Disclaimers

1. 
   sueshep permalink

   May 2, 2010

   I’m really glad you wrote this post. As someone who came to this site unfamiliar with feminism and anti-racism, it took a while to check my privilege at the door. I’m still not sure I’ve done so completely, and I’m not sure I ever will be able to. But I’ve certainly learned a lot.

   Now, I say this in hindsight. When I came here, I thought I knew about a lot of these things – “Oh I know about feminists, like the weird people who get angry at guys for holding doors for them” and that sort of distorted view. I didn’t know that there was a whole conversation going on, just trying to get a handle on the very complicated everything that is racism and anti-racism, rape-permissive culture, feminism, the existence of cis and trans gender issues, sexism and abuse. And I thought I was *knowledgeable* on the topic. Good grief.

   Adoption looks like one of those extraordinarily complicated topics. And it’s good to be reminded of that, because it is really really easy to react with a knee jerk and say “Well, my experience was nothing like that! ARRGH FLAME” or, worse, “You’re evil for discussing this. We shouldn’t talk about this. It’s just going to make people feel uncomfortable,” as if shoving the pile under the bed will make it go away.

   … yeah. That was disorganised. Anyway, I’m glad you posted this.

   Like or Dislike: 3  1
2. 
   Liz permalink

   May 2, 2010

   “But if you read my adoption post and thought, “Well, that’s not true, because my experience was good,” I don’t give a shit and I don’t want to hear it. That is you coming in here and demanding that the conversation be made about you. I’m not going to argue your life experience with you; that’s a losing goddamn battle from the start, which is why it’s called a derailment tactic. But the fact that your experience was good has no relevance to a discussion about bad experiences, unless you have a deep and abiding need to make everybody agree with and focus on your experience. That’s some privileged shit. ”

   This bit is an absolutely fantastic way of explaining how privilege and derailment work, I’m saving it for future discussions with people!

   Like or Dislike: 3  0
3. 
   Kate permalink

   May 2, 2010

   I just thought now would be agood time to leave a generic ‘thankyou’. Thankyou for always being so articulate, for providing me new food for thought, in an organised way, and showing me new places I can follow those thought paths. And thanks for acknowledging that the world is messy and often horrible, and that pretending it isn’t doesn’t make it better, and acknowledging it doesn’t make it worse.

   I love coming here, even when I know I’m not going to like what I hear.

   Like or Dislike: 1  0
4. 
   Sheherezade permalink

   May 2, 2010

   I want to say first that this seems to me to be a post much more about privilege than it is about adoption, and in any case, I feel a little more qualified to talk about privilege than adoption, so that’s what my response is – I don’t mean to derail anything, and if I have done so, inadvertently, then I’m really sorry, and just ignore it.

   Having said that, and also taking it as read that you know the amount of respect that I have for you, as a personality and as a writer, I would just say that I really don’t like the word ‘privilege’; I find it deeply problematic. Maybe it’s just that I live and have been educated in the UK, where its usage seems to be much less common, whereas a lot of the sites I read and post on are American. It isn’t that we don’t recognise the concept, which is obviously a hugely important one. Rather, I think it tends to simplify something so enormously complicated down to the point where it can do two things which are very negative:

   1) act as a dismissal to people genuinely trying to engage with issues and problems of varying perspective, ie, in response to “wow, that experience is so different to mine; let’s talk about why”, one gets, “your privilege means that you won’t ever understand”. Which might be true, but doesn’t mean that one should stop trying, or be encouraged to stop trying.

   2) possibly more importantly, act as an excuse for people who don’t want to engage with these issues, ie, “I’m [insert privileged position], so I’ll never understand, so I shouldn’t bother to listen”

   I’m not for a second saying that every use of ‘privilege’ in that context does that – and certainly, I loved it when you said, “I’ve got privilege that can be used for good here”, which was fabulous, and something not commented on enough, ever. I just think that the more we use the word, the more glib it can sound, until eventually, there’s a real risk that we chalk every lack of communication down to privilege or no privilege and distance ourselves from it so far that we become disengaged. Blanket terms scare me because they are pretty much indefinable.

   And this opinion of mine on privilege is obviously a position that I can only adopt through privilege – the privilege of education, for one, which allows me to analyse words in a way that I couldn’t have done without it – but that’s in a sense my last point, which is that to talk about privilege is to be privileged. It’s a word born out of education and debate and engagement with important issues, none of which are of crucially immediate importance to the single mother with three kids who works twelve hours a day (bad example, but you see my point). So there’s an irony to the word itself that makes me uncomfortable.

   I can completely understand why, when talking about the concept in a general sense, as you do here, it’s important to have that blanket term. And this isn’t a criticism of using it in this way. It’s just that, if we’re talking about individual cases, to individual people, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better, instead of just saying, ‘privilege’, to try and isolate the individual problem of miscommunication and perspective.

   Like or Dislike: 1  0
5. 
   Harriet J permalink*

   May 2, 2010

   I get what you mean. To me, the way I process what you’re saying, it’s much like debates around the word “feminism.” Is that the appropriate word anymore? Does that word turn people off? But is the reason that word turns people off because it’s, you know, about feminism, and that’s actually what turns people off? If we change the word to something else to make it more palatable, isn’t that a capitulation? And won’t the new word become associated with feminism, and eventually become an inappropriate word? But if we don’t change the word, and people don’t learn about feminism because of the label, what use is the label? It’s just a word, after all — it’s not the movement. But words have power, after all — they make movements.

   I feel the same way about privilege. When I first discovered that word and the concept behind it, I was so happy, because suddenly I could describe and identify this whole group of seemingly unrelated actions and beliefs and well-intentioned fuck-ups that I had trouble articulating before. And suddenly there were essays and treatises and checklists and manifestos for dismantling this whole group of things that were finally under one umbrella. On the other hand, it’s now a word with some public saturation, so it’s becoming a sour word that everybody is sick of hearing. We could use a different word, but that’s somewhat of a capitulation to people who don’t want their privilege called out. If we call privilege “your sweet, sweet angelic face” instead, that’s again moving the conversation back to where the mainstream is comfortable, and could make the concept lose its teeth. But if we don’t sharpen, separate, specify, or otherwise newly define concepts and words related to privilege, we risk it falling into a big echo chamber, where people hear the word and stop listening because, “Oh, this again. I’m not going to be able to say anything right, so I may as well shut up.”

   I am generally of the opinion that if a concept is going to survive, it will consistently reinvent itself, no matter what the people most invested in the concept want or think or believe. The word “feminism” didn’t always exist, but the concept surely did. The word gave it an umbrella under which unrelated movements and people could find common ground, but that doesn’t mean the word will always exist. The concept will stay, and change, if the word as it’s currently defined loses salience for a cultural moment. I don’t know. To me, it’s like when people try to create memes. You can never predict with any accuracy which memes are suddenly going to become the meme that everybody knows; culture is a really fickle thing. So, I could decide I’m going to call privilege something else now, but unless the word privilege really needs a change, and unless I find the word that strikes a chord with our cultural landscape, it’s just going to be me calling privilege something obscure. Which is to say, I find all this really interesting, but I leave it up to more dedicated people to deal with fucking zeitgeists — it annoys my brain to work on this.

   That being said, I have always preferred the term “entitlement.” That’s a word that gets used a lot in recovery from abuse and recovery from addiction, and while it doesn’t capture the motivations or invisible processes that privilege does, I think it’s a better word to describe the actions of privilege. Especially because people who are privileged often don’t feel privileged — that’s the invisible process — and can be very underprivileged in certain ways. Addicts, for example, can be tremendously underprivileged, but they are burdened with an overwhelming, crippling sense of entitlement that they should have the things they want at any cost, and shouldn’t have to face the consequences of those actions. There are also plenty of abusers who are very underprivileged, but feel they’re entitled to terrify somebody into domestic and sexual slavery. Entitlement, to me, is a belief that you deserve a baseline that you aren’t willing to grant to others, and if achieving that baseline causes pain, inconvenience, or suffering to others, that’s none of your concern, because your needs outweigh theirs. Privilege, to me, is what can insulate a person from seeing the reality of other people’s baselines, so that entitlement can become an honestly ignorant process. As in, coming into a conversation that is not about you and trying to make it about you — and getting mad when you get shut down — is an act of extreme entitlement, because it’s demanding attention without consequence from people who have never indicated they think you’re worth attention. To me, privilege is the invisible luxury that insulates a person from observing that other people don’t act this way, it’s not an appropriate way to act, and there are natural consequences to acting that way (like getting called an asshole). But entitlement is what takes that ignorance born of isolation and turns it into the act of shitting on a conversation and then being all, “Come clean my shit up! I shouldn’t have to.”

   That being said, I agree that sometimes working on the individual problem can be helpful, but sometimes I think that’s a dodge. If you’ve grown up with other people as entitled and privileged as you are, and I try to tell you, “See, you’re doing X, and that’s really not appropriate here,” you can justifiably shoot back that of course you’re doing X, everybody does X, X is the normal thing to do. I can’t tell you why X isn’t normal or appropriate unless I have a conversation about groups and not individuals, unless I can talk to you about how the group you come from — which up till now you have known as normal — is not an isolated abnormality, and lives in a world that has no relation to the world I live in.

   There are things that are miscommunications, but there are things that are miscommunicated because privilege has stripped your brain of the words, concepts, or basic critical thinking skills required to communicate. It’s like, if you are from the privileged group that isn’t blind, and I am from the underprivileged group that is blind, and you are trying to explain to me the color blue, and I don’t understand what you’re saying. We’re miscommunicating, but we’re miscommunicating because you have privilege that gives you access to a world that I can never access or understand. It’s not a matter of using the right words so much as a matter of realizing that you don’t speak my language at all, and in some cases you never will. We may find some phrases in our different languages that are vaguely similar (such as when the only way some men can understand the fear of rape is by thinking about that time they thought they might have been robbed but weren’t but it was kind of scary anyway), but there are going to be parts of our language that will never be understood by the other, because privilege will always keep us from sharing our experiences fully.

   Like or Dislike: 2  0
6. 
   MomTFH permalink

   May 2, 2010

   Wowza. Love it.

   Sorry, I am about to go off.

   I forwarded your recent adoption post to a friend of mine. She is someone who had a relatively successful adoption, but is so in tune with the major flaws in the whole adoption industry. I am incredibly lucky to have learned about adoption on a deeper level, and been shown the issues of adoptive parent privilege and birth mother (and adoptee) silencing prevailing media and cultural dialogue. The barriers to being able to discover one’s genetic identity and familial history as an adoptee.

   I learned what I have learned by listening to the people in my life that are part of the adoption triad, and through my interaction with birth mothers (and adoptive parents, and adoptee infants) as a health care practitioner-to-be. I still feel like I need to tread lightly before I start bloviating on this subject.

   One of my pet peeves is when people stumble on to a very technical conversation that involves a layered understanding of privilege just to broach the specific topic, and starts crapping all over it. This happened on Alas A Blog when talking about research on maternal mortality and racism. If you can’t even acknowledge there has been good research on racism and its real effects on health care outcomes, then don’t come crapping on the conversation with a hypothetical “Well, has anyone ever looked into how CLASS plays into this? Hmmmm?” thinking you are coming up with a brilliant new angle that us researchers have NEVER thought of doing multifactorial analysis on, and if you don’t even know what the word “confounder” means and you didn’t even read the article you are bloviating about, I am not interested in having a conversation with you, and I may sound sarcastic when I call you out.

   You’re completely right that there is a learning curve to this, and this is not a 101 site. You cannot get into a deep discussion about these topics if you have to put up with derails. It has happened on my site. I am not going to stop a discussion about the intricacies of health care reform because one commenter is spouting off Glenn Beck quotes at me about how taxation is like stealing from your neighbor. I am not going to stop a discussion about pregnancy or breastfeeding because one commenter is saying their experience is more important than the real barriers and layers of privileged fucked up ness and loss of autonomy surrounding that whole experience for millions of people.

   There is a conversation going on in the genfemblogosphere about taking a stand on the importance of what you are writing about, and having high standards, and not taking any shit from people who want to say you’re not authoritative on what you really are pretty authoritative on, in your own space, to boot.

   There’s nothing wrong with having high standards for the conversation you are hosting.

   Like or Dislike: 4  0
7. 
   Kathleen Thornberry permalink

   May 2, 2010

   WOW Harriet, I think your fleshing out of the terms “entitlement” and “privilege” is worthy of it’s own…BOOK DEAL! Or if not that, post.

   THe part about the entitlement of addicts was totally mindblowing to me! I have been struggling with trying to understand the addicts in my life (blood relatives, and some friends) and really had come to a point where I was seriously wondering, “Are they just SOCIOPATHS?” (In some cases, yes, btw). Your description of entitlement really was helpful.

   Mulling this over further: the women I know who are addicts, are all recovered. The men I know who are addicts, are not. I wonder just how much the ENTITLEMENT of being MALE (and therefore justifiably more important than some other people, the female ones) plays into NOT recovering? Because it just feels so natural to be entitled, that it isn’t questioned?

   Like or Dislike: 0  0
8. 
   Harriet J permalink*

   May 2, 2010

   Somewhat related: One of the criticisms of AA and related 12-step groups, from a feminist view, is the insistence on submission to a higher authority and giving up your will. Which is something I totally get in the context of recovery — stop trying to control everything and learn to deal with consequences, that’s good sauce — but since the 12-steps were created by a man, there’s a critique that it’s really reflecting a male perspective. As in, it may be a much bigger and revelatory deal for a man to learn to give up control and power and the force of his will to a great authority, whereas women may have been doing that shit their whole lives already. It may not be a spiritual, mind-bending experience for them, and leave them sort of in the cold among a group of men who are all, “My god! I just discovered what not being bossy and arrogant and catered to all the time is like! Have you tried this? It’s amazing!” Women in 12-step recovery may need to learn how to assert their will before they can learn what it’s like to release it — you can’t let go of something you never had.

   Like or Dislike: 4  0
9. 
   verybod permalink

   May 3, 2010

   Re: privilege and entitlement

   I find the word ‘entitlement’ very useful too.

   Often, when I’ve met someone who dislikes me, I have previously seen that interaction in terms of my privilege. That person, who lacks the privileges I have ‘has issues’ with what I am (white, middle class, from the industrialised North), and I have thought it a shame that ‘the chip on their shoulder’ has prevented them from seeing through my privilege to what a lovely marvellous person I am.

   Only very recently, as I have learnt more about privilege and entitlement have I realised that the issue was more likely who I was than what I was. My sense of entitlement meant I took up space, dominated, demanded and expected stuff to go my way, and was a fair enough reason to dislike me. Actually, maybe that should all be in the present tense.

   Anyway, privilege is something that we can be more aware of, and that awareness can massively help our actions and our sense of entitlement. But it is complicated how much control we have over it. Some of my privileges I can give up: I could give up my financial resources and my secure housing. But I can’t give up my family’s resources, my whiteness, class etc. The one privilege I am trying to work most on leaving behind is the one where I don’t have to notice, be constantly wound up at, and act against, the oppression that is all around me all the time.

   So in general, I get it when people get defensive when their privilege is called out, because they have this “It’s not like I can help it! I was born this way!” reaction.

   My sense of entitlement is something I totally have the power to change. I grew up with the privilege of a particularly loving and praising family which left me with an unusual quantity of self-esteem. When I read Harriet’s point,

   “Entitlement, to me, is a belief that you deserve a baseline that you aren’t willing to grant to others, and if achieving that baseline causes pain, inconvenience, or suffering to others, that’s none of your concern, because your needs outweigh theirs.”

   I immediately thought, “That’s not true. Just because I believe I deserve stuff doesn’t mean I don’t believe others do too.” And then I remembered how I have behaved in the past that completely confirms Harriet’s words, and that my entitlement is based in the context that society has socialised me to believe I am worth more than other people.

   And I think again about how amazing it is that I haven’t noticed more people disliking me.

   Like or Dislike: 2  0
10. 
    Kathleen Thornberry permalink

    May 3, 2010

    Thank you Harriet! I am mulling over what you have written; it seems to me to be completely and perfectly true; in fact I am surprised that AA works for women at all!

    Interestingly, the people I know (anecdote not data, obviously) who have used AA to recover are: women and gay men. People I know who have used AA to recover and backslide and recover and backslide like a goddamn dunking stool: straight men. So it seems that maybe for some people, having the life experience of NOT feeling more important than everyone else already, might put one ahead of the game.

    Of the straight men I know: it seems to me that at first they are all “Oh it is so AMAZING to not be the center of the universe, what a different perspective this is, OH I AM SO SPIRITUAL NOW” and then, after a while, the novelty wears off, and it’s back to the comfortable perspective of being the hub of the universe. HA HA in one case, I swear its more like, “Why do people have to be mad at me about my lying and deceiving? I hate being in trouble all the time! Why can’t they just accept that this is what I do? I should be loved and valued in spite of the fact that I spend every penny I earn and any money off THEIRS I can get my hands on on drugs!”

    It boggles the mind.

    Verybod: I feel ya. Your delineation that, one can often NOT change much of one’s privilege, but one CAN change one’s sense of entitlement, is WAY HELPFUL!!! It is true: I can’t change my whiteness or my educatedness or my able-bodied-ness or cisgenderedness or my intelligence etc etc, but I CAN change my sense of self-importance and also ha ha my baseline belief that, if people would just do what I say, everything would be fixed! HA HA HA

    I think that probably a lot of people don’t understand the concept of “being called out” on one’s privilege, for the reason that they can’t CHANGE it. So they experience “being called out” as “silencing”, when really, what is called for is to just quit insisting on primacy.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
11. 
    Azumi permalink

    May 3, 2010

    I just wanted to say that the invention of words, those ‘fabrications’ hit home really clearly for me. That has happened to me before when I have engaged in a discourse- it will probably continue to although I grow more adept at deal with people and trying to judge- (does this mean more to me? Does it mean enough to me to endure what I know in all probability will be anger, hatred, and a lot of vicious reactions in order to talk about something I see that’s wrong)
    But anyways, I didn’t really know what to call that weird mixture of skeptical/furious reactions, or something that is not particularly shocking but was shocking to me, the continued imaginary things that I did not say when talking about rape and women.
    So thanks. I think I understand more now how that didn’t just happen to me.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
12. 
    PG permalink

    May 3, 2010

    I agree that derailment is a constant problem on blogs. I’ve been guilty of a few derails myself when I see some bit of the post that interests me more than the main focus (generally because I already agree with the main point, whereas I’m unsure or underinformed about the bit), and comment with just a question about the bit, that then takes the focus off the main point.

    As this post states, one can easily be oblivious to one’s own privilege on the subject of adoption. One can have privilege not only by lack of experience with adoption, but also by having had a good experience. I think in that respect it’s difficult to compare to rape. One can say unambiguously that rape is always bad. It is a violent crime that’s pretty universally agreed should be punished. (The trolls come out in greatest force on the question of what constitutes rape, as they often believe anything other than Miss Scarlett getting pulled from her buggy by a bunch of darkies is merely a “misunderstanding” and not actual rape.) Some people may have a worse rape experience than others, but pretty much by definition you can’t have a good experience of rape any more than you can have a good experience of other forms of assault.

    In contrast, the original post made clear that adoption is not always bad; that given the right set of circumstances and people, it can be the best outcome of what began as a bad situation (a woman pregnant with or having custody of a child that she cannot raise, doesn’t want to raise, or has been deemed by others — in violation of her own views — to be incapable of raising; or a child who has been orphaned). Adoption can also make the initial situation even worse, much as medical and legal authorities’ indifference to or abuse of rape survivors can make the bad situation worse.

    So I don’t think adoption is properly analogous to rape; it seems to me closer to rape prosecution, the process that supposedly will “fix” what happened in the rape but in reality generally serves the interests of everyone except the rape survivor. You can have the world’s best rape prosecution — the survivor is believed, the assailant is caught, the survivor isn’t slut-shamed, her confidentiality is maintained, the assailant is convicted — and nothing about it will actually restore the survivor to where she was before the rape happened. And bad prosecution efforts can be so bad that survivors will refuse to report, or will refuse to participate in prosecution, because it will make their lives worse instead of better.

    The original post seems to be saying that adoption is a process to ameliorate an original bad situation into one that hopefully will be better, but can’t be assumed to be better, and regardless is never the ideal.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
13. 
    Mei Ling permalink

    May 3, 2010

    [The original post seems to be saying that adoption is a process to ameliorate an original bad situation into one that hopefully will be better, but can’t be assumed to be better, and regardless is never the ideal.]

    I’ve also noticed the mindset of “Well obviously adoption exists because the ideal *wasn’t* possible, but here we are now, so everything should hopefully be better!” and to those who further analyze this line of thinking and point out the flaws with it are generally shot down, dismissed and/or silenced…

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
14. 
    Kit permalink

    May 3, 2010

    Harriet. I knew that you were deeply thoughtful and I enjoyed your site. Now I really know it. I’m adopted and I would probably be considered a good adoption but it’s so complex and so deep that I’m glad that people are talking about it. I appreciate your guidelines so much. I have a core group of people that I’ve connected with that are other adoptees that are some of the only people that I can completely let it all out. I have one person who was adopted by millionaires and married rich who campaigns against & contributes huge sums of money to limit choice. I can’t stand her and I’ve told her that we’re yin and yang and can’t be near each other. She thinks it’s cute and she tolerates my liberal ways so it’s fine. No. Just no.

    Per your other post about making people reconsider adoption. That is good. Take a long hard look at the realities of it. We’re not baby dolls who stay cute and pliable forever. We rebel and we’re scared because no bond is sacred and we know that at our core even as children.

    Let’s talk about it as feminists and sort it out together. Honestly, pulling this stuff out it in the open is what I need personally. I don’t care who it makes uncomfortable. I say that but I’ve been silenced and shamed and guilted and scared my whole damn life. Adoptive parents and our culture silence us but you can’t make us love you and I’ll never, never be grateful. Don’t even think of hoping for grateful.

    Like or Dislike: 1  0
15. 
    Harriet J permalink*

    May 3, 2010

    @PG: I used the rape analogy because the derailment that was going on looked suspiciously familiar when I compared it to the quality of derailments on my rape threads. I wasn’t trying to make a one-to-one analogy, that rape is like adoption, so much as I was trying to make a “derailments are derailments, no matter where they happen or for what reason” argument. It’s just easier to recognize a derailment for what it is on a subject that is comparitively more morally clear, like rape.

    I didn’t delve too deep into it because I didn’t want to derail further, but having run a blog that discusses rape, you would be surprised at how many people (whose comments don’t ever show up) come in here to defend rape as a good thing. You know, because it taught those stupid sluts a lesson, and rape wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t needed to keep people in line and perpetuate the species, so I think it really serves an altruistic purpose and blah blah blah. Victims aren’t immune from that, either, and I’ve deleted plenty of their comments, too, ranging from the troll-like “bitches deserve rape” to the heartbreaking “well, I was raped, and it taught me to stop being such a passive stupid woman, so I’m glad it happened and I think more women could get something out of it if they stopped being victims.” But, I thought that would turn into an off-the-walls hair-raising debacle, so I didn’t try to make it a topic comparison so much as a derailment comparison.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
16. 
    Mei Ling permalink

    May 4, 2010

    “You know, because it taught those stupid sluts a lesson, and rape wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t needed to keep people in line and perpetuate the species…”

    You’ve seen this? Seriously?

    This is just unfathomable.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
17. 
    Sherm permalink

    May 4, 2010

    I agree with your message, but you could have said all that with less then half the wordage, you repeated yourself repeatedly. I know this is going to come off as a swipe, but your posts really are getting longer without any extra meat in them. It’s like someone told you you have to write 3000 words, but you only had 800 and the rest is padding.

    I’m very interested in what you have to say on this topic, but half way through I was skimming paragraphs.

    Like or Dislike: 0  2
18. 
    Guest permalink

    May 4, 2010

    If you had asked me fifteen years ago about being adopted (I’m an adoptee), I would have said it was all good, nothing bad, nope never any bad at all and don’t even try to imply that I don’t mean that completely.

    But it’s fifteen years later, now. At the end of my twenties, I met my birth father, then my birth mother a year later. I’d had moderate cyclical depression before then, but my early 30s were the biggest, blackest, bleakest depression ever. I’m still crawling out of it.

    I learned some details about my birth: my teen biomom tried to keep me at first, but finally caved to pressure to put me up for adoption at two months. At three months, my birth family took me home. I have no idea what happened during the intervening month, but I suspect it’s a good part of why I simply cannot connect with anyone at a level deeper than friendship. (All sex, no matter how consensual, feels like violation. I was so tuned out of how my body felt that I didn’t realise this wasn’t normal.)

    My adoptive family was well-intentioned, but privileged and clueless. My mother did her level best to ensure I would grow up “right”: toward the blandly-pretty cheerleader type and away from the artistic free-spirit type (like biomom) she saw me headed toward. In other words, every instinct and preference I had was wrong, plain and simple. Every complication had to be wallpapered over with the right things to do and say and *feel*.

    After the atomic explosion of reunion with biomom (whom I visit once a year or so), I’m putting the pieces back together a bit at a time. Owning myself, completely and consciously, is the point I’m headed for. It might, like the West or East Pole, never be reached, but that’s okay. At least I can make out the path now.

    Like or Dislike: 1  0
19. 
    sueshep permalink

    May 4, 2010

    @ Sherm: Looking at the topic sentences of each paragraph, it looks to me like Harriet J couldn’t have easily cut much. I mean, maybe she could have cut 10% off, in the same way that most writers benefit from having their paper trimmed around the edges to make their prose crisper. But each paragraph was necessary to get her point across, and given the subject matter, erring on the side of additional details for the sake of clarity seems entirely reasonable.

    I think she’s venturing into territory that is even less familiar to the average reader (for example, sueshep) and so is setting up more guidelines and explaining her thinking along the way. It’s certainly true that people have different attention spans and that reading on a computer screen can be really difficult for some people – it’s not usually noticeable for short articles, but longer ones like this post can be hard on the eyes – but I’m glad this post takes the time to explain things thoroughly.

    Like or Dislike: 1  0
20. 
    Harriet J permalink*

    May 4, 2010

    @Mei Ling: You’d think it’s unfathomable — like only complete horrifying monsters would say this stuff — until you’re like “LET’S TALK ABOUT RAPE” in public, and BOOM, people you once thought were perfectly reasonable are all, “But isn’t it part of human nature? I think you’re being too harsh.”

    I don’t publish those comments, even from survivors who I normally privilege here, but Marcella over at Abyss2Hope routinely publishes and analyzes the comments she gets, for anybody who’s interested.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
21. 
    Harriet J permalink*

    May 4, 2010

    : If you don’t like how I write, GTFO. There are many other blogs you can dump your whiny plea for attention on. I don’t truck with it here.

    Here, I’ll help you. Banned.

    To anybody who thinks that shit was harsh: you can GTFO, too. This is how things roll here. Deal.

    Like or Dislike: 2  0
22. 
    Mei Ling permalink

    May 4, 2010

    “And yes, I am going to go that one step farther and say that if you have had a good experience in adoption, that by itself means you are sporting some serious privileges.”

    What if an adoptee comes on and said they had a good adoption experience but that the circumstances leading to their adoption were horrible?

    Does that mean they still have privilege?

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
23. 
    Kit permalink

    May 4, 2010

    Mei Ling, I think it does speak to the privilege or more likely naivete about things. I could live the life of a pampered pet and talk about my experience but that doesn’t mean that most adoptions are good. There are ‘good adoption experiences’ out there but the trauma to the people involved means that it can never be an optimal experience.

    Guest, I fell into a major depression after I met my biomom as well. It was an accumulation of sorrow and completing a circle of some sort for me. I never wanted my birth mother to have kept me or take me on now. I wanted to let her know that I was all right and she should let go of any guilt or whatever that she was carrying. It didn’t help that I cracked up right after meeting her but I didn’t plan it. The only thing that I’ve ever wished was that she had the ability to choose to abort me so that it didn’t play out this way.

    Hedgehog, Please, Please forgive yourself for not raising your child when you weren’t ready. It destroys you without building onto your foundation. We all do the best that we can everyday and that’s what you’ve done.

    Harriet, Love you

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
24. 
    PG permalink

    May 4, 2010

    Mei Ling,

    My guess is that if adoption privilege is like other forms of privilege, it’s not an on-off switch where you have it or don’t; it’s more like a gradation where you can have different amounts of it based on a variety of circumstances. From what I understand about your adoption, you may have less privilege than someone who had a good adoption experience and was adopted in circumstances that made the adoption objectively necessary (e.g. death of birthparents, rather than birthparents’ lack of economic/social support) by people who shared your birth culture. But you may have more privilege than someone who went into the system at an age/race/health condition that rendered them “unadoptable” and had to go through a series of abusive foster homes until old enough to emancipate.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
25. 
    Mei Ling permalink

    May 4, 2010

    @PG: You know about my personal case?

    As to the rest of your comment, that makes more sense. Thanks.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
26. 
    Coco permalink

    May 4, 2010

    One thing you wrote has stuck with me for pretty much ever, Harriet, and I often privately apply it to adoption although you wrote it about rape. To paraphrase, it was about rape existing on a continuum, as part of a spectrum of generally accepted behavior, not some special sphere where everything was suddenly all different.

    Adoption, to me, is very similar in that the awful, broken parts of adoption aren’t some shocking, horrible set of circumstances that only happen in a blue moon. Our society is conditioned to view and frame adoption as wonderful, win-win-win, and to consistently rationalize away the things that are wrong. It is a set of behaviors that is deeply ingrained.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
27. 
    Harriet J permalink*

    May 4, 2010

    @Mei Ling:

    I think so, yes. For two reasons:

    1. Having a good experience means you have a place in the public narrative. You’re in the center, the mainstream. You can talk about your adoption without the world around you clutching their pearls and calling you a troublemaker. That doesn’t mean that a person with a good experience has to discuss the good parts, or that they necessarily have to use that privilege — I would say you are a good example of that, since (according to what I’ve seen of your blog) you had a wonderful experience with your adoptive parents, but have chosen to say things about adoption that cause you to lose that privilege of being in the mainstream. For somebody with a bad experience, mentioning even the basic details of their childhood puts their voice on the marginalized edge. It’s a huge privilege to be able to (whether or not you choose to) discuss your childhood in public without being attacked, degraded, or dismissed.

    2. An adoptee can have awesome, loving, wonderful, nigh-perfect adoptive parents and still have a bad adoption experience, because “take them home and love them!” has never been an adequate solution, even if the love is perfect. The people I have known who have had the worst adoption experiences have been poor disabled PoC. Services aren’t made for them. If there are services for them, they’re barred due to their class or due to racial steering. More people make ugly assumptions about their family. I have known many families who raise their children in wonderful, loving ways, but must fight tooth and nail with the school to get services, must fight tooth and nail with the state to get subsidies, must fight tooth and nail to find and afford appropriately trained doctors or therapists. Many adoptive families put up with that shit, but families with some visible privilege are going to be able to avoid some of it or have those blows softened. Families who can afford an international adoption can likely afford many services that others can’t. Families with money can send their children to schools with adequately trained staff. White men who take their transracially adopted children out in public are angels; white women who take their transracially adopted children out in public are whores who had interracial sex!!1!! Privilege can mediate and soften a lot of the ethical fuck-ups of adoption, making the life of the child insulated by that privilege a lot smoother. Not everybody who’s had a good experience of adoption necessarily came from a privileged background, but I think it’s very likely that those good experiences may not have been so good if invisible privilege hadn’t been cushioning them.

    That’s why I said, “This isn’t a meritocracy.” People can try their damned hardest to make everything good, and they can deserve to have everything be good for them, but the playing field isn’t level. It’s easier for some people to have good and pleasant experiences than others, because some people aren’t allowed to leave their houses without being reminded that they are fat/black/poor/female/uncitizens/targets of violence, and some people aren’t given the time, space, or resources to ever have that shit let up.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
28. 
    Mei Ling permalink

    May 4, 2010

    “That doesn’t mean that a person with a good experience has to discuss the good parts, or that they necessarily have to use that privilege ”

    And this is precisely what baffles so many people. I’ve seen a lot of comments which go along the lines of “Bwuh? You said your adoptive parents are awesome, but you still wish you could have been raised in that culture.” Cue the head scratching. And then finally, they conclude with “Well I guess your adoptive parents weren’t *that* great. Either *somebody* screwed up, or you’re just an ungrateful, spoiled brat who feels she is entitled the world.”

    “but have chosen to say things about adoption that cause you to lose that privilege of being in the mainstream”

    Yes, I’ve found that if I call my adoption experience a good thing, then people don’t consider it necessary to listen to the bad aspects associated with it, or just figure that the bad aspects don’t matter because the good compensates for everything, OR… that I’m just being ungrateful by not acknowledging the good aspects *enough.*

    “For somebody with a bad experience, mentioning even the basic details of their childhood puts their voice on the marginalized edge. ”

    This happens SO much, especially on the adoption section at Yahoo Answers. This happened to a fellow Korean adoptee girl4708 who blogs about her repatriation in Korea – she was adopted to be both physically and emotionally abused, but when people read her blog they believe her opinion is a result of the abuse and NOT of adoption in itself. So that then allows them to brush aside her voice because, as we all know, someone will inevitably say “WELL NOT ALL ADOPTIONS END UP ABUSIVE.”

    But girl4708 doesn’t focus on that. She focuses on the ethics of separation of family and how society perceives the mother & child bond in adoption itself.

    And then you have folks who throw the “Well would you rather xyz have been left in an abusive family?!”

    *sigh*

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
29. 
    anonymouse permalink

    May 5, 2010

    The privilege versus entitlement discussion was very helpful. I’d summarize it as privilege being about how others act toward you: privilege is something you’re given whether you like it or not. Entitlement, on the other hand, is about how you act toward others, often in relation to your privilege. For an example of entitlement, anonymous commenters on the internet who feel like bloggers owe them something and feel entitled to trash-talk when they don’t get it.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
30. 
    Mei Ling permalink

    May 5, 2010

    Hey, anonymouse! Cute alias

    “privilege is something you’re given whether you like it or not”

    This is very, very prevalent in adoption. Oftentimes, if adoptees have the *nerve* to talk about the negatives, they are shot down with the “be grateful you weren’t left in the orphanage/streets!” and then the adoptees are expected to act as though the privilege through adoption was something they had to “earn” ON the basis of their adoption.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
31. 
    SomeGuy permalink

    May 6, 2010

    I’m just some guy who reads this blog.

    To be honest I don’t really know much about pretty much anything you talk about. Maybe that’s why I read it; it’s stuff I probably wouldn’t think about otherwise.

    Anywho…You use the term “privilege” a lot, and I can pick up most of what you are talking about from context….but it seems to have a very specific meaning in the context you are always using it and I’m not sure what it is and am worried I might be missing out.

    I see some discussion about it in the comments at times, but I’m still worried that I don’t fully understand the concept.

    The problem is with a short generic term like that there is a lot of signal noise on google et al and I could never be sure if the definition I found was the same as the way you intend it …so if you could explain the concept I would greatly appreciate it.

    That’s not the only term I find myself scratching my head at on your blog, maybe it would benefit from a glossary?

    I humbly request some education….

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
32. 
    Harriet J permalink*

    May 6, 2010

    Here’s a good start on privilege in general. You’ll find — here and in other spaces — more specified uses of the term, such as “male privilege,” “white privilege,” “heterosexual privilege,” “cis privilege,” “class privilege,” etc. Googling those will give you better hits than just “privilege,” and will give you a some more examples of what privilege means in different contexts. In the context of this post, I was talking about the privilege of having a good adoption experience. Adoption hasn’t really been a focus of feminism, and members of the adoption triad are just really starting to claw a foothold in the mainstream and demand that adoption be critically examined, so “happy adoption privilege” isn’t really a concept that’s out there a lot and isn’t the easiest place to start looking at “privilege” in general. But once you’ve done some reading up on privilege, it’ll maybe be easier to see how much privilege benefits the ability to adopt or be adopted, and how privilege can cushion the experience (and silence other experiences) overall.

    For the more feminist concepts that get discussed on the rest of this blog, you’re in luck — somebody actually went and created a Feminism 101 blog.

    Thanks for the suggestion, but I won’t be starting a glossary. This isn’t a 101 site, and conversation easily slows to a glacial crawl when I try to make it 101. There are other resources out there that are 101 or will accept 101 questions. Sometimes I am willing or able to field questions like yours, and sometimes not.

    You haven’t asked, but because it sounds like you’re pretty new to this stuf and about to dive in, I’m going to give you a little advice.

    Say one day you go to work and you really have a bad migraine. You just want to do your work and go home as soon as possible. You send out an email to all your coworkers telling them you have a bad migraine, you don’t want to talk, and if they could just leave you be for today that’d be much appreciated.

    Nobody reads their email. Instead, every few minutes, some coworker comes by your office and starts chatting with you. You hold your head and shoot daggers with your eyes. They say, “Boy, you don’t look so good!” “Yes, I have a migraine. I sent an email.” “I didn’t read it. Hey, you know what always works for me when I have a migraine?” “Really, I’d like to get my work done.” “Well, you can’t work with a migraine!” Somebody else walks by. “Who has a migraine?” “Oh, Harriet has a migraine.” “Oh, wow, your head must really be hurting, huh?” Another coworker walks by. “Hey! Didn’t you guys read her email?” Addressing you, “How are you feeling? God, you look terrible.” Another coworker comes by. “How’s that migraine treating you?” Finally, you snap at them to leave you the fuck alone. They wander off, and a few minutes later, some new coworker comes by to say, “Are you okay? I heard you were really upste about something! You feeling all right? God, you look angry. Maybe you should count to ten.”

    This is what it’s like to deal with 101 questions all the time. The resources are out there — people are capable of educating themselves — but they instead keep interrupting you with obnoxious questions while you are trying to get some shit done. And when you’re dealing with oppression ‘n shit, the metaphorical “migraine” comes about because maybe you had your goddamn fill of obnoxious questions already. Maybe today you got groped on the bus and aren’t in the pleasant state of mind required to patiently explain to somebody why rape isn’t women’s fault. Maybe today you saw on the news that some state functionally made “existing while brown” an actual crime, and your hackles are up from having to listen to, “Well, if they didn’t want to be arrested, they should go back to their brown countries!” on the news and street all day. So, ugliness happens in the world, you get a migraine, ignorant and often well-intentioned people get obnoxious at you, and If you finally burst and tell them to fuck off, they don’t, but now they are interrupting you with obnoxious questions about what’s wrong with you that you’d tell somebody to fuck off. And if you didn’t feel like explaining to them why their questions were obnoxious, you damn sure don’t feel like explaining to them why you’d be so angry that you’d tell somebody to fuck off.

    I’m not telling you this because it’s what you did. You left a respectful question, and I’m not having a feminism migraine today, so you got an answer. But, since it sounds like you’re just starting out here, I’m preparing you for what you are definitely going to encounter at some point, because you are going to make mistakes. One of the privileges you have in this world is that you have gone through your life without hearing about or having to understand the concept of privilege. You are asking people who don’t have that privilege to drop everything and educate you, which is another way of asking underprivileged people to priortize you, which can be a really obnoxious thing. Eventually (if you’re not in a space that’s designated itself as 101) you’re going to encounter somebody with a migraine, and they are going to snap at you, and I advise you resist the desire to snap back, because they are educating you as surely as a glossary could, and are educating you about things you would never think to ask about but you do need to know, such as “In what ways am I an intolerable, ignorant asshole sometimes? In what ways do I actively damage the people around me?”

    You can also mediate the snapping by doing what you did here. If you had just asked me, “What’s privilege?” I would have told you this isn’t a 101 space, go google it. But you indicated that you’ve made an attempt and weren’t able to figure the rest out on your own. Whenever you ask a question in a non-101 space, try to make it clear that you’ve done your homework already. As in, “I read about cis privilege, and I understand the concept and can see it in things like discrimination laws that don’t cover trans people. But I’m having trouble understanding how it applies in day-to-day life. Could somebody give me a few examples?”

    Like or Dislike: 3  0
33. 
    Mei Ling permalink

    May 6, 2010

    “So, ugliness happens in the world, you get a migraine, ignorant and often well-intentioned people get obnoxious at you, and If you finally burst and tell them to fuck off, they don’t, but now they are interrupting you with obnoxious questions about what’s wrong with you that you’d tell somebody to fuck off.”

    In adopto-land, it’s very, very difficult to go into a round of 101. On the loss side, that is…

    And your response (Harriet) made me laugh. I love your style.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
34. 
    Graphite permalink

    May 7, 2010

    Harriet, that response on why 101 questions can be frustrating is just golden. If it’s convenient, would you consider making it a separate post? Would love to be able to link people to it.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
35. 
    Jennifer permalink

    May 7, 2010

    @ Graphite: You can link directly to comments if you want. Click on the little grey link that says “Permalink” at the top of the comment – you should then be “put” on the page exactly at the start of the comment (though you can still go up & down from there), and the address appearing in your browser’s address bar should be the address of exactly that point, which you can give to other people or put in HTML or whatever.

    For Harriet’s one just there about privilege it’s
    https://fugitivus.net/2010/05/01/disclaimers/#comment-3213

    though on the other hand I also agree that it was fully worthy of being a post in itself

    Like or Dislike: 1  0
36. 
    DW permalink

    May 8, 2010

    Thank you for reminding me that when *I* disagree with a concept of privilege, it is probably because I forgot to examine mine. I totally get the, “HEY! I’m an ally and I don’t act like that!” thereby becoming THAT egocentric person. It happened to me when I read some of the adoption stuff on Shakesville and now I understand why. Adoption is a fucked up industry – we have been trying to adopt for 2+ years and I think I have been broken by the system. I also totally appreciate the perspective of white dude with transracial child=angelic, selfless saint and white mom with transracial child=SLUT who fucked non white guy! What a fucked up clusterfuck that is.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
37. 
    Graphite permalink

    May 8, 2010

    Thanks, Jennifer!

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
38. 
    Dawn on MDI permalink

    May 8, 2010

    Harriet, thank you.

    I am an adult adoptee. I was adopted by my birth father back when such things were pretty unheard of. My parents were not married. My birth mother had less resources – education, money, connections – and more stresses (five other children by two other men) than my birth father’s family, and so I came to live with them. Parts of my childhood were really great and parts of my childhood sucked. I don’t think that was different from any of my peers. What was different was how I felt about myself. I was told when I was young “your mother loved you sooooooo much that she gave you up so that you could be loved by us.” What a load of crap. I knew, even at four or five years old, that someone had chosen me, yes, but that happened only because someone else had first said “no thanks.” Other adoptees I have spoken with describe this as a never healing hole in the soul. A place that cannot be filled. Original rejection, perhaps. It was nice to see that recognized here.

    There is another story in the news lately that brings up issues of adoptions and kids and parents and things that simply cannot be overcome. Here in Maine, I knew a couple who were by far about the most functional people I have ever met. Highly educated. One worked in adoption services and social services and community action programs, the other was (is) a professor of science at a university. They adopted three children. One was a closed adoption of a healthy white infant, one was an open adoption of a mixed-race child, and one was an international adoption of a toddler from Haiti (this was back in the 1990s). The first two adoptions went well. Kids have issues, as all kids do, but these parents were better equipped to handle them than any others I have known. Great parenting skills, good connection to resources, all of it.

    But the little boy from Haiti presented a new set of problems. Because he was raised in an orphanage for the first 18 months of his life, he never bonded with one adult. There were nuns running the orphanage, and they did their best, but no child got enough attention in that situation, and failure to bond does funky things to the brain chemistry and subsequent behavior of a child as he grows. As their child grew, he exhibited symptoms that were diagnosed as “oppositional defiant disorder.” He was charming and manipulative and prone to violent outbursts during which he broke up the furniture in his room and sometimes in other parts of the house. Nothing they did seemed to help. Their health suffered. The stress was extreme. Eventually, after doctors threatened to hospitalize the mom for her skyrocketing blood pressure, they placed the little boy (he was 10, then I think) with a temporary family to try to see if there was a way to make his adoption placement work. They did all they could. The temporary family had very different values than the adoptive family, and eventually, the little boy was placed with and adopted by a new family.

    The community of friends and church members and others who felt justified in judging and making unkind comments during that time was horrific. I have never met two more functional, healthy, child-centered people in my life. They endured enormous self-blame for what they felt was a failure to be able to parent their child, self-blame for the stress and grief they caused their other children in that effort, and then to have others –who had NEVER lived with the child in question — blame them? Well, that was beyond the pale.

    The little boy settled into his new family, where he seemed to do well. He grew up, graduated high school and is now on trial for his part in a home invasion/robbery/machete attack. I recognized his name in the newspaper account of his arrest, and then I recognized his photograph. It is the adult version of the little boy that my ex and I babysat for a weekend while his parents were away at a wedding. He was difficult to handle then, even knowing what I did about his behavior and issues, and I was glad when his parents returned home.

    That neighbors felt they had any business judging that family for doing what they had to do shocked and nauseated me. Anybody who has not participated in an adoption situation has NO business telling anyone who’s in one what to do or how to do it.

    Thanks for bringing this up, and for providing me the space to share.

    Like or Dislike: 2  0
39. 
    wiggles permalink

    May 8, 2010

    “I mean, what are you, the funny police, and by the way George Carlin made a joke once so NOW I DON’T NEED CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS.”

    I remember that. He argued that rape can be funny, then he made a rape joke that wasn’t remotely funny.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
40. 
    Karen permalink

    May 8, 2010

    Adoptive mom here. I’m glad to have stumbled upon your blog because I love reading well-thought-out blog posts. We have a “good adoption experience” so far, as my daughter is still a toddler. And we have a wide open adoption, so I hope it will continue to be a good experience for all of us. But there is something that has happened to me since we adopted that I didn’t expect in a million years…the sadness. Whenever I think about my daughter’s first parents, or when we get together with them, I feel the tragedy that began our adoption experience. They are wonderful people with really crappy life circumstances and my husband and I are wonderful people with loads of privileged life circumstances. It’s hard to talk about with other people because unless they have experienced this they don’t understand it, but my husband and I feel angst about adoption now. It’s very confusing. Anyhow, your section in the original post about adoption saying that every adoption is the result of the destruction of a family…I couldn’t agree more. I’m happy to have an open adoption so that we can preserve those family ties to some extent, but it is only a bandaid for the underlying problems with adoption. It would be so much *easier* emotionally to have a closed adoption because then I could fantasize that my daughter’s birthparents were scumbags who didn’t want her. The truth sucks. My point is that even for those of us with “good adoption experiences” adoption is still f***ed up.

    Like or Dislike: 1  0
41. 
    sfHeath permalink

    May 9, 2010

    @ anonymouse:

    The privilege versus entitlement discussion was very helpful. I’d summarize it as privilege being about how others act toward you: privilege is something you’re given whether you like it or not. Entitlement, on the other hand, is about how you act toward others, often in relation to your privilege.

    Excellent summary. It made me think last night about the intersection between the two: the guy who’s born on third base thinking he hit a triple.

    It’d be really easy for me to congratulate myself on my own skills in getting as far as I have in my profession, for me to ignore the struggles of others in my profession as their own problem. If I were to act from entitlement, I would behave that way. But I’ve examined my privilege; the hand-up I’ve gotten from my race, gender, education, all of which are merely circumstances beyond my control. I also am privileged by the support of my partner, and my membership in a union.

    To recognize the sacrifices that union members have made in the past that have enabled me to gain the lifestyle I currently enjoy, I’ve made it a mission to volunteer for union committees, and work to make the union stronger for those who come after me. I also do my level best to support my partner in her pursuits, to make it a true partnership.

    In short, I hope that by recognizing my privilege, I can choose a path other than entitlement. So the work is in two directions – looking back to strip the blinders off of my privilege, and looking forward to avoid trampling on people with my entitlement.

    Harriet, if this comment is too 101, please delete with my apologies.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
42. 
    SomeGuy permalink

    May 11, 2010

    Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

    Also re: something you were saying about 12 step groups.

    About a year ago I decided to do something about my substance abuse…part of that was attending various 12 step groups. I found them to be somewhat helpful, especially in the very early stages, if only to see what might become of me if I kept at it…I stopped attending for a variety of reasons, but one of the major factors was a big tiff I got into with some of the members at the last “home group meeting”…

    In our area there are a variety of, well I don’t know what to call them really…but they are meetings of 12 step tailored for specific groups. There are “women’s meetings” and “LGBT meetings”.

    We got into a discussion about these meetings and whether they were appropriate or not, and a lot of the people in my home group seemed really resentful of the idea that such meetings would exist. I don’t really know much about these issues, but it seemed obvious to me that these groups face issues that we may have been unable or unequipped to deal with.

    They seemed to think that these groups were an affront to their ability or some type of “we’re too cool for normal groups” type of thing…

    I tried to explain that there may be women out there who for whatever reason have been traumatized or something and may not be comfortable even in the presence of males….or tran-sexuals who have a pretty legitimate reason to fear being assaulted. They just kind of tut-tuted that and dismissed those as “irrational fears” and despite my protests that it didn’t matter if the fears were “irrational” so long as they were REAL (and that they were actually quite valid in the first place) they still couldn’t get over it.

    I don’t really understand why they cared in the first place…as long as people are getting help, right?

    Anyway, that and a lot of other things really turned me off and I stopped going, but it’s something I recommend people consider if they need help because there are thoughtful and helpful people to be found, and it can do some good….but it’s definitely not perfect and one should be careful not to drink the kool-aid while there.

    Like or Dislike: 1  0
43. 
    Harriet J permalink*

    May 11, 2010

    : That’s really too bad. I’ve found 12-step meetings aren’t for me, though the literature coming out of these groups is really phenomenal and helpful. I have a lot of reasons why the meetings don’t do it for me, but one has definitely been that I’m dragging my social consciousness in there, and there doesn’t seem to really be a place for it. As in, I would go in there talking about how boundaries and amends and faith and loss of control applied to trying to work on racism and sexism and all sorts of other -isms. I didn’t encounter any hostility from anybody, but there was definitely an undercurrent of “Ooooookaaay…” Nobody seemed to know how to interact with that. I had counted on a meeting being a place where, even if everybody disagreed with me or didn’t “get it”, I’d get some support or understanding or at least non-judgment, and I mostly did. That, to me, is the basic core of what a 12-step meeting is supposed to offer, even if nothing else works: non-judgment. It’s really a shame to hear what a fail yours was.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
44. 
    Heisenberg permalink

    May 14, 2010

    Speaking of entitlement: Goddamnit Harriet, update. I read 2 gender-themed blogs: you, and Roissy. I know you’re disgusted by my classification (and the existence of) the latter, but without more here… well, it’s probably healthier, since I can’t just flip on over to you for rationality-catharsis after an intellectually-violent patriarchal insanity binge. But still.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
45. 
    Graphite permalink

    May 15, 2010

    I just recently discovered Roissy’s blog when I was curious about an unrelated issue and clicking links led to him. I just wanted to post, just to provide a warning people who read the name and the words ‘gender-themed blog’ and get curious and consider searching him: that entire blog is just one big fat trigger, apart from being disgusting, so tread carefully.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
46. 
    Harriet J permalink*

    May 15, 2010

    : I had never heard of this thing. I will file it in the “places not to go, things not to see” corner of my mind.

    Like or Dislike: 0  0
47. 
    Graphite permalink

    May 16, 2010

    Yeah, ’tis a good and healthy call to avoid it. Here’s a brief summary, so as to avoid the sort of curiousity that usually leads me to look at things that are vaguely alluded to but never explained: Roissy’s a ‘pickup artist’. He’s into evolutionary psych on his terms, classifying men as ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’, and telling men that they only care about looks/fuckability and women that they only care about status/manliness. There is, of course, a fair whack of misogyny, misandry, encouragement of emotional abuse and rape apologia to be found there. The place is basically an abuser’s manual disguised as a guide to being attractive to women.
    *starwipe* The more you know. Bleh.
    Sorry for getting so off-topic, it’s just that finding that place the other day was less than pleasant for me (crying was involved at one point), and I don’t even have serious personal triggers that I’m aware of, so I hated the idea of you or a commenter looking it up unwarned and having a day-ruining surprise.

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48. 
    Heisenberg permalink

    May 17, 2010

    … apologies if that fucked anybody up. I just have him under the /Gender folder in my bookmarks, along with a bunch of other feminist blogs, as well as people spread evenly along axes of misogyny, cluelessness and sadness. As a sheltered western male, his perspective is novel to me, and I don’t feel like I’m responsibly informed about anything if I’m not familiar with its extremes from their own perspective. Especially when the pervasiveness of those extremes seems, by the account of the side I find far saner, to be so fundamentally antagonistic to those most dearly in contact with issues that are less immediate to me. I gather a lot of people who’ve found Fugitivus already know from hard-won first-hand experience the type of person that reading Roissy et al would tell you about, but I find it valuable to explore that side. And I have neither the trauma of having been on the business end of this type of thinking to keep me from being capable of reading it, nor the aggregate wisdom of whatever would allow me to dismiss it all as tired.

    I do see ideas and perspectives at least worthy of further inspection in some of what he’d say, valuable at least to properly criticize and debate (though I certainly recognize this is probably not the place to do it). At /very/ least to have in mind may be informing many others’ approaches to gender when discussing it (I am very surprised that the phenomenon of ‘the pickup community’ is not in the common consciousness of this board).

    Motherfucker takes it really far, though. Even in the remaining part of me capable of taking some of the things he’d discuss in a lighter way than you’d find conscionable, a lot of what’s on Roissy’s blog is especially shockingly hateful. I think he has stuck in a severe backlash (as I feel many who’d resort to a ‘pickup art’ would be coming from) from some earlier immersion in the standard ‘nice guy’ fallacies, and never really stabilized somewhere sane and healthy (or caught on a positive reinforcement loop, at the height of some set of almost-wrong beliefs). Not that this speculation matters. As others have said, you’re probably best off ignoring that name, and I’m sorry if my throwaway reference pointed people to somewhere they’d rather not have seen.

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