2) "they are good guys and likely not participating in sexism."
The other thing is, and this sort of fits into the "personality" (as opposed to actions) thing, is that my immediate response to that is: "Then presumably they WANT TO KNOW if they appear to be participating in sexism".
I was posting something somewhere else about 'splitting' that I think it sort of relevant to this:
Lynn Truss says something about this in Talk to the Hand that I found sort of lighbulbish.
Roughly (my copy is on loan), she says that apologies require a splitting of self (This part of me did something. This part of me can see that it was a bad/foolish/careless thing to do, and wishes to acknowledge that, and to reconcile myself with the world, and knows how to do so) that used to be entirely normal, and that people are now taught to resist fiercely.
With the result that apologising is regarded as a form of self-immolation.
I apologise quite a lot, and people keep telling me I need to stop it. This is, you understand, people who like me and wish me well. We'd talk about it and they'd say, you know, you don't have to apologise all the time and I'd say yeah I know that, so what?
It puzzled me horribly until I came across this idea of splitting.
I think not getting the notion of splitting is a basic problem on both sides': how do we talk about behaviour w/o talking about personality? And at the same time, how do we call people on MAKING it about personality when their behaviour is called into question?
Because I feel like it's this twitch everyone has, that logic doesn't really touch. I mean, we all know that sexism is a social blight, not a personality flaw, but we all fall for it at least some of the time.
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timeasmymeasure
More thinky
Date: 2007-09-02 08:57 pm (UTC)The other thing is, and this sort of fits into the "personality" (as opposed to actions) thing, is that my immediate response to that is: "Then presumably they WANT TO KNOW if they appear to be participating in sexism".
I was posting something somewhere else about 'splitting' that I think it sort of relevant to this:
Lynn Truss says something about this in Talk to the Hand that I found sort of lighbulbish.
Roughly (my copy is on loan), she says that apologies require a splitting of self (This part of me did something. This part of me can see that it was a bad/foolish/careless thing to do, and wishes to acknowledge that, and to reconcile myself with the world, and knows how to do so) that used to be entirely normal, and that people are now taught to resist fiercely.
With the result that apologising is regarded as a form of self-immolation.
I apologise quite a lot, and people keep telling me I need to stop it. This is, you understand, people who like me and wish me well. We'd talk about it and they'd say, you know, you don't have to apologise all the time and I'd say yeah I know that, so what?
It puzzled me horribly until I came across this idea of splitting.
I think not getting the notion of splitting is a basic problem on both sides': how do we talk about behaviour w/o talking about personality? And at the same time, how do we call people on MAKING it about personality when their behaviour is called into question?
Because I feel like it's this twitch everyone has, that logic doesn't really touch. I mean, we all know that sexism is a social blight, not a personality flaw, but we all fall for it at least some of the time.
How do we get off that level and stay off?