Wrong Opinions

[liv]

So, update: I passed my Hebrew test, but the rest of my incoming class didn't, and I think the next stage is yell at the college for setting massively unfair assessments. I may have somewhere temporary to live (undying gratitude to angelofthenorth) for the first two months of term, and if everything comes together very nicely somewhere long term from November.

jack and I planned a week in Brighton visiting my sister, which sort of worked in that we went to Brighton and stayed with my sister, but sort of didn't in that I ended up needing to be in London Monday and Tuesday for college related reasons, and back in Cambridge on Wednesday as I got roped into Tisha b'Av with my home community. So all in all this is the first week I've actually been able to experience the "summer break" I planned between finishing my job and starting my course. I had a lovely weekend with cjwatson and the middle kids, but now there is Covid in their household and I'm worried for them and concerned that I may have been exposed. And on a more minor note I can't hang out with them, which I'm grumpy about. I can't describe how much I hate living with this awful plague.

Anyway, now I have a bit of time, let me rant the rant that's been brewing for a while. This is the kind of thing where I'm kicking back against accepted decent liberal norms and I expect to be told I'm wrong, but actually I would quite like to hear any criticism because I'm really frustrated. The thing is, I basically accept that it's a good idea to look at human interactions and societies through the lens of power differentials. If the underlying social situation isn't symmetrical, it's not fair to treat privileged people identically to oppressed people. I accept that "reverse racism" and "misandry" and "heterophobia" are made-up distractions, I don't at all want to argue that they are real. But I'm increasingly annoyed by what looks like reducing everything to a one-dimensional relationship between "the privileged" who can never experience any harm, and "the oppressed" who can never perpetrate any harm.

Example: The syllogism that goes "Jews of European descent are white. Racism doesn't harm white people. Therefore... oops, I accidentally did a Holocaust denial." That one is probably the root of my frustration, and I feel somewhat confident to hold an opinion about it because I'm directly affected, being a white Jewish person myself.

There are other examples too. People claiming that Christians never experience religious oppression because Christians are the hegemony in the US and to a great extent globally. But I personally know Christians who have experienced religious violence (and that's without considering countries where Christians actually are a religious minority persecuted by fundamentalist Muslims or Hindus or historically speaking fascists and Communists in power). Here's a recent example from someone who is white, mainstream CoE, based in England: As the Churchwarden of an LGBT inclusive church I am telling you that members of the congregation message me, asking if it is safe to come to church. And I cannot say "yes", I can only say that I hope it is. Violence against Christians, specifically as Christians, exists, and much of it is perpetrated by other, sectarian Christians, but it's still violence. If I care about anti-Christian violence, does that mean I'm indifferent to islamophobia and antisemitism? Of course not, but it feels wrong to me to deny the reality that this violence exists, simply to affirm the view that overall, Christians have relative religious privilege.

Recently I was accused of being transphobic because I complained about sexist behaviour by men, without specifying that I meant cis men. But I didn't particularly mean cis men, if a random stranger harasses me on the street or patronizes me in an internet discussion, I have no knowledge of whether that person is cis. When trans people are angry with me for being transphobic it's not a good time to ask for clarification, so I couldn't work out if the view was that trans men would never be sexist jerks because trans men are all essentially good and respectful of women, or whether the argument was that it doesn't count when a trans man harasses a cis woman because cis women in general have more social power than trans men. I reject both those positions. I think it is in fact reasonably likely that I unintentionally hold some transphobic views, I'm not taking the line that I can't possibly be transphobic because I'm a "good person". But I am annoyed by the attempt to make it taboo to ever complain about sexism or gendered violence because it might offend trans men. I don't see how that's different to any other #NotAllMen derail; sure, a poor or disabled or racialized man lacks privilege compared to me, but that doesn't mean he can't be sexist, and the same goes for trans men.

And in what feels like a similar example, I'm on warning on Mastodon because I stated, during US Pride Month, that straight people do in fact experience violence based on their sexuality, from honour killings to forced marriage to discrimination against pregnant people the majority of whom are straight women. The admin of my instance said that this was a homophobic view, which has mainly led me to stop posting on Mastodon at all. If my opinion, as a bi woman, that some straight people experience sexuality-based violence and political harm, is a danger to other LGBTQ+ people on my instance, then I don't know where to go from here. I'm not saying I can't be homophobic because I'm bi, because I don't in fact believe that all homophobia is perpetrated by straight people against gay people. I'm saying that seeking solidarity with straight victims of sexuality-based violence and prejudice is not inherently homophobic.

I have much more faith in my lovely DW circle to tell me why I'm wrong, than random fighty people in internet discussions. So, go ahead, set me right.

Comments

[liv]

Thank you, this is a really helpful and supportive comment. It's not that people are making a logical argument based on assertions about anti-Christian and sectarian violence, but that they are signalling their general political position that Christians are overall privileged and that they are on the side of the oppressed. Fair enough.

[slashmarks]

Yeah. To be clear, I think the shibboleth thing is a real problem, all the more so when people apply it to, say, other countries they know nothing about, but it's useful to understand what's actually going on in responding to it IMO.