On Pragmatism

People keep asking me to water down my message or consider what it would look like as a congressional bill or to choose different settings for my activism. And to them I say:

KILL PRAGMATISM. KILL IT!

Cleaning Up After My Microaggressions

The following is a laundry list of all the micro-aggressive things on my blog that need to be fixed.

Mild TW on #3 for slurs, but everything has *** or is referred to as "the ___ slur".

1) Image descriptions. On tumblr I noticed that some of the better SJ blogs have image descriptions to make their blogs more accessible to the visually impaired. The plan is to go back to all of my posts, especially the recent or popular ones, and add image descriptions. I'm a wordy person, so I'm unsure as to what's more important—descriptiveness or conciseness?

2) Subtitles. This is something I've known I should do, and I used to make excuses for myself because it's extremely time-consuming and difficult. But I probably shouldn't complain because I'm the person in the position of privilege! So I really do intend to subtitle my videos. I'm also going to lean more towards doing written posts instead of vlogs in the future just because it's 10x more accessible.

3) Words that aren't mine. I've also noticed on tumblr that people are extremely careful about slurs. In the past, I thought that off-limits words were essentially n***** (for white people), f** (for hetero people), t***** (for cis people) and r******* (for non-disabled people) and that anything else was okay to use, as Autistic Hoya puts it, when "discussing contemporary or historical use of the term". Now I'm not so sure? Especially because whether a term achieves what I call, in my head, "n-word status,"—when you can't even say it when reading books and quotes and stuff—is largely decided by dominant groups and whether a subordinated group is talked about enough popularly for us to establish norms around those slurs. So from now on I'm going to be using "f-word" or "f-slur" and the like. This will a) avoid triggering people b) avoid offending people and MY PERSONAL FAVORITE c) give people room to reclaim words. I'm aware that this is really annoying for everyone, myself included, but guess why it's annoying? Because of our privilege! And by the end of this we will have all built super inclusive, considerate vocabularies. I really want to emphasize that reclaiming part—which is when you use a slur against yourself when that slur pertains to a group you're a part of, e.g. me calling myself the n-word or the b-word—by attaching the Butler card:

In "Undoing Gender," Judith Butler writes:

In the same way that the terms of an exclusionary modernity have been appropriated for progressive uses, progressive terms can be appropriated for progressive aims. The terms that we use in the course of political movements which have been appropriated by the Right or for misogynist purposes are not, for that reason, strategically out of bounds. These terms are never finally and fully tethered to a single use. The task of reappropriation is to illustrate the vulnerability of these often compromised terms to an unexpected progressive possibility; such terms belong to no one in particular; they assume a life and a purpose that exceed the uses to which they have been consciously put. They are not to be seen as merely tainted goods, too bound up with the history of oppression, but neither are they to be regarded as having a pure meaning that might be distilled from their various usages in political contexts. The task, it seems, is to compel the terms of modernity to embrace those they have traditionally excluded, where the embrace does not work to domesticate and neutralize the newly avowed term; such terms should remain problematic for the existing notion of the polity, should expose the limits of its claim to universality, and compel a radical rethinking of its parameters. For a term to be made part of a polity that has been conventionally excluded is for it to emerge as a threat to the coherence of the polity, and for the polity to survive that threat without annihilating the term. The term would then open up a different temporality for the polity, establishing for that polity an unknown future, provoking anxiety in those who seek to patrol its conventional boundaries. If there can be a modernity without foundationalism, then it will be one in which the key terms of its operation are not fully secured in advance, one that assumes a futural form for politics that cannot be fully anticipated, a politics of hope and anxiety.

4) The last thing is trigger warnings. I'm not sure how effective these are. Usually when I see a trigger warning the image or text is literally right below it, and my eyes are drawn to it before I can even register that I've been warned. Either that or I just get too curious and scroll down even though I know the content will be triggering. I like to indicate how severe the trigger warning is and specifically what it's for because, as someone who has triggers, I don't like excluding myself from conversations unless I absolutely have to.

5) I think there may be some thin-shaming, which is uncool because a) ableism b) sexism. I'm planning to talk about this in more depth later. But while I don't think it's okay to shame people for being thin, I'm also really frustrated with the people who are acting like thin-shaming is the same as fat-shaming, because IT'S JUST NOT, OKAY?

So yeah! I have work to do—but like Mia McKenzie said in "No More Allies," being an ally should be exhausting, because oppressed groups are exhausted, too.

*******

UPDATE: I also apologize for any use of "the asterisk" i.e. trans*. Details on it here (tw:profanity), but, in short, nonbinary people are not a footnote. It has also been used for transmisogyny, presumably to classify trans women as "trans*" but not "trans". 

I HAVE REACHED MY JENNIFER LAWRENCE BODY POSITIVITY CLIP QUOTA

If I.
Have to see.
Another clip.
Of Jennifer Lawrence.
Telling me to love my body.
OH MY GOD.
MY FACE WILL MELT OFF I SWEAR I SWEAR OH MY GOD.

Image: A gif of Bill Cosby that starts out as just him shouting something enthusiastically, but is then edited to turn into a disturbing pixillated clip of his face melting into a swirly green ghosty shape. He appears to be in a courtroom or something—he's wearing a suit? It's a disconcerting combination of funny and scary.

I can be real with y'all, right? Let's be real. Jennifer Lawrence is a relatively thin, non-disabled white woman. And I'm pretty sure the reason why she's liberal America's sweetheart right now (I'm aware that saying "America" instead of "the U.S." is problematic—I only used it for the sake of referencing Upworthy's use of the expression) is because she puts a thin, non-disabled, white face on this watered-down commercialized-feminist version of body positivity wherein the media is like, "Love your body, unless [all the things]!" And then all of the Obama-voting white liberals of the world run around in little celebratory circles like "oppression is officially over!"

Seriously though, I net like Jennifer Lawrence, even though she's said some problematic things, because at least she's trying. She doesn't seem to be trying that hard though? Like, I've said problematic things, but I still think I try pretty hard not to—she's just rubbing her butt on sacred rock formations like it ain't no thang?

ANYWAYS. I net like JLaw. Kind of. Or at least I like her better than some of the other public figures we have representing thin, non-disabled white women. But can we get some more representation please? I want to hear a WoC tell me to love my body. I want to hear a gender nonconforming person tell me to love my body. I want to hear a disabled person tell me to love my body. And considering how prevalent fat-shame is in our society's body-negative ways, I want to hear a fat person tell me to love my body.

Why isn't Mindy Kaling "America's sweetheart"?

Image: Mindy Kaling, in a navy blue dress with a gold zipper up the front, a grey ribbon around the waist, and pocket-like detailing that intentionally and overtly makes her hips look wider and her waist look smaller. Her hair is over both shoulders, side-parted and tucked behind one ear. She's raising an eyebrow and smiling slightly, with both arms behind her back. She's lit from left to right, standing in front of a pink background. She looks sassy a'f.

I have no beef with JLaw (except for the things on YFIP), but the fact that she's been de facto elected as the voice on body positivity can be attributed probably entirely to her social position. I have beef with the fact that we choose to watch her on tv, and youtube, and repost her on social networks, and talk about her, more than we would someone who says the exact same things but has less privilege or privilege in different areas.

In short: If you've functionally obtained Hollywood model status, and you want to talk about body positivity, that's fine, but you need to acknowledge your privilege. I understand that JLaw is not as thin as most actresses, but she is by no means a "fat actress" or "considered obese" or any of that, and even if she were, she's still white and non-disabled (and all of the other stuff on the privilege laundry list).


P.S. Thanks to these people for helping me find a non-ableist term for someone without a disability. "Abled" and "able bodied" are not preferable—"enabled" or "non-disabled" are better. Or at least, until I hear otherwise from someone better educated than me, 'cause I'm not that well educated on ableism.