I want to highlight this comment by Mandisa Thomas left on my post “On silencing anger to silence minority voices”:
Greetings,
Mandisa Thomas here – the person to whom the Black on Black crime question was directed.
My talk on the day in question was about how the Freethought community can learn from the Hospitality Industry – which was well received by the audience. I touched on my organization briefly, and I did not speak on the problems in the Black community that particular day. So for this woman to come out of left field and ask a question that wasn’t related to the subject at hand was not only rude, but it also implied that just because we are an orgainzation that focuses on Blacks that we are supposed to take on such a gigantic problem on our own. It also seemed to imply that I should ONLY be speaking on issues relating to the Black community. She may not have been meaning to come across as insidious or oblivious, but I also don’t think she was paying attention to my presentation, or even cared much about the issue at hand. She certainly did not speak with me afterwards to either clarify, or even offer assistance on such efforts. I certainly did not go off on her, but she receives no sympathy from me either.
Bria has my full support with this matter. I also think there should have been a better effort to involve the primary organizer of the convention if JT, Mark, and this woman were truly concerned. This obviously didn’t happen, and it is disappointing.
Funny how JT didn’t think to mention that in his post. It makes the whole situation even more blatantly racist, and his reaction even more problematic. But seeing that he has already doubled down and is painting my mere disagreement with him as a toxic evil attempt to destroy him, I expect this revelation won’t change much either.
It’s a sad day when you have the blinders of friendship ripped off.
76 comments
dezn_98 says:
Aug 22, 2013
MaoistAnchoress
I think you and I are threats to them. We are threats to their dominance… this is why they react negatively to us – because we threaten one thing.. their privilege. We do that.. simply by existing and talking about discrimination.. it is sad, but true.
god I hate this world.
MaoistAnchoress says:
Aug 22, 2013
It’s very sad and very true, I just, you know, don’t have the emotional resources/supply to engage people in freethinker communities but very rarely, even FTB. It’s just…it can’t happen: I don’t have the emotional resources for it but very very rarely, it’s simply impossible to happen with any more frequency. I lost my family and extended family twice, once for getting out of a cult we were in and escaping, and then again years later due to transphobia, and that time was final disowning.
My life is a living hell/living nightmare, but I comfort myself with the fact that I’m under a Glass Jar made of thick walls of glass, everyone watching from the outside. Some marveling at me, some pointing and laughing, none with meaningful access…
There’s a certain satisfaction, a cruel satisfaction, to be had by taking the attitude (towards privileged people) of “Well, you sure you want to shun and marginalize me? You insist hunh? Ok, I’ll most certainly oblige you, but don’t complain when you’ve got no meaningful access to me…”
smhll says:
Aug 22, 2013
I only express my opinions about this stuff in an effort to affirm my humanity from the culture that wants to take it away.
Bottom line for me: trying to take away someone’s humanity from them, or hold it hostage up on a high shelf and make them beg for it using only words on the polite list CAN NEVER BE “CIVIL” !
dezn_98 says:
Aug 22, 2013
For me cruelty is unnecessary harm… and fighting back against privileged people, no matter their intent, when they something dehumanizing. Is not cruel…. rather, it is what must be done to mitigate the harm discrimination does to us in general.
Having the stomach for what must be done… is a different story. You may not be in a place where you can stomach it now.. but who knows, later on you may be. It took years of sustained cultural abuse for my muscles to kick in and finally start speaking up…. even though I know, that I still get hurt in the end – I still, personally have to do it. Others that live through too much pain to even talk about it, sadly… become rarer and rarer. What you go through, I can not imagine…. and there are members of my family that are so traumatize by the colonization of american imperialism back in my home country…. that they are scared to speak up for fear of death. Because the USA sponsored deaths squads have killed my people… and tortured them. I can not blame them, and neither shall I offer advice to those who have been through so much more sht than I can ever go through in my lifetime.
I have the privilege of have some emotional stability in my life – enough so that I can speak out everywhere I go.. others do not.
You have this strangers support… for whatever that brings.
piegasm says:
Aug 22, 2013
@43 Ronja
Thanks for doing that fact checking. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of response it gets.
Ronja Addams-Moring says:
Aug 22, 2013
@piegasm / 55
The response seems to have been this and only this:
And JT is positively gloating in his Facebook status update 3 hours ago:
Yes, that’s a verbatim quote, smiley and all – I wish it wasn’t. JT’s posts and comments on his clusterfuck have gone from infuriating via ridiculous to deeply disgusting. He does take digging himself deeper to a rare order of magnitude, though the entertainment values of that is… limited, IMO.
Also, does JT not have eyes to see? There are extremely few PoC commenting on either his blog posts or on his FB timeline. That in itself should already be a huge red flag. If he managed to alienate PoC to the extent that he gets next to no comments from the group that this whole thing is *about*, it should be self-evident that He.Is. Doing. It. Wrong.
Raging Bee says:
Aug 22, 2013
Taking a peer aside to scold is downright uncivil.
And publicly bragging about how you’re handling things privately is doubly so.
piegasm says:
Aug 22, 2013
@56 Ronja
That’s just…wow. I mean after everything that’s been said the last couple of days his takeaway is “hooray, I profited from upsetting all these people!” Just when you think you’ve seen the limit of how far up one’s own ass one can stick their head, JT raises the bar.
@57 Raging Bee
I was thinking that myself after I saw that he’d tweeted prior to speaking to Bria. He tweets about it, then talks to Bria, then writes a blog post congratulating himself for being more “civil” than Bria by virtue of pulling her aside privately. Puke.
John Phillips, FCD says:
Aug 22, 2013
If there was any doubt before, there can be none now, JT has definitely jumped the shark.
kellym says:
Aug 22, 2013
@Ronja Addams-Moring / 56
JT Eberhard, gloating:
Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and others could have told JT that there was no chance of him going broke by telling white people that black people need to act more civil.
JT is undoubtedly being love bombed by the Slimepit now. I predict he and his new friends are going to get along just fine.
cityzenjane says:
Aug 22, 2013
Four Words which CIS white Dudes should not use to describe their experience of being criticised online.
1. Lynched
2. Castrated
3. Destroyed
4. Cruxified
Appropriate substitutions:
1. Called to account for an attitude
2. Called to reflect upon privilege they enjoy
3. On the receiving end of anger for something I said or did
Other suggestions welcome.
I’ve seen all of these in the last few weeks…and it’s ridiculous.
cityzenjane says:
Aug 22, 2013
WHAT a shitstain.
deoridhe says:
Aug 22, 2013
People saying they were shaken out of their privilege blindness by people who showed them deference and tiptoed around their feelings.
I actually had this happen (I was a rank bigot on the job, got called on it by one of the people a tier above me, and she was really nice about it and gave me the “you didn’t know” excuse – which was true, I was ignorant and didn’t intend anything, but intention is not magic) but the dynamics were that I was the neophyte and she was the expert, and I deferred to her, so I’m hardly an example to be held up in general circumstances.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the loudest bigots are the ones who insist they aren’t bigots long enough to get someone who is oppressed to do something “wrong”, at which point they blame that person for their bigotry. That’s why so often you have these false allies – they are bigots who don’t want to be seen as bigots because there is some social capital cost in being a bigot (not a lot, but enough to make it undesirable). The whole dynamic of seeking cookies for being “allies” is part of the same dynamic.
As far as I’m concerned, though, if someone getting angry over injustice is enough to make another person defend bigotry, than the latter was always a bigot in sheep’s clothing, no matter how much they may deny it. The non-bigoted response to “what you did was wrong and here’s why” is apology, not defensive anger.
MaoistAnchoress says:
Aug 22, 2013
@citizenjane
Yeah this guy (JT) has the nerve to make himself out to be the victim here and then starts clamoring about freezepeach within the capitalist discourse view. What an ASSHOLE, jesus. Grrrr. Ugh, your reminding me why I can’t deal with this topic anymore. To think people like this one control and run skeptic/freethinker movements, I stay far far far away from movement atheism due to people like this one.
@dezn98, who said:
Thank you for this emotional support. The last 15 years of my life (I am 31 1/2 years old currently) has been spent, barring two breaks of 1 year each, in severe or extreme isolation; the last five being pretty extreme isolation. I’ve never had a driver’s license or driven a car outside of driver’s ed, and the normative aspect of my life for almost half my life now, has been severe or extreme isolation. It’s good to have emotional support from you in whatever way you feel you can contribute. ((hugs)))
What you described about your family sounds very tragic, I’m so sorry that was the case ((softhug))
My Autism leaves me feeling very strange. I am a transwoman, so it gets even stranger. So as far as I understand it, I am eight years old emotionally, and hundreds of years old intellectually, in a 31 year old transsexual body that feels 18 years old. Bizarre I know.
If you want to get to know me better stranger, you can do that, but how we would go about doing that I will leave up to you. If you would rather not do so, that is fine as well. I don’t think I will be around much for awhile, and I am difficult to track….to say the least…so if you want to speak your mind and get to know me better, I will give you a window to respond here so we can contact one another in other forms.
Thanks for the conversation. Also, regarding my whole Lesbro comment, I’m definitely bisexual, I just, you know, have that kind of Lesbro vibe sometimes, anyway. I think it’s because I was socialized with guys, so I have the potential to socialize with you very well in this sense I guess.
Anyway, thank you for your comments and emotional support here, and if you want to get to know me better, you can do this. If you have a friend, cis/trans/gq guy/gal/whatever else, and they want to get to know me better, I suppose I could do that online and in offline too if they wanted. My life is extreme isolation ok, what can I say except to say I should put the trauma out of my mind. It’s time to dissociate some more.
jaggington says:
Aug 23, 2013
From Ronja@43’s very informative links:
So he’d already decided to blog about it before POPsplaining* to Bria Crutchfield about how wrong her reaction was. Does make it seem like he’s twisting circumstances to fit an agenda.
*You’ve had mansplaining and condesplaining, welcome to PersonOf Privilegesplaining.
John Phillips, FCD says:
Aug 23, 2013
At the rate JT keeps digging by now he must have gone way past the core and be about to pop out on the other side of the world. He’s obviously forgotten the first rule…
nerok says:
Aug 23, 2013
@61 cityzenjane
Apart from being hyperbole, how are “Castrated”, “Destroyed” and “Cruxified” outside the realm of cis white dudes purview? “Lynched” has a clear connotation, at least in the American perspective. I’m pretty sure straight people and white people were crucified, castrated and destroyed throughout history.
carlie says:
Aug 23, 2013
JT has closed comments on his post about Jen and Bria. Where did the free speech go?
Raging Bee says:
Aug 23, 2013
Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and others could have told JT that there was no chance of him going broke by telling white people that black people need to act more civil.
I remember George Will being really good at that. IIRC his favorite code-phrase was “breakdown of civility,” which was apparently scarier in his mind than “breakdown of civil society.”
Raging Bee says:
Aug 23, 2013
JT has definitely jumped the shark.
…and tried to convince it to be more civil?
R Johnston says:
Aug 23, 2013
JT gets a thrill from feeling wise and superior to others. That’s why he felt it appropriate to lecture Bria on how to respond to flagrantly racist bullshit. That’s also why he’s a secularist activist–he really enjoys feeling superior to and wiser than people of traditional religious faith–which is something to keep in mind if anyone ever slips and starts feeling he’s doing good on that front even if he’s a racism and misogyny promoter.
Anyway, the comments section on that post was making him rightfully feel completely ignorant and inferior, and he just can’t have that. Speech that rightfully stomps his ego into the mud where it belongs is as bad a thing as there can be from his point of view. Faith in JT’s infallibility is a matter of religious principle to him and is not to be questioned.
rrede says:
Aug 23, 2013
I’ve been reading everything, without trying to comment (school starts next week, and I’m mired in meetings and shuffling through syllabi).
When I saw this post on Shakesville, I was struck by elements of similarity (and thinking that JT could end up being Brannon down the road).
Thanks and support to Bria, Mandisa, Jen, and the wonderful commenters.
http://www.shakesville.com/2013/08/silencing-and-intimidation-of-women-of.html
MaoistAnchoress says:
Aug 23, 2013
@dezn_98
argh, I suck with definitions. Lesbro means the opposite of what I thought it meant for some reason: so lesbro is guy who hangs out with lesbians. I meant it as a Lesbian who hands out with guys, except I’m bisexual, not a Lesbian (almost though). Sorry, I had to clarify that because I don’t know nor ever have identified as a guy, but I suck with slang terms, so I confuse people badly sometimes. I’m assigned male at birth transwoman, and I come from a very traditionalist background, so I’m new to many slang terms, my apologies.
It turns out I meant the exact opposite of what the term meant, LOL.
Anyway, if you want a friend elsewhere, and don’t want to keep being a stranger, I can get to know you better elsewhere?? Or maybe you have a friend who would get to know me better elsewhere??? I guess that’s all I was trying to say. I’m not the best with um, conventional social skills, to say the least.
Thanks for contributing to the JT/Mark Ferris/etc stuff though, it was good to have your voice. For some reason I keep thinking you are agendered transperson, not sure why. Anyway, I suffer severe mental illness, as I think you can tell by now, so it’s time for me to keep to myself again after contributing in the other threads. Bye for now! /waves :+)
dezn_98 says:
Aug 23, 2013
@MaoistAnchoress YO!! Sorry for the late reply, I was chillin with my fam – having drinks.
I will hit up your blog one of these days and I’ll put up some contact info. Stay strong, check you later.
MaoistAnchoress says:
Aug 23, 2013
@dezn_98
Mhmm =)
I got some message on my blog, I’m not sure if it was you though. I’m assuming it was/is, but if not I have two new people to get to know better! yay! If that message was you, I responded via email.
Take care, and I’ll hear from you soon if that wasn’t you <3
^.^
MaoistAnchoress says:
Aug 25, 2013
Oh yeah @dezn,
The person that messaged me was a different person, so I’ll just keep waiting for you to message. Also, I had to change my um, blog, because I was being tracked by transphobes.
Here is the new blog link: http://sweetlovingvampryss.blogspot.com/2013/06/cave-of-shadow-erotic-poetry.html
Also, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t say hi, or whatever, it’s up to you. I’m usually pretty out of it anyway, isolation of this sort will do that to people. It makes me super chatty or severely withdrawn, it’s pretty traumatic stuff.
I’ll see you around.