You may not be in a place where you can stomach it now.. but who knows, later on you may be. It took years of sustained cultural abuse for my muscles to kick in and finally start speaking up…. even though I know, that I still get hurt in the end – I still, personally have to do it. Others that live through too much pain to even talk about it, sadly… become rarer and rarer. What you go through, I can not imagine…. and there are members of my family that are so traumatize by the colonization of american imperialism back in my home country…. that they are scared to speak up for fear of death. Because the USA sponsored deaths squads have killed my people… and tortured them. I can not blame them, and neither shall I offer advice to those who have been through so much more sht than I can ever go through in my lifetime.
I have the privilege of have some emotional stability in my life – enough so that I can speak out everywhere I go.. others do not.
You have this strangers support… for whatever that brings.
@43 Ronja
Thanks for doing that fact checking. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of response it gets.
@piegasm / 55
The response seems to have been this and only this:
And JT is positively gloating in his Facebook status update 3 hours ago:
Yes, that’s a verbatim quote, smiley and all – I wish it wasn’t. JT’s posts and comments on his clusterfuck have gone from infuriating via ridiculous to deeply disgusting. He does take digging himself deeper to a rare order of magnitude, though the entertainment values of that is… limited, IMO.
Also, does JT not have eyes to see? There are extremely few PoC commenting on either his blog posts or on his FB timeline. That in itself should already be a huge red flag. If he managed to alienate PoC to the extent that he gets next to no comments from the group that this whole thing is *about*, it should be self-evident that He.Is. Doing. It. Wrong.
Taking a peer aside to scold is downright uncivil.
And publicly bragging about how you’re handling things privately is doubly so.
@56 Ronja
That’s just…wow. I mean after everything that’s been said the last couple of days his takeaway is “hooray, I profited from upsetting all these people!” Just when you think you’ve seen the limit of how far up one’s own ass one can stick their head, JT raises the bar.
@57 Raging Bee
I was thinking that myself after I saw that he’d tweeted prior to speaking to Bria. He tweets about it, then talks to Bria, then writes a blog post congratulating himself for being more “civil” than Bria by virtue of pulling her aside privately. Puke.
If there was any doubt before, there can be none now, JT has definitely jumped the shark.
@Ronja Addams-Moring / 56
JT Eberhard, gloating:
Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and others could have told JT that there was no chance of him going broke by telling white people that black people need to act more civil.
JT is undoubtedly being love bombed by the Slimepit now. I predict he and his new friends are going to get along just fine.
Four Words which CIS white Dudes should not use to describe their experience of being criticised online.
1. Lynched
2. Castrated
3. Destroyed
4. Cruxified
Appropriate substitutions:
1. Called to account for an attitude
2. Called to reflect upon privilege they enjoy
3. On the receiving end of anger for something I said or did
Other suggestions welcome.
I’ve seen all of these in the last few weeks…and it’s ridiculous.
WHAT a shitstain.
People saying they were shaken out of their privilege blindness by people who showed them deference and tiptoed around their feelings.
I actually had this happen (I was a rank bigot on the job, got called on it by one of the people a tier above me, and she was really nice about it and gave me the “you didn’t know” excuse – which was true, I was ignorant and didn’t intend anything, but intention is not magic) but the dynamics were that I was the neophyte and she was the expert, and I deferred to her, so I’m hardly an example to be held up in general circumstances.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the loudest bigots are the ones who insist they aren’t bigots long enough to get someone who is oppressed to do something “wrong”, at which point they blame that person for their bigotry. That’s why so often you have these false allies – they are bigots who don’t want to be seen as bigots because there is some social capital cost in being a bigot (not a lot, but enough to make it undesirable). The whole dynamic of seeking cookies for being “allies” is part of the same dynamic.
As far as I’m concerned, though, if someone getting angry over injustice is enough to make another person defend bigotry, than the latter was always a bigot in sheep’s clothing, no matter how much they may deny it. The non-bigoted response to “what you did was wrong and here’s why” is apology, not defensive anger.
@citizenjane
Yeah this guy (JT) has the nerve to make himself out to be the victim here and then starts clamoring about freezepeach within the capitalist discourse view. What an ASSHOLE, jesus. Grrrr. Ugh, your reminding me why I can’t deal with this topic anymore. To think people like this one control and run skeptic/freethinker movements, I stay far far far away from movement atheism due to people like this one.
@dezn98, who said:
Thank you for this emotional support. The last 15 years of my life (I am 31 1/2 years old currently) has been spent, barring two breaks of 1 year each, in severe or extreme isolation; the last five being pretty extreme isolation. I’ve never had a driver’s license or driven a car outside of driver’s ed, and the normative aspect of my life for almost half my life now, has been severe or extreme isolation. It’s good to have emotional support from you in whatever way you feel you can contribute. ((hugs)))
What you described about your family sounds very tragic, I’m so sorry that was the case ((softhug))
My Autism leaves me feeling very strange. I am a transwoman, so it gets even stranger. So as far as I understand it, I am eight years old emotionally, and hundreds of years old intellectually, in a 31 year old transsexual body that feels 18 years old. Bizarre I know.
If you want to get to know me better stranger, you can do that, but how we would go about doing that I will leave up to you. If you would rather not do so, that is fine as well. I don’t think I will be around much for awhile, and I am difficult to track….to say the least…so if you want to speak your mind and get to know me better, I will give you a window to respond here so we can contact one another in other forms.
Thanks for the conversation. Also, regarding my whole Lesbro comment, I’m definitely bisexual, I just, you know, have that kind of Lesbro vibe sometimes, anyway. I think it’s because I was socialized with guys, so I have the potential to socialize with you very well in this sense I guess.
Anyway, thank you for your comments and emotional support here, and if you want to get to know me better, you can do this. If you have a friend, cis/trans/gq guy/gal/whatever else, and they want to get to know me better, I suppose I could do that online and in offline too if they wanted. My life is extreme isolation ok, what can I say except to say I should put the trauma out of my mind. It’s time to dissociate some more.
From Ronja@43’s very informative links:
So he’d already decided to blog about it before POPsplaining* to Bria Crutchfield about how wrong her reaction was. Does make it seem like he’s twisting circumstances to fit an agenda.
*You’ve had mansplaining and condesplaining, welcome to PersonOf Privilegesplaining.
At the rate JT keeps digging by now he must have gone way past the core and be about to pop out on the other side of the world. He’s obviously forgotten the first rule…
@61 cityzenjane
Apart from being hyperbole, how are “Castrated”, “Destroyed” and “Cruxified” outside the realm of cis white dudes purview? “Lynched” has a clear connotation, at least in the American perspective. I’m pretty sure straight people and white people were crucified, castrated and destroyed throughout history.
JT has closed comments on his post about Jen and Bria. Where did the free speech go?
Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and others could have told JT that there was no chance of him going broke by telling white people that black people need to act more civil.
I remember George Will being really good at that. IIRC his favorite code-phrase was “breakdown of civility,” which was apparently scarier in his mind than “breakdown of civil society.”
JT has definitely jumped the shark.
…and tried to convince it to be more civil?
JT gets a thrill from feeling wise and superior to others. That’s why he felt it appropriate to lecture Bria on how to respond to flagrantly racist bullshit. That’s also why he’s a secularist activist–he really enjoys feeling superior to and wiser than people of traditional religious faith–which is something to keep in mind if anyone ever slips and starts feeling he’s doing good on that front even if he’s a racism and misogyny promoter.
Anyway, the comments section on that post was making him rightfully feel completely ignorant and inferior, and he just can’t have that. Speech that rightfully stomps his ego into the mud where it belongs is as bad a thing as there can be from his point of view. Faith in JT’s infallibility is a matter of religious principle to him and is not to be questioned.
I’ve been reading everything, without trying to comment (school starts next week, and I’m mired in meetings and shuffling through syllabi).
When I saw this post on Shakesville, I was struck by elements of similarity (and thinking that JT could end up being Brannon down the road).
Thanks and support to Bria, Mandisa, Jen, and the wonderful commenters.
http://www.shakesville.com/2013/08/silencing-and-intimidation-of-women-of.html
@dezn_98
argh, I suck with definitions. Lesbro means the opposite of what I thought it meant for some reason: so lesbro is guy who hangs out with lesbians. I meant it as a Lesbian who hands out with guys, except I’m bisexual, not a Lesbian (almost though). Sorry, I had to clarify that because I don’t know nor ever have identified as a guy, but I suck with slang terms, so I confuse people badly sometimes. I’m assigned male at birth transwoman, and I come from a very traditionalist background, so I’m new to many slang terms, my apologies.
It turns out I meant the exact opposite of what the term meant, LOL.
Anyway, if you want a friend elsewhere, and don’t want to keep being a stranger, I can get to know you better elsewhere?? Or maybe you have a friend who would get to know me better elsewhere??? I guess that’s all I was trying to say. I’m not the best with um, conventional social skills, to say the least.
Thanks for contributing to the JT/Mark Ferris/etc stuff though, it was good to have your voice. For some reason I keep thinking you are agendered transperson, not sure why. Anyway, I suffer severe mental illness, as I think you can tell by now, so it’s time for me to keep to myself again after contributing in the other threads. Bye for now! /waves :+)
@MaoistAnchoress YO!! Sorry for the late reply, I was chillin with my fam – having drinks.
I will hit up your blog one of these days and I’ll put up some contact info. Stay strong, check you later.
@dezn_98
Mhmm =)
I got some message on my blog, I’m not sure if it was you though. I’m assuming it was/is, but if not I have two new people to get to know better! yay! If that message was you, I responded via email.
Take care, and I’ll hear from you soon if that wasn’t you <3
^.^
Oh yeah @dezn,
The person that messaged me was a different person, so I’ll just keep waiting for you to message. Also, I had to change my um, blog, because I was being tracked by transphobes.
Here is the new blog link: http://sweetlovingvampryss.blogspot.com/2013/06/cave-of-shadow-erotic-poetry.html
Also, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t say hi, or whatever, it’s up to you. I’m usually pretty out of it anyway, isolation of this sort will do that to people. It makes me super chatty or severely withdrawn, it’s pretty traumatic stuff.
I’ll see you around.