On calling out:

So, it happened again, apparently I hate PoC or something. Okay, first things first, while I have white privilege? I don't call people of color out for funsies, the PoC community is very tight knit and probably due to how many false accusations privileged white folks make tends to be hostile to any white person complaining even if they have a point. To be honest, my heart always sinks when I notice oppressive things being written by a person of color, because I know there's no right way to handle it.

It's a lot easier to call out someone who is white for problematic behaviour. Probably because when whites do it to me, it tends to be wholly privileged shits who I can just dismiss. People of color who do problematic things are sadly often those I and others look up to, and it's hard to have to argue with someone who is so on the ball about other oppressions that you can't really understand why they're apparently not able to grasp it from your viewpoint.

Why don't I wait for a PoC with the same oppressions to call it out? Minority PoC seem to come under a lot of pressure to allow this sort of shit to slide in the name of 'solidarity' with the larger cause of fighting racism. So either I swallow it, hope that minority PoC don't decide to stay quiet in the name of solidarity or I stand up and take a load of crap for pointing it out.

These are the typical reasons I will call People of color out for:

1. They've one of the minority of people who have got multiple privileges outside of being PoC and are punching down but trying to frame it as punching up.

If you're a person of color with multiple privileges in areas like class/Sex/Sexuality/Gender identity/function, and wield your privilege in those to say oppressive things to minority whites with multiple oppressions in terms of class/Sex/Sexuality/Gender identity/function? You're punching down not up. Targeting the more vulnerable of the oppressive group is never punching up when you have that much privilege on your side.

2. They've one of the minority of people who defend a person of color (who has got multiple privilege in areas other than skin color) who routinely bullies and oppresses white minority people and frames it as you guess it, punching up.

Yes, I get that people can like anti-racism advocate who writes amazing stuff on racism and racial oppression, but liking someone's good writing doesn't mean defending it when they punch down. Especially not when they cause PTSD. What amazes me is when people who know how much PTSD caused by bullying and oppression hurts sit there and defend it.

3. They've one of the minority of people who think it's tone policing whenever someone asks them or someone else not to use slurs that affect groups they're not part of.

Asking people not to shore up oppressive structures is not saying the rest of what they're saying isn't valuable or shouldn't be taken seriously. Nobody is telling anyone not to be angry or asking anyone not to express their anger towards privileged groups, but if they're punching down or sideways in the course of talking about race and racism? Then it is acceptable to ask them not to as far as I'm concerned.

This should not require a big song and dance btw. It should just require an "okay" and a return to talking about race and racism without oppressive slurs. Nobody is asking anyone to do more than to acknowledge it and stop it.

4. They've one of the small minority who pull this: They spend one day understandably upset about people thinking that people of color can't have other oppressions; Then spend the following day basically asserting flat out that white minorities don't exist.

As I've covered before, white privilege is powerful but it has never turned a disabled, impoverished, genderqueer bisexual white presumed woman into a non-disabled, rich, cis-het white man. A Person of color with the same oppression faces the added complication of racism, but white people don't magically have their oppression vanish just cos they're white.

I will back someone to the hilt when it comes to asserting that yes, PoC who are disabled/poor/GLBT/excetra exist and are oppressed for being people of color on top of being disabled/poor/GLBT/excetra. But if they start telling me I'm not really oppressed because I have white privilege which magically erases all those other oppressions? I will not be happy and I'm likely to express said unhappiness.

5. If they've one of the minority of people who acknowledge white minorities actually exist, but their default response is still to assume/act like White folks are not really oppressed by being a minority.

Seriously, I'm getting pretty sick of folks with perhaps only one or two oppressions, lecturing me about how fucking spiffy it is to be a white *insert oppression they don't have*. My existence is just fucking that, my existence, they don't get to define how my oppression works.

6. They've one of the minority of people who think that only racism and any other oppressions they face matter, they basically act like unless it affects them, we should shut up about it.

Yeah no, I care about their oppression, I don't expect anyone to care about mine but I do expect people not to pull that.

7. They can write endless essays on intersectionality and how oppressions intersect, but still do 1-6 constantly.

This is the most infuriating one. I expect that ignorant fucking "no oppression but our one matters" crap from the white privileged feminists. The most privileged white feminists tend to be ignorant shits.

Yes, I do tend to expect more from PoC, given that WoC in particular are understandably very proud of the incredible contributions people of color like Ms Crenshaw have made to the theories of social oppression and privilege. I especially expect better than this from PoC who lead the way in terms of discussion and dissection of social issues, if they can recognise the notion that Person of color = able bodied is erasive bullshit? Then they should also be able to recognise that stuff like denying disabled people are oppressed for being disabled if they're also white is also bullshit.


Seriously, I'm tired of having to deal with this kind of crap. I want to spend the time I waste on this crap instead reading the great essays many advocates of color write,  spend learning about what I can do to tackle white supremacy, I want to interrogate whiteness and how it fits in with the whole oppressive structure that dehumanises people, I want to talk about how it benefits us and to work on not reinforcing it. I want to spend my time backing people to the hilt not having to argue with them that yes, I exist and yes, I deserve social justice as well.

I want to fight for a world in which we're not considered lesser according to some bullshit hierarchy that denigrates anyone who doesn't fit the "norm", and I'd like not to have to fight for it against other minority folks. Is that so much to ask?

This is the sort of thing I get mad about:

Let me make this clear? Your claims to be intersectional amounts to precisely a piss in a pot if when it comes down to it, you still think other people's oppressions are worthless or not really worth acknowledging in cases where they cross over with your empowerment.

Yesterday Suey_Park started tweeting a poem by Alice Walker which uses a slur, the slur in question is "midget" which is offensive to little people. Now while Suey_park is great on the subject of race and race issue? Whenever those race issues cross over with disability or other oppressions, she starts getting it wrong.

The Poem may be seen here: https://kimblekorner.wikispaces.com/Alice+Walker It is called Expect nothing.

Now Alice Walker is an amazing poet, but the use of slurs still matters and hurts. Suey_park would never ever countenance the idea that racial slurs and ideas in historic white writing don't matter and don't wound people of color even today, her response when it's other groups being hurt however is rather unsatisfactory.

Here's the thing, it is perfectly possible to celebrate the empowerment of women of color via writing and lit, while also acknowledging that they can and did write some things that wound other groups. Pointing out the existence of slurs used by a writer who worked within, against and sometimes reinforced an oppressive framework via them does not devalue their work, it does not mean we have to throw it out, but it fucking well does mean we have to acknowledge it. Just as we should acknowledge that all the slurs used by someone like Mark Twain matter. Except in the latest case it once again didn't get acknowledged, instead people derailed like woah. I'm going to dissect some of the conversation.

https://twitter.com/suey_park/status/436931270527156224

"Context" is not a magically "fixes all the problems with using a term" thing. Of mice and men for example is still massively disabilist for all it's historical and for all it's meant well. You can place the novel in historical context but it's still a novel that carries the message that disabled people will end up being put down out of pity.

https://twitter.com/dorothyk98/status/437262180912992256

So if someone uncritically tweets historical white writing containing racial slurs, it's magically okay? Of course it isn't, because slurs do matter and shouldn't be treated uncritical.

https://twitter.com/dorothyk98/status/437263238091112448
https://twitter.com/dorothyk98/status/437263926695567360

Heard this argument before, it's gaslighting, they're basically arguing that if minority folks just examined the work, then they wouldn't find it offensive. Could you imagine if someone told a Person of color that if they examined Huckleberry Finn that all the times it uses racial slurs would magically become not hurtful? People would understandably call whoever did that on being shitty.

https://twitter.com/dorothyk98/status/437264732009951232
https://twitter.com/dorothyk98/status/437264732009951232
https://twitter.com/dorothyk98/status/437267588146401280

Yay, more gaslighting. I've examined the poem, I can't see how it could be remotely considered as opposing ablism. What the poem seems to be more addressing is both self kindness and not relying on others to be your mirror, which is hardly tackling ingrained dehumanisation of disabled bodies.

It's a call to self strength as far as I can see, not a call out of social structure. Alice Walker's work has always primarily dissected racism and racial identity, not other isms for all that she is blind in one eye. She doesn't have to tackle other oppressions but she shouldn't be made out to be tackling them when she isn't.

Pushing against white inbuilt racism does not automatically mean you're also pushing against other forms of oppression perpetuated by society.

https://twitter.com/clepsydras/status/436751393106718720

Because the only thing we can do with problematic writing is to toss it out you see. That's the default, nothing else is allowed. Seriously, what part of pointing out that a piece of writing contains a slur term means you're arguing for it to be chucked in the waste bin? Acknowledging the problematic shit in something doesn't mean throwing it out, it means acknowledging it as well as the value of the piece.

https://twitter.com/suey_park/status/436845958047887360

It's a metaphor! No, how a slur is used doesn't make it magically not hurtful. Especially when it's being used as a metaphor for the bodies of those who it isn't directed at. Alice Walker is not a Little person. She also used slur terms a lot: Count the disabilist terms. She was by no means non-problematic.

https://twitter.com/suey_park/status/436837379236569088

Try a lot of DISABLED people in her mentions. Suey straight up ERASES the fuck out of their identities. She's done this before. This is some seriously problematic shit. Just because someone is white doesn't mean their other identities cease to matter and that's the only one that is important.

https://twitter.com/suey_park/status/436953691975741440

Yeah, that's ironic coming from the person who treats rich, non-disabled, cis het guy as being the default for white people, by talking about how white folks are never oppressed. Not never oppressed racially but literally NEVER oppressed at all. As if somehow our minority existence disappears into whiteness and is auto smothered into not being a problem.

https://twitter.com/suey_park/status/437266514920472576

No  it is entirely fair to point out an oppressive statement made in the context of tackling oppression. Nobody is saying "stop tackling oppression" or getting pissed because someone said something "mean" about white people. There's a big difference between "not all white people are like that" and "This poem while empowering contains a slur that harms another group". The latter requires some form of acknowledgment.

https://twitter.com/roopikarisam/status/437267666815176705

"Oh folks didn't consider it a slur back then", folks didn't consider racial slurs to be slurs back then either, should all the white literature containing racial slurs receive a pass as well? I don't think so.

https://twitter.com/suey_park/status/437268054129405953

Yeah, that poem is not specifically addressing disability, and even if it was, unless the term was being used by a little person of color? It's still not magically not a problem.

https://twitter.com/suey_park/status/437269243550498816

So all the defensiveness about it wasn't saying it should be okay and should go unexamined?

https://twitter.com/suey_park/status/437271211576279040

Okay, there is literally nothing about acknowledging problematic elements within our movements that require centering a privileged group. We can say "I love this poem, it represented this part of my groups struggle, though I find the use of the slur to be archaic and harmful to the group it affects".

Nobody is asking you to break off and write 500 lines on how it's problematic and never use it again. PoC who get called on repeating ablism uncritically tend to frame anything that isn't talking directly about PoC experiences as centering others. But an acknowledgement isn't centering. How should it go:

PoC: Says something problematic about X group in the course of talking about racial oppression.
Member of X group: That's problematic because of Y reason.
*cue a very short discussion of the merits of the argument or literature to PoC with a thread of acknowledgement that it's not perfectly anti-oppression for everyone before returning to the main discussion of racial oppression".

Instead we usually end up with several hours of defending how it's worth so much that PoC shouldn't have to acknowledge that it hurts anyone else because it's just that good.

https://twitter.com/JonathanHsy/status/437274346630160384

Yeah that's just a "it's not problematic, you just read it that way" argument. Which doesn't fly at all.

In short: This stuff is problematic. Suey_park is not supportive of disabled people, she routinely erases us, especially if we're white. Nobody is asking her to stop fighting against racism, but she really needs to stop telling people their oppressions don't matter if them being oppressed serves her fight against her oppressions.

Because oppressions matter, they matter because we need an inclusive movement. That means I don't uncritically defend stuff like which contains racism, and it should also mean that people like Suey don't uncritically defend things which contain other isms just because they like them.

Why mental illness and xism are not the same:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/when-mainstream-media-lunatic--2014121101031185881.html


1. Firstly being mentally ill and being a bigot are not the same thing. A mental illness is just that an illness. You might as well equate having chicken pox and bigotry, and by doing so? You would imply that chicken pox is somehow the fault of the person whose body is expressing the illness.

To equate the two is as good as saying that mental illness is chosen, because we as a society still think of bigotry as being a deliberate dehumanisation or deliberate ignorance of dehumanisation, even radical spaces treat bigotry as deliberate by default. You will never see them start from the assumption that someone is unaware, it's always starting from the assumption that people who say or do bigoted thing know exactly what they're doing. So basically by conflating the two the idea that mentally ill people know exactly what they're doing and their mental illness is "put on" gets reinforced.

People can make an active effort and choice to work against being being bigots, there is no such effort that can be made to stop being mentally ill, whether we get better or not isn't something we can simply manage via effort

2. The second thing is as I've covered before? Equating the two, lets mainstream society off the hook. It's easy to say that bigots are the other.. Equating it with mental illness puts bigotry outside what we think of as the norm and puts it as what a small group do rather than addressing how it's normalised within our communities.

It's relatively easy in such a structure for privileged people to go "Xism is what stupid/crazy people do" and from there go "I'm not stupid/crazy so therefore I'm not a bigot". Bigotry is part of the norm, it is normalised in our society, we don't think of it as odd or abnormal, so when you define bigotry as being like something society considers to be odd or abnormal, then you define it as being something "other people do" by default.

We've got to start treating bigotry and by extension bigots as a normalised party of society that needs tackling, not as the invisible 'other' or even "lunatic fringe". Bigots are can be personable gentle and kind people who we would never expect to be hateful. In fact tbh, I find the more mainstream and respectable the person? The more of an asshole they are to oppressed minorities.

Writing people of color when white:

Or how writing anything that could be remotely considered writing about a person of color is considered "good enough" by default in so-called inclusive white majority communities.

I've noticed that if a white writer includes a person of color in their writing and says the right things when talking about race and racism in progressive white majority communities, they are immediately considered to be "inclusive" writers, without the actual writing ever being examined or even read.

An example would be the individual who came into a writing group I belonged to, in order to complain about how someone they'd allowed to write a short story based on their PoC character had wrote the character as a race card player, cue outrage, how dare someone butcher someone elses character like that and ruin how inclusive it was, clearly the second writer was a terrible racist.

Here's the thing though: Nobody but me bothered to read the original story, they just assumed the outraged author must have written an inclusive character due to being angry about it and saying the right things. Even after I suggested people read it? They refused.

Fact is the second writer had simply reproduced the first's incredibly racist characterisation. The PoC in question wasn't a character, they simply existed to call other character's racist, they never had a non-race related conversation or had any actual characterisation beyond "I'm PoC and RACISM", and even in situations where they would have had a point about race being a factor? The writer was so hamfisted that the character ended up coming off as race card playing. It was about as nuanced as a brick to the face quite frankly.

This is the thing, in progressive space much of the time white 'progressive' people don't read it when a white person writes a PoC character, we all just nod and assume it's well done, after all they're one of us, one of the "good" white people. Exception: if someone the progressive space regards as a leader takes the time to read it and declares it awfully racist, then we might read it or blanket condemn it.

Same goes for other oppressions, we all default assume that those in the progressive space with us are progressive (unless we dislike them) and therefore dismiss it when others say they fucked up.

Appropriate public behaviour towards adults:

Or how not to be an asshole to disabled people. If like many people you for some reason believe disabled people aren't worthy of being treated like you would another adult? This is a primer for not being a wankstain to folks.

1. If you wouldn't grab the body of abled adult? Don't grab our wheelchairs or bodies.

You'd think this wouldn't be exactly rocket science, but apparently it is. I don't care how fucking helpful you think you're being, you were taught not to grab at preschool. Ask before you touch. Especially since you can potentially seriously hurt us.

2. Don't use us as examples of "inspiration" or to explain things to other people.

Granted folks have sometimes apologised after doing this, but it's still fucking annoying, We are not your object lesson. You want to teach your kid/someone about our disability? Don't use me  or anyone else as a non-consenting teaching aid. Ask first.

3. Don't demand details of why we're disabled as if you have a right to them.

Do we demand to know all about your sex life? No, so why would you think the intimate details of our lives are yours for the demanding? Corollary: Don't ask how we have sex either, it's none of your bees wax.

4. Don't run up to us and start babbling about how you saw a program with "someone who is disabled just like you" the other night.

We probably didn't see the program and even if we did, why the fuck would we want to discuss it with a random stranger who apparently thinks that our disabilities are an appropriate ice breaker topic? You probably wouldn't run up to a person of color/a woman and start talking about how you saw a person of color/a woman on TV last night because you recognise that they're people and that it's an inappropriate thing to do, so don't fucking do it to us.

5. Don't run over and start trying to set us up with some random relative/friend/whoever of yours simply being they're also disabled.

What you're essentially saying is "Nobody else but another disabled person would be interested in you", wow, talk about fucking insulting. Again, this is ignoring that we're people and yes, plenty of people find us attractive.

6. Don't talk over us/act like we don't exist.

A disabled person speaks to you or interacts with you? Don't ignore us and talk to our carer or even random nearby strangers. I assure you that the gentleman I do not even know doesn't want my bankcard either, hand it back to me like you've handed it back to the other twenty people you served before me.

7. We're not children, do not fucking baby talk us.

Seriously, no I don't have a boo boo, how would you like a punch punch up the nose nose?

8. Don't act like we're objects.

Seriously, don't do shit like sticking your foot under our wheelchair while reaching over us and then get mad when we move and run over your foot. Or just wheeling us out of the way as if we're a cart.

9. If we're in a wheelchair? Don't assume we can't feel our legs.

Wheelchair =/= paraplegic, okay. Lots of people with lots of conditions use one and no, that does not mean it's cute when your kid 'tests' it by kicking us in the legs. It's even less cute when you do it because you think we won't feel you ram us.

10. If it seems hilarious to you? It's probably not funny.

Seriously, we get the same fucking jokes day in and day out delivered with shit eating grins as if they're comedy gold. No, unbelievably, you're not the first and only to tell wheelchair user "not to speed". No, you're not the first and only one to call a cane user "hop along Cassidy".

In short, if you wouldn't fucking do it to someone who doesn't appear disabled? Don't do it to those who are disabled.

Doing the "right" thing does not pay.

In an earlier post, I talked about working in sweatshops in the UK as a teen. Well guess what? I've recently found out that the one job I had as teen where I was paid actual wages and supposedly paid NI and Tax via it? Has not paid my NI or Tax contributions to the government. The owner of that company has snaffled my NI and Tax contributions away into their profits.

The government don't want to chase these guys for money that should have been paid, instead they want me to pony up years of NI contributions that I already paid.

So, yes, you can do the right thing, you can get a job and still have your pension and entitlement to help negatively affected because the rich guy who hired you pocketed what he was supposed to pay the government out of your wages. Of course the government only recently informed me of the shortfall and the paperwork required to prove I paid those deductions was destroyed by my abusive parent when I escaped. So essentially there is nothing I can do about it even if I could find the owner since the business did eventually close down, but it's amazing how a company I worked for, for over a year was never rumbled at the time.

So tell me again Cameron, how did all that work I did improve my life?

Trans =/= Predator, but it's more complex than just that.

TW: discussion of sexual assault and laws relating to it.

Recently a person was arrested an is awaiting trial after claiming to be a trans woman and sexually assaulting two cis women in a shelter. The details are here: http://www.torontosun.com/2014/02/15/shocking-case-proves-tobys-law-is-flawed

So, let's talk about the problems inherent in how we're talking about cases like this on both sides:

Firstly Cis folks? Just because this particular individual claimed to be a trans woman and then proceeded to assault vulnerable people while in a shelter? Does not mean that outlawing trans women from using the facilities for women would protect Cis women.

There are plenty of countries where no law such as Toby's law exists and those countries still have cases of heterosexual cis men dressing as women in order to harass, assault and mistreat cis women. All laws protecting Trans individuals right to use the bathroom of their gender identity do is to enshrine that right, their absence or existence does not change the behaviour of Cis male predators.

Secondly? Let's talk about the real facts. Fact is cis women are more likely to be hit by lightening than to be assaulted by either a trans individual or a individual pretending to be trans anywhere. Yes, the trans community sometimes has predators, and sometimes predators pretend to belong to a group in order to prey upon them and others. The truth is still that overwhelmingly Cis women are vastly more likely to assaulted by someone they know, such as a boyfriend, family member, Husband, or family friend than by some unknown to them Trans women or Cis male stranger in a bathroom.

Yet you'd think laws like Toby's law were filling bathrooms and shelters with cis male predators dressed like women and that cis women were being assaulted by them at an astounding rate from the coverage, except that isn't so. Protecting women, cis or trans is important, but we all need to look at the facts rather than listening to the media that massively overblows them.

Thirdly? Cis women? I know you're scared, and yes, I know what socialisation does to brutalise you. The doctors said "congrats, it's a girl" when I was born as well even if they were wrong. But please remember and appreciate that trans individuals are being brutalised, that we suffer the same fear as you, that we will be assaulted and killed for who and what we are. In many ways the fear both groups are subject to is alike, we all have to fear Cis male predators in particular. So remember that we all want to be safe and don't dismiss the safety of Trans individuals as being less important than your own, perhaps then we can start to find solutions that keep us all safe.

On the Trans side?

Could we please stop acting like trans predators/cis male predators who dress as women and assault people don't exist? Yes, they're a tiny group. But they still do exist. It not only erases people like me who were sexually assaulted by a trans individual, but it also effectively gaslights cis women who even if they are overstating the problem can indeed read the reports of the rare occasions when it does happen.

Admitting their existence isn't a problem, what we should be stressing is how incredibly rare such cases are, and how barring trans individuals from bathrooms and shelters won't prevent any assaults on cis women by such predators but will put trans individuals especially trans women are risk of assault, and murder.

Could we also start appreciating that even if the fears of cis women are not in proportion to the rate of actual assaults by trans individuals/cis male predators presenting as trans? Those fears are still built on the intense socialisation in fear and being responsible for owing a body with a vagina those declared female at birth are subject to.

Those whose birth the doctor greets rightly or wrongly with "congratulations, it's a girl" are taught to be constantly afraid, constantly on our guard, because society blames us when we get assaulted. The ownership of a vagina imposes a heavy burden of responsibility, one that DFAB people carry for life and only get to put down in spaces where presumably no men are present. The result is DFAB people who live in a world where they are constantly in the trenches so to speak. It's really little wonder that DFAB people are more than a little twitchy and overprotective of those spaces where the world's blame for having a vagina can be at least temporarily left behind.

We really need to start realising that DFAB people are often in a state of shellshock at the way the world has always treated them and making allowances for the effects of said shellshock.

We've got to stop treating this socialised fear as unreasonable, especially since once we transition and especially if we don't pass, we're subject to it ourselves and end up in our own trenches. None of us would mock a trans individuals fear of assault since we know it happens, yet often we seem to fail to appreciate that in many ways Cis women and trans individuals are in the same trenches.


For both sides? We need to start listening to each others, Cis women with the exception of known hateful individuals aren't being afraid just to spite trans people, there are reasons behind it, and trans people are not deliberately trying to hurt Cis women. We need a solution that creates spaces in which we're all safe. We need dedicated Trans shelters, we need a world that doesn't make it so often the only work trans people can get is survival sex work, we need a world free from the rape culture that impacts DFAB people, Trans women, Cis women and Trans men, we need a world where everyone is safe, and the current conversations? Aren't helping to build that, they're just building walls between us.