On Myths and MOnsters

This is another one of my will write for an hour and this posts commissioner is Elaine Vinegault

Her Question:

Can you please write about how you think various forms of oppression/marginalization/disenfranchisement/ etc. are linked or are not linked? Thanks :)

Les Sorcieres,Las Brouhas, Vampires , Bloodsuckers, Ghosts, Invisible Men.

When it comes down to it, those are the things that run the machine. These caricatures and invented mythologies are what NEED to be spun around humans when you justify not treating them with any sort of consideration or respect.

Be it gender , race,class, ethnicity the common link about oppressing people is that they can never be what they ARE but instead MUST be what fits the narrative.

You can't justify not paying someone a living wage , without placing a value on their life. You can't justify becoming someones spokesman without affirming that they can not speak for themselves.

It's the basics of advertising, create a need and fill it.

This predefinition of people without any actual regard to their self definition allows you to define
yourself by being it's opposite , or in a quick fix completely invalidate them.

This is the skill of ALL oppression, and it is taught

WELL

Except because it is fundamentally based on creating pleasant historical fictions

and in turn validates our long held practices of creating pleasant personal myths.

SO much so that even those of us with progressive politics see no problem using the exact same methods when dealing with each other .

Because it is so proven to work.

Switch some code words , spook and ape become "urban youth", wetback is " immigrant", etc

and it is a common belief that as long as we don't speak of them with the disdain we once did or we ourselves don't know the horrible history ,or more importantly

don't readily identify with that history.

We are better than those who preceded us and champions for the "righteous".

Create the myths and monsters , malevolent and benevolent and anything you say afterwards will serve you well.

If they fight it , it proves they don't know what your talking about. If they go along it gives you power. Remember the preeminent power god gave Adam was to give the beasts names.

And why not it's worked for 800 years

This is where oppressions marginalization intersect, prevent people from self defining or declare those definitions invalid and they WILL never work as they can.

At Feministe this happened twice.

Ren Ev posted this .

I read through it and promptly ran for the sidelines. I love Ren and read her regularly but do not comment because I frankly can not in many cases participate.

No matter what the battle lines is drawn , the sides at this point are set, and while yes in a cake or death way I am a sex pos, I am not in itthe debate.It just doesn't involve me. The main purpose of this debate as long as it's about one versus another , without an examination of the stories and the histories that go along with it. It's always going to be a repetition of ingrained prejudices , half tinged rhetoric and shame.

Trinity in this comment towards the end after the haymakers were thrown and the rhetoric flew :

Yep. For some people it’s a luxury to be able to be the Hairy Feminist and not lose your job. For some people it’s easy to be.

Conversely it is also a luxury to be able to even remotely live up to the idea of a conventional beauty . OR that one can afford to do all those things to support EITHER aesthetic. Or that not subscribing to the conventional OR the hairy feminist can impair your appeal to other progressives but your very ability to feed your kids?

But those are questions we don't ask of myths and monsters.Those are conversations that happen between people, and as long as we using the same invective and methodology that is used to form us as myths and monsters we will continue to repeat the rhetorics that cause us to have them.

and then Nanette broke it down and flipped it around some.

While I won't go into the specifics of why her post is seminal ( because I said one hour) but the h problems of the mythos that comes from pretending we do not use the same methodologies to oppress others that are used to oppress us is played out both here and on this thread at Pandagon. ( I would like to insert a note a of sheer amazement at the fortitude and excellence of justicewalks in that thread )

Now LLoyd Webber originally linked me to this way early in the chaos and I flipped off something snide and kind of evil and kept it moving.

I expect nothing from these conversations anymore, and at the moment I had looked at it no one I knew or cared for was under any undue stress or attack. But seriously I became drawn in by the use of the term racist and the ensuing rhetoric.

Nanette's post crystallized it for me as did the path of the commentary on both posts.

Racist becomes the worst thing anyone can be for the non POC and non allied posters. Because it is deemed by THEM to be such an effrontery that any and all tactics to DESTROY those who would bring it up are ok.

The myth of the racist rather than the actual experience of those who rather gently and respectfully breeched the subject of it was more important than dialogue . By committing so virulently to absolving Amanda of ANY racist intentions or culpability they hit EVERY single tired meme , of class, race, and emotional condescension they could. Even so much as going

Maybe if Amanda had the same life experiences that JW has had, she’d see it as racist. But on the same token, if JW would bother to honestly look at it from Amanda’s perspective, a racist subtext wouldn’t be found.*

*Of course, that would require acknowledging that not all white people are racists, but I suspect that’s not possible in JW’s case, which pretty much makes her comments pointless in that strawman kinda way.

Essentially if JW wasn't black maybe she wouldn't be giving Amanda such a hard time. And if she would just realize that all white people who purposely ignored her experiences weren't mean she too could ignore centuries of ingrained and consistent racism

What was missed in that ENTIRE conversation that Nanette captured so beautifully is taht for a t least a good portion of the thread the actual message was

" Yes you did something racist with a racist history BUT we still want to work it out with you"

But these were not people they were myths and monsters. So what could can from kill joys mouth or an infanticide advocate, but non intelligence and buzz killing?

The fact that these monsters and myths are only characterized b y their ability to have soul crushing knowledge of a racist trope, that i have taught and been aware of as originating in the 17th century.

That they would not be satisfied by the BIG STEP of taking it to her publisher, but ask that her words be specific and real and presented as they are and taken with the same care she expects us to show her book.

Not something you give to myths and monsters.

And whats more that when Nanette writes about her OWN experience , it is assumed she is talking about Amanda. Myths and montsters aren't the namers they create nothing

And here is where we the problem of myths and monsters not just for the oppressed but for their "creators" happens..

Even in fable myths and monsters must be handled specifically. Myths and monsters are even in their fiction their own creatures , and develop life and loves on their own.

If you create us as such we will develop something amazing , the ability to act both within your fiction AND within the truth.

And the truth

Hurts.

Until systems of oppression are truly shelved for the prominence of humanity it matters not what the ism schism that the privileged hold onto. They will always be joy killed when the myths and monsters screw up the narratives.

But so will we if we accept it until we are able to look at EACH other out side of these narratives we will never do the work of untangling ourselves from this bloody cosmology.

or

"Ain't nothing good gon' come to ya , til you do right by me"- Queen Latifah

Une Sorciere Negre