It's Not Always Personal.

I was chatting with Brent not too long ago, and he mentioned my last reference to the concept of the death of the author. I didn't write much, so it was brief, but his mention that it was at least partially spurred by this thread over at RPG.net, in Tangency.* It looks like it was started in good faith and, frankly, I'm just glad whenever someone brings up entitlement and geek culture. If I did it every time I thought about it, I'd probably get banned for trolling. It's just too ubiquitous, though I'm not convinced it's worse then any other x-culture that isn't formed with acknowledgement of priviliage as one of its assumed or core tenants.

The thread is over 60 pages long on the default setting. There are 615 posts as of right now. Obviously, it's still rolling. Actually, I've stopped reading it.

Here's an issue for me, and it comes with a caveat in that I haven't spent a lot of time carefully framing my arguement or rant or whatever. And this isn't specifically about that thread. And I'm a white male in my mid-20's that thinks about this a lot and I've got privilage to spare, and I'm aware of the issues at hand regarding a white male discussing issues of a subaltern group and what that means to the discussion, and framing it in a way where the discussion is actually about me, and not the needs of others. Oh, so, that's actually what this is about.

I may have said this before, but maybe not. It's been a while. Here's what I've learned; this discussion is not about me. It's not about my needs, it's not about how I feel, it's not about the impact society has on me. It's not about my hurt feelings when I discover that I am in a privilaged group and that my existance does, by my passive actions, cause a certain amount of stress on a subaltern group. They don't know me; I am part of the weight that's on their chest. Metaphorically, probably. I don't sit on people very often. There's really very little call for that.  

No jokes, people. Moving on.
So, I dunno. I've learned a lot from reading stuff like iblamethepatriarchy and doing a little research. What I'm frustrated at are the people that hear that women are threatened, and they're threatened by men, and they have a good reason... and the first thing out of men's mouths is often to kind of jump down the throat on people that feel threatened. And when I was reading iblame and I thought 'Shit, that is hyperbolic.' or 'Man, that sounds pretty crass, I'm not like that!' I don't say a damned thing. Because I am there as a guest. This is not my space. It is the space of women to talk to each other, and they were kind enough to let me listen, and that's what I'm going to do. And that's taught me a ton. It's one of those times where engaging in discussion of the other does nothing productive, because there's no dialogue that I can open that isn't coming from me, where I'm in a place of power and they're not, societally speaking.

So, RPG.net isn't iblamethepatriarchy. It's supposed to be a safe place, and I mean, ok. For a public forum about playing as an elf, it's damned good. But what gets me, here, are a bunch of people who are acting tough, feel like they can ask the tough questions, trying to play the 'rational guy' or whatever, but they're feelings are hurt because they recognize something of themselves in the condemnation of geek culture (because we're geeks, of course) and aren't putting two and two together. This isn't about us being the bad people, specifically. It's about us checking ourselves. Few people like to hear that the actions they thought were innocuous and that everyone else is telling them are ok are actually disenfranchising to some people. And it's fucking inconvenient! We'll have to ask questions and listen to the answers and change accordingly, and that is a massive pain in the ass! We all like to think that history will vindicate us and we'll live happily ever after, and that the treatment of our actions will by history will be something like 'and contrary to every backwards era that we've ever seen previous to now, these people were totally enlightend and didn't hold any backwards ideas regarding race, sex, or gender."

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that this is unlikely. Actually, it's unlikely that history books ever get significantly past WWII. Nevermind.

It's a pain, guys, but hey. Most of us are near to the top of the world's social food chain. The least we can do is listen and not silence.

* Entitled "XKCD and rape culture", requires an account (albeit a free one) to view.