Mona

youarenotyou:

whenever i write about feeling alienated, and feeling frustrated when activists talk down to me as if i’ve never experienced what they’re talking about, someone inevitably comes along and condescendingly explains to me why this happens as if i don’t understand the thought process. and they justify it. justify the white savior mentality. justify the othering. justify people silencing me in the name of helping me.

like of course professors assume nobody in the classroom has dealt with these problems—that’s perfectly logical.

because we all know that drug addicts, homeless people (whether current or formerly), mentally ill people, and other extremely marginalized people never end up in a classroom setting. 

no, we are all relegated to “victim” status only.

(and we’re in need of help. we’re ignorant about our own lives! helpless!)

it completely threatens their worldview to suggest that many of the students they’re teaching know about these issues already

not because we read them in some textbook

but because we’ve lived them.

and these are the same people who have the nerve to ask “why aren’t there more marginalized people in our movements?”

there are multiple answers to that question but this is one of them.

yes, it IS insulting for an able bodied, straight, cis, middle class white man to talk to me and other people as if we’re brand new to oppression. it IS fucking offensive as hell to have those assumptions made in any context. it reminds me of my constant status as an inferior person because the implication is that the people “we” (future social workers, activists) help, are separate and different from “us” —that a person like me (who is in the system) would never be on the other end of “the helping professions” (as a professional). it is dehumanizing to have groups i belong to treated as “other” and have a professor simultaneously acknowledge and perpetuate this othering.it is patronizing to be “taught” about my own experiences.

and to have my identities and experiences dismissed entirely, ignored, and erased—when i TRY to talk about them, and you silence me—

that is why i want nothing to do with you, and your “movements.”

most of these people who want to help!!! are not interested in examining their OWN privileges and how they uphold these systems of oppression—how the non profit industrial complex is part of the problem—how the ‘helping professions’ are structured in a very particular way—how the savior/victim dichotomy is incredibly harmful. 

most of them are really just not that interested in actually listening to marginalized people.

i don’t trust most activists, especially when they’re coming from positions of extreme privilege. especially when they think they’re experts on oppressions they don’t experience. 

but no matter how many times i repeat this shit they never listen. it’s always wahhhh i’m being so mean, i’m generalizing, i’m acting like an expert (actually i do know more when it comes to things i’ve experienced and you haven’t), there’s nothing wrong with most activists, leftists, liberals, feminists, anarchists, blah, blah, blah, it’s all in your head, you’re just looking to be angry, they have noble intentions, it’s just a few bad apples, i don’t believe you. 

sigh.

(via kiriamaya)