This is what I was talking about. Mustering white friends to defend eredien from the mean women of colour.
I'm so deeply insulted by this exchange that I don't even have words to describe how I feel.
Let me be clear: I will respond to this once and that's it.
As an Indian, and a Hindu, it's my culture and my life that people are talking about cutting up and turning into animated shorts for white peoples' entertainment. I expressed quite succinctly how that affects me in my original comment in the previous thread. Instead of addressing my feelings or exploring what experiences led me to react this way to the concept of a white woman retelling a Hindu epic with a lens of "female suffering", eredien posted a long series of nit-picks with a blog post I linked to, and then wrote extensively about how scared she is of being criticised for being white and appropriating from subjugated cultures. I'd rather have a relationship with someone where we "jump on each other's logic all the time" than a relationship in which my feelings and experiences get erased so often, and where it's okay to derail a discussion about the ethics of exploitation to speak extensively about one party's personal anxieties. But then, I'm finding that such relationships are rare with white people.
Secondly, I don't respond to tonearguments. Especially when they insinuate that white people are better at speaking about these issues than someone who experiences them personally, and with a backhanded compliment about your agreement, to boot. I did read raxvulpine's comments, but I don't trust white people to speak for me, especially not those inclined to making tone arguments and setting the (narrow) conditions by which they will and will not support people of colour. Eredien has had ample opportunity to engage with them in the past, given how much I've written about them over the years, and yet this post made it abundantly clear that she wasn't listening. Yet I'm the one who gets challenged about how I conduct my friendships? What a demeaning double-standard.
I've seen all these questions before. They come from a space of white, Western privilege and assume its boundaries. I was challenging her assumptions with a sly rejoinder about "personal biases" (a phrase which Eredien used extensively to discredit Zooeylive's criticisms of Nina Paley) -- because the questions themselves are not based on a robust understanding of the cultural implications of (neo)imperialism. I'm pretty put out that Eredien addressed them to her overwhelmingly white friends list instead of trying to find the answers for herself, presuming that there aren't any and that her thoughts and feelings are wholly original and new. As I said, it's not my job to educate.
Considering how insulting this whole exchange has been, I think I've been pretty bloody restrained.
Eredien, I'm sorry for directing this at you obliquely through gaudior, but hir comments directed at how I conduct my friendships made me feel that I had to defend myself publicly.
no subject
I'm so deeply insulted by this exchange that I don't even have words to describe how I feel.
Let me be clear: I will respond to this once and that's it.
As an Indian, and a Hindu, it's my culture and my life that people are talking about cutting up and turning into animated shorts for white peoples' entertainment. I expressed quite succinctly how that affects me in my original comment in the previous thread. Instead of addressing my feelings or exploring what experiences led me to react this way to the concept of a white woman retelling a Hindu epic with a lens of "female suffering",
I'd rather have a relationship with someone where we "jump on each other's logic all the time" than a relationship in which my feelings and experiences get erased so often, and where it's okay to derail a discussion about the ethics of exploitation to speak extensively about one party's personal anxieties. But then, I'm finding that such relationships are rare with white people.
Secondly, I don't respond to tone arguments. Especially when they insinuate that white people are better at speaking about these issues than someone who experiences them personally, and with a backhanded compliment about your agreement, to boot. I did read
Eredien has had ample opportunity to engage with them in the past, given how much I've written about them over the years, and yet this post made it abundantly clear that she wasn't listening. Yet I'm the one who gets challenged about how I conduct my friendships? What a demeaning double-standard.
I've seen all these questions before. They come from a space of white, Western privilege and assume its boundaries. I was challenging her assumptions with a sly rejoinder about "personal biases" (a phrase which Eredien used extensively to discredit Zooeylive's criticisms of Nina Paley) -- because the questions themselves are not based on a robust understanding of the cultural implications of (neo)imperialism. I'm pretty put out that Eredien addressed them to her overwhelmingly white friends list instead of trying to find the answers for herself, presuming that there aren't any and that her thoughts and feelings are wholly original and new. As I said, it's not my job to educate.
Considering how insulting this whole exchange has been, I think I've been pretty bloody restrained.
Eredien, I'm sorry for directing this at you obliquely through