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Sep. 25th, 2004 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sev"Any woman who isn't angry at least once a day is either stupid or numb." -- Melinda Shore, either as quoted by or paraphrased by Ann Burlingham. (I know at least one of you has some substantive disagreements with one or both of these people. But this is perhaps the *most* insightful thing I've ever seen attributed to Melinda -- and I'm a Melinda fan -- so I'd ask that even if you generally don't resonate with what she writes, at least read that quote one more time and look at is as something *I* believe.)
I used to add "...or complicit" to that paraphrase when I invoked it. I don't anymore; I've decided it's redundant. We're all complicit; living in this culture means we're *saturated* with it and the best we can do is try to be aware that we *are* going to propagate power imbalances and try to mitigate it as best as we can.
The rest of this post started as a comment in somebody else's journal. It got a little long and I figured if I posted it here instead, I could stop worrying about whether or not my tone was going to be inappropriate for over there. This is my journal, so anything I write is of appropriate tone for over here. :) I've not bothered to make it cohesive and I'm not really saying anything I haven't said before. But it's been awhile since I wrote on this topic, and if nothing else, it's time for me to get my hand back in...
I've noticed how little I'm writing about privilege and power issues in the last few years. I didn't make a conscious decision to stop; I just got quieter and quieter until one day I found myself identifying as a "burned-out activist". I let it all wear me out. And in retrospect, I'm definitely not proud of that.
That said, finding a balance -- where I can be honest & insightful but not wear myself out at people who are just going to frustrate me -- isn't easy. And any time I say something publicly, I have to find that balance. But I really have to believe there's some middle ground between silence and exhaustion. Because it *is* important that we say these things.
I think activists of any stripe do need to periodically find a place where we can preach to the choir. It's why some people work to create "safe space". Those of us who go out and bruise our egos against the privileged world need a place to retreat and interact with people who get it. Lately I've been finding that space in interactions (both in person and online) with other people whose feminism is a lot like mine (*wave* hi!), and it's relaxing and freeing and energizing.
And sometimes I just sit in my kitchen and listen to music with female vocalists and let the anger wash over me in waves, hoping that I can harness that emotion and turn it into enough energy to just get through the day.
Activism has many faces. There's a need for people who are willing to shake up the status quo, who are willing to get people's attention and risk making them uncomfortable. There's a need for people who do the less glamorous work of educating people *without* making them uncomfortable (sometimes only after the first group has shaken them up a bit; sometimes not). And there's a need for people who do little other than stand back and provide support and encouragement for those who are out interacting with the rest of the world. Not one of these strategies can be effective without the others. (I've written about this before, so I'm not inclined to go into too much detail, here.)
But since there's so few activists to go around, we sometimes spend a lot of energy trying to convince each other that "no, you would be more effective over here doing it my way!" I think that scarcity is behind a lot of the strife I see within groups of people who really all have similar goals.
I used to add "...or complicit" to that paraphrase when I invoked it. I don't anymore; I've decided it's redundant. We're all complicit; living in this culture means we're *saturated* with it and the best we can do is try to be aware that we *are* going to propagate power imbalances and try to mitigate it as best as we can.
The rest of this post started as a comment in somebody else's journal. It got a little long and I figured if I posted it here instead, I could stop worrying about whether or not my tone was going to be inappropriate for over there. This is my journal, so anything I write is of appropriate tone for over here. :) I've not bothered to make it cohesive and I'm not really saying anything I haven't said before. But it's been awhile since I wrote on this topic, and if nothing else, it's time for me to get my hand back in...
I've noticed how little I'm writing about privilege and power issues in the last few years. I didn't make a conscious decision to stop; I just got quieter and quieter until one day I found myself identifying as a "burned-out activist". I let it all wear me out. And in retrospect, I'm definitely not proud of that.
That said, finding a balance -- where I can be honest & insightful but not wear myself out at people who are just going to frustrate me -- isn't easy. And any time I say something publicly, I have to find that balance. But I really have to believe there's some middle ground between silence and exhaustion. Because it *is* important that we say these things.
I think activists of any stripe do need to periodically find a place where we can preach to the choir. It's why some people work to create "safe space". Those of us who go out and bruise our egos against the privileged world need a place to retreat and interact with people who get it. Lately I've been finding that space in interactions (both in person and online) with other people whose feminism is a lot like mine (*wave* hi!), and it's relaxing and freeing and energizing.
And sometimes I just sit in my kitchen and listen to music with female vocalists and let the anger wash over me in waves, hoping that I can harness that emotion and turn it into enough energy to just get through the day.
Activism has many faces. There's a need for people who are willing to shake up the status quo, who are willing to get people's attention and risk making them uncomfortable. There's a need for people who do the less glamorous work of educating people *without* making them uncomfortable (sometimes only after the first group has shaken them up a bit; sometimes not). And there's a need for people who do little other than stand back and provide support and encouragement for those who are out interacting with the rest of the world. Not one of these strategies can be effective without the others. (I've written about this before, so I'm not inclined to go into too much detail, here.)
But since there's so few activists to go around, we sometimes spend a lot of energy trying to convince each other that "no, you would be more effective over here doing it my way!" I think that scarcity is behind a lot of the strife I see within groups of people who really all have similar goals.
