Privileged people rarely take the voices of marginalized people seriously. Social justices spaces attempt to fix this with rules about how to respond to when marginalized people tell you that you’ve done something wrong. Like most formal descriptions of social skills, the rules don’t quite match reality. This is causing some problems that I think we could fix with a more honest conversation about how to respond to criticism.

The formal social justice rules say something like this:

• You should listen to marginalized people.
  
• When a marginalized person calls you out, don’t argue.
  
• Believe them, apologize, and don’t do it again.
  
• When you see others doing what you were called out for doing, call them out.
  

Those rules are a good approximation of some things, but they don’t actually work. It is impossible to follow them literally, in part because:

• Marginalized people are not a monolith. 
  
• Marginalized people have the same range of opinions as privileged people.
  
• When two marginalized people tell you logically incompatible things, it is impossible to act on both sets of instructions.
  
• For instance, some women believe that abortion is a human right foundational human right for women. Some women believe that abortion is murder and an attack on women and girls.
  
• “Listen to women” doesn’t tell you who to believe, what policy to support, or how to talk about abortion. 
  
• For instance, some women believe that religious rules about clothing liberate women from sexual objectification, other women believe that religious rules about clothing sexually objectify women. 
  
• “Listen to women” doesn’t tell you what to believe about modesty rules. 
  
• Narrowing it to “listen to women of minority faiths” doesn’t help, because women disagree about this within every faith.
  
• When “listen to marginalized people” means “adopt a particular position”, marginalized people are treated as rhetorical props rather than real people.
• Objectifying marginalized people does not create justice.

Since the rule is literally impossible to follow, no one is actually succeeding at following it. What usually ends up happening when people try is that:

• One opinion gets lifted up as “the position of marginalized people” 
  
• Agreeing with that opinion is called “listen to marginalized people”
  
• Disagreeing with that opinion is called “talking over marginalized people”
  
• Marginalized people who disagree with that opinion are called out by privileged people for “talking over marginalized people”.
  
• This results in a lot of fights over who is the true voice of the marginalized people.
  
• We need an approach that is more conducive to real listening and learning.
  

This version of the rule also leaves us open to sabotage:

• There are a lot of people who don’t want us to be able to talk to each other and build effective coalitions.
  
• Some of them are using the language of call-outs to undermine everyone who emerges as an effective progressive leader. 
  
• They say that they are marginalized people, and make up lies about leaders.
  
• Or they say things that are technically true, but taken out of context in deliberately misleading ways.
  
• The rules about shutting up and listening to marginalized people make it very difficult to contradict these lies and distortions. 
  
• (Sometimes they really are members of the marginalized groups they claim to speak for. Sometimes they’re outright lying about who they are).
  
• (For instance, Russian intelligence agents have used social media to pretend to be marginalized Americans and spread lies about Hillary Clinton.)
  

The formal rule is also easily exploited by abusive people, along these lines:

• An abusive person convinces their victim that they are the voice of marginalized people.
  
• The abuser uses the rules about “when people tell you that you’re being oppressive, don’t argue” to control the victim.
  
• Whenever the victim tries to stand up for themself, the abuser tells the victim that they’re being oppressive.
  
• That can be a powerfully effective way to make victims in our communities feel that they have no right to resist abuse. 
• This can also prevent victims from getting support in basic ways.
  
• Abusers can send victims into depression spirals by convincing them that everything that brings them pleasure is oppressive and immoral. 
  
• The abuser may also isolate the victim by telling them that it would be oppressive for them to spend time with their friends and family, try to access victim services, or call the police. 
  
• The abuser may also separate the victim from their community and natural allies by spreading baseless rumors about their supposed oppressive behavior. (Or threatening to do so).
• When there are rules against questioning call outs, there are also implicit rules against taking the side of a victim when the abuser uses the language of calling out.
• Rules that say some people should unconditionally defer to others are always dangerous.
  

The rule also lacks intersectionality:

• No one experiences every form of oppression or every form of privilege.
  
• Call-outs often involve people who are marginalized in different ways. 
  
• Often, both sides in the conflict have a point.
  
• For instance, black men have male privilege and white women have white privilege.
  
• If a white woman calls a black man out for sexism and he responds by calling her out for racism (or vice versa), “listened to marginalized people” isn’t a very helpful rule because they’re both marginalized.
  
• These conversations tend to degenerate into an argument about which form of marginalization is most significant.
  
• This prevents people involved from actually listening to each other.
  
• In conflicts like this, it’s often the case that both sides have a legitimate point. (In ways that are often not immediately obvious.)
  
• We need to be able to work through these conflicts without expecting simplistic rules to resolve them in advance.
  

This rule also tends to prevent groups centered around one form of marginalized from coming to engage with other forms of marginalization:

• For instance, in some spaces, racism and sexism are known to be issues, but ableism is not.
  
• (This can occur in any combination. Eg: There are also spaces that get ableism and sexism but not racism, and spaces that get economic justice and racism but not antisemitism, or any number of other things.)
  
• When disabled people raise the issue of ableism in any context (social justice or otherwise), they’re likely to be shouted down and told that it’s not important.
  
• In social justice spaces, this shouting down is often done in the name of “listening to marginalized people”.
  
• For instance, disabled people may be told ‘you need to listen to marginalized people and de-center your issues’, carrying the implication that ableism is less important than other forms of oppression.
  
• (This happens to *every* marginalized group in some context or other.)
  
• If we want real intersectional solidarity, we need to have space for ongoing conflicts that are not simple to resolve.
  

Tl;dr “Shut up and listen to marginalized people” isn’t quite the right rule, because it objectifies marginalized people, leaves us open to sabotage, enables abuse, and prevents us from working through conflicts in a substantive way. We need to do better by each other, and start listening for real.

One reason I started writing this blog is that I got tired of seeing social skills programs teach autistic people that they have to become normal in order to have friends.

It’s not true. There are a lot of autistic people who have friends without becoming remotely normal. Oddness and friendship are entirely compatible.

You can be autistic, seem autistic, and have friends who like you and enjoy your company.

Some people won’t like you, and that’s ok. Not everyone has to like everyone.

Some people will dislike you because they are bigoted against autistic people. That’s not ok, but it doesn’t have to ruin your life. Ableists don’t speak for everyone. Those people aren’t your friends. Other people can be.

You’ll probably always face ableism. Trying to be normal probably won’t make that go away; accepting yourself probably won’t make that go away either. You don’t need to change the whole world in order to have friends.

You can have friends as the person you are, in the world as it is now.

Stupid 2 - Aftermath

Previous

CW: lady whumpee, lady whump, past torture, manhandling, drowning, dehumanization.

=-=

She was right. Anna thought about the punishment? lesson? What was it this time? Was there even a reason at all? 

Rachel had said she wouldn’t be able to as much as open her eyes and she truly couldn’t. She could only feel the pain, the blood, the fear. Rachel was saying something, using the sweet condescending tone he always uses, but Anna couldn’t hear a word through everything.

She groaned, or tried, her throat was too hoarse to allow her to actually make a sound, Rachel picked her up and she wanted to ask her not to. To beg. It almost never works but she can’t stop herself from pleading for any strand of mercy Rachel might have.

Anna heard the chains falling down, and groaned again when Rachel carried her up the stairs to the bathroom. She must have passed out somewhere in the way because when she came back her head was being forced in the full bathtub.

Rachel pulled her out as soon as she started struggling, “Stupid mutt, I told you not to sleep without permission. Didn’t I?”

Anna gave a small nod, her body limp and hurting too much already, she just wanted it to stop.

She passed out another two times during the bath, both times she was forced awake by despair and pain.

“Oh mutt…” Rachel said, chaining the now clean and with dressed wounds Anna near the dog bed inside Rachel’s room, “If you weren’t so stupid I would be so much nicer to you,” she grabbed her victms’ hair, “are you listing to me?”

Anna nodded, trying to force herself to stay awake. She had to force herself to listen. 

“Idiot, this is the reason you are hurting all the time, because you fucking deserve it, or do you think I am the only one who would hurt a idiot like you?” Rachel let go of her.

The chain was too short, forcing Anna on her knees, she whined pitifully, trying to be allowed to lay down, else she would choke everytime she fell asleep. The whine only earned her a hard slap across the face.

“Think about what you did mutt,” Rachel said, walking towards her bed, where she lay down comfortably, “in silence.”

=-=

I’ve received a lot of requests for more Signal, and though I’m fresh out of ideas for the main canon, I thought I could do a bit of a prologue, from before they were with Doctors Crane and Sampson. An anon had the great idea of elaborating upon the mentioned wind tunnel from the ask game, so I went with that! I hope you enjoy!

(Putting all anon requests at the bottom of the post, as there’s a lot!)

CW//Lab whump, dehumanization, restraints, exhaustion, forced exercise

There was a stark contrast between Signal’s kennel and the rest of the facility.

The facility itself was boundless– No matter how long they spend inside, how many treks through the blank halls they made, Signal had never seen the end of it. The hallways themselves were indistinguishable from one another, all blending together– Signal was never sure if they had been in the same hallway before, or if they were being led somewhere entirely new.

Knowing was impossible. The facility was impossible. Impossible to understand, and more than that, impossible to escape from.

Their kennel, on the other hand? Signal’s kennel was small, simple, comprehensible. Seven feet in one way, four in the other– They’d counted, making use of their curled fingers to measure inches, bit by tiny bit. They knew every last square inch of it. The inches where they curled up to sleep, where they backed away when the scientists came.

That was where they were, now– The very back of their kennel, spine pressed against the tile wall. The chain link structure provided minimal protection from outside prying eyes, providing a pixelated view of the scientist in a lab coat outside.

Which scientist? Signal hardly knew, and more than that, they hardly cared. Just like the hallways, there seemed to be infinite numbers of them. They were all the same, all threats in the same way.

Hell, they even spoke the same.

“Good morning, dear, time to come out, now.”

Dear. The word made Signal feel sick. They bristled as they pressed against the back of their kennel, ankles straining again the short length of chain that connected them and wings doing the same, struggling to break free from the straps keeping them folded.

Every day, they tried the same tactic to keep themself safe: A mixture of growling and swiping feebly at the air in front of them, trying in vain to scare away whoever had decided to target them. Never once did it work, but it felt far better than allowing themself to be taken with no fight at all.

With the clinking of a key in a lock, the chain link door of the kennel clattered open. The moment Signal felt blue-gloved hands upon their skin, heart-pounding panic set in, sending their limbs flailing and their jaws striking out at anything that they might’ve been able to find purchase on.

No purchase was found, and nothing was struck. Before they knew it, Signal’s wrists had been cinched behind their back, shoulders held in place by guiding hands, not allowing them to twist or spin.

Led down the hallway, Signal was not blindfolded, but they may as well have been. The towering ceilings and endless steel doors told them nothing of where they were– They wouldn’t have been able to figure it out, not even with a map. Other white coats shuffled past in either direction. At some point, one joined Signal’s captor, moving at their side with jovial words.

Signal had long since stopped listening to their conversations. They couldn’t care less.

They kept their head bowed, steps forced short by the hobbling strap between their ankles.

What would it be today? They had no way of knowing, they never did. Why would the scientists explain to them anything? After all, they were merely an animal, a lab rat, what would their understanding matter? Perhaps they would be having samples taken, or the opposite, having god-knows-what injected into their veins. A physical examination was always possible, or scans– Of their skin, their muscles, their bones, their organs.

They caught a scrap of conversation between the two scientists escorting them.

“I’m taking this one for some exercise. Its doctor is concerned that its wings are going to atrophy.”

“You’re taking it outside to fly?”

“Outside? No, no, just to the tunnel.”

The tunnel? It wasn’t something Signal had heard referred to before, something that made them balk and attempt to stop their constant march forward. Yet, it was in vain– A good shove and their feeble form was moving again.

Every last door in the endless hallway looked the same, and Signal fully expected to be shoved through any one of them, at any time.

Instead, they did not stop until the very end of the hallway, where an oversized, arc-shaped garage door was settled into the wall. There was no way they were going through there, r-

They were.

With a great rumbling, the door retracted upwards.

Signal understood at once why they called it the tunnel. Taking on the appearance of a giant, sideways half-cylinder, a metal-plated room stepped out in the distance. Immediately, their gaze was flitting about, searching for where exactly the pain would come in, where the torture would begin.

Instead, they were merely led into the massive tunnel, the garage door grinding closed behind them. Without thinking, they felt themself beginning to resist.

The structure of the thing was simple, all illuminated by great, shining bulbs, aligned in a straight row along the top of the tunnel. Inside the giant tunnel, settled in one corner, sat a metal control room, windows across the sides. The rest of the space was open, except for…

At one end of the half-cylinder, an oversized fan had been embedded behind an equally massive grate. Was that going to grind them up? It was the first thought that crossed Signal’s mind, though they quickly realized that it didn’t make much sense.

“Alright, buddy.” The scientist pushing them forward patted Signal on one shoulder. “Let’s stretch those wings a bit, huh?”

Signal did not much like the idea, but that was the case for any idea that the scientists had. Yet, it did have one positive– They nearly let out a sigh of relief as they felt the straps unbuckled from around their wings.

They wasted no time at all in unfurling them, feeling the stagnant air catch through their bent feathers. The two scientists stumbled backwards.

How long had it been, since they’d been able to fly? They didn’t remember, and, yet, the action came as naturally as breathing. A pair of powerful beats later, and they were up, halfway to the top of the cylinder. With a great cheer, they flew into a loop, before realizing how stupid the action was and halting.

The scientists on the ground looked up at them with a laugh, before moving to the control room, locking themselves in.

This was… This was amazing! Sure, it wasn’t as good as outside, as feeling the real wind in their wings, but it didn’t matter! They were flying !

Signal soon let go of their bashfulness, spinning over and over again in great arcs through the air. For the first time in ages, they could feel the blood pumping in their veins, the breath coursing through their lungs.

They did not so much as notice as the scientists below turned dials and pulled levers. Yet, they very much noticed when the massive fan churned to life.

The surprise alone was enough to find them falling out of a spin. Feeling like a deer in the headlights, they hovered, watching as the massive blades groaned and grumbled, beginning to move, then turn, then spin.

Even the first few rotations nearly knocked them back. What in the- What was this?!

Signal realized far too late.

By the time they understood the idea of the tunnel, the idea of exercise, they’d already been slammed back, against the far wall of the tunnel. Their head echoed hollowly with ripples of pain as they began beating their wings, struggling to free themself from the wall like a bug from an interstate windshield.

The fan was getting louder, louder, until they could no longer hear their own pounding, desperate thoughts, slamming against the inside of their skull. When they eventually freed themself from the wall, it was far from without difficulty– their lungs were overtaken by gasping as their wings beat the air in panic.

It felt like being behind a passenger jet.

Faster, faster, they urged their wings as the horrid gusts from in front slammed into their face, nipping their nose, tearing their breath from their lungs and tears from their eyes. They could sense the wall behind them, dreading slamming into it again, but did not dare turn around– a moment of lost concentration and they would fall again.

This was exercise? This was supposed to be good for their health?! Or was it merely another humiliation, another torture, like the thousands of others?

Signal had no spare mind with which to consider the matter. Instead, they could only beat their wings, could only gasp for what air they could get. They had long ago closed their eyes, focusing only on the wind, on fighting it with every movement.

The faster they beat their wings, however, it seemed that the fan matched their increase in speed.

Their lungs burned, the cold wind threatening to rip their feathers from their wings, their skin from their face and arms.

Signal had no way of keeping track of time in that hellish place. Only the scientists below knew that they lasted 5 minutes, 43 seconds before slamming into the back wall of the wind tunnel, and falling to the ground, unconscious.

All things considered, it was a good exercise routine. Efficient, quick, and great for their wings! That was what was recorded on Signal’s file, at least, alongside another line:

Advised: Repeat wind tunnel exercise weekly.

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I apologize that I didn’t continue the main story this time, I promise I’ll do so when I have the muse for it!