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]

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 :)