noracharles: (Default)
Nora Charles ([personal profile] noracharles) wrote2009-09-11 01:18 am

Protecting anglophone privilege

FYI: Demanding that a non-native speaker of English either stop posting or accept an anglophone gatekeeper is the moral equivalent of calling out an author for peppering their fic with babelfished non-English phrases as exotic decoration with no respect or regard for the speakers of that language.

I posted about this phenomenon in international fandom represent, but the situation in this discussion on fanficrants is slightly different. Here the commenters are very sensibly complaining only about hard-to-read-because-of-poor-grammar fics in general, you understand. The undercurrent of seething xenophobia and the racist jokes are completely incidental.

Pros of reading the discussion: see Nora flip her shit.
Cons of reading the discussion: may cause elevated blood-pressure.
laughingrat: My Marxist-Feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard, with added unfortunate Beauty-2K compliance. (Marxist-Feminist Dialectic)

[personal profile] laughingrat 2009-09-11 12:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, I'm definitely not a grammar expert (SO not a grammar expert, srs), so it's all good. I'd had it hammered at me before that the singular "they" is incorrect, so hey. Me, though, I love going with a default "she," because it freaks people out so much. Er, not really because I like freaking people out--although if some little "Nice Guy" wants to get up on his hind legs about it because it offended him, so much the better if his latent sexism is exposed--but because, well, men got to be the default for 20,000 years, and it's sort of delicious to play with the idea of LADYPANTS being the default. It makes my brain sit up and go "Wha?" in a way that I find entertaining. :-D

Politics + Neuroscience = ...no, scratch that.

I only saw two regulars

Yeah, you too? I wasn't seeing a lot of names in there that I knew. There was one person who seemed pretty reasonable, not one of the (avowed) dudes, but someone else...eh, can't remember her username. She was slightly less infuriating, at any rate.

That teapot dude needs to STFU and get off my internet, though, because he's been braying a lot in FFR lately and I'm pretty sure it's the "dude invading a woman-majority space" thing. Notice how someone immediately was all "OMG UR SO SMRT"? I hate it when that happens. That happens in the fiber comms on Yahoo; some dude marches in waving his tiny tin penis around and at least one woman is all, "OMG, U SO TALENTED." STOP IT, LADIES. JUST STOP.

Well, you said I could be ranty...

Gotta re-read Ronia. I think I was 12 when I read it. Too long ago.

EDITed because some of that didn't make no sense.
Edited 2009-09-11 12:35 (UTC)
laughingrat: Evil!Kirk erroneously thinks chicks dig him (Stupid Patriarchy.)

[personal profile] laughingrat 2009-09-11 12:57 pm (UTC)(link)
You think the fawning was because he's a man?

Well, I'm being kinda knee-jerky here, so maybe not. ;) Yeah, he was better than he coulda been, right? But that straw argument thing, argh. You can argue with your projections all ya want, d00d; I'll be over here having a sandwich.

Not that I've ever, ever been knee-jerk about anything or argued with a projection.

Good morning! Also, I swear I do work too, but there's nothing like librarianship to keep you on a computer all day.
laughingrat: By scary_lullabies (Hawt Lesbian Tea)

[personal profile] laughingrat 2009-09-11 02:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I think you're right that it does infantilize them. But I think that's maybe more of an unintended consequence? Or--well, if you have a predator in your midst, you want to both placate him (by praise) and make him less dangerous (by infantilizing), right? Not that I think that women consciously think either thing, but they don't HAVE to, because culture thinks it for them. You know what I mean?

It's a protective measure, in other words, like all femininity. That's my take.

Recently on Pandagon there was a post about how some female journalist was all yelling at the MEEN FEMNISTS for picking on menz all the time, you know? We have such high expectations of men, this journalist complained; we're so hard on them! This Lady Journalist then laid out how men just can't help being idiots, how they just can't cope with housework and treating women like humans and all that, and how women should be patient with them.

The Pandagon writer countered, dryly, with, "Yeah. Feminists just hate men. We hate men so much, in fact, that we think they're full human beings and expect them to act as such." OH SNAP.

Yeah, I think LJ allows for the possibility of gender-neutralness because we don't usually sign our posts and comments. Maybe in e-groups it's different because we often do, so we actually have the info.

I've seen lesbian ladies be totally groovin' on the Patriarchy without even realizing it, sadly, but it DOES seem like it's not a common thing. Thank the lard. But yeah, all that sexist stuff is awful insidious.