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I'm feeling extra frustrated about memes. Last week I saw one about how celebrating the year 2020 the 100th anniversary of national women's suffrage in the US would be white-washing history because not all women had the right to vote until 1964. Native American women couldn't vote until 1924, Chinese women couldn't vote until 1943, and so on.
This kind of thing bothers me a great deal. It feels decontextualized and misleading. I immediately took it to mean that rights for those women were specifically established in those years. What actually happened is that voting rights for members of all sexes of those groups were created at that time (though even that is a simplification because many Native Americans could legally vote prior to 1924). Those seem like ethnic minority rights issues rather than a women's rights issue. Not mentioning that elides the civil-rights struggles for minorities.
I expressed that view and the person who posted the meme was upset with me about it. I don't know how to respond to people being angry with me; I never have. It makes me want to run away. I didn't see any way to make things better and still express my feelings. I certainly don't want to tone-police someone, or seem like I'm arguing against the importance of women's rights. The only thing I felt like I could do, other than continuing to make them upset at me, was unfriend that person.
I asked Danae what she thought and she said that the meme makes an important point, and that she thinks I do as well. I didn't understand what that point was at the time. I guess I understand a bit better now, after thinking about it off and on for a week. Those statements, though, just seem disingenuous. Of course it's true that there were women who could not legally vote. But there are women *now* who can't legally vote; female felons for instance.
These thoughts have helped clarify for me some of the resistance to Black Lives Matter. Many critics attack the movement's name, saying that it is exclusionary, or racist, or decontextualized. That it implies that non-Black lives don't matter. I vehemently disagree with that. However, one could argue that I'm attacking those statements about women's voting rights similarly; that I'm accusing them of implying that men's voting rights don't matter. That was not my intent, nor was I even conscious of the issue, but I see how it might be interpreted that way. Communication is so damned messy.
I don't know what to do in cases like this. fully contextualized history is so important to me that it makes me really distressed to see bits and pieces used to support ideas in the present. I feel like it hurts our society. But, in adding that context whenever it seems to be missing, am I being like one of those people who pick on BLM [which I always feel weird about abbreviating because my first connection with BLM is the Bureau of Land Management] because of message form rather than message content? I feel like a lot of that is willful misunderstanding and it makes me angry.
But what *is* the content of the women's voting rights meme? What do people take away from it? I can't help but think that it puts those later voting rights changes later on in the same category as the 1920 change; that these were issues of women fighting for the right to vote and that because they are minorities we aren't told about those fights. But those fights *are* taught; just not in the context of women's history. Understanding history is inescapably a process of categorizing and isolating pieces of the infinite whole. These things probably deserve a sidenote when talking about the 1920 suffrage movement, but it seems to me that they fit better in discussions of minority rights movements in the context of the Magnuson Act and World War II for the Chinese, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the '60s for African-Americans (1964 was the year that poll-taxes were made unconstitutional by the 24th amendment).
I don't have any good answers for this. I wish I could just not see all these things, but I don't think I can install the meme blocker that a Facebook friend told me about on my work computer. I don't want to upset people. I want to support people fighting for social justice. Am I too much of a pedant sometimes? I really think *all* this stuff is important; social justice and history both.
How can most people just scroll by these things with just a thought or two and move on? *sighs* Maybe they place a higher value on their sanity and personal relationships than I do.
This kind of thing bothers me a great deal. It feels decontextualized and misleading. I immediately took it to mean that rights for those women were specifically established in those years. What actually happened is that voting rights for members of all sexes of those groups were created at that time (though even that is a simplification because many Native Americans could legally vote prior to 1924). Those seem like ethnic minority rights issues rather than a women's rights issue. Not mentioning that elides the civil-rights struggles for minorities.
I expressed that view and the person who posted the meme was upset with me about it. I don't know how to respond to people being angry with me; I never have. It makes me want to run away. I didn't see any way to make things better and still express my feelings. I certainly don't want to tone-police someone, or seem like I'm arguing against the importance of women's rights. The only thing I felt like I could do, other than continuing to make them upset at me, was unfriend that person.
I asked Danae what she thought and she said that the meme makes an important point, and that she thinks I do as well. I didn't understand what that point was at the time. I guess I understand a bit better now, after thinking about it off and on for a week. Those statements, though, just seem disingenuous. Of course it's true that there were women who could not legally vote. But there are women *now* who can't legally vote; female felons for instance.
These thoughts have helped clarify for me some of the resistance to Black Lives Matter. Many critics attack the movement's name, saying that it is exclusionary, or racist, or decontextualized. That it implies that non-Black lives don't matter. I vehemently disagree with that. However, one could argue that I'm attacking those statements about women's voting rights similarly; that I'm accusing them of implying that men's voting rights don't matter. That was not my intent, nor was I even conscious of the issue, but I see how it might be interpreted that way. Communication is so damned messy.
I don't know what to do in cases like this. fully contextualized history is so important to me that it makes me really distressed to see bits and pieces used to support ideas in the present. I feel like it hurts our society. But, in adding that context whenever it seems to be missing, am I being like one of those people who pick on BLM [which I always feel weird about abbreviating because my first connection with BLM is the Bureau of Land Management] because of message form rather than message content? I feel like a lot of that is willful misunderstanding and it makes me angry.
But what *is* the content of the women's voting rights meme? What do people take away from it? I can't help but think that it puts those later voting rights changes later on in the same category as the 1920 change; that these were issues of women fighting for the right to vote and that because they are minorities we aren't told about those fights. But those fights *are* taught; just not in the context of women's history. Understanding history is inescapably a process of categorizing and isolating pieces of the infinite whole. These things probably deserve a sidenote when talking about the 1920 suffrage movement, but it seems to me that they fit better in discussions of minority rights movements in the context of the Magnuson Act and World War II for the Chinese, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the '60s for African-Americans (1964 was the year that poll-taxes were made unconstitutional by the 24th amendment).
I don't have any good answers for this. I wish I could just not see all these things, but I don't think I can install the meme blocker that a Facebook friend told me about on my work computer. I don't want to upset people. I want to support people fighting for social justice. Am I too much of a pedant sometimes? I really think *all* this stuff is important; social justice and history both.
How can most people just scroll by these things with just a thought or two and move on? *sighs* Maybe they place a higher value on their sanity and personal relationships than I do.