Being engaged with a kind of marginalization which mirrors one's own can be extremely cathartic and educational, as well. It's one of the reasons why some people prefer writing/engaging with fantasy than realistic works. If understanding real world fascism through the lens of Harry Potter fascism is what it takes for somebody to grapple with the horrors of current politics without falling into debilitating grief, then so be it. It's why some trans or neurodivergent folks might resonate strongly with fictional types of non-humanism in ways which aren't actually self-dehumanizing; sometimes you want to be non-binary in peace without thinking about how transness is constructed and oppressed in society, and instead you ant to explore your own gender through the lens of a fictional society of dragons where there isn't that looming binary, or you want to consider your own thought processes as being structured mechanically without the "haha, you're a freak" social weight attacked to it. Sometimes it actually helps us critically engage with weighty and personal experiences when we allow that distance or that veil of allegory.
When it comes to understanding yourself through the context of understanding others, well. There's plenty that could be said about realizing how fucked up your parents were by gaining experience of what somebody's life with good parents looks like, or somebody with body dysmorphia finding solidarity with somebody with gender dysphoria, or even a transmasculine person reading about transfeminine-based queerness as a way to get to know their own feelings about transness without being swallowed by dysphoria and shame.
However a really important experience for me was when I took Latinx Studies. It turns out that a lot of Latinx-American racial theory and narratives... closely resemble East Asian-American racial theory and narratives. And while I have all kinds of shame and hatred and bitterness and regret surrounding my culture and my heritage and my upbringing, that weight didn't carry over into learning about other peoples' experiences being Latinx. So I actually learned things about the politics of immigration and assimilation and stuff... without my trauma brain screaming "NONONONONONO!" and shutting everything out. And yeah, in some way you could say that I used another culture I didn't belong to in order to make things about me (in my own head!). However I don't see how that makes me different from any other non-Latinx student in the class. And, in fact, there were very few people in the class of recent immigrant generational status, which essentially meant that when it came to lessons relating to first- and second-generation immigration experiences versus third+ generation experiences for Latinx folks in the US, it meant that I had more firsthand insights to share about cultural disjoints and assimilationist politics than many of the actually-Latinx-but-third-generation-and-beyond folks who were raised to be much more competent of hegemonic American culture than I was. Despite how interested I am in the social sciences, I always steered clear of anything to do with East Asia or East Asian-Americanism or even family systems because it hit too close to home. But because I started my theoretical basis of immigration and non-black/white racial politics and culture-passed-down-through-generations with Latinx Studies instead of Asian American Studies, I actually know useful things about immigration and racial politics and generational culture. I have a framework in which to understand my dad telling me that as an American, I oppress him, and I have a more profound understanding of the politics of the US-Mexican border than most average non-Latinx folks I know. I makes me better for me and it makes me better at being a respectful ally/activist, because wow, that whole "putting yourself in other peoples' shoes" isn't all that bad of a thing when it comes to building connections and inspiring people to treat each other like fellow humans!
Also learning about queer Chinese identity (as in what queer people are doing in China, not Chinese-American queer identity) in my transnational queer studies class taught me a lot about my own culture (which was obviously never taught to me because why would my parents know about or teach me about queerness??) and gave me a lot of resources to articulate just how the constructions of male and female really are different between the American culture that I know and the non-American culture I was formatively raised in. And some dipshit tumblr activist would tell me "oh, but that's okay, because you are queer and Chinese, so that's your heritage and it's not appropriation or fetishization or disrespectful!" Except that's ridiculously wrong, because according to Chinese people born Chinese, I'm not one of them. Because it turns out that racial/ethnic politics are culturally bound, too! And the queerness that I bring with me, which is backed in the Western view of transgenderism being distinct from queer sexuality, would also be super out of place and even imperialist within the realm of native Chinese queer culture, in which there's not actually a distinction between what Americans would ostensibly identify as "butch lesbianism" and "transmasculinity." So actually, it would be a really ignorant take to extend the logic of "you shouldn't write outside of the identities you are" and say "but you're the race I say you are (Chinese), which matches the race I say those other people are (Chinese, but in China), and you're queer and they're queer (true, but queerness is constructed in different contexts! in relation to different systems!), so therefore if you wanted to write about being a Chinese trans person (in China), that'd be fine!" Which is exactly what they'd do! And in fact, at a certain point, people who engage in bad identity politics on tumblr tend to think so heavily within the realms of race/class/gender/ability/maybe religion that they forget about how very relevant identities such as immigration status/nationality/body type/language/geographic stability/etc are just as relevant. And because intersectionality and the matrix of identity is all about how literally everything is relevant, it quite actually does make significantly more sense to say "okay, never mind with policing individual-level identity credentials, let's just say we should all strive to be humble and focus more on institutional things and naming patterns on that scale."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-11-03 01:49 am (UTC)When it comes to understanding yourself through the context of understanding others, well. There's plenty that could be said about realizing how fucked up your parents were by gaining experience of what somebody's life with good parents looks like, or somebody with body dysmorphia finding solidarity with somebody with gender dysphoria, or even a transmasculine person reading about transfeminine-based queerness as a way to get to know their own feelings about transness without being swallowed by dysphoria and shame.
However a really important experience for me was when I took Latinx Studies. It turns out that a lot of Latinx-American racial theory and narratives... closely resemble East Asian-American racial theory and narratives. And while I have all kinds of shame and hatred and bitterness and regret surrounding my culture and my heritage and my upbringing, that weight didn't carry over into learning about other peoples' experiences being Latinx. So I actually learned things about the politics of immigration and assimilation and stuff... without my trauma brain screaming "NONONONONONO!" and shutting everything out. And yeah, in some way you could say that I used another culture I didn't belong to in order to make things about me (in my own head!). However I don't see how that makes me different from any other non-Latinx student in the class. And, in fact, there were very few people in the class of recent immigrant generational status, which essentially meant that when it came to lessons relating to first- and second-generation immigration experiences versus third+ generation experiences for Latinx folks in the US, it meant that I had more firsthand insights to share about cultural disjoints and assimilationist politics than many of the actually-Latinx-but-third-generation-and-beyond folks who were raised to be much more competent of hegemonic American culture than I was. Despite how interested I am in the social sciences, I always steered clear of anything to do with East Asia or East Asian-Americanism or even family systems because it hit too close to home. But because I started my theoretical basis of immigration and non-black/white racial politics and culture-passed-down-through-generations with Latinx Studies instead of Asian American Studies, I actually know useful things about immigration and racial politics and generational culture. I have a framework in which to understand my dad telling me that as an American, I oppress him, and I have a more profound understanding of the politics of the US-Mexican border than most average non-Latinx folks I know. I makes me better for me and it makes me better at being a respectful ally/activist, because wow, that whole "putting yourself in other peoples' shoes" isn't all that bad of a thing when it comes to building connections and inspiring people to treat each other like fellow humans!
Also learning about queer Chinese identity (as in what queer people are doing in China, not Chinese-American queer identity) in my transnational queer studies class taught me a lot about my own culture (which was obviously never taught to me because why would my parents know about or teach me about queerness??) and gave me a lot of resources to articulate just how the constructions of male and female really are different between the American culture that I know and the non-American culture I was formatively raised in. And some dipshit tumblr activist would tell me "oh, but that's okay, because you are queer and Chinese, so that's your heritage and it's not appropriation or fetishization or disrespectful!" Except that's ridiculously wrong, because according to Chinese people born Chinese, I'm not one of them. Because it turns out that racial/ethnic politics are culturally bound, too! And the queerness that I bring with me, which is backed in the Western view of transgenderism being distinct from queer sexuality, would also be super out of place and even imperialist within the realm of native Chinese queer culture, in which there's not actually a distinction between what Americans would ostensibly identify as "butch lesbianism" and "transmasculinity." So actually, it would be a really ignorant take to extend the logic of "you shouldn't write outside of the identities you are" and say "but you're the race I say you are (Chinese), which matches the race I say those other people are (Chinese, but in China), and you're queer and they're queer (true, but queerness is constructed in different contexts! in relation to different systems!), so therefore if you wanted to write about being a Chinese trans person (in China), that'd be fine!" Which is exactly what they'd do! And in fact, at a certain point, people who engage in bad identity politics on tumblr tend to think so heavily within the realms of race/class/gender/ability/maybe religion that they forget about how very relevant identities such as immigration status/nationality/body type/language/geographic stability/etc are just as relevant. And because intersectionality and the matrix of identity is all about how literally everything is relevant, it quite actually does make significantly more sense to say "okay, never mind with policing individual-level identity credentials, let's just say we should all strive to be humble and focus more on institutional things and naming patterns on that scale."