Metaquoted

[ironphoenix]

dungeonwriter on passing.

Written from the point of view of an invisibly disabled person, but applicable to passing in many contexts, this captures some of the complex ambivalence of passing.

Comments

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

Interesting. "Passing" has always been a complex subject for me too, on several different topics. Not invisible disabilities, but rather mental illness (though I suppose some people consider that an invisible disability too) and ethnicity. Most people don't notice how much my OCD influences things (and if had a dime for every time someone has told me that I don't have OCD because I'm disorganized/messy/etc., I'd be rich). And the ethnicity one is even more of a complicated kettle of fish that nobody ever seems to understand no matter how much I try to explain it. *sigh*

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Mental illness is certainly a passing issue from all I've seen, whether it is an "invisible disability" or not.

I'm curious about "the ethnicity one," if you're willing to say more.

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

I can try to explain, but I can't promise it'll make any sense, because no one thus far has been able to understand it, but here goes.

What it comes down to is that I pass as "white". Now, as you're probably aware, "white" in the anti-oppression framework refers to more than just skin colour, but refers to a whole myriad of cultural/religious/historical/etc. points as well. These points are generally applied to everyone of white skin colour.

Only... they're not applicable that generally. Historical experiences of different groups of white people vary widely. For example, while the British were out colonizing the world in the 18th century, Latvians and Estonians were still kept as serfs by German, Russian and Polish landowners. Serfdom wasn't abolished in the Russian Empire as a whole until 1861 (some of the Baltic provinces had abolished it by 1819, but part of Latvia was still under serfdom until 1861). We also didn't have surnames until serfdom was abolished. Even when serfdom was abolished, it didn't grant anybody land - you still needed to rent it, and there were still strict controls on being able to move about. Finally in the 1880s you could start to buy out the land you were working from the landowner. Latvian and Estonian were considered "peasant tongues", so if there was opportunity to get educated, you needed to abandon your language and culture and become Russified or Germanized. It was only after a series of hard-fought independence wars that we were able to gain independence after the First World War, only to have it taken away again barely 20 years later when the Soviet Union took over, and Latvians/Estonians once again became second-class. That's not even considering the thousands who fled to the West with little more than the clothes on their backs (if they were lucky), or were killed and deported to Siberia (if they weren't). Independence was regained again only 20 years ago.

So with that history in mind, I relate very little to the historical and cultural experience of the English, French, other Western Europeans. And it is that historical and cultural experience that the reference of "white" refers to. By grouping all white-skinned people under that banner, they've marginalized us and made us invisible, told us that our cultural and historical experience doesn't matter, that we share the same blame for historical events that our ancestors had no involvement in just because we look the same, that we have no place at the table for marginalized groups to modern-day issues because we look like the people who are considered the "majority", "privileged", whatever you want to call it.

Discrimination against Eastern Europeans is alive and well. It is extremely predominant in Western Europe, especially since many Eastern European countries joined the EU and consequently many Eastern Europeans moved to Western countries to work. It exists in our school systems, it exists in everyday life. It does seem better now than it did when I was a kid, but that could be because Ottawa is generally a more multicultural and welcoming city - a stark contrast to the small town in southern Ontario that I grew up in, that was 98% White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The other 2% were the few black and Asian families, and then mine. At my elementary school, I was regularly teased for my strange name, my ethnicity, and anything connected to my heritage. Teachers would not stop this ethnicity-based teasing, because, as far as they were concerned (and they told me this point-blank), "you're white, they're white, so it's okay". What part of that is okay?!?

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

*nods* Yeah, I think I get where you're coming from. The conflation of "White" with "privileged" ignores an awful lot of cultural reality, even beyond the usual questions of sexism, classism, etc. Time was, an Irish or Scots last name or accent was a barrier to quite a few places, but they're lumped in with "WASPs". (Even today, call an Irishman an Englishman and you may have made an enemy.) Any generalization necessarily makes minorities within the group invisible.

This is a problem within marginalized groups too: the mainstream movements often ignore sub-minorities. E.g., neither the Black activist nor the feminist movements adequately represent Black women and their issues. I've heard this talked about as "intersectionality." The fact is, we each come from a complex and unique background, and any generalization or collectivization has to take that into account and recognize the limitations of the grouping's validity.

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

Yeah, having lived in Scotland, and in the deep Highlands at that, I'm quite familiar with how even today "Scottishness" isn't something that is particularly respected. Sure, you have the Highland Games and whatnot, but those are just a commodification of the culture, not much different than Westerners wearing Indian clothing or white kids adopting black hip-hop culture. Things like the Highland Clearances are still rarely talked about, and it was only in the past 20 or 30 years that they've even been not taboo to discuss. People know that there are a lot of folks of Scottish descent in Canada, but rarely have they paused to think of why (a big cause of that "why" is Highlanders being kicked off of their land).

That's not even considering the language issue - if people want to understand why Latvians are so feverently against the idea of Russian as a second state language, you only need to look to Scotland, Ireland and Wales, where a minority of people speak their native languages. And even if they do, it is not something you do in "polite" society. One of my Scottish co-workers when I was there was completely embarassed about being able to speak Scots (which is a different language from Scottish English - Scots is related to English, but it is not a dialect/accent of English). Scots also has no official status (unlike Gaelic, which does, but there are still few people who speak Gaelic fluently, as compared to the number of Scottish people).

But what it all comes down to, with any "anti-oppression" stuff, is "it's not that f**king simple". "Anti-oppression" activists claim to be against all sorts of thing such as stereotyping and discrimination and whatnot, but will do a lot of it themselves if it doesn't fit their worldview (if you've ever heard left-wing GLBT folks talking about gay conservatives, or gay Christians, you'll see what I mean. I've experienced this too - I've taken more flak from the GLBT/poly community for being a libertarian than I ever have from right-wingers, conservatives and libertarians alike, for being a bisexual poly atheist). So all in all, I try to avoid such wide-sweeping agendas and stick to "treat people like people" and learning more about history and culture so that I can understand the specific historical contexts that other people might be coming from. Because things are always more complex than one-liners that can fit on a placard (and protests are a whole other kettle of fish from this one that we've been discussing, that I have different problems with).

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Heh... I had a .signature quote (that thing that appends to the bottom of e-mails) for a while that read "Thoughts good! Slogans bad! Thoughts good! Slogans bad!"

Language is a touchy subject, yes... I was born in Quebec and lived a fair bit of my early childhood there in Francophone society, so I understand why French matters more than The Rest Of Canada understands. When I visited Estonia with other exchange students working in Finland, we were warned that even if we could speak Russian and the person we were talking to probably could too, we'd be better off muddling through in pretty much any other language... no love lost there. (Finns aren't too fond of Russians either, btw. They joke about Swedes the way we joke about Americans, but Russians aren't spoken of.)

Sympathies on the libertarian front... I don't agree with that position, but I don't see any reason to be uncivil about it. Frankly, I have a default position of respect for left-leaning wealthy people and right-leaning not-so-wealthy people: too many people's political ideals boil down to "what gets me more?" and change as their situation changes.

"Treat people like people" is a pretty good ethic, at least as long as one doesn't start narrowing the definition of "people".

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

too many people's political ideals boil down to "what gets me more?" and change as their situation changes.

Yeah, who was it that said "if you're not a liberal when you're young, you have no heart, and if you're not a conservative when you're old, you have no head?"... seems to be the way many people seem to go.

I guess for me, part of it comes from upbringing - growing up in a family where all four of my grandparents fled Communist oppression isn't exactly an environment where left-wing thinking was encouraged. But it was more than that too, since I am more conservative than my parents. I've always been an individualist, and a firm believer in making one's own way in the world. I believe in only helping people willing to help themselves (the "give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for the rest of his life" principle), and that "you make your own luck" and that people are their own worst enemies when it comes to success or the lack of it. I believe people artificially limit themselves, because people are capable of so many wonderous achievements, even if it seems like they have to overcome insurmountable odds (be those societal constructs, bodily constraints, etc.) to do it. Society, meanwhile, has encouraged these limits, getting people to think of themselves as weak, ineffectual and incapable, and thus needing Big Government/Big Business/Big Labour to take care of them - when all that does is concentrate power in the hands of those wanting to use it to their own manipulative ends.

My definition of "people" is pretty simple - the species of "homo sapiens". Whales and dolphins don't count :)

[kali-kali.livejournal.com]

Continued...


That's not even considering the media. In the media, all Eastern Europeans are Russians. Stop, end of story. The rest of us don't even exist. Even if a movie/TV show is set in a different Eastern European country, the main characters are still Russians (for example, xXx and Hostel - set in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, respectively, but the antagonists are still Russians). Not to mention that movies also depict Eastern Europe as this boogeyman-filled industrial wasteland, which is also not true.

The thing that really gets me about the whole anti-oppression framework that many left-wingers profess is that they won't acknowledge any of this. Believe me, I've tried. "White" is "white", and that's that. And while there are many things that left-wingers and I disagree on, if they could at least acknowledge this one point, we'd be able to have much more civil conversations, and I might be able to accept their anti-oppression framework. But until they do, I can't, because said framework declares that I don't exist.

[waterspyder.livejournal.com]

I've finally started to get to a place where I'm comfortable showing the effects of my disability to some, where I used to hide it from everyone, including Josh. It makes it even harder.

The one place where I'm consistently confronted with my own limitations is OC Transpo. If I haven't disclosed my situation to someone, I try to avoid taking the bus with them. The looks and comments of strangers are a little easier to take. I don't look disabled, why do I need a seat? I don't look disabled, why can't you just take the stairs?

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

*nods* Invisible disabilities are just laziness or lack of self-discipline, eh?

[waterspyder.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Sometimes, I'm told, it's just because I'm fat, and that doesn't count.

I really want people to think hard about the chain reaction that happens to someone when they get a spinal or leg injury if they don't have a wickedly high metabolism.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, playing the fat card. Visible, and still a legitimate target for ridicule and discrimination of all kinds, because it's obviously your fault.