[sudo-discuss] cuddling it
Max B
maxb.personal at gmail.com
Mon May 6 14:01:14 PDT 2013
+1
Thank you for that.
On 05/06/2013 01:40 PM, hep wrote:
> it is really sad that this list is literally turning into a game of
> oppression bingo. i will make this brief.
>
> 1. using terms like "civilization" to refer to a class of dominant
> majority with a huge history of colonialistic oppression, at the
> expense of any class who has experiences colonialistic oppression is
> pretty offensive. if you want to qualify this as "what they wrongly
> refer to themselves as" then use quotes and indicate as such. ie
> "Doesn't the so-self-called 'civilized' psyche secretly crave the
> things it sets itself apart from and gives up and projects on its
> image of the noble savage though?" it would be better however to
> reword this overall to say something like "Doesn't the privileged
> majority psyche secretly crave the things it sets itself apart from
> and gives up and projects on its image of the oppressed culture though?"
>
> 2. using tropes like "noble savage" is ok as long as everyone involves
> understand that you are referring to the named trope and not using
> that term as an offensive term. this can be solved by referencing the
> trope at hand. ie http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Noble_savage
>
> 3. some people are still going to be offended by this term, because it
> is still hugely offensive to native peoples even as it is used as a
> handy moniker to call out offensive behavior by the privileged majority.
>
> 4. using the term noble savage in reference to african americans is
> doubly offensive, even if it fits the point you are trying to make
> fyi. if you MUST use tropes to refer to POC, make sure you are using
> the correct one that examines the colonial aspects of the behavior
> being discussed.
>
> 5. when someone is offended by your choice in language, the correct
> thing to do is not double down and try to explain that you weren't
> being offensive. the correct thing to do is to say something like "i
> am sorry my language choice offended you. what i was trying to say
> was___". do not attempt to use dictionary.com <http://dictionary.com>,
> etymology, wikipedia usage, etc to try and prove that you weren't
> being offensive. offense is not in the eye of the person who offended,
> it is in the eye of that person offended. so just accept that you
> behaved offensively even as you did not intend to and move on. trying
> to explain to the world at large how you totally weren't offensive
> citing media to try and "prove" it just makes you more offensive, and
> it is incredibly disrespectful to the person you are communicating
> with who likely doesn't give a shit what you were actually trying to
> say at this point, and did not sign on for a weeks long multiple page
> scroll email battle/war of attention attrition. accept, move on. don't
> become a cliche.
>
> 6. free speech is not a get out of jail free card. you have the right
> to say anything you want. and we all have the right to think of you as
> an asshole for saying it. if someone says "don't say that" they aren't
> depriving you of your right to free speech, they are trying to save
> you from losing friends and allies in your community. "congress shall
> make no law abridging free speech." there is nothing in there that
> says someone HAS to remain your friend after you were unintentionally
> a racist asshole.
>
> 7. most people who fight oppression in their communities do not want
> to argue about it in their hobbies. respect that. just because you
> have the time and inclination to have a long-winded email argument
> does not mean that you are not also being totally offensive by
> assuming the other person wants/needs/is going to engage in it. often
> times i see people "win" arguments on email lists only because they
> were the more persistant asshole, not because they are right. and be
> aware that that is totally obvious to people not involved but still
> reading.
>
>
> 8. a point to everyone: native american peoples are not dead. there
> are still many thriving native cultures, and people need to understand
> that when they refer to native things or topics they are talking not
> just about past people that were wiped out, but also active real
> working native peoples still here. the bay area is full of native
> people who are active in their tribal affiliations, who work to
> promote native rights, and who are invested in the topics of native
> americans. when you frame out things like that there is a "civlized"
> society, and native societies (implying not civilized) many of those
> people are GOING to be super offended. Like when native people try to
> call out white people on wearing headdresses as culturally
> appropriative, and white people rebut with "YOU ARE ON THE INTERNET.
> THAT WAS INVENTED BY US MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T USE THAT". fucked up. (for
> the ignorant: native people are americans as well and have equal
> rights to share in american culture as any other american. besides
> which: last i checked many native peoples have also contributed to the
> internet, even as there are colonial privileged oppressionistic usages
> of native culture as well, such as apache.) try to keep that in mind
> as you use terms that may evoke native americans, at the risk of being
> seen as a total racist asshole.
>
> also everything that rachel said.
>
> -hep
>
>
> On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Anthony Di Franco
> <di.franco at aya.yale.edu <mailto:di.franco at aya.yale.edu>> wrote:
>
> Rachel, I've had a bit more time to reflect on what you wrote, and
> while I don't have anything to add about the immediate question
> beyond what I said yesterday, I'd like to talk about some of the
> broader context you brought up in your reply and the more general
> issues involved.
>
> The first thing is that I am primarily viewing what we are trying
> to do as having a discussion, so it seems to me that when there
> are misunderstandings that is exactly when we should be having
> more discussion to clarify what we are trying to say and find out
> effective ways to say it, not less. Meanwhile, you are using the
> terms of some sort of power struggle where I am being attacked and
> defending myself and allegiances are forming and shifting around
> the patterns of conflict. I do not see a power struggle but rather
> a community trying to communicate and communication depends on
> shared understanding among senders and recipients of symbols and
> how to use them to convey meaning. Where this is not immediately
> clear, clarifying it explicitly seems the most direct way to move
> towards better mutual understanding. I hope this can be reconciled
> with your own views and I welcome further discussion on this.
>
> Within the attacking and defending point of view, I am also
> uncomfortable with some things. To speak of attacking and
> defending and also then to say that the subject of the attack
> should *stop defending* reminds me too much of the revolting cries
> of "stop resisting" from police - I could certainly never meditate
> on such an ugly phrase and I find the suggestion grotesque. It's
> something I've heard while authoritarian thugs victimize people
> who are not resisting but only perhaps trying to maintain their
> safety and dignity under an uninvited attack, perhaps not even
> that, and one way the phrase is used is as a disingenuous way of
> framing the situation so that later, biased interpretations of
> what happened will have something to latch onto. I am glad we have
> much less at stake in our interactions here than in those
> situations but I still really don't like to see us internalizing
> that logic in how we handle communications in our group.
>
> There is another aspect of this I am uncomfortable with, which is
> the idea that people should respond to feedback only by silently
> assenting. This reminds me too much of other situations where
> people, sometimes myself, were supposed to be seen and not heard,
> and it deprives people of agency over and responsibility for what
> they do by expecting them to let others determine their behavior
> unilaterally. I am happy to take feedback and, generally, I hope
> you can trust people to act on feedback appropriately rather than
> trying to short-circuit their agency. The more informative
> feedback is, then, the better, and it should contain information
> people can use themselves to evaluate what they are doing the way
> others do so they can figure out how to accommodate everyone's
> needs. When feedback consist simply of naked statements it is too
> much like trolling in the small or gaslighting in the large, and
> especially then, amounts to an insidious way to deprive people of
> agency by conditioning them to fear unpredictable pain when they
> exercise agency, and has a chilling effect. In general, the idea
> that certain people are less able than others to handle the
> responsibilities of being human, and so they should have their
> behaviors dictated to them unilaterally by others, is a key to
> justifying many regimes of oppression, especially modern ones, and
> because of that I am very uncomfortable when I see any example of
> that logic being internalized in our group dynamics.
>
> I don't know what passed between you and Eddan involving trump
> cards but if the card game analogy really is apt then it may be a
> sign of trivializing the question of safe space by saying that
> certain people's concerns trump other people's concerns, based not
> on the concerns themselves, but only on who is raising the
> concerns. Both are important. I have heard some justifications for
> 'trumping' as I understand it that remind me of the debate around
> the Oscar Grant case. There, defenders of Mehserle's conduct
> claimed that police should be the judges of what legitimate police
> use of force is because they have special training and experience
> that give them a uniquely relevant perspective on what violence is
> justified and what demands of compliance they can legitimately
> make of people. Another justification I heard was that police are
> especially vulnerable due to the danger inherent in their duties
> and so things should be biased heavily towards a presumption of
> legitimacy when they use violence or demand compliance. To me both
> these justifications seem problematic because they create a class
> that can coerce others without accountability and can unilaterally
> force standards of conduct on others. I am happy that there is
> much less at stake among us here than there is in cases of police
> brutality or Oscar Grant's case, and that there is no comparison
> other than this logic being used. But the logic that certain
> people's perspectives are uniquely relevant, or that their
> vulnerability gives them license to force things upon others
> unilaterally, is still a logic I don't think we should internalize
> among ourselves, because it produces unaccountable
> authoritarianism that can be exploited for unintended ends, and
> does not help with the ostensibly intended ones anyway. It results
> in us 'policing' ourselves in a way much too much like the way the
> cities are policed to the detriment of many people and of values
> we share.
>
> Finally, you mentioned the evening at Marina's apartment and I
> want to clarify my experience of what happened there. My 'aha'
> moment didn't have anything to do with the point you were trying
> to make - I can't even remember exactly what that point was,
> because it is so strongly overshadowed by my memory of how you
> treated me. You called me out for something that had passed
> between you and me in the middle of a social gathering among a mix
> of friends and strangers, none of whom were involved, which
> immediately put me in a very uncomfortable situation. Then, you
> dismissed my attempts to defer speaking to a more appropriate
> setting, and to open up a dialog with you where I shared my
> perspective. The only way out you gave me was to assent without
> comment to you. My 'aha' moment was when I realized that things
> between us had degenerated to that point; it was when I realized I
> was mistaken in trying to have a discussion because we were
> interacting like two territorial animals, or like a police
> interrogator and a suspect, and you were simply demanding a
> display of submission or contrition from me before you would let
> me slink off. While it felt degrading, I took the way out you
> offered to spare myself and the others in the room the experience
> of things continuing. I take the risk of sharing this openly with
> you now because I think we know each other much better than we did
> then and we would never again end up interacting like potentially
> hostile strangers passing in the night, or worse. I think we can
> and should and have been doing better, and overall it's best not
> to let a mistaken assumption about what I was thinking and how I
> felt influence an important discussion about how we treat one
> another in our community.
>
> I, like you, hope you can appreciate that I am taking the time to
> write this admittedly long-winded reply, not to suck the air out
> of the room, whatever that means, but to contribute to a
> discussion that moves us towards a better shared understanding of
> how to respect our shared values and towards more appreciation of
> one another's perspectives.
>
> Anthony
>
>
> On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 10:14 AM, rachel lyra hospodar
> <rachelyra at gmail.com <mailto:rachelyra at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> I am really sad about this whole thread.
>
> Anthony, I think I know you well enough to say that your
> intent here was not to be offensive, but unfortunately... Here
> we are. I am responding to the specific message below because
> it is the one that made me want to unsubscribe from this
> mailing list and unassociate myself from this group.
> Everything that came after, gah.
>
> Anti-oppression for the priveleged class, ie not being an
> unintentional giant jerkface: if someone points out that you
> are offending or harming them, they are not seeking an
> explanation, but a change in behavior. Perhaps an apology or
> acknowledgement, even a query. If someone says 'i think your
> POV is fucked up and harmful' please do not go on to elaborate
> on your POV to them. Even if you think they don't get your
> amazing nuances. Your amazing nuances are not always
> important, and part of 'oppression' is that some peoples'
> nuances are always shoved in other people's faces. Sometimes
> being a friend means keeping your opinion to your damn self.
>
> This relates to something that eddan has on occasion termed
> 'the trump card'. We are all individuals, and as such we
> ultimately need to keep our own house in order. The trump card
> concept relates to safe spaces - as safe as eddan might feel
> in a space, I'm not going to average it together with my
> safety levels to achieve some sort of average safety rating.
> My safety reading of a space will always, for me, trump
> eddan's, and while I am happy if he feels safe it doesn't
> really matter to my safety level.
>
> The interesting thing about telling most people they are
> making you feel unsafe, or that they are offending you, is
> that for some reason their response is almost never 'gosh,
> whoops!'. It's more usually like what happened here - a bunch
> of longwinded explanation that completely misses the point,
> and then a perceived ally of the offender jumping in, also
> talking a lot, and sucking all the air out of the room.
> People always have reasoning for why they did what they did.
> Requiring offended folks to read about your reasoning for why
> you said what you said misses the point, and to me makes this
> conversation read like you don't care if you were offensive.
>
> It's deja vu to me that you are giving all this definition and
> explanation around the terms you used. It seems identical to
> our debate around the use of 'constable' and it is sad to me
> to see you take refuge in the same pattern of defense. It
> doesn't matter about the etymological history of a phrase. It
> doesn't. As fun as you may find it to think about, the way
> things are *heard*, by others, NOW, is a trump card for many.
>
> Anthony, I hope you can understand that I have taken the time
> out of my life to write this message in the hopes of helping
> you to modulate your behavior to be less offensive. I am sure
> you remember the first time I engaged with you on this topic,
> at Marina's house. Perhaps you'll remember the aha moment when
> you *stopped defending* and simply accepted the input,
> thanking me. Perhaps you'll find in that a sort of meditative
> place of return.
>
> Good luck to you all. I enjoy many things about sudo community
> and am sure I will stay connected in many ways.
>
> R.
>
> On May 3, 2013 3:05 PM, "Anthony Di Franco"
> <di.franco at gmail.com <mailto:di.franco at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Doesn't the civilized psyche secretly crave the things it
> sets itself apart from and gives up and projects on its
> image of the noble savage though?
>
> Your description seems more like meditatively flowing
> through it.
>
>
> On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 2:58 PM, netdiva <netdiva at sonic.net
> <mailto:netdiva at sonic.net>> wrote:
>
> Here I was thinking "killing it" was just another
> example of appropriation of african american
> vernacular by the mainstream.
>
>
>
>
> On 5/3/2013 2:46 PM, Leonid Kozhukh wrote:
>
> "killing it" is a recently popular term to denote
> excellence and immense progress. it has a violent,
> forceful connotation.
>
> friends in the circus community - through
> empirical evidence - have established a belief
> that operating at the highest levels of talent
> requires mindfulness, awareness, and calm. thus, a
> better term, which they have started to playfully
> use, is "cuddling it."
>
> thought sudoers would appreciate this.
>
> cuddling it,
>
> --
> len
>
> founder, ligertail
> http://ligertail.com
>
>
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>
> --
> hep
> hepic photography || www.hepic.net <http://www.hepic.net>
> dis at gruntle.org <mailto:dis at gruntle.org> || 415 867 9472
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