In the Dear BB article, BB mentions that the person writing in has a lot of stuff to unlearn. That is extremely true for most of us I believe. As much as I would like to say that I have never said “grow some balls” or an extremely sexist song was never my favorite, I would be lying. I saw the light when I came to university, I probably would have never come to my senses if I did not educate myself. Exposing myself to different ideas was hard at first because none of us want to be part of the problem. Unlearning practices that have been ingrained in us since birth and constantly rewarded in everyday society is difficult because one has to be actively correcting themselves. How is someone supposed to correct themselves or change their behaviour if they do not know anything else? I am in no way defending their ignorance because the accessing any information is effortless at the moment, they are just being lazy. Forcing it down their throats is my immediate response, to tie people to chairs and show them the consequences their actions or non-actions have. That is obviously not ethically sound so I am open to new ideas.
The catch phrase should actually be “If it is white, heterosexual, gender normative and it bleeds it leads.” The structures of society view Trans, native and black women as less, this makes it ok to commit crimes against them. These crimes are rape, murder and assault. There is no societal outrage for these injustices. The cases are not covered for months while the whole country is holding their breath to get the person who did this. There is no air time for the highly attended candlelight virgule. If this was the case there would be no room for other stories. Maybe then people would notice. It has been decided that we do not need to concern ourselves with their problems. The them vs. us worldview is still extremely adopted, in the eyes of people with this worldview the ‘them’ are lesser people and do not deserve the same rights and freedoms.
As we talked about in class, it is overwhelming to even think about how to solve the system. I think that a lot of the time people depend on the “but that’s the way it has always been” argument. Since we do not live in a dictatorship, we need to convince more than one person to change the laws. We have to fight and fight hard for everything we believe in and over time it will become just the way it is. This means creating noise, so much noise that they cannot ignore us.
Hi Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, unlearning is such a challenging path to embark on. We all have habits of thought that have been ingrained, practiced and rewarded countless times. I often have to remind myself of the level of understanding and standard of conduct I started University with to appreciate that people are able to unlearn and relearn to a point that they transform. Although, our environment shapes us, individuals have significant influence on the social environment they are situated in. This is where I think Laverne Cox’s beautiful explanation of justice, love in the public realm, becomes so useful. When you love someone there is always enough time and room to hear what they have to say and you are anxiously concerned with their well-being. I think part of our fight is to increase the collective love we are willing to give one another, so the suffering of one is seen as the suffering of all. Part of this is achieved through sharing stories of people’s lived experience in various forms of media. Shows like Orange is the New Black and Twin Peaks allow viewers to connect with and love characters that are different from themselves but share common aspirations. The question then becomes how do we as individuals help to increase love for those groups who do not currently experience justice?
Hi Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, unlearning is such a challenging path to embark on. We all have habits of thought that have been ingrained, practiced and rewarded countless times. I often have to remind myself of the level of understanding and standard of conduct I started University with to appreciate that people are able to unlearn and relearn to a point that they transform. Although, our environment shapes us, individuals have significant influence on the social environment they are situated in. This is where I think Laverne Cox’s beautiful explanation of justice, love in the public realm, becomes so useful. When you love someone there is always enough time and room to hear what they have to say and you are anxiously concerned with their well-being. I think part of our fight is to increase the collective love we are willing to give one another, so the suffering of one is seen as the suffering of all. Part of this is achieved through sharing stories of people’s lived experience in various forms of media. Shows like Orange is the New Black and Twin Peaks allow viewers to connect with and love characters that are different from themselves but share common aspirations. The question then becomes how do we as individuals help to increase love for those groups who do not currently experience justice?