taking some excellent advice

I watched this amazing video the other day, via a Safe Schools blog, which got it from Bilerico, who got it, I guess from the originator, Jay Smooth.



Here is a technique to put at the top of one's toolkit. It's talking about racism, and the excellent advice that it offers is directly applicable to other situations in which someone says something offensive or uncomfortable, and I want to call them out on saying it without inspiring a huge, defensive, "I'm not transphobic/sexist/racist!!!!" reaction on their part.

This is for two reasons. On the one hand, sometimes such things will be said by people who haven't fully processed their own privilege, or had their consciousness raised- well meaning folks who just don't realize that whatever they just said was messed-up. Or even folks who HAVE done a lot of work around their privilege (whatever kind of privilege that is) can still make a mistake, or speak without thinking, or say something that they just hadn't considered from all angles yet. To use a trans example, this would be my friends who have worked hard (to varying degrees, but all to a certain extent) to understand what it means to be trans, to understand why I need to transition, to recognize my (everyone's) right to articulate and access my own gender identity....yet still say things like "Wow, Eli, you look just like a boy!"

Prompting me, in my braver moments, to say "Thanks for the sentiment, but I want you to know, that's offensive; telling me I look "like" a boy automatically sets up a situation in which I can never "be" a boy, only an illegitimate facsimile. Which hurts my feelings and invalidates trans folks everywhere."

So it's nice to have this video as a reminder of the importance of focusing on someone's words/deeds, since their other actions and intentions are great, and NOT racist, sexist, etc.

Then there's the other situation, the less comfortable one: dealing with people who actually ARE racist, sexist, transphobic. The trick is, a bigot will pretty much never self-identify as such. And who am I kidding- as Avenue Q tells us, we're ALL a "little racist." So I guess here, I mean people who have never tried to understand their privilege, who refuse to acknowledge that systematic oppressions like racism and misogyny even exist, let alone flourish, in our society, the folks who cling to their behavior and declare "I'm not a homophobe! I have gay friends!" even as they vote against marriage equality and hate crimes bills. Since they will (almost) never acknowledge (for example) that they are, in fact, homophobic in their little unexamined hearts, often the best and easiest way to thwart their behavior is, as this video tells us, not to get into a big philosophical debate about whether they're homophobic or not. They will invariably get off track and out of proportion and probably not get anywhere, since for them to lose that argument, they have to say "Uh, yeah, I guess I'm a homophobe." Which most folks will never feel comfortable doing. Even in the unlikely event that they realize that you are right, that they ARE homophobic, they'll probably be too embarrassed/defensive to admit it.

But! as Jay Smooth so rightly points out, by focusing on concrete, undeniable evidence- aka "that fucked up thing you just said"- it's possible to NOT let offensive words slide by and spend the rest of the day kicking yourself for not having stood up and said anything; an activity that I am totally sick of. There's no grey area of having to decide whether someone's really transphobic in their heart or not. One can just straight up address the behavior, stick to the facts when explaining why it's offensive, and (hopefully!) get the person to acknowledge that the thing they said was messed up, and agree not to say it anymore, thus winning the battle and taking a tiny step towards winning the war without attempting to actually win in one skirmish the whole big "you're a racist" war.

Thanks for the excellent advice, Jay Smooth!