[sudo-discuss] cuddling it

[Anthony Di Franco]

Thanks Hep, that helps a lot, and I'll be sure to bear it all in mind.
On May 6, 2013 1:40 PM, "hep" <dis at gruntle.org> wrote:

> it is really sad that this list is literally turning into a game of
> oppression bingo. i will make this brief.
>
> 1. using terms like "civilization" to refer to a class of dominant
> majority with a huge history of colonialistic oppression, at the expense of
> any class who has experiences colonialistic oppression is pretty offensive.
> if you want to qualify this as "what they wrongly refer to themselves as"
> then use quotes and indicate as such. ie "Doesn't the so-self-called
> 'civilized' psyche secretly crave the things it sets itself apart from and
> gives up and projects on its image of the noble savage though?" it would be
> better however to reword this overall to say something like "Doesn't the
> privileged majority psyche secretly crave the things it sets itself apart
> from and gives up and projects on its image of the oppressed culture
> though?"
>
> 2. using tropes like "noble savage" is ok as long as everyone involves
> understand that you are referring to the named trope and not using that
> term as an offensive term. this can be solved by referencing the trope at
> hand. ie http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Noble_savage
>
> 3. some people are still going to be offended by this term, because it is
> still hugely offensive to native peoples even as it is used as a handy
> moniker to call out offensive behavior by the privileged majority.
>
> 4. using the term noble savage in reference to african americans is doubly
> offensive, even if it fits the point you are trying to make fyi. if you
> MUST use tropes to refer to POC, make sure you are using the correct one
> that examines the colonial aspects of the behavior being discussed.
>
> 5. when someone is offended by your choice in language, the correct thing
> to do is not double down and try to explain that you weren't being
> offensive. the correct thing to do is to say something like "i am sorry my
> language choice offended you. what i was trying to say was___". do not
> attempt to use dictionary.com, etymology, wikipedia usage, etc to try and
> prove that you weren't being offensive. offense is not in the eye of the
> person who offended, it is in the eye of that person offended. so just
> accept that you behaved offensively even as you did not intend to and move
> on. trying to explain to the world at large how you totally weren't
> offensive citing media to try and "prove" it just makes you more offensive,
> and it is incredibly disrespectful to the person you are communicating with
> who likely doesn't give a shit what you were actually trying to say at this
> point, and did not sign on for a weeks long multiple page scroll email
> battle/war of attention attrition. accept, move on. don't become a cliche.
>
> 6. free speech is not a get out of jail free card. you have the right to
> say anything you want. and we all have the right to think of you as an
> asshole for saying it. if someone says "don't say that" they aren't
> depriving you of your right to free speech, they are trying to save you
> from losing friends and allies in your community. "congress shall make no
> law abridging free speech." there is nothing in there that says someone HAS
> to remain your friend after you were unintentionally a racist asshole.
>
> 7. most people who fight oppression in their communities do not want to
> argue about it in their hobbies. respect that. just because you have the
> time and inclination to have a long-winded email argument does not mean
> that you are not also being totally offensive by assuming the other person
> wants/needs/is going to engage in it. often times i see people "win"
> arguments on email lists only because they were the more persistant
> asshole, not because they are right. and be aware that that is totally
> obvious to people not involved but still reading.
>
>
> 8. a point to everyone: native american peoples are not dead. there are
> still many thriving native cultures, and people need to understand that
> when they refer to native things or topics they are talking not just about
> past people that were wiped out, but also active real working native
> peoples still here. the bay area is full of native people who are active in
> their tribal affiliations, who work to promote native rights, and who are
> invested in the topics of native americans. when you frame out things like
> that there is a "civlized" society, and native societies (implying not
> civilized) many of those people are GOING to be super offended. Like when
> native people try to call out white people on wearing headdresses as
> culturally appropriative, and white people rebut with "YOU ARE ON THE
> INTERNET. THAT WAS INVENTED BY US MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T USE THAT". fucked up.
> (for the ignorant: native people are americans as well and have equal
> rights to share in american culture as any other american. besides which:
> last i checked many native peoples have also contributed to the internet,
> even as there are colonial privileged oppressionistic usages of native
> culture as well, such as apache.) try to keep that in mind as you use terms
> that may evoke native americans, at the risk of being seen as a total
> racist asshole.
>
> also everything that rachel said.
>
> -hep
>
>
> On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Anthony Di Franco <di.franco at aya.yale.edu>wrote:
>
>> Rachel, I've had a bit more time to reflect on what you wrote, and while
>> I don't have anything to add about the immediate question beyond what I
>> said yesterday, I'd like to talk about some of the broader context you
>> brought up in your reply and the more general issues involved.
>>
>> The first thing is that I am primarily viewing what we are trying to do
>> as having a discussion, so it seems to me that when there are
>> misunderstandings that is exactly when we should be having more discussion
>> to clarify what we are trying to say and find out effective ways to say it,
>> not less. Meanwhile, you are using the terms of some sort of power struggle
>> where I am being attacked and defending myself and allegiances are forming
>> and shifting around the patterns of conflict. I do not see a power struggle
>> but rather a community trying to communicate and communication depends on
>> shared understanding among senders and recipients of symbols and how to use
>> them to convey meaning. Where this is not immediately clear, clarifying it
>> explicitly seems the most direct way to move towards better mutual
>> understanding. I hope this can be reconciled with your own views and I
>> welcome further discussion on this.
>>
>> Within the attacking and defending point of view, I am also uncomfortable
>> with some things. To speak of attacking and defending and also then to say
>> that the subject of the attack should *stop defending* reminds me too much
>> of the revolting cries of "stop resisting" from police - I could certainly
>> never meditate on such an ugly phrase and I find the suggestion grotesque.
>> It's something I've heard while authoritarian thugs victimize people who
>> are not resisting but only perhaps trying to maintain their safety and
>> dignity under an uninvited attack, perhaps not even that, and one way the
>> phrase is used is as a disingenuous way of framing the situation so that
>> later, biased interpretations of what happened will have something to latch
>> onto. I am glad we have much less at stake in our interactions here than in
>> those situations but I still really don't like to see us internalizing that
>> logic in how we handle communications in our group.
>>
>> There is another aspect of this I am uncomfortable with, which is the
>> idea that people should respond to feedback only by silently assenting.
>> This reminds me too much of other situations where people, sometimes
>> myself, were supposed to be seen and not heard, and it deprives people of
>> agency over and responsibility for what they do by expecting them to let
>> others determine their behavior unilaterally. I am happy to take feedback
>> and, generally, I hope you can trust people to act on feedback
>> appropriately rather than trying to short-circuit their agency. The more
>> informative feedback is, then, the better, and it should contain
>> information people can use themselves to evaluate what they are doing the
>> way others do so they can figure out how to accommodate everyone's needs.
>> When feedback consist simply of naked statements it is too much like
>> trolling in the small or gaslighting in the large, and especially then,
>> amounts to an insidious way to deprive people of agency by conditioning
>> them to fear unpredictable pain when they exercise agency, and has a
>> chilling effect. In general, the idea that certain people are less able
>> than others to handle the responsibilities of being human, and so they
>> should have their behaviors dictated to them unilaterally by others, is a
>> key to justifying many regimes of oppression, especially modern ones, and
>> because of that I am very uncomfortable when I see any example of that
>> logic being internalized in our group dynamics.
>>
>> I don't know what passed between you and Eddan involving trump cards but
>> if the card game analogy really is apt then it may be a sign of
>> trivializing the question of safe space by saying that certain people's
>> concerns trump other people's concerns, based not on the concerns
>> themselves, but only on who is raising the concerns. Both are important. I
>> have heard some justifications for 'trumping' as I understand it that
>> remind me of the debate around the Oscar Grant case. There, defenders of
>> Mehserle's conduct claimed that police should be the judges of what
>> legitimate police use of force is because they have special training and
>> experience that give them a uniquely relevant perspective on what violence
>> is justified and what demands of compliance they can legitimately make of
>> people. Another justification I heard was that police are especially
>> vulnerable due to the danger inherent in their duties and so things should
>> be biased heavily towards a presumption of legitimacy when they use
>> violence or demand compliance. To me both these justifications seem
>> problematic because they create a class that can coerce others without
>> accountability and can unilaterally force standards of conduct on others. I
>> am happy that there is much less at stake among us here than there is in
>> cases of police brutality or Oscar Grant's case, and that there is no
>> comparison other than this logic being used. But the logic that certain
>> people's perspectives are uniquely relevant, or that their vulnerability
>> gives them license to force things upon others unilaterally, is still a
>> logic I don't think we should internalize among ourselves, because it
>> produces unaccountable authoritarianism that can be exploited for
>> unintended ends, and does not help with the ostensibly intended ones
>> anyway. It results in us 'policing' ourselves in a way much too much like
>> the way the cities are policed to the detriment of many people and of
>> values we share.
>>
>> Finally, you mentioned the evening at Marina's apartment and I want to
>> clarify my experience of what happened there. My 'aha' moment didn't have
>> anything to do with the point you were trying to make - I can't even
>> remember exactly what that point was, because it is so strongly
>> overshadowed by my memory of how you treated me. You called me out for
>> something that had passed between you and me in the middle of a social
>> gathering among a mix of friends and strangers, none of whom were involved,
>> which immediately put me in a very uncomfortable situation. Then, you
>> dismissed my attempts to defer speaking to a more appropriate setting, and
>> to open up a dialog with you where I shared my perspective. The only way
>> out you gave me was to assent without comment to you. My 'aha' moment was
>> when I realized that things between us had degenerated to that point; it
>> was when I realized I was mistaken in trying to have a discussion because
>> we were interacting like two territorial animals, or like a police
>> interrogator and a suspect, and you were simply demanding a display of
>> submission or contrition from me before you would let me slink off. While
>> it felt degrading, I took the way out you offered to spare myself and the
>> others in the room the experience of things continuing. I take the risk of
>> sharing this openly with you now because I think we know each other much
>> better than we did then and we would never again end up interacting like
>> potentially hostile strangers passing in the night, or worse. I think we
>> can and should and have been doing better, and overall it's best not to let
>> a mistaken assumption about what I was thinking and how I felt influence an
>> important discussion about how we treat one another in our community.
>>
>> I, like you, hope you can appreciate that I am taking the time to write
>> this admittedly long-winded reply, not to suck the air out of the room,
>> whatever that means, but to contribute to a discussion that moves us
>> towards a better shared understanding of how to respect our shared values
>> and towards more appreciation of one another's perspectives.
>>
>> Anthony
>>
>>
>> On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 10:14 AM, rachel lyra hospodar <
>> rachelyra at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I am really sad about this whole thread.
>>>
>>> Anthony, I think I know you well enough to say that your intent here was
>>> not to be offensive, but unfortunately... Here we are. I am responding to
>>> the specific message below because it is the one that made me want to
>>> unsubscribe from this mailing list and unassociate myself from this group.
>>> Everything that came after, gah.
>>>
>>> Anti-oppression for the priveleged class, ie not being an unintentional
>>> giant jerkface: if someone points out that you are offending or harming
>>> them, they are not seeking an explanation, but a change in behavior.
>>> Perhaps an apology or acknowledgement, even a query. If someone says 'i
>>> think your POV is fucked up and harmful' please do not go on to elaborate
>>> on your POV to them. Even if you think they don't get your amazing nuances.
>>> Your amazing nuances are not always important, and part of 'oppression' is
>>> that some peoples' nuances are always shoved in other people's faces.
>>> Sometimes being a friend means keeping your opinion to your damn self.
>>>
>>> This relates to something that eddan has on occasion termed 'the trump
>>> card'.  We are all individuals, and as such we ultimately need to keep our
>>> own house in order. The trump card concept relates to safe spaces - as safe
>>> as eddan might feel in a space, I'm not going to average it together with
>>> my safety levels to achieve some sort of average safety rating. My safety
>>> reading of a space will always, for me, trump eddan's, and while I am happy
>>> if he feels safe it doesn't really matter to my safety level.
>>>
>>> The interesting thing about telling most people they are making you feel
>>> unsafe, or that they are offending you, is that for some reason their
>>> response is almost never 'gosh, whoops!'. It's more usually like what
>>> happened here - a bunch of longwinded explanation that completely misses
>>> the point, and then a perceived ally of the offender jumping in, also
>>> talking a lot, and sucking all the air out of the room.  People always have
>>> reasoning for why they did what they did. Requiring offended folks to read
>>> about your reasoning for why you said what you said misses the point, and
>>> to me makes this conversation read like you don't care if you were
>>> offensive.
>>>
>>> It's deja vu to me that you are giving all this definition and
>>> explanation around the terms you used. It seems identical to our debate
>>> around the use of 'constable' and it is sad to me to see you take refuge in
>>> the same pattern of defense. It doesn't matter about the etymological
>>> history of a phrase. It doesn't. As fun as you may find it to think about,
>>> the way things are *heard*, by others, NOW, is a trump card for many.
>>>
>>> Anthony, I hope you can understand that I have taken the time out of my
>>> life to write this message in the hopes of helping you to modulate your
>>> behavior to be less offensive. I am sure you remember the first time I
>>> engaged with you on this topic, at Marina's house. Perhaps you'll remember
>>> the aha moment when you *stopped defending* and simply accepted the input,
>>> thanking me. Perhaps you'll find in that a sort of meditative place of
>>> return.
>>>
>>> Good luck to you all. I enjoy many things about sudo community and am
>>> sure I will stay connected in many ways.
>>>
>>> R.
>>>  On May 3, 2013 3:05 PM, "Anthony Di Franco" <di.franco at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Doesn't the civilized psyche secretly crave the things it sets itself
>>>> apart from and gives up and projects on its image of the noble savage
>>>> though?
>>>>
>>>> Your description seems more like meditatively flowing through it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 2:58 PM, netdiva <netdiva at sonic.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Here I was thinking "killing it" was just another example of
>>>>> appropriation of african american vernacular by the mainstream.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 5/3/2013 2:46 PM, Leonid Kozhukh wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> "killing it" is a recently popular term to denote excellence and
>>>>>> immense progress. it has a violent, forceful connotation.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> friends in the circus community - through empirical evidence - have
>>>>>> established a belief that operating at the highest levels of talent
>>>>>> requires mindfulness, awareness, and calm. thus, a better term, which they
>>>>>> have started to playfully use, is "cuddling it."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> thought sudoers would appreciate this.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> cuddling it,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> len
>>>>>>
>>>>>> founder, ligertail
>>>>>> http://ligertail.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
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>
>
> --
> hep
> hepic photography || www.hepic.net
>     dis at gruntle.org || 415 867 9472
>
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