My Husband Says, “Get Some Perspective”
Oct 22nd, 2009 by heidi
My husband, the INTP, tells you what he thinks about the latest drama. Note, although I have sold out to the patriarchy by being married to a white male, his thoughts are not necessarily my own but I find them interesting.
And, JoGeek gives the definition of the philosophy that sums up my own thoughts on privilege without even knowing that the word and concept she describes existed. Thank you, JoGeek!
It reminds me a little of my childhood (did any of you Iron Chef fans catch the reference there?). I spent the first nine years of my life in West Africa as a missionary kid. I saw people who’d been damaged by polio, faced the terror of being bitten by a wild cat that might have carried rabies, know what it’s like to evacuate in the middle of the night because you think your house might get bombed or that mercenaries might massacre you…and sometimes, just sometimes, I find myself wondering what the hell we fat white middle-class North American (European in some cases?) women are complaining about?
Before everyone explodes…I know privilege exists. But as my husband puts it, the fact that I can turn on my computer in the morning and type whatever I like about our government, or about FA, or about anybody I like without fearing reprisals other than nasty trolling means that, in the end, I’d really rather get back to the meat of FA (forgive me, vegetarians) and explore my own size issues. If I feel like being politically active, then I’ll do it. In the meantime, I’m part of the FA movement, and of the Fatosphere, because while I will never be one of the most popular blogs on the ‘sphere (I write too much about non-FA topics, am not terribly political in my FA discussions, and am just not very funny – popular blogs are all about either controversy or comedy), I like being in a place that *doesn’t judge me based on my size.* Well, that is, apart from the good fat/bad fat, etc. stuff that I mentioned a few days back, a post on which I received some truly lovely and supportive comments.
Those comments are the reason I’m here. I think they’re the reason most of us are here. I’d like to invite all of us to remember that, as my LIS professors beat into our heads this summer, words on the Internet can come out wrong. Someone who seems belligerent may actually be flippant but entirely desirous of an honest answer. It is so obvious that it barely bears retelling, but the language we use is important and fine distinctions like whether one is flat out stating that someone IS X or is just ACTING LIKE X are likely to be entirely irrelevant and lost in hurt and dismay. Being flippant can come across as aggressive and if you tell someone they’re acting like a douchebag, chances are that they’ll think you’re calling them a douchebag, because the difference, at least on the Intarwebz, is just not that significant. I can’t see your face and you can’t see mine (except in bad profile pics, which you’ll notice I don’t put up on this blog. Ask me for my Flickr account if you want to see my gorgeous self. Ha).
I have a lot to learn about articulate writing. I may be able to b/s my way through an academic research paper with the best of them (does anyone really want to question my academic credentials?) but that doesn’t mean I say everything the way I mean to say it. I’m constantly editing, rewriting, rethinking, and feeling like I’ve failed to get my point across. I’m not always as patient with other people as I hope they are with me…and however privileged or unprivileged we are feeling, if we can’t take that step back now and then and reevaluate what we’ve written (and apologize if we need to for the way in which we’ve said something, rather than what we actually said, an important distinction!), then I’m not sure it’s worth recognizing any of those privileges because we’re not doing anything useful with them anyway.
And that is all I have to say on privilege for the next year, I should hope. I’m going to head back to the Heidi-Hole and hunker down in my Bad Fattiness with my lunch and my homework, thankyouverymuch.
Yes, exactly! You’ve touched on all the points that I think so many people in the f-sphere are forgetting.
The most important point being; NO ONE INTENDED TO INSULT ANYONE. So why all the upset? *sigh*
Yay! I like your point- FA is about ACCEPTING WHO YOU ARE. No matter what size, no matter what issues you have, no matter if you’re a “good” or “bad fat, liberal or republican or whatever, to me FA is about getting out of the habit of beating yourself up. To stop comparing yourself to that thin woman or that fat woman and just be happy being you. Women (and men!) in America and all over the world do way too much of that. And its so annoying and counter-productive. FA has helped me to stop all that, well, at least get rid of most of it. So yay for FA! And yay for you!
Rachel –
Delurking to say I know that many of their posts come off to me as garbled, snarky and dismissive. At first I wanted to extend them the benefit of the doubt, but what they write hasn’t improved, and I got frustrated enough I quit reading them a while back.
Thing is, that kind of frustration build-up can lead to a “this is the last straw!” reaction instead of a “hm, here’s what I think” comment.
I did find the bellies posts were cute and funny. Most any post where they’re doing minimal writing and posting pictures works for me. Maybe I may need to reset my “TL; DR” counter for them to be about a paragraph?
I skim a lot of ZC posts…but then, that’s true for most posts on the Fatosphere feed. I think my general opinion of most blogs is that if they don’t interest me, I don’t read them. Period. I probably would never even have read Bianca’s post if it hadn’t been for Marianne’s reply and the way that seemed to me to be an overboard response to what really, in the end, was a “scroll on by, scroll on by” moment.
In my opinion, anyway.
Sylvia’s made some very sweet, supportive comments here and so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Certainly the bigwigs of mainstream FA have never taken the time (for a myriad of reasons, yes, I’m not claiming otherwise!) to comment on my blog, so if I find someone friendly, I’m going to at least try to defend them insofar as I can, which in this instance meant not defending Bianca’s post so much as explaining how I’d read it and how I didn’t feel that the language used to describe her was a proportional response.
I think you pick and choose what’s important to you and which blogs you find most readable. That’s the joy of having so many to choose from.
Thanks Heidi. I enjoyed the contemplative nature of your post. I have lurked here for some time and will post more in the future.
A mentor once told me that clear writing starts with clear thinking. I find your writing and thinking to be very clear. I haven’t figured everything out yet so my writing may be less clear. I also tend to be more practical than ideological. I have core beliefs but dogma doesn’t interest me in any area of my life.
The best thing to come out of all of this privilege upset for me is that I have discovered many wonderful FA sites and a diversity of opinions.
Huh.
I’ve read the controversy, the commentary, and the responses, and all I can really say is this:
Someone with as much privilege as stated certainly has the ability to do their own work when it comes to the question of, “What can I do to change/help?”