A thing I keep getting stuck on is that a lot of the unlearning of bad shit – a thing that we all do when we deal with our privilege – takes place either in silence or in coded words.
For example: we know that we’ve been brainwashed into seeing cisgenderedness as beautiful and we know that unlearning that takes more than just reading that one sentence, it takes actual work unraveling your desires, taking them apart and rebuilding them.
But no one goes out and says “so I am cisgender and I was raised to be cissexist and now I’m not attracted to transgender people unless they have this specific set of features that is idealized as ‘passing’. I’m trying to unlearn that. Here’s my experiences so far.”. And it makes sense not to talk about it that way, because if you start talking openly about not being attracted to trans people you will say a lot of hurtful shit. But for many people it’s the truth, the shitty hurtful truth that needs to be unlearned. So instead people either deny their shit, pretending that their desires as inherent, or they talk in code, either talking about ‘unlearning cis privilege’ only in the abstract, or only in the positive as something ‘achieved’, about how much they’re appreciating trans beauty now (not creepy at all…)
So when cis people spend time unraveling their brainwashing and learning to truly appreciate non-passing trans beauty (and it’s rare that they do that work at all), that work is largely done in private. Which is, obviously, less productive than doing it in a conversation with other, with access to feedback and to other people’s experiences. That’s true of every learning process.
So what would it take for that more open process to take place? A radical acceptance of confessions of cissexism? That would be a pretty big burden on trans people, who would have to hear that shit and hide all their emotions in the interest of cis spiritual growth. Not a nice idea. An all-cis environment where there are no trans people to hurt? That could be potentially terrible.
I really don’t have an answer to this. Unlearning cisgender beauty standards is just one example. You could name a thousand more, from unlearning the coding that tells us to see gay displays of affection as inherently more sexual than straight ones to unlearning seeing white people as inherently more professional, etc. We’ve all got a LOT of shit to unlearn. How do we talk honestly about that without hurting people by showing them the shit inside us?
#really great question #which applies to allies of all marginalized groups #ex. i am an lgbt person #and i do not want to have to hear straight people talk about #all of their internalized bad shit re: lgbt people #but i do want them to spend the time unlearning it and growing from it #and on the flip side #i am also white #and people of color do not want or need to hear me #talking about all my internalized racism #but i do need to be able to get it out into the light #so that i can look at it properly #if that makes sense #because it’s so easy to excuse your internalized prejudice #when you’re only accountable to yourself# it’s important to have a support / accountability group #but that group should NEVER #be made up of members of the marginalized community
Truuuuuueeeee.
And I think we need other people with the same privileges (or who for some other reason can listen to our shit without being hurt by it) to look at our shit to hold us accountable for the stuff we really don’t wanna admit AND too tell us not to be too fucking hard on ourself because guilt never created growth.
Like, we need both that painful honesty and that compassion when we’re dealing with this shit. For every time we get defensive and deny our shit there’s a time when we hate ourselves for our flaws and that’s not helping us get any better. The getting defensive and the massive self-hate thing are linked too. We wouldn’t be getting so defensive if we knew how to deal with our shit without falling into pools of self-hate. So yeah, we need community learning that’s okay with people’s imperfections but is also very honest about them.
QueerAnarchism 