stories matter

[rm]

And that's also why this thing now called RaceFail '09 is a very serious business.

yuki_onna has done a great piece here, and it speaks not just to why this all fucking matters but why stories matter at all.

http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/450101.html

and a nod to coyotegoth for the tip.

Comments

[argentla.livejournal.com]

The problem, of course, is that the we/you/they split is a bitch. Especially when you're talking about gender issues.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm encountering that trying to unpack some of the issues over on someone else's journal right now. I liked this post, because I felt like it was a defense of storytelling (something people harp on me for a lot) and therefore I felt was sort of extensible to everyone. Everyone should tell more stories. Everyone should read more stories.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

The you/we split is a nontrivial issue for me, though, and as eloquent as she is, it's a real problem for me (which is part of why I stopped reading yuki_onna).

I'm a little twitchy about it because I've been boxed about the years on this quite a bit already.

[rm.livejournal.com]

God, we're all twitchy at this point, I think. I'm having a good discussion elsewhere that I'm not linking because I'm afraid of it getting jumped by resentments both justified and not.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

There's not really any way I can respond to it without sounding like an asshole, but suffice it to say that since I write queer fiction (though not genre fiction), it is the big economy-size can of worms.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and quite so. (What I am saying is: "I hear you" -- I've been ridiculously silent on this whole thing and appreciate the complexities and awkwardnesses of it).

I was interested to note that verb_noire is focusing on both PoC and queer protagonists.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know thewayoftheid, and am talking to her about it to see if maybe I can do something with them.

I'm actually pretty close to some kind of freak-out on this topic. While other people are talking big about we, they, and you, all I've got is me, feeling increasingly cornered.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not I am twitchy about it too. Maybe it's a failure of mine, but I couldn't think of how else to pronoun a conversation about people who look and live like me being absent from stories.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

The privilege of dominant groups or cultures is to be able to say "we" with impunity, even when "we" is demonstrably false.

The problem with "we" is that it is an artificial construct. If "we" are divided from "they" (or "you") along racial lines, that division does not erase the separations of sex or class. If "we" is demarcated by sex, it does not negate class or race. However you draw those lines, it comes down in the end to the politics of exclusion; "we" draw strength from being distinct from "you," and somebody is always left standing in the cold, wondering where they fit.

It is a paradigm that seeks power by substituting one form of exclusion and marginalization for another, ensuring that no matter what struggles take place, someone always loses, and the shape of the existing order is perpetuated, even if its shading varies.

The master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. Or, if you prefer, the words of P.J. O'Rourke: "There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause."

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

IAWTC.8)
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