On throwing books at the wall and standing on people's feet

[morgan_dhu]

Does it really need to be said that one valid response to reading something that you find profoundly angering in exactly the same way as the last fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand times you read it somewhere else, is throwing the book against the wall and writing about why that thing you read, in the book you threw against the wall, and in all the other books that you didn't throw against the wall because you hadn't reached your limit yet, made you so profoundly angry?

And even if someone comes to you and says, "that book you threw against the wall, it's written by someone who wanted to explore those issues that make you angry and try to expose them as what they are," it's perfectly reasonable to say "Just seeing it makes me angry and I don't want to see it, even in the context of trying to expose it for what it is, BECAUSE I ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS."

And I say this even though this particular book is one that I enjoyed, and that made me think about some of these things, because I am one of the people who doesn't know enough about those issues and hasn't been hurt by them and I wanted to see how they were dealt with and I had the privilege of knowing that anything that writer wrote about that issue could not hurt me. Plus, it had a lot of other stuff in it that was really interesting to me. So thanks to my privilege on this issue, I could read this book and not want to throw it against the wall.

But, you know, there was once this TV show that I loved. It said some wonderful things about female power, and it was lots of fun to watch. And then this TV show did something that made me profoundly angry in exactly the same way as the last fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand times I read/saw it in other places, and I didn't want to watch that show anymore. Because a lot of people seem to think that rape is such a wonderful dramatic vehicle, and getting raped by a god is even more dramatic, and they can give me all sorts of reasons why this rape was exactly the right thing to have in this TV show. But just because everyone and his metaphorical dog has used rape as a dramatic device, and sometimes they do it to show how nasty rape is and how surviving it can make a woman so strong, that doesn't mean that as a woman who has been raped, I'm not entitled to be profoundly angry and just say no to rape as a character development McGuffin.

And then there was this other TV show that I loved. It said some wonderful things about female power, and it was lots of fun to watch. And then this TV show also did something that made me profoundly angry in exactly the same way as the last fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand times I read/saw it in other places, and I didn't want to watch that show anymore either. Because there's only so many times a queer girl can read/watch things that written by people who think that it's the height of great drama to kill off the lesbians or turn them into insane and evil murderers, until she just doesn't want to see that anymore. Even if some people assure her that it's just because that writer never lets anyone be happy in a relationship, it's not like he's picking on the lesbians. Because lots of stories let straight people have happy endings, but they always kill the lesbians, or drive them mad.

So, yeah, I know something about lacking some kinds of privilege and getting so angry when privileged people use me and people like me in hurtful ways in books and movies and TV shows and cultural stuff in general. And I know that it's the right of anyone in that situation to throw the book against the wall, and write about why it hurt, and be as loud and angry as they want to be, because it is valid to get hurt and angry when someone is standing on your foot and not only won't get off, but tells you that they're standing on your foot so that people will see how bad it is to stand on someone's foot.

And it's the right of anyone in that situation to get even more profoundly angry when people tell you that you can't see that there's a good reason for that person to stand on your foot so people can see what it's like and learn from it because you're too emotional and not a good reader and haven't the critical tools to properly analyse what's happening in this brilliant piece of performance art in which someone is STANDING ON YOUR FOOT AND WON'T GET OFF. Or that you're being manipulative and abusive when you use strong and angry language to tell people that you're tired of people STANDING ON YOUR FOOT AND NOT GETTING OFF and you aren't going to smile, and take it, or maybe ask them politely if they wouldn't mind moving a little further away any more.

And I say this knowing that I may well be standing on someone's foot all unknowing myself, and can only ask that please, if I am, and am so stupid that I don't see it, then I would be grateful if you would tell me so I can try to do better at not standing on people's feet, because I know I don't like having my foot stood on, and I so don't want to stand on anyone else's foot either.


(If you need it, you can find context for this post here.)

Comments

[were-lemur.livejournal.com]

And quite aside from the incredible condescension of dismissing someone's point of view because they're "too angry" - who says someone is obliged to be all calm and unruffled when they've just been offended?

*nods*

This is a basic tool in the "shut up and go away" box. As a feminist, I've seen a lot of women being accused of being "emotional wimmin" when calling men out for various statements and behaviors. I'd like to think that women who identify as feminists would be a little more sensitive when it came to perpetrating of this kind of thing, but ... *sigh*

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

As a feminist, I've seen a lot of women being accused of being "emotional wimmin" when calling men out for various statements and behaviors. I'd like to think that women who identify as feminists would be a little more sensitive when it came to perpetrating of this kind of thing, but ...

Yes, exactly. These are standard tactics.

There have been many people quoting Martin Luther King lately, but this excerpt from the Letter from Birmingham Jail seems appropriate to this issue:

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.