I was planning to write
the next article in the series about the importance of systemic change over the
cosmetic ones and why so many people
seem to think the two are equivalent. But in order to explain why I feel
this way, I believe it is important to understand that I am not coming at this
from a view of pure detachment.
As reluctant as I have
been to discuss my personal life in this blog, I now realize that in this
series in particular it is important to make clear that this is not an issue
that I take lightly. I do in fact have skin in this game, and that’s why I
think so many groups and people are fighting the wrong battles. So here goes.
When I was a teenager, I was
diagnosed with what was then referred to as
a mild form of autism. When I was in college, the terminology had shifted
to ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’ and it remained that way for the next twenty years. A
few years ago its was changed to autism spectrum disorder, and you now refer to
yourself as being ‘on the spectrum’.
It was not until my
mid-twenties that my social and personal life began to improve. I joined a
series of organizations that helped people with my kind of disabilities, and
slowly but surely gathered both a support system and an increasingly large
circle of friends. After spending my entire childhood and a fair amount of my
adulthood utterly unwilling to change any aspect of my life to make it easier
for others, I slowly became more and more flexible when it came to scheduling
my routines with other people. From almost never willing to do anything outside
of my house, I now have an active social life where I interact with friends and
even strangers on a daily basis. I have managed to hold down jobs and personal
relationships, something I could not have comprehended when I was younger.
I mention all of this
because while I have fundamentally been aware of the gradual acceptance and
inclusion of people on the spectrum in the world at large, at no point have I
ever thought the change in how we are referred to played any part in it, certainly
not when it came to my own life. Has my life improved dramatically during the
period when the language was shifting? Yes. Correlation rarely equals causation,
and I have never believed in this case.
I have often gotten into
conflicts with members of my own peer group in this regard. Indeed, it was in a
conversation with one where I came up with the terminology of ‘cosmetic changes’
rather than systemic ones. I really don’t believe in my heart of hearts that our
lives become easier because of how people refer to us. Perhaps it is clearer
when offensive terms and hate speech disappear from the language, but I’ve
never seen any evidence that makes our individual struggles easier. (And I have
never held that nicer terms do anything to change a person’s privates thoughts.
They might be willing to say your on the spectrum in front of you, but in private
they might very well call you a retard.)
This leaves aside the idea
that the Overton Window on what is considered ‘offensive’ seems to always be
shifting every few years. Cripple was a part of the lexicon for years; then it
was set aside for handicap until that was considered offensive; now disability is
considered too strong. All of this is based on not wanted to let your overwhelming
characteristic define who you are. The problem is, in the case of so many
minorities, that’s not enough and never well be. Black was fine for years; then
people insisted on African-American, now some are going to black. Same with
Latin American, then Latino, then LatinX. There used to be just gay, then gay
and lesbian, the LGBTQ+ and I expect the term to change again. It’s bad when one
actually uses an offensive term, but it’s not much better when the term you’ve
been using is now considered offensive even if you’ve been using what you
thought was the acceptable one.
This would be bad enough on its own, and its worst still
when even the idea of debating the concept of change is de facto considered offensive
or hate speech. What I find infinitely more troubling is the concept that
somehow changing how you are referred to as a person or a group is considered
systemic change instead of merely cosmetic change. Because when it comes to civil
rights – and that is what all of these groups are arguing for – the loudest
voices seem to argue that who you are referred to is some kind of victory for ‘the
cause’ when it is the barest of cosmetic changes.
I’d actually call it worse
because in the best case scenario, it is posturing. Who was it really a victory
for when it became decided that pronouns were a major obstacle to those who do
not identify by either gender? I don’t think it even meets the standards of a
moral victory, and its barely those of an individual one. I’ll actually be
going into much more detail on this in the next article in this series, but for
now let’s just dealing with it in the abstract sense. Assume that you manage to
non-binary people manage to get universal acceptance for ‘they, them and theirs’
as pronouns. How does that make things better for your cause? Does this reduce
the legislative threats that are restricting your rights? Does it make you more
accepted by the bigots who already hate you? Does it make any easier to get
employment or get promoted? All you’ve done is change how people talk about you
in a certain situation. If you really consider this some kind of victory, I don’t
think you have any understanding of what a victory is. The people who agree to
do this – it doesn’t cost them anything to say this. And you have no idea
whether they even think any better of you.
All of this strikes me as
laughable, particularly in my case. If a ‘Weight Watchers’ ad aired that said: “For
years I said I had Aspergers and my life was miserable. Now I say I’m on the
spectrum….and look me now!” We laugh at these kinds of ads every time we see
them, and to be clear there is no difference between changing how your outward
appearance and how you are referred to when it comes to personal happiness or
indeed long-term success. Hell, these days in the age of body positivity, we’d
consider an organization like Weight Watchers a hate group because it was
denouncing a group of people. So why should any similar cosmetic change be
considered any kind of short-term or long-term improvement?
Let me ask a question to every
person in a minority group. (And in case the term ‘minority’ is now considered hate
speech, let’s consider it as a mathematical term. Don’t pretend any of you
represent more than fifty-one percent of the population.)
LatinX, are your lives
better off now that you don’t have to bear the burden of being called ‘Latin-Americans’
anymore? African-Americans, do police pull you over less often now that you don’t
refer to yourselves as blacks? LGBTQ+ community, are you now not subjected to
same slanted looks and bigotry when you hold the hand of your partner in public
as you did before you were just gays and lesbians?
Don’t pretend this is a rhetorical
question or that it’s a false equivalence. If you truly think that changing how
the rest of the country refers to you in public is a war you want to wage, a battle that is as important as received
full equality under the law, then you’d better make it very clear. If this is a
battlefield you want to die on, that’s the only way you can explain to me why
this is something you have to fight for more then voting for people who
share your interests or organizing for social causes or battling for full
equality under the law. And if you do, you have to explain why it’s more
important to win the cosmetic battle first, and then concentrate on the systematic
ones.
I have spent many articles
and pages arguing fundamentally for consensus and compromise and while some
might argue that I don’t understand these issues because of my race, gender, or
sexuality, let me put it historically. For much of America’s history the doctrine
of the land, put into words by the Supreme Court in one of their worst
decisions was ‘separate but equal.’ That
law and doctrine was eventually overturned. Now however the basic doctrine of
every group related to identity politics seems fundamentally to come down to
being treated as ‘separate and equal.’ This is no way for a society to
try and exist, and yet somehow, that seems to be the idea behind identity
politics. African-Americans seem to think their considerations must be prioritized
over LatinX, who think their priorities must supplant LGBTQ+, etc. That there is
likely overlap between these groups, that their interests might coincide in the
overall picture, rarely seems to matter to the loudest voice. It is my group first,
everyone else second, and society a dead last. And that leads to loud and
vehement disagree of every single subject – including what outsiders call your tribe.
I’ve decried everybody on
this blog who stakes their claim based on who they are and what they think
needs to be done to help them. They will claim they are speaking for a larger
subsection of society, but they’re actually talking about what they themselves
want for themselves, no matter how unrealistic or impossible it may be. So before
I go any further, I’ll tell you the truth who I am and I want.
My name is David. I’m a
critic, primarily of television, but recently expanding to movies, books,
history, popular culture and our society.
I suffer from a disability
whose name keeps changing. It has never defined me. I do not use it as an excuse
for my failings or my successes. I define myself through my likes, my family
and my friends. The latter group is very diverse, racially, sexually,
generationally and in perhaps the biggest taboo these days, politically. I don’t
agree with any of these people a hundred percent of time; at most I agree with
any one of them thirty percent of the time. I believe it is our differences
that should be celebrated as much – if not more – than our similarities.
Whatever benchmarks you define
yourself by – politically, generational, sexual, religious – are nobody’s
business but my own. They form my opinions as much as yours do.
As for what I would like
done for my tribe, which is at the core of so many of these articles. I want
people who are part of it and people who aren’t part of it to work together to
help people like me. I want you to make things easier for people like me to
find jobs, to find homes, to get promoted. I want you work together to provide
a place so that future generations of people like me have a better path forward
than I do, that they face fewer obstacles than I do, then they have a place to go to know they’re not alone in
the world.
In order to do this,
everyone must contribute. They must give money; they must create agencies and
legislation that will make life for me and others like me easier. They must
vote for people who not only have my problems but people who will help work to
get these problems solved. They must have the patience to work within the
system that forms obstacles for people like me and others who have similar
issues in their lives. They must understand that this will take patience and
time but they must persevere and understand that systemic change is slow and
incremental and does not provide quick fixes for anyone. It will be frustrated
and maddening for everybody, but they must be willing to not only do the work
but understand what the work really is and what it consists of. They must see the
setbacks as merely setbacks and not causes for surrender.
It will not be easy. It
will not be done quickly. But it is what is best, not only for me and people
like me but for all people.
And once we have gotten
all the systematic changes we need to make things better for people like me, once
we have done the work that makes life better for us, then I’m willing to talk
about something cosmetic and relatively trivial as to what term makes the most
people comfortable about what to call us.
That is what I consider systematic
change. In my next article in this series, I’ll make the argument for what
seems to be a prime battlefield of
something that is purely cosmetic.
No comments:
Post a Comment