Protecting anglophone privilege

[noracharles]

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.

Comments

[laughingrat]

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.

[noracharles]

I don't think you're being knee-jerk or projecting; I ask because I have a hard time recognizing the dynamic on the internet, but I see it constantly in real life. Constantly. Women suddenly pretend to drop 20 IQ points, the conversation revolves around the dude who entered the room, and he's getting pettings and praise and treats for not being a complete neanderthal. How can men be so blind to the condescension and utter lack of expectations from women? How can they not see how humiliating that should be, being treated like a 3 year old who managed not to poop his pants on a long car trip?

But instead women compete with each other to see who can lower their expectations more and settle for less in a mate, just so a man will pay attention to them and thus validate their existence.

I just don't get it online. Why? O_o
To me, people online are kind of nebulously genderless with me seeing them more as feminine if they're good at discussions, and more as masculine if they like to soliloquize, until they identify themselves as their preferred gender. And even then I often forget what they said they were after a while. Maybe it's a straight people thing, and that's why I don't understand it.

[laughingrat]

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.

[noracharles]

That's a very interesting perspective. I had always put it down to wanting to appear sexually attractive to men by pleasing them, and a general fear of being seen as unfeminine and thus being punished for not conforming.

I read a discussion about rape culture not so long ago, where an American and a Brit compared statistics, and they were shockingly different. I have the impression that women do fear men more in the United States, but it's so hard to tell given how vast and varied the country is. My only direct experience is with Arkansas and Washington state, and only in a certain social class and environment, naturally.

I have to say, I know a lot of men, and love and respect some of them dearly. The ones I like the most who are not in my immediate family are the ones who have the strength and confidence to be feminists. It is very, very difficult for me not to fall into the trap of exceptionalism. Logically I know that male and female social groups are parallel to a large extent, and that when the genders do mix both genders change their behavior. When I think of how differently women behave among women and in the company of men, and how men misjudge women in dismissive, generalizing ways for being stupid, submissive and backstabbing to other women and I know how false and skewed that perspective is, it stands to reason that men can be pretty awesome when I'm not there to observe them.

For instance, I often listen to thoughtful and sensitive men on the radio. Just as soon as a woman is present, most men act like entitled jerks. The behavior is especially bad when more than one man is present - they can be quite pleasant one on one. So I have to conclude that a large part of their behavior is ultra-masculine posturing for the benefit of other men, enacting some bizarre idea of being the kind of man women want. And they're never corrected in this belief, because the women are busy enacting the ultra-feminine woman men want.

I don't understand what you mean by signing your name on e-groups. How is the way you identify yourself different there? On LJ/dw we have pseuds and user info to identify us, and some even use their icons as avatars.