In my case last Thursday-- like I said, I misunderstood something-- it was a Tumblr post, and as such it wasn't obviously connected to other posts, I had no idea it was about Specific Cultural Issues That I Had No Say In-- the original poster had brought them up, but I saw them as just details to her specific situation, and I related to the broader issue-- addressing moral issues in writing. I wasn't trying or not-trying to be an Ally, I was just trying to talk to someone else about writing. So when someone who wasn't even the original poster jumped in with "This is an inappropriate response!" and linked to the other things she'd written that I hadn't even seen, I was genuinely confused. WHY? Why address me at all? Why was I being answered by someone different than the person I'd replied to? I didn't hurt anyone, I wasn't trying to start anything, I was just ignorant. I couldn't understand why she EXPECTED me to know things I couldn't have known from what I'd seen in the first place.
In the case of the author, I try not to be too specific, because I don't want anyone else to have to deal with the bitter taste I have in the back of my mouth when I think about her books now. But it was over a post about a piece of reproductive health legislation that I agreed had a lot of problems and really did seem to be, in this specific instance, a case of men trying to regulate women's bodies. BUT her flippant references to fetuses as bundles of lifeless cells in said post rubbed me the wrong way as someone who DOES respect the life of the unborn child, even though I'm more willing to compromise when it comes to legislation than most people who call themselves Pro-Life, and I am related to many women who are fierce Pro-Life activists-- totally their own choices, not the influence of the men in their lives or anything-- and I understood how THEY see the issue, and it occurred to me that decent people like them might be perfectly willing to take issue with this particular piece of legislation if people calling for action against it weren't ripping down the Pro-Life movement in general. So I wrote about how I agreed that these laws had issues but we really needed to learn to talk with each other or we'd never be able to make change, because the people on each side are fighting about two completely different things without realizing it! And, yeah. That didn't go over well. It's one thing to say, why should you put out honey if you don't want flies to begin with, but I wasn't trying to attract the flies. I was trying to attract the lovely, intelligent women who were on the other side of the argument only because they saw it as a threat to unborn rights, instead of noticing that in this case it WAS actually more of a threat to women's rights.
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chiming
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Date: 2014-02-09 11:46 pm (UTC)From:In the case of the author, I try not to be too specific, because I don't want anyone else to have to deal with the bitter taste I have in the back of my mouth when I think about her books now. But it was over a post about a piece of reproductive health legislation that I agreed had a lot of problems and really did seem to be, in this specific instance, a case of men trying to regulate women's bodies. BUT her flippant references to fetuses as bundles of lifeless cells in said post rubbed me the wrong way as someone who DOES respect the life of the unborn child, even though I'm more willing to compromise when it comes to legislation than most people who call themselves Pro-Life, and I am related to many women who are fierce Pro-Life activists-- totally their own choices, not the influence of the men in their lives or anything-- and I understood how THEY see the issue, and it occurred to me that decent people like them might be perfectly willing to take issue with this particular piece of legislation if people calling for action against it weren't ripping down the Pro-Life movement in general. So I wrote about how I agreed that these laws had issues but we really needed to learn to talk with each other or we'd never be able to make change, because the people on each side are fighting about two completely different things without realizing it! And, yeah. That didn't go over well. It's one thing to say, why should you put out honey if you don't want flies to begin with, but I wasn't trying to attract the flies. I was trying to attract the lovely, intelligent women who were on the other side of the argument only because they saw it as a threat to unborn rights, instead of noticing that in this case it WAS actually more of a threat to women's rights.