excuses

instead of writing about perfectly logical explanations, i want to write about excuses...
today, i was playing softball. i have been playing for about 15 years and can acknowledge that i am pretty good. we were playing a team that had their stand full of heckling fans. as happens when playing softball, someone hit it to third base, i caught it and threw them out. let me clarify, a man hit it and me, a woman, got him out. end of inning.
next thing i hear is--you better check her for testosterone.
this was jarring for me to hear. it makes me cringe a little just to write it. but, that is what happened.
what i know, is that what was said is less about me and more about the person who said it. my perception is that there are multiple explanations for feeling the need to say that:

1. masculinity is delicate and needs to be cared for because it will break

2. fear of approval from colleagues

3. embarrassment of being showed up by a woman

4. intimidation of me as a player

5. strict adherence to gender norms and hierarchy

6. anger for getting out

7. intimidation of that a woman can show a man up

8. displaced emotions related to gender roles/norms/expectations

what gets me is that the comment that was made was an excuse in and of itself. an excuse for poor behavior. an excuse to belittle someone (me). an excuse to blame external forces, when there were no external forces.
excuses are weapons. they hurt, injure, and destroy. if they feel they need weapons like that to win a softball game, so be it.

they lost. 21-8. i guess excuses don't work after all...

white normativity

it occurs to me that white normativity exists although i have never heard this term. i was just at a conference about race, at a workshop on a theory of "silent racism." this theory is essentially that all white people are somewhat racist--that white people's actions/behaviors/thoughts are more or less racist or somewhere on that continuum. "not racist" doesn't exist in this theory.
now, i am not going to argue for or against this theory, but i do want to mention that during the workshop, the person leading it kept saying "we." usually this is not a big deal, however, someone asked who the "we" was and the response was white people. language, namely "we," the presenter used was never altered after this question was asked.
the presenter assumed the audience was white, as that is the meaning of "we." the audience was not white. in fact, the audience was mostly people of color. to me, the inherent message of the continuation of using "we" is that people of color should be disregarded, even if they are in the room.
this was the moment during the conference that i began to think about white normativity. i began to connect concept to practice. to me, white normativity is when we reference the world from a white perspective and (un/consciously) assume that everyone agrees with and has this perspective.

in this situation, the perfectly logical explanation (ple) for the presenter using "we" and really only meaning white people, was simply that it was difficult to find an easy way to make clear that the theory was in reference to white people. to me the ple is pretty pathetic. also, it tells me that the presenter is not doing their own work, just reporting their research. if the presenter had done their own work, this ple would not exist.

pronouns

really, i just have one thing to say. in the absence of knowing the appropriate gender pronoun--she/he--the person should not be referred to as "it."
the sad thing is i hear this often enough to realize that it is said often. people are always people; they should be treated as such. no one, not one person, should be referred to as a thing, an it, whatever, or nothing.
what made me especially disappointed today was that one of the people who off-handedly called someone "it" was a person who attended a training about how to be an ally for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) community. calling someone "it" certainly is not a good start or positive reflection of this person's ability to be an ally to the lgbtq community.
that is all.

turning the other cheek

privilege and ignore are scary words to me when they are in the same sentence. a couple months ago now i helped lead a training about privilege. a man at the training said that he would just ignore his privilege and that would serve as a solution for the system of privilege.

it’s scary to think that the two-year-old child’s solution of covering up your eyes—if i can’t see you, you can’t see me—is suddenly a viable solution for adults in regard to privilege. when we see two-year-olds do this, it’s cute and endearing. when adults do this, what do we think? it’s sad to me because i have seen covering one's eyes as an acceptable solution. it’s sad and scary to think ignoring privilege and pretending not to have it all of a sudden seems a likely way to solve the problem. is it true that in reality when it happens, we think it's okay? why is this funny for a child to do and serious for an adult? to me, this indicates something very wrong is going on. something we are not willing to acknowledge but is there nonetheless.

the real problem of privilege, however, is systemic, cultural, and personal. we might not be able to see it because we are not really looking. it’s a pervasive system wrought with expectation and entitlement, fear and blame whether we acknowledge it or not. when people have privilege and acknowledge they do the guilt that accompanies is overwhelming. let me ask though---who makes guilt an overwhelming emotion? only the person feeling it, that’s who...rightfully so to some degree being that the system is so insidious. it chokes everyone, suffocating people into consciouslessness.

i am not trying to knock the tactic of ignorant bliss altogether. sometimes it is useful; i recognize it as a defense mechanism, but i think it’s important to unpack that. why is there a need for defense when it comes to acknowledging privilege? my best guess is the lack of readiness to accept responsibility for privilege. responsibility for how the system currently is, responsibility for contributing to oppression, and responsibility to do something about it and with it. that’s a huge mental and spiritual undertaking. avoiding such an undertaking, such a responsibility, is certainly easier than facing the reality.
on the other hand, people lacking privilege face reality everyday. there is no option of defense—of ignoring, of pretending, of avoiding responsibility. privilege truly is having this luxury. the option of avoidance if and when you choose.
ignorance by choice is just one more perfectly logical explanation (ple) to not change; to not have to try to live and achieve social justice.
stay awake people! don’t use a ple because it’s easy. be in it (in your privilege) even though it’s hard and brings about emotions that are difficult to face up to. reality in its fullest is difficult to face up to. what’s worse is when you don’t see what is truly going on around you and how you are a part of it. don't continue to contribute to oppression. it doesn't benefit anyone. how is ignoring privilege beneficial to anyone--including yourself?

so, what do you do with your privilege?

blindspots

the past couple days i have been thinking about the concepts and connections of colorblindness and pansexuality. my guess is this will come out a little convoluted though, so hang on until the end.

i don’t believe in colorblindness, but i hear so many people saying it has advantages (not necessarily what the advantages are, just that advantages exist) and how they believe in it. the lack of explanation makes me wonder: what exactly are the advantages to colorblindness?
seeing someone for who they are not for the race they are. that’s the advantage, right? i struggle to figure out whether this is a perfectly logical explanation (ple) to the question/dilemma of living in a race-conscious world. a way to minimize that consciousness. or is it something other than a ple--is it a cultural shift in consciousness around the importance of race? is race beginning to lose its power over how a person, and how groups of people, are perceived and treated?
then, i think about cases like jena 6. doesn’t what happened there--in a segregated louisiana prove that we are not yet blind and don’t have the capacity to be so? i know this potentially is a rhetorical question, but i don’t wish it to be one. i want to talk about it.
i don’t think we actually talk about race enough. talk about it to understand it, and to understand the impacts it has. likewise, i think colorblindness should be talked about more as well. what it means and the impacts of its existence--in theory and in practice.

about colorblindness...i think it’s the not caring that gets to me. when a person says the world should be colorblind and follows that sentiment with the fact that they don’t care about a person’s race, it scares me. it feels like an attempt to wipe away belief systems, traditions, and experiences. if i say i am colorblind and i don’t care about your race, it seems like the additional message i send it that i also don’t care about your history and experience in this world.
i’m no expert, but i do believe race matters. on the systemic and cultural levels, race matters because it is used to advantage some and disadvantage others. on the individual level, race matters because it shapes how we see ourselves and how we are able to see and connect with others. there are high stakes in one’s race. i believe a person’s experience is impacted by race and i don’t want to be blind to that.

similarly, i don’t want to be blind to a person’s gender. pansexuality describes a sexual orientation where gender doesn’t matter. it’s attraction regardless of gender identity and expression.
intellectually, i know that the concept of pansexuality is about acknowledging there is a continuum of gender and not a binary system of gender. which i agree to; gender identity and expression are continuums, not a rigid system of two and only two. however, because pansexuality is attraction regardless of gender identity and expression i think there is blindness present. blindness to how we live gendered (and sex-roled) experiences. even if they are genderqueered experiences.
pansexuality is also viewed as being more open-minded. a more progressive perspective of gender and sexual orientation. if that’s the case, am i lacking open-mindedness because i don’t believe in its reality? perhaps it is not even about open and closed-mindedness. maybe a better way of thinking is on, off, and idle. much like our machines and technology. as gender is seen as a binary, it is on; when it is seen as a continuum, it is idle; when it is not seen at all, it is off. now, after writing that i think with that logical that pansexuality is an interesting mix of idleness and off. idle because it acknowledges the continuum, but off because of its practice of blindness.

everything is so gray and unresolved. i don’t even know how to continue to describe these two concepts and their connections. i am riddled with questions i just don’t have answers to...
do race and gender still play the same roles now as they did when i was a kid and teenager? what role do they play?
am i stuck in an archaic way of thinking about race and gender?
is the attempt at non-judgment actually judgment after all?
are colorblindness and pansexuality applications of social justice or movements away from social justice?

dear void of the unknown, please help me find pathways of thinking and articulating these dilemmas i have laid out before you.