I went to my 2nd session of Passionate Politics, where we read an excerpt from “Glitch Feminism” by Legacy Russel. I liked it a lot, and had a couple of thoughts.

Not wanting to understand a different person

There was a woman in the meeting, a queer, disabled, fat, polyamorous woman. She arrived a bit late, and she was wearing a mask. When I first saw her, I was somewhat annoyed: I didn’t like that she was breathing loudly because of the mask, and also the mask was making it a bit difficult to understand her (and I already have trouble understanding English speakers sometimes.) But also, because she was a queer, disabled, polyamorous, and fat woman, I had a preconception of her as someone agressive (it’s a pattern I noticed among people with these characteristics) and very different from me.

At one point she said something, and I asked her a question, and it turned out that I really asked the question in order to answer it myself (“What’s your favourite color? Oh, and mine’s blue, ".) It occurred to me that even though there were many points at which I could ask a genuine question - she's a very different person from me - I really didn't want to. I didn't want to understand her. I wanted her to dissapear - not because I didn't like her as a person, but because she was almost the opposite of me: a white cis man. Her being there and talking meant that being a fat queer woman was just as OK as being a white cis man. We were equal. And by giving power (or legitimacy) to her, it took power away from me.

It’s probably because she was being quite assertive and self-confident that she scared me in this way. Before her, I was a good WCM trying to expand my bubble and look at different people. After she joined, I became unimportant, just another dude no one was interested in.

So it was a combination of her taking up the group’s attention, and of her being very different from me that scared me. I didn’t understand her, but other people did, and they had discussions in which I couldn’t participate. Whereas when another dude was talking, I could relate to his experiences better, and I could participate so I didn’t perceive him as threatening.

Residue of Patriarchy

One girl mentioned a male colleague that said something like “She laughs like a man”. The girl read it as him thinking that women are inferior to men. I suggested that it’s not a binary: I may think that men and women are equal, but I come from a society that doesn’t believe that, and so in some ways I still view men as superior. We called it the residue of patriarchy, and it can be extrapolated to other stuff: gayness, transness etc. It’s a reminder that people can be on a path, and we shouldn’t label someone as homophobic etc if they happen to make a remark that “betrays” their “real” views. We contain multitudes, ha-ha.