hobbitdragon:

Sometimes I think I’m a failure as an activist, and I guilt myself and tell myself I should be rioting on the streets and writing letters to the government and reading the news even though doing so sends me into depression/anxiety attacks. I tell myself that I should be doing something, anything, more than what I do.

And then someone—a friend, a family member, a fan—will send me a letter telling me I changed their life. And this happens regularly, at least once every three weeks, sometimes more. Sometimes I’ll get spurts of letters from people telling me that I gave them the mental space to come out of the closet as gay/trans*/kinky/queer, that I improved their sex life, that I gave them the courage to leave a damaging relationship, that I taught them something about communication which saved their relationship, and so on. I can only assume that this means I’m actually accomplishing my goals, as ineffectual as I sometimes feel.

This is what makes MY life worth living, is letters like this. And yet it’s strange for me to receive them, because some part of me still keeps telling me “But you’re not doing anything worthwhile. You draw silly porn and write erotica and post stuff on the internet and blog a bit. It’s not like you’re doing anything WORTHWHILE or POLITICAL.”

But to reiterate that tremendously true feminist saying: the personal is political [trigger warning for extensive discussions of sexism]. My personal life has certainly had an effect on those around me, and other people’s personal lives have certainly had an effect on me.

So I’d like to talk about quiet activism. It’s not rioting on the streets, and it’s nothing quantifiable, but it’s still very important. And when I actually break it down, it’s not a complicated process, though it is very difficult.

If you want to start changing the world, here’s my advice.

1. Be yourself where other people can see you do it.

Many (I might even venture to say most) people have a public face and a private self. This is most obvious in American conservative male politicians, who are famous for screaming in public about how gay marriage will ruin everything and then hiring male prostitutes for filthy lavatory sex in private. This is an extreme example of something all of us do: shield ourselves from judgment and/or punishment by putting on a facade of what we think other people want us to be.

The sad fact is that a lot of people DO want you to be whatever it is you’re pretending to be in public and WILL punish you if they find out you’re not that thing—but there are also a lot of very desperate, very scared, very lonely people who would love to know who you actually are and need to believe that it’s okay to be exactly that thing.

The result of the public/private split is that everyone goes around believing that there’s something wrong with them for wanting what they want, feeling what they feel, or doing what they do in private because they don’t see anyone else wanting/feeling/doing the same. We look to those around us examples of how we “should” be, and often everyone else looks so much more put-together and accomplished and like generally more shining examples of humanity than WE are. So we use others’ public faces as role models for our private lives—and this mostly means we’re trying to live up to unreasonable and impossible ideals. I think many of us (or again, perhaps most) know how it feels when you’re constantly failing to live up to what you think you “ought” to be. (HINT: awful.)

Sometimes you are forced to fall into the public face/private self split, because your boss will fire you if he finds out you’ve been in porn, your family will withdraw financial support if they found out you had an abortion, your church would no longer welcome you if they discover you hired a prostitute, and your friends would disown you if they knew you’d converted to Mormonism….and so on. Sometimes you need people to like you who would not like you if they knew what you really want/feel/do. It’s okay to need that, because we don’t always have better options immediately available to us. But I think it’s important to make space where you can be yourself where other people can see it, too—important for both you and them.

2. Tell people what you feel, even if what you feel is shame about your feelings and fear of how of how other people will respond to what you feel.

Again, sometimes there are people in your life who cannot/will not listen to how you feel. Not all of us have the ability to leave situations in which we depend on people who cannot or will not meet our needs. But the internet is a marvelous invention, capable of connecting even the most physically distant and varied of people.

This means we simultaneously get a lot of horrible shit on the internet (normal person+anonymity+audience=TOTAL FUCKWAD, as the authors of Penny Arcade have not only said but sometimes exemplified [trigger warning for discussion of rape culture gone wild]) but we also get a lot of deeply moving and very private revelations about the experiences of others. Because sometimes, normal person+anonymity+audience=activism.

The internet is one space in which we are freed us to speak our truth when we would not otherwise be able or willing to do so because we fear the consequences. For me, it’s meant that I could share my erotic fantasies, discuss my struggles with gender, reveal my fears about my future, admit my failures, and get the support I needed even when my real-life friends and family could not and would not accept any of this. The end result? I got a taste how it felt to be accepted, welcomed, and applauded for who I really was, and that gave me the courage to start asking for that in real life—and thus getting it. Did this improve my quality of life? VASTLY. And as my quality of life and self-respect improved, apparently so did that of my friends, family, and fans.

Hearing someone else’s genuine experience unfiltered by the need to impress or conform can be a very powerful experience. And having your genuine experience heard without having to impress or conform can be a very powerful experience too. After all, that’s what therapy should be: someone hearing your genuine experience without requiring you to impress them or conform to their expectations. That is also what activism is: sharing your truth without warping it for the purposes of impressing or conforming.

3. Be as vulnerable as you possibly can.

Someone who later abused my trust once told me that I was so open that it was like I was walking around naked on a battlefield and he was scared that I would be hurt or taken advantage of—and I was hurt, ironically by him and through no intention of his own, but this was not because I was ‘naked’: it was because I did not know danger when I saw it so I walked right into it.

The reason we set up the public/private split is to protect ourselves. It’s a highly adaptive survival habit….up to a point. But we pass that point when we end up stuck with and dependent upon people who would disown, hurt, or destroy us if they knew who we really were. The public/private split is like wearing layers of armor—it keeps you safer as long as you can keep the armor on, but it cuts off intimacy and it weighs you down. And even the best-made armor has chinks through which you can be hurt anyway.

As I’ve said, not everyone has the privilege of a life in which they can safely be honest all the time. (I sure don’t.) But almost everyone can be more honest (and thus more vulnerable) more of the time, and the more vulnerable we all are, the more we learn to treat one another’s vulnerability with care.

4. Realize the power of pleasure.

Enjoy yourself loudly and share the pleasure as much as you can, and don’t underestimate the power of this.

I write and draw what I sometimes belittle by calling “silly porn”—and yet, I regularly get fanmail from people telling me how grateful they were for my so-called silly porn because when they looked at it they could begin to believe that their bodies and desires were okay to have.

And I write fanfiction. It is not ever going to be published or acclaimed as high literature—but that does not matter, because while high literature touches some people, fanfic touches others. It was in fanfiction that I first discovered and saw positively and lovingly portrayed so many things which later turned out to be vital to my identity—trans* bodies, BDSM, polyamory, the list goes on.

It was in watching queer porn that I first saw bodies like mine treated as beautiful, desirable, and whole. There were some videos I watched over and over and over again not because I found them erotic but because in them as in nowhere else I was able to see someone who might possibly be like me feeling blissful, connected, and happy. Their pleasure gave me hope.

And now, my pleasure gives others hope. I often try to talk myself out of the things I enjoy by telling myself that fanfiction is a waste of time, erotica is a waste of time, and art in general is a waste of time—but over and over again I return to it because I enjoy it, and it turns out that what I enjoy has changed the world in small yet lasting ways because I dared to be vulnerable and share my pleasure.

This is Hobbitdragon, talking about all the reasons I live the way I live and do the things I do, and why I think fiction writing is important activism, in much more lovely and articulate words than I have ever been able to express.

One of the people whose lives he changed was mine.

wundy:

Back when I first getting into social justice, I saw someone say something that really stuck with me: “If you’re not the problem then you’re not the problem and it’s not about you.”

For example, when people talk about “white people” in a generalized sense what they are really talking about is whiteness, privilege, ignorance, power dynamics. “I hate when white people do this” means “I hate that the culture of whiteness enables so many people to do this without questioning themselves.”

So, if the criticism really doesn’t apply to you, then you have no reason to get defensive, because you, personally, are not what’s being discussed. If, however, you do feel yourself getting defensive? That is probably your conscience talking and maybe you should take the criticism to heart.

I’m saying, if generalizations about white people bother you, that is probably actually your white guilt doing the talking.

This this this so much of this.

Same goes for “straight people” or “cis people”—those being the two that are usually relevant to me—and any other generalization on privileged groups. If it’s not about you, don’t make it about you.

whathunter:

whatsajuthika:

Eh, I’ll have to disagree with this. There are many problems with feminism which is why a lot of WoC do not identify themselves as part of the feminist movement, since there is a lot of privilege-denying there.

Yeahhh lots of cissexism happening up in mainstream feminism, too. I’m pretty much done with it. /ragequit and all.

I like to say that I’m not “a feminist,” I am simply “feminist.” I apply it to myself as an adjective. I didn’t exactly ragequit the movement, but I did get disillusioned and broaden my focus by rather a lot. Now it just feels ridiculous to specify that I’m “a feminist.”

I’m a social justice warrior, that’s what I am.

(Source: lazyandsarcastic)

emilyswash:

let’s say you have these two friends named lucille and cassie! let’s say your friend lucille trips up and says something that cassie didn’t like. cassie rails her so hard about the mistake that lucille has a panic attack. cassie apologizes, and feels really bad, and so you all move on. now, let’s say that cassie does this to at least two more people (that you know of). do you continue to move on, or do you start to suspect that cassie is an abuser?

WHAM BAM SHYAMALAN: CASSIE IS THE TUMBLR SOCIAL JUSTICE COMMUNITY!!

i don’t really know what to say here. i’m considering deleting my tumblr, or at least taking a bit of a hiatus. i’m, y’know, i would consider myself a radical? we need a revolution! just, a big ol’ revolt. lots of changes, lots of deconstruction, lots of building up. the thing is that i’m not sure that i want to be part of a revolution that includes verbally/textually beating people to tears?

like, people who have just made a mistake, people who apologized, people who mean well. yeah, intent means shit, etc. etc. if someone accidentally punches you, they’ve still punched you. but you know? honestly? honestly? we live in a culture that teaches us from the moment we enter the world that punching people in the face is acceptable. or that doesn’t teach us how to not punch people in the face. or something. of course, overall, i would prefer to not be punched in the face! but if someone’s going to do it— and they ARE going to do it, because that is the world we live in as of this moment, we live in a face-punching world— i’m going to feel better afterward if, when i go, “uhm you just punched me in the face…”, they go “holy shit i didn’t know / i feel bad / i’m gonna try not to do that!”, rather than “YEAH I DID HAHAHAH FACE PUNCHES FOR ALL OF THE FACES!” or like “WELL MAYBE YOUR FACE SHOULDN’T HAVE GOTTEN IN THE WAY OF MY FIST (WHILE IT WAS PUNCHING)!”

i don’t know how to sit down and have an honest discussion about people being assholes without seventy people immediately pointing at me and screaming “TONE ARGUMENT!!!!!!!” so hard that their eyeballs straight-up BURST. burst right out of their face. quite frankly, i am terrified to be involved in that discussion. this is not even a case of my anxiety going off, this is a case of “i am fairly certain that i am wandering into a cave of rabid winnie-the-pooh clones while wearing naught but a thick glaze of honey”. i am terrified to make a mistake or launch a mild criticism in front of a group i am at least partially involved in, and i think that’s a pretty good sign that i should leave it.

I’d like to add to this that, while I strongly believe that “intent isn’t important” is an extremely powerful and necessary tool for marginalized people to have at their disposal, it is meant to be used against people who use a lack of ill intent to “excuse” hurtful actions. A person who mistakenly says something bad and doesn’t realize it or have a chance to apologize before they get attacked is not one of those people.

To put in in perspective, this is an appropriate use of the argument.

Non-SJ Person: [Action worthy of call-out.]
SJ Activist: That’s not appropriate because [explanation].
Non-SJ Person: I didn’t mean it that way! That means it’s not offensive! You should excuse everything I say because I don’t know any better, and also, you are wrong!
SJ Activist: Intent doesn’t matter, you are a douche.

This, on the other hand, is not.

Non-SJ Person: [Action worthy of call-out.]
SJ Activist: That’s not appropriate because [explanation].
Non-SJ Person: Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize! Now that you have pointed it out, I understand I was in the wrong and I apologize.
SJ Activist: Intent doesn’t matter, you are still a douche.

See the difference?

And, you know, I shouldn’t even need to say this, but accusing someone of being a terrible person for something that was merely thoughtless and not actively oppressive, before they have had it pointed out to them, and before they have had a chance to apologize, especially if they aren’t involved in social justice and don’t know what they did wrong—well, that’s not on either. Don’t pull that shit.

I’d rather no more of my friends have anxiety attacks because of this.

neutresex:

TRIGGER WARNING: links to photo and text surrounding sex violence

thefeministhub:

Please reblog to get the word out.  And please, please, please sign this. It takes two seconds to enter in your information that could save many women’s lives.

He was asking people for spare change, to be able to stay at the YMCA tonight. I haven’t been able to give out change (or even buy food with my debit card, when I don’t have any cash) for the last couple of months because I haven’t had any personal money at all, but I got a bunch of money for Christmas, so I told him to wait a second while I put the stuff I’d just bought into my backpack. And he started crying. He thanked me, for even bothering to acknowledge his existence. Fucking thanked me.

What kind of fucked up world do we live in when I’m getting thanked for treating someone like a person and not human trash? How can we let society get to a state where the norm is treating someone like shit and pretending they don’t exist, to the point where it’s worthy of thanks when someone doesn’t step all over you?

I want to believe that people are fundamentally good but it’s so hard sometimes.

So I knelt down next to the building and he waited next to me, and while I’m stuffing the vodka coolers I just picked up into a backpack that’s already full of groceries, this poor guy at the end of his rope is observing that when there’s a disaster somewhere out in the world people are so willing to jump immediately and give a donation, but they walk by people on their own fucking streets and pretend they can’t hear them asking for help because they assume everyone who’s homeless or on the streets is a criminal or a drug addict and therefore not worth saving. And he’s right. There’s this huge mental disconnect in so much of the population. Everyone thinks like poor people out in other countries are poor because of their circumstances, but people in our own cities are poor because they’re lazy and worthless and won’t get a job and it’s their own fault and they deserve what they get—but it’s not like that at all, and people here are as much a victim of circumstances as people elsewhere.

It’s just not fair.

He told me his name was Kelly. I gave him ten dollars and a hug, and wished him safety and good luck.

I hope he’s okay.