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

[highlyeccentric]

As An Trans and also An Queer i have opinions about the men:cis men distinction but I also have learned from my Elders and I am in the Officially Do Not Opine period of Early Transition, pls ask An Different Trans (ask both An Trans Masc and An Trans Woman/Transfemme, also maybe An Miscellaneous Enby, it is good to ask One or Preferably Two Of Each Kind)

What I can extrenely tell you is that I saw that thread Jay Hulme made and I would not classify that experience of homophobia as "oppressions AS CHRISTIANS". I would call it intra-religious homophobia.

Now obviously it questions their legitimacy, from an Xn perspective. But when we discuss "oppression AS x" we do not normally mean intra-group. If my married lesbian jewish friends are not accepted by Orthodox Jews, this does not constitute oppression "as Jews", it is oppression AS lesbians, within a unique Jewiyh context.

Wind back: consider the Crenshaw case study of Black women discriminated against by a manufacturing industry employer, in a way that neither Women (other, mostly White) nor Black men were discriminated against. Legally, these women were neither discriminated against on the basis of gender (because other women were being promoted) nor on the basis of race (Black people were being promoted).

IF Jay Hulme and co are experiencing a specific oppression, and I gotta admit I'm cynical here, it is not "as Christians". It is "as LGBTQ+ Christians". I am cynical: I do not think that, in material terms, what they experience is significantly different to LGBTQ+ Jews, or Muslims, or Hindus, or... you get the idea. I think it is culturally specific, and from a remedy-oriented perspective obviously needs to be addressed by Xns, to Xns, but ALSO that macro-level social remedies do not need to address them AS XNS. Uh. I don't know enough about the UK laws that might possibly apply to the sitch here, but consider a related proposition: A Gay Or Trans Christian Works For A Private School In Australia. In the first, it matters not whether that school is Catholic or Independent (Protestant). In the second, if that Xn is sacked, which they can be, because they do not adhere to the religious doctrines of the school, I still argue they were *not discriminated against as an Xn*, because their counterpart in a Muslim or Jewish school (or any other - i'm not aware of other major religion schools) would experience *sufficiently similar* material circumstances.

I do think that in these circumstances (especially if, as it seems is in the offing, legislature is beefing up freedom of religion laws) there ought to be close attn to how the law assesses what is a valid religious belief, etc, such that, ideally, an Xn school would NOT be able to refuse to employ people who believe in evolution (as they currently can in NSW and most of Aus). BUT. If my legal studies teacher from HS, who worked for my school (and sent her kids to same, until they got into public selectives) because the more elite schools would not hire people who adhereed to "evolution: yeah probably", was not discriminated against *as a Christian*, then her gay counterparts are not being discriminated against *as Christians*. As gays? As "people with a basic sense of reasoning"? SURE. As Christians? No.

[crystalpyramid]

I might add to this that the people oppressing LGBTQ+ Christians, or oppressing supporters of LGBTQ+ Christians, probably do not think of the people they are oppressing as Christians at all, no matter how deeply rooted in the teachings of Jesus the faith and actions of the queers/allies are. I've got a friend who's on the progressive side of Evangelical Christian, and he hangs out with other Evangelicals, and he has a tendency to say things like "in Christian circles where the wife is owned by the husband" and "I'm a Christian, how could I possibly think the [American] republican party has lost it's mind?" which excludes the huge swath of left-leaning Christians from the label at all. (I keep trying to argue with him about this from planet married-by-a-gay-pastor at a church where this was norma, but he's very convinced his worldview is right.) So the people doing the persecuting don't think they're persecuting these people because they're Christian, they probably think they're persecuting them because they're bad Christians or fake Christians or something.

[crystalpyramid]

I agree with you that the one-dimensional thing is harmful and too simplistic to be true. There are multiple axes of privilege and people are at different spots along all of them, and none of them are black-and-white. Many Jews with our conditional whiteness are somewhere in the middle along the racial privilege axis, along with other groups that are currently accepted as white, but weren't always, and could get kicked out again on the whim of the people in charge of enforcing whiteness. (Obviously Black and Arab Jews are in a different position along that axis.) (It's not like having people mistake us as white and think they can crack antisemitic jokes on our presence is always a good thing, but it's different from people knowingly cracking jokes to make us feel uncomfortable.)

Our diversity/equity/inclusion director at work, who is Black, always makes the point of listing the types of privilege she does have — educational privilege, cis privilege, straight privilege, etc. It's not entirely about a "privileged" group versus a "not privileged" group. Most people have some kinds of privilege, and I'm guessing that the people with the absolute least privilege are unlikely to have the the internet access to argue on the internet about stuff.

On the other hand, different conversations tend to focus on different axes, and coming in with arguments about the attacks on privileged people can often feel like you're trying to minimize the impact of the attacks on the less-privileged people. For instance, yes, there are lots of straight (women) who experience violence because of their straight (femaleness). But in almost every one of these situations, queer women would experience equal or greater violence, and straight men tend to experience less violence, so (1) I would argue that it's not really about the straightness, and (2) the fact that women are being oppressed doesn't actually mean that queer and trans people are being less oppressed. (Would being queer somehow exempt a woman from a forced marriage? I doubt it.) Yes, women should ally themselves with the queer and trans people and fight for better treatment in those places, and that's often happening, but trying to draw the line often comes across as saying "see straight people are also oppressed, you're not special", which people respond badly to. See the reactions to "Not All Men" and "All Lives Matter".

My cousin is married to a woman (who I've blocked on Facebook now) who genuinely believes that Christians are the most oppressed people in the world because of their religion and she's not talking about her kind of Christians protesting at liberal churches, she genuinely thinks that there's some kind of persecution of Evangelical Christians happening somewhere, rather than them dominating American politics and trying to take away everyone's rights like I see them doing. I don't think you want to be seen as naively allying yourself with those people, even if there are cases where minority Christian populations have been oppressed around the world. (She thinks it's happening in America somehow.)

(I'm inclined to agree with you on the men vs. trans men thing. I think you either caught a trans person having a bad day, or someone had seen some of your other arguments and was already looking for something to criticize.)

[highlyeccentric]

I'm pretty sure that in the venn diagram of people with grudges against LGBTQ+ XNs specifically, and people persecuting XNs, the overlap, while real, is mostly... a product of overlap, not a unique vector.

i would be interested in hearing from a ... sociologist, probably, about what, say, centrist Muslims in Austrlia think about LGBTQIA+ affirming Xns (i suspect: little, but I'd be interested to see it documented). And very interested in a "you guys dominate the Disc Horse anyway" way about such a study done on Xns and Jews in the US, re what subsections of each group thought of subsections of the other. I reckon the main thing the latter would attest to is that Xns know nothing about Jews, but I'd be intersted in a careful and broad qualitative study nonetheless.

[landofnowhere]

I don't have a coherent viewpoint, but with the religious thing, it makes me think of unmarked/marked identities, versus identies that set people apart from the default. (So that people whose identities were previously unmarked can become uncomfortable when their identities move in the direction of being more marked -- e.g. people who are uncomfortable with the word "cis".) Social justice is often a reaction to the fact that structures already exist to address the problems of the unmarked group, while the problems with people in marked identity groups are considered to be their own problem.

Which religious identities are viewed as marked/unmarked can vary dramatically based on location, even within the US, and also has been changing over the time. In much of the US, "Christian" has historically been the unmarked identity (though the definition of what counts as "Christian" varies from place to place), but this has become less true over time, and in more liberal parts of the US where "secular" is the unmarked identity and "openly religious of whatever sort" is a marked identity. (But on the other hand, religious people still have a lot of structural privilege!)

[slashmarks]

I mean, I think you're basically right, even if we could quibble about some of the semantics of specific definitions; the question of where the line is between homophobic violence within Christian communities and religious violence against Christian communities perceived as heretical/outside acceptable Christianity *as* religious communities is genuinely difficult but it doesn't really change the fact that the latter exists, as do places where the largest Christian groups are discriminated-against minorities.

But I don't think the abstraction is basically an unpopular nonexistent opinion among liberals or leftists - rather, people get used to certain shibboleths detached from actual situations depending on the local situations they're dealing with, and some people are hasty to jump down other people's throats for violating those shibboleths. (And there's a lot of in-fighting over all of it. People who are loudly and confidently telling you you need to be educated to stop being wrong are not necessarily doing it in the name of a widespread consensus.)

[rmc28]

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

I'm confused why you think this is about sexuality rather than (perceived) gender, i.e. misogyny. Now, because I know you, I will give you the benefit of the doubt about that and ask about it, but I can entirely see why someone who doesn't already know you might think you were being deliberately confusing during Pride month.

[mathcathy]

Hey! I can't - so I would be interested if you can articulate why, please?

Maybe I am not quite clear on the definitions, so many of these spaces seem to be like a minefield to be avoided, where people with most knowledge (and personal, easily trauma-triggered experience, perhaps) are least tolerant of those with little and a genuine desire not to offend.

(My context is as a straight female, rape survivor and someone who faced such pregnancy related discrimination at work that it resulted in a legal settlement)

[rmc28]

I will try (and my context is as a variably-out cis bi woman who has faced gender discrimination in the workplace and in my sporting hobby).

If I read a statement that "straight people face discrimination too", and then it's followed by a list of discriminations that seem to me about gender rather than sexuality, then it strikes me as a category error, mixing up the axis of gender with the axis of sexuality, to claim that the majority, default group along one axis is oppressed because of harms done along a different axis.

It might be an honest mistake. But in my experience, this kind of category error or whataboutery is usually a deliberate attempt to waste time and activist energy. I also feel a reflexive exasperation that someone is attempting to make Pride all about straight people, similar to how I get annoyed with the people that only care about International Men's Day on International Women's Day. Humans are pattern-matchers, and this sort of thing pattern-matches to the kind of person who isn't here to be constructive.

Recently, in my hobby group, a jersey design was recently suggested that depicted a female body in a skimpy bikini. A lot of women complained, half a dozen men and a couple of women told us we were overreacting, but the organisers said they'd rethink and withdrew the bikini jersey. The replacement design is of a seagull, and now some of those same men are all complaining about animal rights and how it's unfair to depict an animal that way. Now, they are so obviously in bad faith it's almost funny, but it's a whole drip-drip-drip of experiences like this that make me reflexively categorise "category error" as "likely troll".

[mathcathy]

Thank you.

I understand that. Like when people can't separate gender discrimination and racial discrimination from each other in the case of a black woman who experiences both as multiplicative discrimination and finds it hard to explain the accumulative challenges she faces to someone who is focused on one or the other?

I read around about the different axes of gender and sexuality when my niece identified as pan-sexual and immediately changed her name and dress choices toward more masculine stereotypes. I don't understand how the definition she chose (she is 13) fits the behaviours she changed and wonder if she really knows what she wants / who she is / how to identify at this point. From my perspective, she made a sexuality identification (one which I would expect to minimise desire for gender-based appearance) and changed gender attributes. Then, she had no sexuality attributes to change because she hasn't begun having boyfriends or girlfriends yet so maybe changing something helped whatever she is feeling.

So in the space which is set aside for talking primarily about sexuality discrimination and for allowing people who have a minority sexuality identity to find common ground and share experience, reminders about gender discrimination are out of place? Not because they aren't true, rather because there are other forums and other times?

[liv]

I'm sort of sad that there's a moratorium on your opinions about gender right now, I can see why, but it's still a shame.

I know you don't get on well with Hulme, and honestly he's not my favourite Twitter Opinion Haver either, but I grabbed his thread as a recent example. But I believe that the people threatening to burn down his church are in fact specifically threatening (and let's hope it never goes further than threats) and persecuting affirming Christians. Not LGBTQ+ people in general, because I see no evidence at all that they are in the habit of threatening Muslims or Hindus or secular people based on their perceived sexuality, and not only Christians who happen to be LGBTQ+, because many of the members of the congregation who would be harmed if (God forbid) their church were burned down are straight. Like, if a homophobe beats up a gay man, that's not persecution of Christians because the victim happens to be Christian. But if a group of Christian homophobes make threats against a church, building and leadership and congregation, that's persecution of Christians for their religious belief, namely the belief that God wants them to welcome all sexualities and genders in the church community. That's not an incidental belief for the people who hold it, that's a pretty core part of their religious identity.

In the school example, a believing Christian who can't get a job in a Christian school because they are trans is being religiously, and not only transphobically, discriminated against; yes, a trans Muslim or a Jew or an atheist would similarly be at risk of being sacked from a Christian school, but it's obvious that a Muslim or Jew or atheist doesn't adhere to the religious doctrines of Christianity. Whereas a trans Christian may well be a sincere, believing, committed Christian, yet suffers job discrimination.

But aside from Hulme's position, here in the UK we're only a few decades out from an actual sectarian war with an actual body count. I can't bring myself to say "Christians never suffer religious violence" when I know people whose relatives were murdered or who narrowly survived bombing attempts aimed at terrorizing people who share their religion. Plus there are several refugee communities here which include significant numbers of Christians who had to flee religious persecution, sometimes from other types of Christian, sometimes from Muslims.

[melannen]

>> 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.

I think for me, this is the key: Racism (used to be?) widely defined as "prejudice + power" and while that's overly simplistic, the power-based analysis needs to be the basis: you need to look at who has power in a given situation, and whether they're using that power to disadvantage people of other categories.

I see an error occurring a lot in social justice spaces where there's an idea that someone is from a group that is socially less-privileged and therefore could never have the power to commit oppression, and it often leads to horrible identity-based abuses of power by people or groups who refuse to acknowledge they could possibly have power in that axis, even with a smaller community in which they do have institutional or majority power. But on the other hand, the fact that larger societal structures still reinforce one group over another complicates things!

One relatively low-key example: I work in a career where only about 10% of staff are male. At my workplace we generally have about a dozen staff, of whom about one is male. Does our hypothetical one male staffer experience gender-based discrimination as a cis male? I would say yes, I frequently observe things like assumptions that stereotypically-male tasks (like dealing with physically intimidating customers) will be his job, or backroom discussions about men that would absolutely not be ok if it were a majority-male staff talking about women, or being put on the spot to speak for all men. But at the same time he still has structural advantages (he can leave this job and assume he will be in a space where men have more power; the highest-paid jobs within the career still go vastly disproportionately to men) and some of the disadvantages he faces are due to structural discrimination against a majority female group (our pay scales assume everyone has a higher-paid spouse with better health insurance, which hits everybody but hits hardest on the people structurally least likely to have a higher-paid spouse, including cis men, which is a large part of why they're so rare.)

As a church-going Christian who spends a lot of time in subcultural spaces that are not majority Christian I have definitely experienced situations where I felt afraid to mention anything about my church life. Not a fear of physical harm ever, for sure, but a fear that it would lose me status and respect and opportunities within the group if people knew I go to church, or that I even might be specifically asked to keep it quiet, yes, for sure, even as people from other religious traditions are encouraged to be open about their religious lives. Is that discrimination against me as a Christian? Sure. Does it happen partly because many of the people in those subcultures are using them as an escape from smothering structural Christianity outside the space? Definitely. Does that mean it's not actually oppressive use of structural power within the group against a specific identity group? *shrug emoji*

But rather than examine those complexities, and accept that power differentials can very widely in different spaces, and accept that some people can be oppressed and privileged on the same axis at the same time, it's much easier to play oppression olympics and divide the world into Must Always Check Their Privilege and Must Never Check Their Privilege groups.


----All that said though, I don't think most of your examples above are great examples?

The holocaust denial example I think falls into a different fallacy I see of people wanting to group every oppression against a descent or affinity group into "racism". Jews may or may not experience racism in different spaces and circumstances; Jews *always* face antisemitism. It's often useful to group those two together, and the word "racism" has power in the English world that can be important. But it's often the opposite of useful to treat them as synonyms. A lot of indigenous or otherwise discriminated against ethnic groups in Europe have always strongly identified as White and do not want their struggles grouped under racism; and using the term for things like the oppression of minority groups in Eastern Russia or Nigeria can be unhelpfully reductive and also erase some of the unique features of Western racism.

I think other people have addressed the Christianity example - it's absolutely possible for Christians to be discriminated against, even in a culturally Christian society, but Christians being mean to each other is just Christians being Christians, not anti-Christian oppression.

Your straightness example is similar - most of your examples there are specifically discrimination against afab people or against women or against people who can carry pregnancies or against the overlap of those three groups. There are quite a lot of non-straight people who fall into them! (In many cultures forced marriage is *more* likely to affect queer people.) There are situation where straight people (or people in het partnerships) face discrimination for that reason - for example in the US a straight couple living together are more likely to lose their disability benefits than a gay couple living together - but it's distinct from the kinds of things you mentioned.

Your Mastodon example is more complicated though. I don't think it's transphobic to say that men can be sexist! It might be misandrist, and worth looking at from that axis, but it's not transphobic to group trans men and cis men together as men! I think this comes back to the idea that power differentials can vary by space - it's very common for moderators of an online space that is supposed to be a 'safe space' or 'friendly' to a certain group to overlook the fact that this gives that group institutional power within that space. Which is not necessarily a bad thing! But it means you can't come at moderating from the perspective that within the space itself, that group has no power.

[rmc28]

I don't think discussion / reminder of gender discrimination is out of place in queer spaces. If anything, it's important to talk about the intersections between different marginalisations (like your Black woman example, or we could also consider religion or disability). In addition, a lot of anti-queer discrimination seems to be based in gender discrimination and/or a sense that people are violating gender norms.

I think it's categorising the gender discrimination as discrimination against straight people that feels out of place in a queer space.

Thinking about your niece: if we assume up until her declaration of pan-sexual identity she was assumed to only be interested in boys and dressing accordingly, lots of women who love women dress more masculinely, so maybe that's what she's exploring. Certainly I've always felt more comfortable when my overall presentation neither entirely feminine or entirely tomboy, whether that's very long hair with jeans and tshirts, or very short hair and long flowing dresses.

[mathcathy]

I have never experienced nor heard of anyone experiencing discrimination because they are straight. Do you think that's how Liv's comment could have been interpreted?

There probably isn't any gender based discrimination that can't be experienced regardless of sexuality. At least I can't think of one.

My niece is in a reasonably safe space to explore. A few of her friends are similarly and you observation is a good one. Thank you for it.

[liv]

Yes, I think some of it is failure of intersectional thinking, just assuming that people live in only one category and can be neatly divided into "privileged" and "not privileged". But also, even in one dimension, it's wrong to assume that people who are on the "privileged" side of the scales are somehow invulnerable and never harmed by discrimination. White people who speak out against racism may be targeted by racists; that's less important than the attacks on POC, but it's still wrong to dismiss it as not harmful.

I can see the point that some people have completely terrible ideas about Christian "persecution" which is really just having to share a society with non-Christians. People wishing someone 'happy holidays' is not oppression of Christians. But I don't think it's a good idea to just swing to the opposite of that, to dismiss real, physical violence against Christians as nothing because Christians don't suffer oppression.

One issue with talking about sexuality based violence is that it's often mistargeted. GNC straight people may suffer homophobia because they're perceived as Queer. But homophobia is still homophobia and still causes harm even when it's incorrect. Equally, and bi and lesbian women may suffer sexuality based violence because they're perceived as straight. And attacks on women for being sexually involved with the wrong men, or getting pregnant, or expressing their male-directed sexuality in a way that doesn't suit the patriarchy, harms straight women even when it also harms Queer women.

[crystalpyramid]

I would argue that bi and lesbian women are generally suffering mistreatment because they're perceived as women, not because they're perceived as straight. The guy who was street harassing me a week after I got married probably wouldn't have cared any more if I was a lesbian than he did that I was newly married (and I should think somewhat into the marriage at the time).

[ironymaiden]

Re: gender/sexuality stuff, what I'm seeing here is that you are (I assume unintentionally) making TERF dog whistles and people who deal with TERFs on the regular are reacting accordingly.

Others have explained the Xtian on Xtian issue pretty well. I would frame it this way - would you say The Troubles were about religious discrimination against Christians?

[silveradept]

I think a fair amount of your difficulties are going to come from the context of the statements rather than the text of them. As you mentioned, whiteness has a somewhat specific definition (in US discourse, at least), and that discourse makes a difference between people who are accepted as white and enjoy the privileges thereof and people who are given benefits of whiteness so long as they perform their role of attacking the people who are outside whiteness and allying themselves with whiteness. In that construction, according to the scholars I've read, Jews often are classed into the "conditional benefits" category, which allows all of the antisemitic conspiracy theories to flourish and hover beneath the surface as the threat of what will happen if Jews stop allying themselves with whiteness, and as a way of reminding Jews they are not white. That resolves "racism never hurts white people" because the construction of whiteness is always the one doing the racism, even if their racism hits other light-skinned or passing-white people.

Christian violence is endemic against other professed Christians, but it is rarely about doctrinal differences in the current era. Most Christians doing violence to other Christians do so because they have already concluded the deity condemns not-straight-ness, voting liberal, sex out of marriage, or materials that portray any of these things being available in any way, etc. and have appointed themselves as the entity that brings the judgment of the deity onto others. It is not violence based on someone else's beliefs, except that those beliefs are different than the attacker's and the attacker believes they cannot be wrong.

Not specifying whether it was a cis or trans man runs into context where a fair number of (perceived) cis women accuse trans men of harassment or sexist behavior as a tactic to gather unwarranted sympathy for themselves and to direct hostility and harassment towards the trans man for dating to exist and challenge her worldview. For someone who regularly receives those kinds of attacks, an unclarified statement can look like an attack, even if it wasn't meant as such and was a more general complaint about privileged behavior from someone who's never had to think about anything other than being catered to. Additional contextualization might help avoid being read in bad faith.

With regards to gendered or sexual violence, your timing might be hurting your point if you talk about it during Pride month. It can seem like you're downplaying the endemic violence and survival during a celebration of queer people still existing out loud despite that violence, and that's the homophobia, rather than the truth of the statement that straight people and cis people do experience gendered and sexual violence.

It would be an entirely fair complaint to say "but that's not what I said" or "that's not at all what I meant,' but in cases like these, the context is usually the thing causing the problems. That can be intensely frustrating to people who want to be taken at their word, without having to consider or navigate a complex set of hidden additional meanings. Hopefully this made at least some sense.

[azurelunatic]

My straight daughter is experiencing a different kind of bullying from her family of origin because she is straight than she would if she were not. If they suspected she was not straight, they'd inflict bullying meant to "correct" her to straightness. Since she is straight, she experiences bullying about her "unacceptable" lack of Male Significant Other, and the perceived attributes that they imagine are why she doesn't have the kind of serious boyfriend they'd like. But the bullying would in both cases be coming from her family's rigid beliefs about the proper role of a woman. (Which is that she needs to marry well so her husband can support the family in their old age, and to have babies to pass along the generational trauma.)

I would say that her straightness inflects the flavor of misogyny she's getting, but the cause is still misogyny. And it's also why the asexual spectrum deserves a place under the big rainbow umbrella: people not performing heterosexuality to the satisfaction of their local gatekeepers get bullied in ways that rhyme even if they're not exactly the same.

[liv]

Ooh, thank you, yes, this is a really useful point to bring into the mix. I think you're right that there's a shift (in some contexts) from the unmarked default being "Christian" to the unmarked default being "secular", and I can see that that shift would be uncomfortable for some Christians.

I am on board with the idea that social structures, including the justice and political system, are set up to protect Christians, so special effort needs to be made to support atheists and people from minority religions. But social justice advocates don't need to deny the possibility of harm ever happening to Christians in order to redress this imbalance.

[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.

[liv]

Because women are, in fact, people, and therefore straight women are part of the category of straight people! Discrimination based on sexuality is still a problem when most of those affected are women. I am making a distinction between general misogyny (eg preferentially hiring and promoting men in general over women in general), and discrimination based on sexuality (eg firing people for being pregnant and therefore the system assumes that they had sex with men, even though non-pregnant and non-parent women may have reasonable equality with their male counterparts). Is it misogyny to punish women for being single mothers or teen mothers? Yes, but it's also discrimination based on taking the pregnancy as a visible sign that the person had het sex. Slut shaming affects women who are actually bi, lesbian etc, but it's prejudice based on assuming (possibly incorrectly) that the victim is having sex with men.

Insisting people must marry someone approved, or even chosen, by the community and only have sex within the context of the approved marriage is discrimination based on sexuality; people who marry the wrong person or have non-approved sex or are uninterested in sex at all are punished, and the punishments fall disproportionately on women, but the characteristic that people are being discriminated for is sexuality, not femaleness. Now absolutely this kind of sexual control is bad for LBGTQ+ people as well as straight people, but it's far from harmless to straight people, even straight men.

Discrimination against sex workers (see the recent examples about how unbanking affects far more people than just Nigel Farage) harms straight sex workers based on their sexuality / sexual behaviour, whether the sex workers are cis and straight or some other identity.

The Pride month thing is just frustrating, honestly; I'm not American, the Mastodon admin isn't American, and "don't mention straight people during US Pride month" was an expectation that I hadn't predicted.

[liv]

Thank you, this is helpful and insightful. I definitely think that part of the issue is "who has power" is contextual, not absolute. Really good example of a man in a female dominated profession, it absolutely is true that he may experience anti-male sexism locally, while still benefitting from the general privilege of being male in a male-dominated society.

I'm sorry to hear about your negative experiences as a Christian in non-Christian spaces. Your analysis is more generous and more cogent than I could probably manage in the circumstances, and I definitely find that perspective helpful. I haven't always got it right in terms of how I interact with Christians in interfaith and Jewish spaces, where locally I hold power and authority.

Jews and racism: I am basically ok with conceding the word "racism" to mean structural harm done to BIPOC minorities by white supremacist society, and use a different name for other kinds of ethnic discrimination. You set out a very clear argument for why this might be a more helpful use of language. If a dominant white group commits genocide against a white minority, that's arguably not racism, but it certainly is harm, and it's not oppression that is incidental to the victims' ethnic background.

Lots of oppressions that harm straight people also harm LGBTQ+ people, definitely no denial there. But because, say, pregnancy discrimination harms non-women who are pregnant, doesn't mean that straight pregnant women are completely safe because of their straightness. Homophobia can harm some straight people who are GNC and mistaken for gay even when they're not, or forced to restrict their behaviour and self-expression to avoid being called gay, but it's still homophobia. There are rare circumstances (like the disability benefits one) where a same-sex relationship may fly under the radar and an opposite sex relationship may be directly targeted, though I'm not sure that is really a "privilege" for people in same sex relationships exactly. The point is not that straight people are discriminated against uniquely based on being straight, but that they are discriminated against or subjected to violence based on their sexuality. They might be oppressed for having sex with the wrong people or in the wrong situation or the wrong way, and I'm frustrated with claims that that can never happen because only LGBTQ+ people are discriminated against because of their sexuality.

[liv]

Absolutely the Troubles were religious discrimination against Christians. Other things too, like ethnicity / national origin, but religion isn't really separate from those in this kind of context. And yes, basically all the perpetrators were also Christian, but violent Christians and Christians with political power can harm other Christians, that's exactly my point.

I'm definitely no TERF because I have never ever been interested in radical feminism. I started out as trans affirming and not particularly feminist, and then I started identifying as a liberal feminist, but radical feminism has no appeal for me, it's just biological essentialism under another name. But I can see that if I state that many straight women are affected by pregnancy discrimination, I might come across as saying that only straight women can become pregnant, which is the sort of opinion a TERF might hold.

[liv]

Good point about unfair accusations of sexual harassment against trans men for simply existing near women. It's analogous to certain white women weaponizing accusations of sexual harassment to attack men of colour. I can see how the misunderstanding might arise, if I think I'm arguing about whether trans men are ever sexist, and the person I'm talking to is arguing about whether trans men are always sexist.

The Pride month thing is just really frustrating. The argument I had was during June which is Pride month in the US but not in Europe (where both I and my admin are based). And if people said: during Pride month, let's focus on addressing homophobia because there's plenty of resources to help straight people the rest of the year, I wouldn't have commented at all, totally fair enough. But instead it was: we don't need straight pride because straight people never face violence based on their sexuality. Of course we don't need straight pride, straight pride is a terrible idea, but we also don't need to actively deny the experiences of straight people to make a point,

[vyvyanx]

I've been reading this discussion with great interest, and I wonder whether part of the problem comes from different understandings of the word "sexuality". The OED (not that I generally want to use dictionaries as arbiters of how people should use their own language, but it's quite useful as a descriptive resource in this instance!) lists two relatively distinct meanings (actually three, but two of relevance here):

1. Sexual nature, instinct, or feelings; the possession or expression of these.
2. A person's sexual identity in relation to the gender to which he or she is typically attracted; the fact of being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual; sexual orientation.

Your examples of straight people being "discriminated against or subjected to violence based on their sexuality" all seem to be examples of (real, serious) discrimination and/or violence associated with them as sexual beings, capable of forming or being coerced into sexual relationships, having sex, getting pregnant etc. - in other words, definition 1 of "sexuality". However, other people (including myself, and perhaps your Mastodon admin) seem to be reading you as referring to definition 2 of "sexuality", which is probably more salient during Pride month and in the context of people discussing homophobic discrimination and violence. That is, you give the impression of saying you think straight people are being discriminated against or attacked specifically because they are straight i.e. the "heterophobia" you yourself dismiss as a "made-up distraction" at the start of your post.

[liv]

That would actually make a lot of sense, if people are taking sexuality to mean only: do you tick the 'gay' box or the 'straight' box? So straight people aren't oppressed based on their sexuality, because their sexuality is merely "straight". (Straight trans people might be oppressed because of being trans, but I think all sides of this debate agree that transphobia exists and is harmful.) I really appreciate your shedding light on the miscommunication.

[landofnowhere]

I agree!

Thinking it over, I think it's also relevant that a lot of the Christian mythos is based on "we were persecuted for our beliefs" (eg the glorification of martyrs), and therefore saying that Christians have been harmed for being Christians can be viewed as a pro-Christian statement, and indeed this sort of stuff encourages the worst sort of Christians in the US.

[silveradept]

That's the analogy I was thinking of as well, regarding weaponizing accusations.

I feel like the "we don't need straight pride" statement is made because while straight people experience sexual violence, the root cause is almost never because someone is straight. Large amounts of sexual violence comes from the perception that someone is not straight and that orientation needs "correction" through violent means. Other sexual violence often arrives because a person is perceived as violating the rules or role assigned to them in a sexual relationship (regarding number of partners, race of partners, actively being sexual, topping when they are cast as perpetual bottoms, marriage or its lack, "promising" sex and then not following through with it, and so forth) based on the culture around them. None of this violence is visited because the person is heterosexual, and without the additional context of "this person survived violence because they stepped outside their cultural paradigm against the wishes of those who held power," it can look like an argument of "this person survived violence directed at them primarily because they were heterosexual," which will ring as a bad-faith argument in most corners that want to be welcoming to people who are under the threat of violence directed at them primarily because they are not heterosexual.

[melannen]

I do want to clarify that my shrug at the end of my discussion of Christian experiences was heartfelt! I don't think that occasionally shutting up about church when I'm in a group of people who are tired of dealing with Christians is necessarily the sort of ongoing harm that needs remediation. (But it might be in some cases! Things are ok in hobby groups that are less ok at jobs or homeless shelters.) And I've definitely also been in non-Christian-majority or non-Christian-led interfaith spaces that still gave Christians extra consideration above other people. But it's unhelpful to come to a discussion with the postulate that no Christians can ever have had experiences anything like that, because there *are* spaces where they don't have the structural power within the space.

And Jews do experience racism sometimes (even non-BIPOC Jews). But sometimes the discrimination Jews face is qualitatively different from racism. And sometimes groups experiencing ethnic oppression that isn't White-supremacy centered do want to claim racism as their term and should. I don't know, this stuff is hard and it's something that's been annoying me disproportionately lately in history discussions where "racism" is used uncritically to condemn, like, cultural assimilation in the Roman Empire, or on the other end when it's used to write off any ethnic oppression that isn't white people oppressing Black or Indigenous people. So I might be the overly annoyed one who needs told I'm wrong here. But yeah I do think 'Jews don't experience racism = Holocaust denial' is often about people wanting to deny there are forms of ethnicity/descent based oppression other than American white people being racist (and also of course just about antisemitism generally.)

Yeah, I think the question of what is oppression of straight people vs. a) what is oppression of people that cisheternormativity classes as women in order to reinforce cisheteronormativity and b) what is oppression of *all* sexuality or sexual expression or c) what is oppression of certain types of sexual expression within the context of straightness can get complicated.

But if you're talking in context of a discussion that started as comparisons with the ways LGB-perceived people are oppressed you really do need to parallel directly with the idea of oppression that happens *primarily* because they are straight or they are having straight sex or you will be seen as sealioning (and yeah any discussion that starts with "we don't need Straight Pride" should probably be allowed to end there as well, even if they are being peripherally Wrong on the Internet about other things). I don't think anyone would argue that straight people can't face oppression - that's the whole idea of intersectionality! - but, say, a Black man who faces discrimination because of stereotypes about Black male sexuality isn't being oppressed because of his straightness, it's primarily because of his Blackness, and straight pride and straight rights won't help him with that. And in the same way, a pregnant woman who faces discrimination because of her pregnancy isn't being discriminated against because she's straight, and a rape victim who has had consensual sex with men isn't being discriminated against because she didn't have sex with women. And focusing on rights for straight people won't do them any good either.

[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.

[hairyears]

The 'No True Scot..." fallacy, with a hint of" We true believers..."


The latter is more dangerous than the former, because it blurs into the zealot's certainty that everything they think and say and do is by definition true and good and godly.

[yrieithydd]

I've seen a lot of June is Pride month stuff in the UK. I think particularly for a younger generation it has crossed the pond.

[yrieithydd]

who genuinely believes that Christians are the most oppressed people in the world because of their religion and she's not talking about her kind of Christians protesting at liberal churches, she genuinely thinks that there's some kind of persecution of Evangelical Christians happening somewhere, rather than them dominating American politics and trying to take away everyone's rights like I see them doing. I don't think you want to be seen as naively allying yourself with those people, even if there are cases where minority Christian populations have been oppressed around the world. (She thinks it's happening in America somehow.)

I have seen claims that globally Christians do face a large amount of persecution (often in majority Muslim countries, China and North Korea), specifically being killed for their faith. I've definitely seen it said that there were more Christian martyrs in the 20th century than the previous 19 put together.

However, that doesn't mean that in the US that Christians are persecuted! But Churches have been bombed in Egypt, Pakistan etc. I'm not sure who correlates the data and how you grade persecution. But the Bishop of Truro was commissioned to report on persecution of Christians.