Thankyou for commenting, I thought about posting this on debunkingwhite but knew the flow of logic etc was a bit dodgy, but the problem with just having my flist read stuff is there's less chance of being challenged on my implicit racism etc.
You're right, I didn't do a very good job of distinguishing between people who are actually being rude, and people who are unfairly perceived as being rude. I think that's a hugely important distinction, but (and I didn't make this very clear) my point is that even if we assume those people are actually being too rude (which they're not) the arguments held against them still don't make any sense. This happens to me a lot: I need to be better at saying "Your A->B argument is flawed" without coming across as agreeing with A!
With regards to the particular rudeness of the example: I just realised, I was probably misinterpreting: I see anyone who's had a marriage ceremony as married, even if it's not legally recognised, it's a self identity thing. So to me saying "I don't recognise your marriage" is equivalent to saying "I don't recognise your relationship", which is imo rude under most circumstances (I certainly wouldn't say it to a gay married couple) But you're right, what he was actually doing isn't rude at all. (Am I still missing your point?)
people with bona fides of making the deliberate effort to recognize and claim their privileges discover (to their horror!) that they subconsciously think of themselves as better than the people who don't have those privileges. It's far worse in people who haven't started recogonizing their privileges
Yes, and this is something I definitely still have problems with myself.
Depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to get a bit of law passed, I would agree, challenging people's privilege is going to hinder what you're trying to do. If the goal is to get people to stop thinking of themselves as better than you, you're probably going to have to challenge their privilege sooner or later.
Absolutely. I think it depends a lot on context, but it's certainly not true to say that all social justice goals are best (or even possibly) achieved by never offendeding anyone ever.
nb: I think the only obstreperous thing about your reply was using a big word like "obstreperous" and thus making me feel dumb when I had to look it up :)
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You're right, I didn't do a very good job of distinguishing between people who are actually being rude, and people who are unfairly perceived as being rude. I think that's a hugely important distinction, but (and I didn't make this very clear) my point is that even if we assume those people are actually being too rude (which they're not) the arguments held against them still don't make any sense. This happens to me a lot: I need to be better at saying "Your A->B argument is flawed" without coming across as agreeing with A!
With regards to the particular rudeness of the example: I just realised, I was probably misinterpreting: I see anyone who's had a marriage ceremony as married, even if it's not legally recognised, it's a self identity thing. So to me saying "I don't recognise your marriage" is equivalent to saying "I don't recognise your relationship", which is imo rude under most circumstances (I certainly wouldn't say it to a gay married couple) But you're right, what he was actually doing isn't rude at all. (Am I still missing your point?)
people with bona fides of making the deliberate effort to recognize and claim their privileges discover (to their horror!) that they subconsciously think of themselves as better than the people who don't have those privileges. It's far worse in people who haven't started recogonizing their privileges
Yes, and this is something I definitely still have problems with myself.
Depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to get a bit of law passed, I would agree, challenging people's privilege is going to hinder what you're trying to do. If the goal is to get people to stop thinking of themselves as better than you, you're probably going to have to challenge their privilege sooner or later.
Absolutely. I think it depends a lot on context, but it's certainly not true to say that all social justice goals are best (or even possibly) achieved by never offendeding anyone ever.
nb: I think the only obstreperous thing about your reply was using a big word like "obstreperous" and thus making me feel dumb when I had to look it up :)