Trust me, it's not easy or fun to point out problematic things.

I've found that almost every time I point out something appropriative, racist, fatphobic, sexist, homophobic, ableist, what-have-you, that I am told I am "taking things personally" or that I'm "looking for things to be offended by"... and that just floors me. As my friend Katie put it this morning, "Why on earth would people deliberately want to look for things to be offended by? By the time we've simply told the truth about what's really happening, who has energy to go searching for more?" Yup, my thoughts exactly.

Of course, the more I read about social justice and familiarize myself with the concept of micro-aggressions, the more I see them. Our perception of the world around us is influenced by our own experiences, as well as listening to the experiences of others. The more I read and research and listen, the less I am able to look past things and gloss them over. I pick my battles, as I don't have the spoons to spend on endless internet arguments. I'm not saying debates have no value; I've learned a lot from watching back and forth arguments about class and race and oppressive language and sexism on tumblr and facebook. It seems the people watching usually take more away from it than the people doing the talking anyway. But there are also times I can't stay quiet, when people I love and respect do and say problematic things. It's tricky, because most of the time, their intent is not to harm. I don't want it to sound like I'm accusing them of being terrible, horrible human beings.

This quote I posted on FB a few days ago sums up my feelings on intent:

"From a very young age we’re basically taught to think of racism and “anything bad” isms as something “very bad people [consciously] do.” We are always taught to identify with the good guys and wonder what the bad guys were thinking. We then have a lot of trouble actually identifying evil thoughts within ourselves, because we don’t see ourselves as being “evil people.”

But part of truly understanding the horror of many acts in history is understanding that the people who made them happen were not particularly evil- the people that followed weren’t particularly evil. That evil often happens in little steps, tiny jokes and references and cultural nuances until something snaps and the whole thing snowballs into chaos and upheaval. Evil as it occurs when groups of people are denied rights or killed or discriminated against or whatever isn’t necessarily the result of an evil thought, but rather the result of a lack of conscious thoughts fighting evil."

- http://feministdisney.tumblr.com

Many of these small displays of injustice are completely unintentional, but to not call them out would be intentional on my part. I know, I know. I'm just a bitter and over-sensitive boner-killer. How dare I not just laugh and move right along, right? Sometimes, I do move along (minus the laughing, because contrary to popular belief, I have a FAB sense of humor and that shit just isn't funny), mainly in conversations about race, because POC don't need another white voice hogging their space. When the conversation is about fatness (or sexism or mental illness), though, you'd better believe I'm going to be soap-boxing.

Back in September I saw this image floating around facebook.

It had been shared by someone I know.

My response to the image was this: "Fatness and it's environmental causes are NOT this simple and images like this only further enforce the fallacies that the general public already believes about fat people. There are fat people who walk, bike, ride the bus everywhere, etc. There are thin people who won't park their car to go into the store and will go through a drive-through instead. Fatness or lack thereof is no indicator of health or well-being. It just isn't that simple. This image thinks it's real clever, when all it's doing is the same as the playground bully who points at the fat kid and says, "You're lazy and greedy!!" The use of the fatty as a scapegoat for wealth, greed, and environmental unconsciousness needs to end." Predictably, I was told by several people (most of whom were thin and therefore acceptable to society) that I was wrong, that no one meant any harm by it, that I was seeing something that wasn't there, and that I was taking it all "too personally".

My advice to anyone who gets called out on problematic words or behavior by someone in a position of less privilege? Listen. Then listen some more. Don't defend, don't argue, don't dismiss.

LISTEN.