Hard words are often necessary ones.. and it helps to have a privileged voice carry them.
Yeah, I'm honestly pretty ambivalent about having played "cis chick explains it all" on that thread, but once the OP started talking more about Oliver's tone than his argument, it seemed like it was going nowhere fast. :c/
But hell, this is coming from the one who had to tell my boss that paying the cis chick to co-facilitate the campus "trans people and allies" group and not paying the trans guy was seven kinds of fucked up. Because when the trans guy said it, he was just being greedy. So I should be used to saying obvious things to stupid people, even though they should have heard them the first hundred times, when the right people said them more eloquently and from personal experience.
Sorry. I'm vomiting my irritation all over this thread, and I probably shouldn't be, but I'm coming off a migraine (partially Femmessay induced) and having trouble thinking of a more coherent way to put this.
Bottom line, privilege is a signal-booster, and while it disgusts me that it should be necessary to use it that way, I feel like cis people who are capable of doing so non-stupidly have an obligation to amplify the message where needed.
(We also have an obligation to shut up and realize when it's being broadcast load and clear without our help, which takes more work, at least for me.)
Re: Hard words are often necessary ones..
and it helps to have a privileged voice carry them.
Yeah, I'm honestly pretty ambivalent about having played "cis chick explains it all" on that thread, but once the OP started talking more about Oliver's tone than his argument, it seemed like it was going nowhere fast. :c/
But hell, this is coming from the one who had to tell my boss that paying the cis chick to co-facilitate the campus "trans people and allies" group and not paying the trans guy was seven kinds of fucked up. Because when the trans guy said it, he was just being greedy. So I should be used to saying obvious things to stupid people, even though they should have heard them the first hundred times, when the right people said them more eloquently and from personal experience.
Sorry. I'm vomiting my irritation all over this thread, and I probably shouldn't be, but I'm coming off a migraine (partially Femmessay induced) and having trouble thinking of a more coherent way to put this.
Bottom line, privilege is a signal-booster, and while it disgusts me that it should be necessary to use it that way, I feel like cis people who are capable of doing so non-stupidly have an obligation to amplify the message where needed.
(We also have an obligation to shut up and realize when it's being broadcast load and clear without our help, which takes more work, at least for me.)