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There's something I understand better now than I used to back when I was self-identifying as a theist. I, too, was really upset that atheists were so prejudiced and bigoted and just pigeonholed any religious people they knew and assumed that if you aren't an atheist, you're an enemy. Or something.
I understand marginalization and privilege a little better now, though. Only some of it is from beginning to identify as an atheist. A lot of it's stuff I've heard from LGBT people and people of color and feminists and just... y'know, people who have experience with this stuff. Here's what I've learned about generalizing about the members (or affiliates) of organizations that hate me (or you, or someone else, or whoever).
It's hard sometimes, when someone walks up wearing the badge and uniform of one's oppressors, to assume that they don't want to be associated with the other people wearing it. It's hard for me (for example) to see someone who self-identifies as Catholic and not see an ally of the homophobia, misogyny, and just general callousness that characterizes that organization. They may not personally hate women or gays or child rape victims, but they're comfortable affiliating with an organization that plainly does, and I have to wonder at that rate whether they're true allies.
Sadly, that type of Christianity is still setting the tone in a lot of the country. While I'm supportive of the efforts of other Christians to clean up their image, I no longer feel like I should suffer at the hands of the Christian cultural system and simultaneously do their PR for them. When more Christians are like Quakers, I'll talk about them like more of them are Quakers.
I get that it's got to suck having people running around acting a fool who are using teachings from the same book as you are to do some terrible things to innocent people. It always sucks to feel like someone else has enough control over your reputation to screw with it by being bigots and just generally showing their whole ass to the world.
That's the thing, though, about continuing to wear the badge and uniform of a group that--for a lot of people--has done them nothing but personal and very tangible harm. Depending on how badly they've been hurt and for how long and how much hope they have left, they might just assume that you're an ally to the people who hurt them. They're not assuming this because they're bigoted, or bullies, or intolerant. They're assuming it because they're tired of giving chances to people who put on that uniform and then getting kicked in the face for it. So... they stop taking the risk.
I'm not quite there yet, but I've seen people get there, and it's hard for me to begrudge them. It's not hate. It's hurt, and it's weariness, and they're right. They should never have had to always be the one giving out chance after chance after chance to people who didn't take it. It's hard exhausting work, and the people I know who've given up on trying to find common ground with Christians? That's why.
So this is why I've stopped saying, "Not all straight/cis/white/etc. people are like that! Please only talk about your painful experiences in a way that protects my feelings!" and it's why I think it'd be great if Christians did, too.
I understand marginalization and privilege a little better now, though. Only some of it is from beginning to identify as an atheist. A lot of it's stuff I've heard from LGBT people and people of color and feminists and just... y'know, people who have experience with this stuff. Here's what I've learned about generalizing about the members (or affiliates) of organizations that hate me (or you, or someone else, or whoever).
It's hard sometimes, when someone walks up wearing the badge and uniform of one's oppressors, to assume that they don't want to be associated with the other people wearing it. It's hard for me (for example) to see someone who self-identifies as Catholic and not see an ally of the homophobia, misogyny, and just general callousness that characterizes that organization. They may not personally hate women or gays or child rape victims, but they're comfortable affiliating with an organization that plainly does, and I have to wonder at that rate whether they're true allies.
Sadly, that type of Christianity is still setting the tone in a lot of the country. While I'm supportive of the efforts of other Christians to clean up their image, I no longer feel like I should suffer at the hands of the Christian cultural system and simultaneously do their PR for them. When more Christians are like Quakers, I'll talk about them like more of them are Quakers.
I get that it's got to suck having people running around acting a fool who are using teachings from the same book as you are to do some terrible things to innocent people. It always sucks to feel like someone else has enough control over your reputation to screw with it by being bigots and just generally showing their whole ass to the world.
That's the thing, though, about continuing to wear the badge and uniform of a group that--for a lot of people--has done them nothing but personal and very tangible harm. Depending on how badly they've been hurt and for how long and how much hope they have left, they might just assume that you're an ally to the people who hurt them. They're not assuming this because they're bigoted, or bullies, or intolerant. They're assuming it because they're tired of giving chances to people who put on that uniform and then getting kicked in the face for it. So... they stop taking the risk.
I'm not quite there yet, but I've seen people get there, and it's hard for me to begrudge them. It's not hate. It's hurt, and it's weariness, and they're right. They should never have had to always be the one giving out chance after chance after chance to people who didn't take it. It's hard exhausting work, and the people I know who've given up on trying to find common ground with Christians? That's why.
So this is why I've stopped saying, "Not all straight/cis/white/etc. people are like that! Please only talk about your painful experiences in a way that protects my feelings!" and it's why I think it'd be great if Christians did, too.
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Date: 2011-07-27 04:35 am (UTC)From:I actually considered adding a note that people with certain religious affiliations have even less room to bitch than straight people or white people, because those latter two things are innate characteristics whereas someone can totally just choose to stop attending Catholic mass.
I'm not a Christian myself, but I did study the Bible. In my experience, people take whatever morality from the Bible that they had when they approached it, because the Christians who make bad neighbors (guys like Breitvik) and the Christians who make good neighbors (I need to wear a button that says, "I love Quakers! ASK ME WHY.") are both working from the same sound Biblical footing. Neither of them is doing Christianity "wrong" as far as I can tell. Some are just falling into the pitfalls of faith and some are managing not to, but neither is really more Christian than the other in my mind.
If Christian communities want to make that distinction, that's what orthodoxy is all about. If some Christian denominations say Ann Coulter's no Christian, or Michele Bachmann's no Christian, or Glenn Beck's no Christian or Breitvik's no Christian, they can do that. I'm not really in a position to kick those folks out of someone else's club, though. If they self-identify as Christians and have Christians who identify them the same way, that means a lot more than my opinion.
I think I feel that way about it because despite being an atheist, I'm also a practicing Wiccan. (Another atheist I know summed it up better than my rambly self can by saying, "Oh! So you're Wiccan like I'm Jewish," so I use that as the quick version now. *laugh*) I have had people straight-up tell me that I am not Wiccan. They're not members of my circle. They're not even members of my local community. They don't know me at all. All they know is that they don't like me, and it doesn't matter to them whether I and my High Priest and High Priestess and our whole circle acknowledge me as part of the family.
That's not an experience that I feel right passing on, so even if someone is a hateful dirtbag, I'm not going to take my disapproval of them as sufficient reason to say, "That's not a real Christian." I would like it if bigotry were not a theologically legitimate way of being Christian, but it sort of is. =/
no subject
Date: 2011-07-27 04:57 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-07-27 06:34 pm (UTC)From:I don't have to buy into the idea that the only real Christians are the dirtbags, but neither am I going to buy into the idea that the nice ones are the only "real" Christians, either, because they aren't.
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Date: 2011-07-27 08:34 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-07-27 09:04 pm (UTC)From:As a religious institution, Christianity has stolen your rituals and my scriptures. I don't know how you feel about that, but I personally feel that I have enough to do in the PR arena dealing with all the misinformation about Judaism that Christianity is responsible for. I'm not even talking about obvious bullshit like Christ-killing and blood libel. I'm talking about the way that they frame our scripture as the source of all the bad shit Jesus had to fix and our G-d as the punisher and the hater who had to be mollified by the blood sacrifice of his own son (btw, our G-d doesn't have sex with mortals and sire children). I'm the one who has to step up and correct them about the rules in Vayikra (Leviticus), which were only ever meant for members of the tribe, not outsiders, and tell people who think that that's how we all lived before Jesus that then as now, the Torah laws are constantly being re-examined and new 'amendments' go up all the time in order to keep them sane and sensible and workable and not egregiously cruel or senselessly enforced, and that they should never be taken as a literal legal code for all mankind. I'm the one who has to explain that while we're still arguing about whether that badly translated passage forbids anal sex, male-male sex or male-male rape, the punishment for transgression is a spiritual excision and not the literal death penalty, and also, the way it's written, bacon is forbidden just as strongly. Christians have used their interpretation of our Law as a justification for hurting people, and I have so much work to do around that that I'm not really interested in fixing their internal problems. Because if I don't do that work then I am also viewed as an enemy rather than an ally by some people who really believe that however bad Christianity is now, once upon a time, we were worse and if we had it our way we still would be.
I sort of feel like the problems pagans have dealing with the demonisation of their gods and rituals (the ones that weren't stolen outright for saints and festivals) are probably similar, but I do remember holidays being MUCH easier when I was Pagan-identified, so. *shrug*
The story that the kyriarchy tells about Christianity, like the stories that it tells about whiteness and masculinity and heterosexuality, can really only be dismantled by the people that it applies to. Everyone knows people of colour want white people to be different from the bad ones and everyone knows women want men to be decent but we don't get to make up those stories; we have enough trouble getting listened to when we try to define who WE are. I honestly don't think that the general public cares what you or I think Christianity is. Christians are the ones who have to come out of the closet and fight this rap.
We also have to live in a society where we constantly have to gauge how safe we are when dealing with those who have more privilege, and demanding that Jews and pagans and atheists not consider what many Christians are like and how they use their privilege is a lot like getting upset because blacks are slower to trust whites and women are slower to trust men.