entirely ruined her disposition with books

That thing is a rant about social justice on tumblr. And I thought about posting on tumblr, but then I realized I didn't want to deal with the very people I'm talking about in my rant. But I wrote it because I needed to get it out of my system, and so I'm going to post it here instead.

So there’s been talk again on my dash criticizing the specific kind of over-the-top social justice warrior-ing going on on tumblr, and I think this is a good conversation to have. My biggest problem with it is that it doesn’t leave any room for actual humanity—be that either mistakes or the fact that different people have different levels of education/access to educational resources.

The expectation seems to be that people will be 100% perfect in their social justice-ing all the time. And meanwhile the ott warriors are just circling below like sharks waiting for someone to slip up JUST ONCE so they can attack. You see this a lot with celebs: every single time a celebrity comes to the attention of tumblr culture, it’s like a competition to see who can find the thing to discredit them the fastest. And I have zero problem with people calling out behavior that is problematic. I do have a problem with the glee with which tumblr does it and the way they smash it in the faces of the ones who like that celeb. It’s not like all people who like a given famous person are the kind of fans who refuse to admit that oppar could possibly do anything wrong. There are fans like that, of course, and there’s no exucse for them, but there are also loads of people who like the work of a given person or who are fond of their face or just think they’d be cool to hang out with and who will readily admit that that person has done things that are NOT OKAY. But they still like that person (for whatever value of ‘like’ applies) and there’s no need to make those ‘fans’ feel terrible about themselves for still enjoying that person/their art. I’ll use a personal example: I like Amy Poehler a lot. I love Parks and Rec and I like her as a person and I think the way she wants to encourage young women and girls is inspirational. I also think that time she posed in a ‘Native American’ headband with the feather was gross and wrong. And there are other things she’s done that are not okay. But I still like her. AND I admit that she’s done things that aren’t okay. I can do both. And face it: if we stopped liking everyone who ever said anything problematic, there would be no one left to like. No one is a paragon of social justice. No one. Everyone slips up, everyone does and says stupid and offensive things, everyone has blindspots. The key is whether you admit to that and try to do better. And since most celebs aren’t called out on those things…we don’t know whether they’d admit, apologize and try to learn. We just don’t know. [Note: there’s a big difference between someone saying or doing something thoughtlessly offensive and someone, say, unrepentantly beating someone they claim to love. I am not conflating the two, so don’t think I am.]

And so the celebrity thing is exhausting. But celebs are a distance from us, and they have a huge amount of privilege to protect them, and so the tumblr attitude towards them is not nearly as bad as when I see this level of self-righteous zealousness leveled at other tumblr users. Honestly, as someone who comes from a very conservative religious background, it reminds me of nothing so much as those people in religious groups who seem to LOVE it when other people ‘sin’ and who lurk around waiting to find out that other people have messed up and then jump on them and badmouth them to everyone and basically just act like the exact opposite of how the tennants of their faith call them to act.

So many people forget that tumblr is full of really young people. I mean, I’m a dinosaur in my mid-twenties, and I’m in a constant process of educating myself. But when I was the age of the majority of tumblr, I knew NOTHING about systemic oppression. Nothing. I grew up in a very sheltered evangelical environment where I was taught to treat everyone with respect and kindness and politeness and that that would pretty much keep me from doing anything wrong. I was never, ever taught about systemic injustice. I didn’t know it existed. Yes, I was one of those ‘stupid’ people who thought that, say, racism was about actively hating/being cruel to people of a different race than you, and since I would never dream of doing that, I couldn’t possibly do anything racist. It was only when I got to college and started reading more widely on the internet that I discovered this whole new world of ideas about how the world was set up. That’s how I discovered feminism and the need for it, the idea of systemic oppression and the patriarchy/kyriarchy and heiarchies in general. Up until then I knew nothing. And I think of what would have happened to me personally if I’d said something unintentionally offensive/hurtful when I was that age and people ripped into me. It would have crushed me. It would have. And I realize that’s nothing compared to the constant grinding under the heel that people who are oppressed go through every day—but God, I used to think feminism was a bad thing! I did! Now it’s as necessary to me as oxygen, but I would have been turned off to it completely if I had felt attacked using it, despite how desperately I needed it…because I didn’t know that I needed it.

I think it’s good to call people out on problematic things they say. I really do. And I think anger is powerful and necessary. But I think that sometimes that anger should be at the system or at people in power who perpetuate oppression, not at some kid who’s probably got no clue what they said was wrong because they’ve been brainwashed by the culture they live in not to see the oppression around them. I’m not saying people need to pander to offensive people, especially when they’re privileged. But there’s a big difference between a matter-of-fact, “Hey, you screwed up big-time here”/“hey, that think you said really, really hurt me”/“hey, you seem to have some ideas about people who are different than you that are very incorrect” and someone’s inbox being flooded with insults. I realize this skates perilously close to the tone argument, and I want to emphasize that I’m not telling people they can’t be angry about things. BE ANGRY. But maybe don’t unleash the fullness of your anger on someone who maybe has no idea what they’re doing is wrong. Rant and rave and scream on your own blog about it. Talk about how it represents just one more terrible thing you have to deal with day in and day out and how sometimes you think you’re going to explode from trying to carry all of that around. But before you contact the person who said or did whatever pissed you off, take a moment to think: is this something that shows real malice or is this something that perhaps signals that this person is just really ignorant? It’s hard to tell sometimes, but I do think we should take the time to think about it. You don’t have the responsibility to educate anyone. But if you do decide to contact them, I think it’s a good thing to take their possible situation into account. Intent doesn’t lessen the pain or anger that person stirred in you. But intent can give us some idea of whether that person could be brought around to enlightenment. Don’t we want everyone to come around to our team? Isn’t that the goal?

People can be eduated. Even deeply, deeply ignorant people. I’m living proof of that. But it probably wouldn’t have happened if I’d been a very young, very vulnerable, and very sheltered girl who felt overwhelmed by people older, more educated, and more articulate than I was telling me what a terrible person I was. That would have triggered my anxiety on a profound level. I know it would have. I just want people to be careful with each other.

I am like 99% sure that I have actually made this post before. But I'm going to make it again because I KEEP SEEING IT OMG, and it keeps bothering me, and who am I if not a person who rambles on my blog for no reason. Welcome to my world of self-indulgance. You do not have to read this because, like I said, I've already said it all before.

Let's talk about Russell T. Davies and Steve Moffat! YAY! *gag*

For those of you who don't know (although if you don't, I don't think your fandom osmosis is working very well; you should probably look into that), they are the two guys who have been showrunners for the new version of Doctor Who.

Let's get a few things out of the way first.

1) Both of these guys are very talented writers.
2) Both of these guys have weaknesses as writers.
3) Both of them write some things that are horrifying, especially when viewed from a feminist perspective, and often the text doesn't acknowledge that these things are, indeed, horrifying.

Okay? Okay.

( cut for length )

I am the most long-winded person ever. I cannot write in linear ways. I am never even remotely coherent. And I say everything using the most words possible. Why do you people put up with me? I will never know.

So I’ve had some ~thoughts~ I’ve wanted to share, but I’ll go ahead and tell you that they aren’t unique—they’ve been verbalized many times before, and often by me. But I’ve been wanting for a long time to consolidate my thoughts on Reader Response Theory and fandom courtesy, and I might as well do it, right?

Caveat: this post contains spoilers through all of the episodes of Doctor Who that have been aired. DW isn’t the focus of this post, though, so if you want to skip over the paragraphs where I start talking about RTD and the Moff, you could probably do that and still get the gist of what’s going on here.


Let’s start with a quote:

And lastly, a note on how we engage with less than perfect source material. Unfortunately, there isn't that much out there that is perfect, or even close to it, and in the end we all pick and choose based on a combination of things we like and things we can put up with. We compartmentalise. Sometimes we enjoy elements of canon source even while we might simultaneously think there's a critical point to be made. Sometimes we deal with these issues enough in our offline life that we want to ignore it when we hit fandom. Sometimes it's because we deal with these issues so much in our offline life that we can't ignore it when it crops up in fandom. Sometimes we don't pick up it at all, or disagree when someone else argues that it's problematic. Sometimes we just don't want to engage that day, that month, or ever….

Mileage will vary a lot on everything I've covered. I hope it's clear from this post that I think that's totally okay, and sort of my point. Few things are perfect, and we love them anyway, and sometimes part of our loving them is critiquing them, and sometimes it isn't, and that's fine.

( cut for leeeeeeength )

So remember a couple of weeks ago when those cringe-inducing pictures of Allison Brie and Gillian Jacobs in lingerie paddling each other with ping-pong paddles that were like the absolute definitions of "male gaze" were making the rounds on tumblr?

Apparently the entire photoshoot is now appearing on GQ's site (and hence ALL OVER THE INTERNET EVEN VIDEOGUM), and I refuse to link to them. I feel like I should have some deep insightful thing to say about the fact that there's this whole "women in comedy" thing where supposedly we're giving women all these opporunities in comedy now but really whenever we talk about women in comedy we end up talking about how attractive they are (I still can't bring myself to watch 30 Rock because I find the premise that Tina Faye is unattractive so very ludicrous that I don't think I can take the show seriously) or how they're in competition with other women in comedy (I wish I had a link to that youtube video that shows Amy Poehler getting interviewed and SHUTTING THE GUY DOWN when he tried to make it a competition between her and Tina and she was all "Tina is my BFF. I want her to succeed. There is no cattiness here." And I fell even more in love with Amy Poehler).

Yes, I should have some deep insightful thing to say about that, but instead I just feel tired. Just tiredtiredtired of living in such a sexist, misogynist rape culture where even though women can technically enter just about any profession we choose, we still know that what really matters to people is the way that we look and where we're expected to be in constant competition with other women instead of having supportive relationships with each other. Where a woman who's just as funny as Gillian Jacobs and Allison Brie (Yvette Nicole Brown) doesn't even get invited to the photoshoot because she doesn't fit a certain image and where women who are as dazzlingly talented as Gillian Jacobs and Allison Brie are instead reduced to playing up faux lesbianism in order to titilate men instead of, you know, letting them show off their excellent senses of humor.

I just want to go take a nap (after having taken a nice long shower to wash the grossness away) and wake up in a world where this isn't the case.

OMG Y’ALL YOU HAVE TO READ THIS ESSAY.

Okay, does anybody remember SurveyFail? Anybody? If you were following metafandom a couple of years ago, no doubt you do. Two researchers who had nothing to do with the fannish community decided to survey fandom about its kinks, pretty much. In doing so, they revealed ALL KINDS OF FAIL. Fandom went crazy—in the amazing, snarky, intelligent way that we tend to do when outsiders are trying to pain a particular picture of us that has nothing to do with reality. [eta: Here's the FanLore entry, in case you want to do some digging. ]

Anyway, we kind of kicked them out? Or so I thought. Apparently they JUST PUBLISHED A BOOK which is full of still more fail. And a brilliant anivad has written an excellent, excellent critique of their both their methods and the ways in which the kyriarchy silences those it sees as Other.

One of my favorite parts of the essay is where anivad talks about the way in which the internet can be used as an equalizer, as a way of the voiceless being able to speak. When the mainstream media, owned by huge conglomerates mostly headed by white guys, refuses to let the oppressed speak, the internet gives us a voice and at least the potential to be heard (admittedly, most of us aren’t heard beyond communities of like-minded people, but the potential is there. By the way, did I mention that you should all go read this essay about livejournal in Russia? Because it opened my eyes to so many things. GO READ NOW).

And all of this just reminds me—AGAIN—of how dismissing internet relationships is just another way to silence people. I was thinking specifically of those of us who have anxiety struggles or other mental health problems. One of the hardest parts of my depression/social anxiety disorder is that way it makes me feel alienated. I don’t want to go out and be around people—it’s too tiring, too awkward, too draining. But, like most people, I still want relationships. I still want to connect to people.

And the internet lets me do this. I connect with people like me, I have conversations with people who are passionate about the same things I am, I build relationships with people I would never had a chance to be with otherwise. My sister jokingly says that my family and the internet is my social life, and you know what? These last few years, while my emotional problems and life situation have made me spend so much time at home, it’s true. And it’s not a bad thing. I hatehatehatehatehate this cultural conception of people who have friends on the internet as stinky losers sitting in their mom’s basement, unable to make friends in real life. It’s so not true of most of us, and even if it is, so what? I know some people whose moms have quite comfortable basements.

The internet is amazing. It’s been a lifesaver for me, and for so many other people. Obviously, as a tool, it can be used for destructive purposes as well (from hate groups organizing to child predators to leaked sex tapes/naked photos). But it can be used for beautiful things. It can let my social anxiety-riddled self connect to other people. It can let people who feel very, very alone and alienated find people who are like them, who share interests or struggles or perspectives. Geography is no obstacle. The boundaries of distance are melting away before our eyes.

And when people dismiss internet-formed friendships or mock them or ignore them or stigmatize them, what they’re really doing is marginalizing us. The ones of us who aren’t neurotypical. The ones of us who are different or Othered. The ones of us who are voiceless.

And look—I’m a privileged person. I’m a white, straight, thin, Christian, middle class white girl from America. I have nearly every single kind of privilege imaginable. The only two areas in which I suffer oppression—my gender and my mental illness—do render me voiceless and marginalized in some areas, but there are far more areas in which I belong to the oppressing group. And if the internet and the communities we form are so important to me with all of my privilege and with my relatively easy life, I can’t imagine how life-saving, life-affirming, life-giving it might be to someone whose very identity comes under fire even more often and with even more violence than mine does.

Anyway, all this to say: the internet is a beautiful tool. My mama often compares my “friends in the computer” to relationships that a lot of literary figures used to maintain via mail and written letters. It really is similar…except that it’s even more convenient, because it can be instantaneous if you want it to (or not, if you don’t want it to—one of the things I love about the internet is that I can literally turn off the conversation and walk away if I need to!) and the conversation can involve as many or as few people as you want it to. That is truly amazing.

--

And as a little aside, I went back on whedonesque yesterday. *sigh* Yes, I did. I just wanted to see what people were saying about that super weird interview with Jane Espenson and Georges Jeanty (um, Jane, I love you. Madly. Passionately. BUT PEOPLE QUESTION BUFFY'S AUTHORITY ALL THE TIIIME). Instead I ended up reading a bunch of people poo-pooing the idea of trigger warnings with the argument of “Well, if someone gets assaulted in a Laundromat, then seeing a washing machine might trigger them, and I can’t know that, so obviously I can’t warn for everything, so I shouldn’t have to warn for ANYTHING!” Which is the biggest bunch of hogwash I’ve heard in a while and made me roll my eyes majorly. I wrote up a big long reply and felt much better. I didn’t post it because I didn’t want to get sucked back into that vortex, but it made me feel better to type it. And the whole thing reminded me of why I stay in the spaces I do on the internet. Oh, beautiful flist, I love you.

Do you think that back in the day when humans first developed writing, there were some pretentious pseudo-intellectual snobs sitting around going, “Writing? Oh, I don’t use writing. I prefer the oral tradition—it’s so much more pure.” Or during the time of Gutenburg, he had friends rolling his eyes telling him that printed books were for the unwashed masses who couldn’t be bothered to unlock the secrets of the meaning of life through the use of hand-written texts? Did our great-great-grandparents expect to be praised for eschewing radio?

Because, I’m sorry: I am not at all impressed by people who are too good for television.

Yes, there are connections between a medium and the work created in that medium. There are some things that are so deeply tied to their medium that the idea of separating them is ridiculous—movies of Faulkner’s more complicated novels tend to be awful because the narrative form and the language he uses is so tied to what he’s trying to communicate and the filmmakers aren't innovative enough to try to play to film's strengths to communicate those ideas instead. A novelized version of The Fall wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as the film, and it certainly wouldn’t be able to communicate the same ideas about the nature of film and storytelling as the movie does. There are strengths and weaknesses to each medium—there are some stories that will be stronger in when depicted visually—in film, theater, or television—and others that are more suited to text. And there are some that have different things to say in each medium, and isn’t that cool? (No, the book isn’t always better than the movie, you’re just more used to one than the other. The Godfather is a better movie. It’s okay. You can admit it.)

But the idea that one medium is inherently better than another is so ridiculous that I can’t take people who feel this way seriously. I have to laugh because a lot of the people I know who think they’re too good for television are huge film buffs, and they don’t see the hypocrisy at all.

[All of this snobbery is not unrelated to the idea of “literary” fiction versus “genre” fiction. Just because you’re writing in a realistic style about a middle-aged New England professor going through a midlife crisis and lusting after one of his students with an ambiguous ending and a general mood of malaise doesn’t mean that your story’s going to be better than a Western or a romance or a sci-fi novel. SCREW. YOU. for thinking so.]

You know that law that says that 90% of everything is crap? It’s true. It’s true of published books. It’s true of television shows. Goodness knows it’s true of fanfiction. And let me repeat: it’s true of television. I am not defending the mindless crap. I’m not defending bad reality shows, daytime talk shows, those endless 24 news channels that have no sense of priorities and are really made up of people yelling at each other and not listening and so they don’t further the political discussion at all. I'm definitely not defending Two and a Half Men. There is so much junk on TV, it’s not even funny.

But there are also powerful shows. Important shows. Funny ones and delightful ones and beautiful ones and moving ones. The odds of you happening on one if you just randomly turn on the tube now and then are pretty low, but they are there. They are worth it. They’re just as much art as Bergman film or a Dostoevsky novel. And we’re really moving into the golden age of television, where show runners are figuring out things like continuity and the importance of character arcs. It’s excellent, and my to-watch list is always long, and I’ll never catch up on everything, and I love it.

So, person who told me in that self-satisfied voice “Oh, I don’t watch TV,” as though you were talking about that area of town you’d never set foot in: oh, yeah, I really think so highly of you because you’ve made the decision not to allow The Wire or Parks and Recreation or Nova or something into your life. Go ahead. Bask in your own superiority. I’m going to watch the first season of Justified.