I get that from the perspective of many - not all, but many - of the more privileged people in the world, they don't need to learn about sexual and gender diversity, or any other kind of diversity for that matter. After all, much of it doesn't apply to them personally, right? But when someone like that does or says something ignorant or forgets to check their privilege - and I'll admit I've been guilty of this on occasion, but I'm trying to stop that - it's really annoying.
Here's an example. In my economics class, we're working on group projects in which we have to create an imaginary product, make a logo for it, and write a one-page paper about how and why it works. My group is making a scent patch for athletes to cover up their B.O. after games and practices (it works like a nicotine patch; you put it on your skin and it puts something in your body to make your sweat smell good. We're calling it the Buddy Body Patch).
With everything else done, we needed to work on the logo. Our design was on a big piece of poster paper, with five circles showing the different patch 'flavors': lavender, berry, bonfire, after-game, and the ocean. Lavender and berry were on one side, bonfire and after-game on the other, ocean in the middle. The lavender and berry side was labeled 'her scents' and the bonfire and after-game were 'his scents.' (Until the side-labeling started, I had merely watched the drawing of the poster. I'd already done my part as group secretary, and I'm not exactly the world's greatest artist.)
I didn't really take this personally or get angry about it, the way I did when a guy in science class was ignorant about asexuality, but it did bother me.
"Some guys like wearing lavender and berry," I protested mildly, simply not seeing the point in gendering sides of a poster. Even with the ocean in the middle and labeled as 'his and hers,' it just seemed a bit much. Since getting into LGBTQ+ activism, I'd noticed more and more about how society was geared toward those considered 'normal,' and it irritated me every time I saw an example of that.
"Yeah, guys who like guys," the girl doing the labeling chuckled with a derisive snort.
"Not always," I tried to explain, but the conversation had already moved on.
I want to hear your thoughts on this. Ideas, anyone?
6 comments:
I can´t follow you about that privilege-thing, but I get the rest of the post.
I guess it´s because how boys and girls are brought up. You know, with girls being dressed in pink and boys in blue; girls being given dolls and boys sports-things... Things like this. It gives us the impression that girls and women are soft, warm, lovinglike while boys and men are hard and cool and tough and so on.
It´s stupid to raise human like this. I know a hell of a lot girls who are stronger than most of our men, and I know a hell of a lot men who cry when we watch sad movies. I know men who wear skirts and dresses and I know women who love 'Sucker Punch' and wear military boots and so on. It´s so sad and stupid that most people are raised different, raised to be what the common people want them to be. There´s no harm in wearing berrry-smell, for example. One of my male friends, he wears women´s parfume if he has the money for it and he´s DEFINETELY not homosexual. He also cries while watching sad movies, he sometimes wears skirts when we go dancing, he is the most sensitive person I know, and I know for sure that he is not gay.
It´s strange. In my hometown, barely anybody thinks about those things. It´s just natural, normal. Amongst the punks and other 'dark' fringe groups, at least, and amonst most of the 'normal' people. In Germany, it´s not the most difficult topic wearing skirts as a man. At least if you compare it to what I hear from the States...
Don´t take this personally, but everything I hear about the States makes me wonder how this country can be so super-arrogant while most of the people there seem to be so absolutely stupid...
Betty, here's what I meant by cis privilege:
http://itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2011/11/list-of-cisgender-privileges/
http://takesupspace.wordpress.com/cis-privilege-checklist/
http://www.susans.org/forums/index.php?topic=91977.0
And the dig about America doesn't bother me either. I'm not exactly thrilled with it or a lot of its residents.
Ah, okay, I get it :D
Yes. It´s often the people without trouble that don´t think they need to care about problems in the world...
Not always. Some of them are genuinely good people, or at least well-meaning.
Of course there´s always exceptions. Luckily ^^
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