Dealing with Privileged People

http://www.derailingfordummies.com/

This link was shared with me by a wonderful friend of mine in response to my last post. It educates the Privileged Person on how to derail any conversation with a Marginalised Person in the most arrogant, ignorant way possible. It includes tactical gems like:

You're Taking Things Too Personally

Similar to You’re Being Overemotional and yet with particular uses of its own. You see, when you say “you’re taking things too personally” you demonstrate your ignorance that these issues ARE personal for them!

That’s highly insulting and is sure to rub anyone up the wrong way. That you're already refusing to consider their reality is giving them a pretty good indication of how the conversation is going to degress, yet the natural human need for understanding will probably compel them to try and reason with you, or at least to point you in the direction of some educational resources that will help you gain insight into their experiences.

By denying the conversation is personal for them, you also reveal your own detachment: there’s really nothing at stake for you in getting into this argument, you’re just doing it for kicks. They will be all too aware of this, and it will begin to work on their emotions, preparing them nicely for the next steps you will take them through.


You're Arguing With Opinions Not Fact

If you really want to excel as a Privileged Person® you need to learn to value data, statistics, research studies and empirical evidence above all things, but especially above Lived Experience©. You can pretend you are oblivious to the fact most studies have been carried out by Privileged People® and therefore carry inherent biases, and insist that the Marginalised Person™ produce “Evidence” of what they‘re claiming.

Their Lived Experience© does not count as evidence, for it is subjective and therefore worthless.

This is very important because it works in two ways: 1) it communicates to the Marginalised Person™ that their personal testament is disbelieved and of no value, causing them great hurt; and 2) it once again reinforces your privilege.

You see, the very capacity to conduct studies, collect data and write detached “fact-based” reports on it, is an inherently privileged activity. The ability to widely access this material and research it exhaustively is also inherently privileged. Privileged People® find it easier to pursue these avenues than Marginalised People™ and so once again you are reminding them you possess this privilege and reinforcing that the world at large values a system of analysis that excludes them, and values it over what their actual personal experience has been.

The process of valuing “fact” over “opinion” is one very much rooted in preserving privilege. Through this methodology, the continued pain and othering of millions of people can be ignored because it’s supported by “opinion” (emotion) and not “fact” (rationality).

It is also important because it calls on the Marginalised Person™ to do something that is simply impossible, and that is summate the entirety of their group’s experiences into a definitive example. It is important that you establish this precedent for the next couple of steps.

Believe it or not, people--my peers, no less--actually do use these kinds of tactics whenever I bring up topics related to sexual assault and PTSD (that is, if they even deign to listen to me in the first place).

Way to go, Privileged People!

Ugh.

I just want to escape from everything right now. I'm dissociated, uncomfortable, exasperated, and stressed. I've been sleeping far too much in my effort to hide from the world. I don't know how to break out of this and find the motivation and happiness that lies just outside my grasp. I know it's there; I just don't know how to find it.

My fraternity is triggering me again. Last term we tried to run our own Crossing the Line-type of event. I thought it was poorly done, but in particular for me, it was a disaster. It brought back the acute frustration and pain of the aftermath last year. I thought the topics of sexual assault were poorly covered, and then when I tried to bring that up in the discussion afterwards, I was at first ignored, and then quite literally talked over by people joking around about other things. Is there any better way to tell someone you don't want to listen to that topic again and that you don't care? I left crying and triggered and was very much not okay for a good chunk of that night. I left because I could not stay.

They want to run Crossing the Line again this term, and this time they want to force people to not leave before the event is over. Needless to say, I will not be attending. I don't think we should be running our own event; as much as we don't like the College's, we do not have the necessary degree of separation or maturity to run this powerful an event ourselves. Sure, it works for most other people who don't have so much at stake, but that doesn't make it a good event. But now that I am being told that I cannot leave, no matter how triggered and desperately upset I am-- it's clear that no one understands what PTSD is like. I brought this up to everyone over email, and all the responses I got basically said "you can deal; you need to stay because it's disrespectful to us if you leave."

*insert all kinds of disbelieving laughter here*  Just that exchange of email was enough to send me spiraling down into a horrible episode. I'm currently sitting here tensed up and trying not to dig my fingernails into my palms or explode into full-blown anxiety or rage. My mind has shut down so this is the only thing I can think about. I want to scream or cry but I can't. It's freaking Thanksgiving break, which I should be spending doing work or at the very least relaxing, and instead I'm trying to keep myself from sliding into a full-blown PTSD episode.

God, I hate this place and some of the people in it. I can't wait to leave.

Hiatus

I've been feeling the old depression creeping back up on me lately. Last night was pretty awful. It's a combination of academic stress, anxiety about post-graduation stuff, memories regarding the aftermath and their associated intense emotions (as one of my friends and brothers is trying to bring it back up to the forefront in my fraternity again), extremely frustrating people-problems, and the jarring absence of daylight before 5pm. Not a good combination at all.

I may have to take a brief hiatus to sort out as much of the above as I can. (Not much I can do about the darkness, unfortunately.) I will probably write some short posts here and there, but I just don't have the emotional energy to tackle a major post right now. My immediate goal is to not burn out or have a mental breakdown before the end of the term.

December 7: the magic date when my last final is due. Between now and then, I have an exam, a major presentation, a problem set, and a paper, along with routine work for each day's class. *takes a deep breath*

See you in December!

Mentors Against Violence: Quick Post

Quick blog post to say that I attended a Mentors Against Violence facilitation this evening with some of our lovely pledges and pledges from three other coed houses. On the whole I thought it went well. There were several good activities and good discussion from those activities. At the end, though, we separated by house and had a more open-ended discussion, and we talked a little bit about my experience. All the pain from the aftermath came back to me, and I cried.

However, I have hope that things will get better. The new members of my house seem to care, even if the old ones don't. While I don't know how much action now can help heal the wounds of the past, the fact that some people are taking this seriously instead of rolling their eyes really warms my heart. We'll see.


More thoughts on the facilitation later-- I have a lot of homework to do tonight.

A Personal Update

This is the 50th post of my blog, about a week short of two months since I started it one sleepless night. Somehow it feels proper and fitting for me to update it with the fact that I cried. No, not just any mundane leaking of tears, but a veritable flood of highly emotional, bittersweet ones, because one of my dearest friends, the friend who was there for me last year, the friend who went to the ER and the police station with me, the friend to whom I owe so much of my sanity, wrote a piece about her own feelings about the event and what it means to the fraternity that could have supported me but didn't. I've known that she feels this way, but it was so powerful to see it written down in her own words; this is the kind of support that I needed then, but I am grateful to have it now.

I long ago stopped hoping that my fraternity would help me heal. The pressure to keep quiet, the pretending it never happened, the eye-rolling at my insistence that this not be brushed under the carpet-- there was only so much that I could take. While I have pledged to myself to move on and look elsewhere for support, I will always hold some bitterness in my heart that people who called themselves my brothers would not and did not care. Sometimes, some days, the old sadness and anger reemerges, wells up, and overflows, and I need some time to cry for myself, for the girl who I was, who felt so very alone for such a long time.

This weekend is my fraternity's Sink Night, an event that is supposed to not only welcome in new members but also to strengthen brotherhood bonding. This term I have chosen not to attend. I explained my decision to the pledges (whom I do like very much) as follows: Sink Night is about affirming brotherhood through fun and games. While I think that is certainly important, I think my fraternity has lost sight of how to handle anything but fun and games. Many of the serious matters that I have seen brought up are either dismissed, mocked, or handled brusquely and disrespectfully. Until I see that this brotherhood that I used to believe in and love can treat people and situations maturely and respectfully, I will not participate in the 'fun and games' and perpetuate the idea that we are above handling things with appropriate gravitas. There is more to a family and brotherhood than superficial niceties and parties-- or at least, there should be. I hope that one day things will change.

I really look forward to moving on beyond this juvenile atmosphere into a world that recognizes it's not all about fun and games and doesn't try to keep up the illusion that it is-- and guess what? I am!


Dear world,

I started my application to grad school this afternoon.
I have confirmed housing in a wonderful place for at least the next six months.
I reached the halfway point assignments-wise in my classes.
Things are going well and finally settling down into place.

The world looks so much brighter when I stop looking through the windows of my undergraduate college fraternity.
Maybe I should invest in a regular window-washer*.
Perhaps chocolate?

Much love,
Me


* metaphorical, of course-- chocolate would make an awful window-washer. The smears would drive me crazy.

Inspiration and Empowerment in the Movies!

40 Inspirational Speeches in Two Minutes

It's exactly what the title says-- safe-for-work, non-triggering, empowering, and just plain awesome. I give total props to the creator for including Newsies, my 8th/9th grade obsession. <3

This feels like a fantastic way to start my homework for the night!

The embedded video doesn't quite fit in the space allotted by my blog design, so here's a direct link to the clip on YouTube if you want to see the whole screen, including the little part missing from the right side of the clip.

My Belated Obligatory Polanski Post

A couple of little posts tonight to make up for the lack of a real big one. I have a major assignment due Friday, so I may not seriously blog until then, unless I get riled up about something and need to.


So, Post One of Tonight's Review of Sayrina's Many Open Google Chrome Tabs That She Meant To Blog About A While Ago:

When the Polanski crapball hit the internet, I didn't blog about it extensively, because I figured that there were so many other bloggers who were doing a better and more comprehensive job than I could. Sure, I had tons of snark and fury about the topic that I unleashed upon unsuspecting people around me, but it just never seemed to make it to my blog.

But I did want to post something I found, one little poem:

What Whoopi Goldberg ('Not a Rape-Rape'), Harvey Weinstein ('So-Called Crime'), et al. Are Saying in Their Outrage Over the Arrest of Roman Polanski

A youthful error? Yes, perhaps.
But he's been punished for this lapse--
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He'll miss the movers and the shakers.
He'll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He's suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.

Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that's for sure--
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too--
Important people just like us.
And we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people's rules.
So Roman's banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.

By Calvin Trillin

The Nation

I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that one of next term's film series is Roman Polanski films. On the one hand, I understand that a certain separation must be made between the man and his art, but on the other hand, I think we all should play the Don't Support Rapists game.