ERROR. There's an elephant in the posting que

[beandelphiki]

*sulks* So my [other] computer, or lj or whatever-the-culprit-is-this-time wouldn't let me post this House-related ramble and vent this afternoon before I left for work. I had a big thing typed up, and it wouldn't even let me post it privately. So it's saved on my OTHER computer. I don't have a disc I want to waste for a file that small, and I didn't have time to send it to my email before, you know, work.

Oh, well. I'll post it tomorrow or something.

In the meantime, I ganked this from puf_almighty:

Have a funny link!

It's much better than the post would have been, anyway.

Comments

[siegeengine.livejournal.com]

You really need one of those little keychain jump drives. They are perfect for such occasions.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have a decently sized one. But that doesn't help with no USB port to plug it into. *shrug*

[armchairshrink.livejournal.com]

puf_almighty is on your flist?

...

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

*shrug* He added me. I add back unless it's a troll journal; I give virtually all other users a chance. He has not yet posted anything (that I've SEEN) that would make me immediately remove him (the only two times I've done that, the person in question used the n-word - with open pride!), so I haven't. Something really basic like using a slur for no other reason than not seeing a reason to be respectful of other people is beyond me to tolerate.

Other than that, I mostly just ask that other people see sexism, racism and so forth as wrong; if I wanted everyone to agree on what those are, what to do about them, etc. etc., well...I wouldn't know a lot of people. Including some of my oldest and dearest lj friends. Seems silly to me to stand on principle NOW. Just, "It's wrong," is opening enough; where it goes from there is something else entirely.

Now, I also haven't picked up any Yoder-like vibes from him (and I figure you know what I mean by that). He seems straightforward and upfront to me; I just think we fundamentally disagree. If you think I'm missing something though, feel free to let me know.

[armchairshrink.livejournal.com]

He thinks a white guy saying to a black girl "Thank your grandfather for my cotton shirt!" is totally okay if they're really pissed at each other and insulting each other. And it's the same as a black person calling a white person a cracker.

Let me find a link.

[armchairshrink.livejournal.com]

Link:
http://community.livejournal.com/anti_feminism/362313.html?thread=18256457#t18256457

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

OY VEY THREAD TRAINWRECK

WHAT

...

Sorta what I'd expect though, yeah. Here's my take on it:

'Kay, he says that he'd "love" to use a line "that mean," on a WoC who falsely accused him of rape.

(Ignoring for the moment that this is apparently appropriate punishment for a crime not yet committed... I suspect there's something general there that can be gleaned about privilege and the subconscious protection of it from that re-working of the timeline, but I'm too tired to parse it at the moment. Five hours of sleep in three days, yay.)

Now, I can understand the desire to attack with both barrels if you've been badly wounded; but I know if I were ever in a situation where I was unjustly accused of some horrible crime by a PoC [first!] I would not be able to justify a racist comment to myself regardless. (And if I said such a thing anyway - I think it'd be a mistake to claim my racist training would not EVER show, no matter what - I'd regret it deeply forever.)

Because yeah, I know a racially-based insult like that isn't the same thing as calling someone a jerk, or whatever; the reach of the impact, as others in the thread said, goes far beyond that. Actually, I think: has the potential to wound, not just black people, but EVERY PoC in America who hears of it with such an easy invocation of whiteness and white people in power, and the relation of white people to every other person in the U.S. It truly strikes me as an evil comment; so casual to be using the reminder of so much. *bleary blink* Jesus, I hope that made sense.

But.

While knowing it's a nasty, racist comment to make, why would you be OVERLY bothered by it if a)some PoC did something real, real bad to you, and b)you only said it to that ONE(1) person? See, you might not say that to any OTHER PoC on the planet, but clearly that ONE(1) is too horrible to deserve that respect, so why worry about it? As insults go, that one IS a zinger, and in the context of insulting ONE(1) PoC who deserves it, you can easily see why this is funny, can't you?

The comment was made to ONE(1) person; the insulted parties include ONE(1) person. Perfectly logical!

(Lord save us from straight +/ white +/ male "logic," i.e. privilege.)

It seems from his comments that he KNOWS (without being able to argue it) that only ONE(1) person was insulted here, because it all comes back to the view-from-white-privilege of "the individual is all." We barely know how NOT to be individuals, right? Not much affects us as a group...and those who have an idea generally are oppressed in some other way.

The snag here is an error (or errors) in the "source code," so to speak. What comes out at the end is what you'd expect to get from that: gobbledegook. Infinite loops. Memory leaks. You name it. But the program continues to run, much of the time failing to recognize it's not running properly because there IS a certain logic to what sort of problems with the program emerge from what code errors. The fact that it's LOGICAL doesn't mean that it's RIGHT though; that's the error we frequently make in trying to figure this stuff out on our own. Hard to find the errors in our own source code - they still produce seemingly-logical results to our own selves.


...Yes? (No?)

Anyway, I am not inclined to believe that puf_almighty will be likely to see eye-to-eye with me on what is a source code error, and what is good code...but yeah, I'm prepared for that. I can't entirely explain what my lines are, but..."I knows it when I sees it," basically. And actually, his posts ARE fairly interesting a lot of the time. If a bit long.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Actually, just as I hit "post" on that, this afterthought hit me:

Essentially, my journal comments areas are NOT safe space. Perhaps I should add that to my profile? I hadn't ever thought about it, but it occurs to me now that people might assume there's commonalities to my list that don't AT ALL exist.

Not that I'd allow my friends to attack each other, but that can be a close call sometimes if you've always had an "open door" commenting policy.

[armchairshrink.livejournal.com]

oh I don't mind if they're not safe space. I just found it shocking that an anti-sexism and anti-racism activist as yourself would have a known sexist and racist on his flist.

I have people on my flist whose opinions I disagree with very strongly too. I just was surprised that it was more of a 'free for all' in your case I guess. Everyone draws their lines differently.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, free-for-all has described it once or twice, but that's really more my philosophy than the reality. (Hell, I was originally not even going to make friends-only posts when I joined lj my senior year of high school; I planned to let the whole world have and take their piece. I figured, what's the point of keeping a journal online otherwise? I have friends to talk to at school, and notebooks to write in privately!)

I've only had one two-page flame war in my journal (since deleted because I was so stressed out by it even when I made it private to finally bring it to a close; it involved one of my closest lj friends and nearly destroyed our friendship at the time), and I suspect you've outdone me on that score; at least in number of squabbles. :P People seem to voluntarily choose to be more hands-off with each other (and me) here.

I dunno, maybe that's just because I don't make enough posts for people to argue on. *snorts*


And I suppose I should clarify that by saying Puf's not Yoder-like, I haven't been made aware of anybody who's literally afraid of him because he's such an unstable freak.