![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
Tags:
no subject
Date: 2011-07-27 11:00 pm (UTC)From:The biggest problem, in my mind, with the "not all Christians are like that!" (replace Christians with white people, men, straight, cis, etc. as necessary) isn't that it's often the case of a Christian (or whatever) demanding that their feelings be considered too. They do, in fact, have a right to have their feelings considered, as much as anyone else's.
The problem is that the claim is insulting. It's implying that the people complaining have not noticed that the majority of Christians, of white people, of straight cis males, and so on, are decent people who have maybe some failings but overall, don't want to hurt anyone and would love for everyone on the planet to be happy and healthy.
When I bitch about Christians, I kinda take it for granted that the audience knows a whole lot of decent Christians, and that they know I know a whole lot of decent Christians. That I am either using handwavy shorthand for "the icky Christians," which we all acknowledge as existing even if we don't agree on which ones those are, or that I'm talking about a systemic unrecognized problem in almost all Christian communities, which they'd work to fix if they understood it was there at all.
I may get upset at how much they don't acknowledge it even when it's pointed out directly, but I don't get upset that they haven't fixed a problem they can't perceive.
The harping on "all Christians aren't like that!" implies that non-Christians who grumble about Christian behavior are stupid and unobservant and horrifically bigoted--instead of allowing that they know perfectly well that the majority aren't like that, and they kinda assumed their audience would understand which subset of Christians was actually the target of the rant.
When the Creepy Guy at the bus stop winks at me and tries to pinch my ass, and I angrily mutter "men!" to the other passengers, I'm not inviting a lecture about how most men don't do that. I'm saying, that's a man thing (no woman at a bus stop has ever tried to pinch my ass), and I wish the men who did that, wouldn't. When I bitch about Christians, I expect the readers to know I don't mean "all Christians do this" but "the Christians who do this, get away with it because they're Christians."
no subject
Date: 2011-07-28 07:04 am (UTC)From:This, x100. If being Christian makes somebody uniquely able to be a jerk, if their jerkness is motivated by their Christianness, and if being Christian means they get to get away with it, then I don't think I'm being a bigot to say, "Damn it, Christianity. Why you hatin'."
no subject
Date: 2011-07-28 09:02 am (UTC)From:Also, I wish I had a dollar for every person who assumed I was a hateful, mean, uneducated and ignorant bigot who has been horribly abused by Christians when I said that while I like Gothic styles, I won't wear anything with a cross on it because Christianity took our scriptures and teaches that we will all be converted to Christianity in the end and that they are the true followers of our G-d and historically has forced conversions of our people, so I feel I'd be letting them all down if I wore a symbol of Christian identity. I don't quite get how they can make the leap from "some Christians do this to Jews and this horrible thing happened in 1400 that was all an attempt to erase Jewish identity, so I won't give the impression of allowing my Jewish identity to be erased" to "Tiferet has clearly been driven insane by torture from individual Christians and now thinks we're all like that."