Part of my endless frustration with blogging, especially when I was at a more widely read blog like Feministe, is something that I still run into at my newer, smaller blog:
I Had a Bad Day Today: 15 comments in one day
200,000 Women Have Had A Really Fucking Bad Decade: 2 comments in two days
As a selfish writer, this makes the incentive to write about The Important Shit considerably less compelling. For one, it’s telling that the author’s incentives are so shallow, and two, it’s telling of the audience’s comfort level with difficult material. I suppose it’s easy to have an opinion on whether or not political het women ought to be down with going down, or how to properly treat a customer service employee, but what the fuck do you do about genocide on the other side of the globe?
Of course, this could be a problem with the author’s approach. When asked to write about “The Greatest Silence” I jumped at the opportunity. There had been a lot of hype surrounding the movie and the first viewer reviews that came out on blogs were largely positive (professional critics made a mess of centering the director instead of her subjects). I watched the movie after my bad day, sitting on the couch with a Manhattan, coltan-laden laptop poised to take notes, realizing that my really bad day, in context, is relative bullshit, and when Chef came home after work to discover me pooled on the sofa sobbing openly while typing notes, he smartly turned and walked out of the room. As moved as I was by the film, I worked hard to do a comprehensive post, submitted it to a couple of people for review before posting it here and on Unsprung. One person said that it was good, but kind of “book report-y,” to which I thought, “Dude, it’s about methodic gang rape, not my feelings.”
I’ve been blogging for going on eight years now, and this is how it goes. Because it isn’t about the blogger, but instead about gang rape methodically used against thousands of African women on the other side of the world, I expected little to no commentary. I mean, what is there to say? There are serious limitations to blogging-as-activism other than defending it as consciousness-raising or encouraging people to throw money at the problem. I learned a good lesson last year when Chris wrote a better post on the same subject and was met with a litany of really inappropriate, disappointing responses because people didn’t want to be reminded that something they do and benefit from doing has repercussions.
“Africa is so fucked, man. I wish there was something I could do (but don’t actually suggest anything please, I’m just saying that).”
“So what should we all do, sell our computers and let the Rethuglicans win at the internet?”
“I can’t read about this. It’s too triggering for me.”
“There goes Clarke again, with his neverending liberal guilt and sanctimony.”
“This post is soooo stupid. If you want to call for better corporate practices in the Congo, please do so. And if you want to point out how ordinary computer users have unwittingly bought supplies from unscrupulous sources and have suggestions about how to improve, by all means go ahead. But this nonsense about “original sin” and this pathetic attempt to guilt me is obscene.”
Personally, obscenity is not being informed that my ability to surf the internet in comfort and safety is directly connected to the pain of a nation, but in writing it off as an attempt to induce guilt. Or as Ilyka wrote via email:
One thing that always shames me about this stuff is how easy it is to rally white American feminists to, say, spring for a new server for Feministing, or flood the NYT’s comments about AutoAdmit, or mobilize to complete any one of a number of projects–but post something like this, and everyone turns Victorian on you. “Oh dear, oh my, how simply dreadful, I must go now to my fainting couch.”
So what about those of us who believe that writing can be transformative? That consciousness-raising can provide the bases for real change? What is it about the really difficult issues that leads to… nothing.
Some years ago I attended a speaking session by a fantastic wordsmith, Derrick Jensen. Jensen is a professional feminist and environmentalist author whose greatest strength is tying together the complicated web of flora and fauna, we-are-all-connected shit that really does make a person want to get out and save the world. But during his talk, spurred by an audience member who wanted to take action to “save the salmon” but was turned off that the answer was “blow up a dam”, Jensen declared that we all have jobs in the revolution, and maybe her job shouldn’t be “blowing up dams.” For example, his role in the revolution was to write books. And while the revolution may include violence, death and destruction, jail time and death for those who defend the defenseless, he was content in knowing that he’d done his part by publishing a couple of books and giving speeches to people privileged enough to see him at a private liberal university like Antioch College. (But also, “fuck the rich.”)
Lesson being that you don’t have to really put in any footwork to be revolutionary, apparently.
Writing in and of itself really isn’t all that revolutionary, at least not in the activist sense, if it doesn’t spur the audience to do or behave any different than before. And if the audience’s response to atrocity is “OMG that’s so fucked, I wish I could do something (but please don’t ask me to actually do something)” — or even worse, radio silence — we haven’t raised much in the way of consciousness at all.
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For ideas on what we can actually *DO* about the monstrous human rights violations in Congo, visit this thread and read the excellent, numerous offerings in the comments. (via)
First off, your criticism of Jensen is absolutely amazing. Actually, so is this entire post.
There’s always a “Gee, that really sucks, but what I am going to do from the comfort of my suburban home, where I sit drinking diet coke, typing frenetically away on my new MacBook, and writing a tome on how best to give feminist blowjobs.” line of comments that accompany any post on a hard-to-read topic. Part of it is a “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” mentality, but I think that more of it is people’s unwillingness to engage a topic that is so unsettling and so hard to address directly. When you’re talking about a massive human rights violation in a foreign country, it’s easier to see your teaspoon as fundamentally useless. Which, while comprehensible, is still stupid.
I’m dying to be more coherent on this, and will endeavor to do so later on tonight.
You know, I’ve gone back and forth about the value of “consciousness raising” and being more aware about oppression and injustice in the world many times. When I was a teenager, I was a voracious consumer of any and all news, particularly about feminism and gender injustice. It lasted through college, and now I’m much more ambivalent about what the actual effects of all this “raising consciousness” are.
There was a thread on metafilter a while back about FGM and Amnesty’s ad campaign against it that really crystallized for me some of the limits of raising awareness about atrocities against women, particularly in other countries. (The thread is here: http://www.metafilter.com/67061/Amnesty-International-ad-campaign-against-FGM although I’m not sure if that’ll get stripped from my comment–I’m no good at HTML!) There’s an inherent superficiality in our understanding from viewing media that’s meant to raise our consciousness, I think; that’s just the limit of trying to boil down an incredibly painful and complex subject to a limited format. And I think there are dangers to that superficiality–first, getting a bunch of Westerners riled up about the eeeevil things that people in that country do is something that I don’t necessarily trust will have good outcomes, either in terms of ending the practice or what our leaders will do with that outrage, and second (although this is lesser concern), I do think a bit about the type of psychological damage we do to women as a class by constantly reminding ourselves about all the violence out there and the horrible, awful things that men do to women. The second concern is sufficiently small that if I think raising awareness will actually lead to some action–any action that will be legitimately helpful–it’s essentially not a dealbreaker. But in situations where we’re raising awareness and there’s not realistically anything to be done (and I guess this is both a question of whether anything can be done, and whether there’s anything we personally can do), the negative can start to outweigh the positive.
I dunno. This is a bit of a ramble-y comment and I apologize for that, it’s just something I struggle with a lot. How much good does “knowing” really do? Is “consciousness raising” a cop out from taking other actions that might have a real impact? Is it better to focus on the social justice issues in our own communities, where the ratio of good-to-be-done to eventual-desensitization-and-despair is higher? When I saw this documentary blogged about here and elsewhere, my immediate reaction was, “Oh God, that’s awful; I don’t think I can watch that,” and is that equivalent to my decision a few years ago to stop reading rape stories in the local paper, which do nothing but make me feel less safe and stop me from going out at night without a buddy–or is it different? Is it morally wrong to say, “I’ve decided that I can’t take any more,” and does it matter what sort of things we say that about? I go back and forth, sometimes thinking yes and sometimes no.
I hope this doesn’t come across as similar to the comments that you skewered on Chris Clarke’s blog. I think there’s a real issue in there and I’m not sure how to resolve it.
What is it about the really difficult issues that leads to… nothing.
but how do you know this - that it leads to nothing? the fact that people haven’t commented doesn’t mean the writing hasn’t affected them - perhaps the problem is that blogs rely upon this instant feedback routine as a standard of efficacy - but, as you say, what does one say in the face of genocide?
perhaps the transformative power of truly potent activist media (whether it be writing, poetry, film or song) is one that requires a longer gestation period - some stuff, often the really important stuff, sometimes takes a long time to stew
Yeah, I don’t have any great answers either, I’m afraid.
I was going to say something wrt the latest clusterfuck, more–that as well as–
you know. I’m not sure whether the problem is so much that such things as immigration or labor exploitation in the Congo are so much more “difficult” than the other shit people are more keen to talk about as that it feels, well, -removed-, for a lot of people.
I’m not saying this as an excuse or anything else–I just want to sit with that for a minute.
Because the thing is: people do tend to respond most strongly to shit that resonates for them on a personal level.
And I’m going to go in a slightly different direction from the usual conclusion to this, i.e. “damn, I’m/we’re shallow and we suck, I Will Work Harder at intellectually understanding such and so, because it is my Duty,” maybe more: okay, I’m not feeling such and so terribly viscerally. Why not? Is it maybe partly because–in some cases at least–I don’t actually -know- any of the people directly affected by such and so?
And if not–maybe, does it make sense to go, “huh, maybe I could get to know ___ on a more personal level. Seek people out. Talk to people -as- people over the long haul, as an end in itself. Make real connections, not just ‘oh, i want to LEARN from you.’ See if the world maybe isn’t a little bit bigger than I thought, and maybe make some friends along the way.”
Because, ime, once you do that, the “difficult” stuff often becomes a lot easier to understand. Because, now it’s not just some abstract issue. Now, it’s personal.
Damn. Equals “why I’m infuriated to see you called a ‘fucking mean bully’.” That is some thinking right there.
And
I think there is definitely something to that too. On the one hand, sometimes there’s no choice but to accept that things take time; on the other, though, I lean on that one too much as a cop-out for not doing anything, i.e. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
There is a definite sense, for issues outside of my own country, of helplessness - a sense that I as an individual can do nothing but talk about this situation, and if I’m very lucky, someone else will listen to me.
There is a feeling that we as individuals, or even we as groups, are not big enough to combat this. Even if I could get this into a bigger discussion, even if I could get politicians here to take this very seriously, what can they do? What can I do?
The feeling of helplessness is dealt with by pretending actual helplessness.
I think there does need to be a slow build up. It doesn’t start with blog posts, but blogging and talking and writing to the newspapers and magazines and engaging with the media and attending and publishing independent works and putting the issue out there again and again and again until everyone knows about it is an important part of the process. But it’s not satisfying, because the longer the process takes, the more people who are aware of it feel a sense of hopelessness on the situation.
I don’t know. Maybe there is nothing more to say on the subject except please keep writing. It’s not a good counter-example, but I’ve found the more I write on my LJ about issues I care about, the more people on my flist write about issues they care about, issues I care about, issues other people care about - and the more awareness is out there. And maybe the best a lot of people can do is to vote with their pocketbooks.
Equals “why I’m infuriated to see you called a ‘fucking mean bully’.>>
I thought it was sort of touching, really. I’d stencil it on the side of my monitor, but it’s one of those flat screens and it’d be kind of like trying to inscribe your name on a grain of rice. (Which, for some reason, is something some people do in some places, and then try to get you to buy it)
In other news, ginmar thinks I’m a rabid attack dog, so, you know, quite the resume, all told.
Maybe I’m weird, but I generally only comment on a blog if I either disagree with some element of the post or have something that I feel I can add to the discussion. When I see a post about big scary genocide-type issues, I read them and I go “oh.” And file it away with the horrible things in the world, but I feel pretty helpless in the face of rape epidemics, so I generally don’t say anything. Maybe that’s a pattern of behaviour I should revise.
Lurker, just chiming in to second that belledame is right on. Posts about relationships, sex, etc (on any blog) get tons of comments quite possibly because those are more universal experiences. Time to step out and get some more experiences. Of course this is why I think issue specific groups/causes are so important. It’s impossible for everyone to directly understand all persons’ experiences. But it’s also just as important to remind people how important it is to open the doors to stuff that might be painful and scary. The detached academic/intellectual approach is easier in many ways.
Hi, Ms. Lauren. Delurking for the first time because for whatever reaon I felt very compelled to share some thoughts on this.
I think that raising awareness is absolutely key to beginning to deal with these kinds of huge problems because part of the reason they’re allowed to go on and why people have the sorts of reactions to them you described is because they are invisible, taken for granted. This is obviously not the kind of problem you see results on just like that or the kind of problem that you are going to feel you’ve personally had any kind of impact on because it’s not personal for you; you are and will remain removed from it, so you can’t look for personal gratification like that. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing what you can to raise awareness. Ignorance is the factor here that keeps people comfortable as they benefit from tragedies like this. The discomfort in the reactions to Clarke’s post clearly illustrates that, I think.
Two nights ago while watching the movie, Iraq in Fragments, which presents basically a fly-on-the-wall view of the daily life of three different groups of Iraqis living under occupation (including, somehow, one of Al Sadr’s Shia militias), my disgust was made fresh at the way so many Americans blithely condemn the Iraqis for the hell they are living through and, somehow, for our own country’s troubles, even now. On the fifth anniversary of the invasion while campaigning in my home state, Senator Clinton said that
Recognizing this as truly one of the most contemptible things I’d heard in a while I nonetheless understood that of course she was merely doing what politicians at her level do: working to fit herself as favorably as possible into the dominant narrative, certainly never challenging it. An awareness on the part of the American public of even just our very recent history in the Middle East would have made it substantially harder to have started this monstrous war in the first place, and just a rudimentary awareness of what’s actually taken place in Iraq since the invasion and the reality of our part in it would not allow for a supposedly progressive presidential candidate to spew shit like that. But that kind of awareness is never going to come from the Clintons of the world, from the top down. It seeps in at the margins and from the bottom and the kind of blogging done here and at Pandagon and increasingly more blogs are a mechanism for that.
A blog post about The Greatest Silence may not drum up much conversation in the comments because it can’t incite the kind of visceral reaction you had to watching it, but it will point a few people in the direction of the movie and so, on the small grassroots level at which blogs tend to operate, raise awareness that much more. It feels like a small thing because it is in relation to the scope of many of the problems in the world, but it’s better that you do it than not and of even more importance that you practice what you blog, that you live and act in accordance with what you know and what you learn everyday and so make the difference you can on whatever level any individual can reasonably be expected to. Acting in whatever capacity you can is more worthwhile than unhelpfully stewing in angst at the recognition of your privilege anyway.
There are serious limitations to blogging-as-activism other than defending it as consciousness-raising or encouraging people to throw money at the problem.
True. And I think one of the things that we* might be getting to the point of realizing is that one of the effects of the New Public Sphere is that we’ve got (again) access to all sorts of “new” information about the world’s problems, we recognize that we’re unavoidably complicit in them and/or that we certainly have some of the resources (time, money, energy, intellect) to try to do something about them, and then we come face-to-face with the fact that we really would rather not. Just like most people throughout history.
*I’m not sure if I mean we, a particular group of people whose blogs I read and who’ve all been sort of part of the same bloggy social group for a while, “we” the blogosphere, we the feminist blogsosphere (or the part of it that’s my own particular solar system), “we” people of a certain age (which i doubt, since you and I are not the same age), or the generic rhetorical “we.”
I didn’t comment. But you DID make a change in me.
I have recently started writing with Amnesty again, and I made note of this movie to share, plus am putting this forward as a focus for action. I understand some of the concerns with Amnesty above - and found Naomi Klein’s perception of AI interesting - and that’s a whole other discussion worth having. But I have had amazing connection experiences arising from Amnesty. So, for what my belief is worth, I believe you have made a difference.
I don’t feel like the “I’ll just never use a computer again” is helpful, even if it weren’t just sort of defensive “take my ball and go home”. (Although a boycott to that area? Fair trade certified metal? might be effective.) But I also don’t think the problem is the computer specifically — it’s the demand that it be cheap, that we have a particular form of valuing in economy, the fact that we are often atrocious, as a species.
I grew up a hippie kid. And to me, the idea that clothes were made by other kids half a world away with bleeding fingers and no food and no school and twelve hour days was something I regularly cried about. (I was a very sad kid.) Most of my clothes except underwear were used. When I was 12, an aunt took me out to buy cool clothes, and I puddled in the dressing room crying about the workers who’d bled for them. My dad (who’d taught me these painful truths), was befuddled - because for him, sweatshops were abstract. Really why I had used clothes was because we couldn’t afford new.
Afterwards, I wrestled for years with my guilt: I was a teenager. I wanted not to be a pariah anymore.
Having it raw and open and exposed like that gives me a lot of sympathy to the moral struggles of people and their stuff. We do like our stuff, and most of us DON’T want it, really, at the expense of other people. But if you actually try - and I have - to live a totally impact, violence free consumer life? You can’t really do it. Well, maybe if you’re rich. And that is the problem of value.
I think silence is often a good thing: it is the sound of processing. Defensiveness is much louder.
I also think it’s perfectly okay to write from a place of your sobbing reaction to the rape of others. No, people being raped is not about you: but our experience of you as a writer IS about you. And if you hurt - but we can’t get there ourselves because we’re feeling defensive about our stuff - we might feel the hurt on your behalf.
Also, now that I’ve read Chris’s year-old post (which I missed at the time), and most of the idiot commentary, I gotta agree that the “how many comments a post gets” problem is a good one. It’s late and I’m tired, though, so I can’t really cohere anything intelligent about it.
Lauren, did you know that Derrick Jensen mentioned your criticism of him at Feministe a long time ago in one of his Endgame books? I read the book a year ago, but he talked about a blogger that was upset that he repeated his jokes at the various speeches he gave, and I’m almost certain he was referring to you.
It’s a good question, and I notice that Christian bloggers (of whom I read a great many) often have this awful tendency, one of which I am also sometimes guilty, of saying, when it comes to the “big, awful issues”: “God is hard to figure out. We just have to work to change what we can.”
Of course, when we have the attitude that we should “change what we can”, we immediately limit ourselves to focusing on small things that have a higher chance of success.
My wife and I pour a huge amount of time into a chinchilla charity. We run America’s only chinchilla-specific 501(c)3. There’s a satisfaction in doing work that is not only meaningful, but produces tangible results. I can change the world for a lot of furry little creatures. How can I stop rape in the Congo, or female genital mutilation, or AIDS as easily?
But the purpose of real charity is not the moral satisfaction of feeling useful — it’s to create lasting change. It’s just hard in the face of such massive problems as these.
This may inspire a post eventually; in any event, I appreciate the challenge to think again.
Delurking, although I guess a blog post in which I gushed about you sort of did that already. Thanks for the comment, by the way. I meant what I said.
I read your post on the DRC and didn’t comment about it. I’ve been to the DRC. Have friends who have been there. Have studied the DRC religiously. And all of that started with…hearing about it. “King Leopold’s Ghost” hooked me, and I have never let go. The most difficult thing about The Revolution is that, although it certainly won’t happen in the way that we want, it does happen in little tiny ways. I went to Kenya/Uganda/Rwanda/DRC because I was educated about some of the stuff going on there. And while I was there I was able to learn so much more, and do some good. Simple as that. While it *is* hard to stay engaged with something from so far away, not trying at all really doesn’t help. And like I said, blogging is an art. The hard stuff is hard for a reason, but it is going to change lives in a more profound way.
Attention must be paid. Ya know? Even if I can’t get a big damn passenger ship to parallel park on the west coast of Africa while all the women and children who want to leave get aboard. (And anyway, they shouldn’t have to leave.)
But one of the things I thought of while reading the review was a post by flea over at One Good Thing” some months back. It was in the form of a letter to her young sons for when they grow up, and what it means to be good people and good men.
And then I think of the men I know, and all the men in the US, and how things could begin to change if, whenever a guy makes a rape joke, one or two or all of the other guys don’t laugh, and don’t back down, and say out loud that rape is too awful and the time for stupid rape jokes is way over. And gradually the concept of rape becomes as repellent to everyone as, say, the depravity of a Jeffrey Dahmer.
I wish to hell that I could, overnight, make everyone take it personally. Because the next morning, we’d be living in a different world.
As it is, I know that when Bush talks about “Saddam’s rape camps”, it’s just showmanship. Where are the WMDs? In their pants.
Sorry. I’m veering out of control. How can we get everyone in the world to think “OMG, what if that happened to me?” and be profoundly horrified? What if the UN peacekeeping troops were so appalled that they helped people instead of getting in line?
A start is by not laughing, not staying uncomfortably silent, when someone - man or woman - makes a joke, or diminishes anyone’s humanity in the way it’s been done for so long.
Now I will go lie down. Just for a little while. Because now is when I remember that until rapists have good reason to doubt whether they’ll survive their little adventure, we’ve got no leverage. Maybe the first thing we pack in humanitarian aid packages should be a weapon for every civilian woman.
See? Going away now.
Lauren, I’ve been lurking at the places where you write for about four or five years. I just left a comment on your previous post about the Congolese genocide. I saw Chris’s post the first time around. It prompted me to switch from replacing broken electronics to getting them repaired. But I just didn’t say anything.
I purchase some of my work materials from Ten Thousand Villages. They work with Artisanat et Developpement (http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/catalog/artisan.detail.php?artisan_id=5) (not safe for some atheists, and there is no mention on that page of how grave the crisis is) to sell fair-trade handcrafted goods from all over the globe. I thought of them because Arwen mentioned fair trade. It’s not fair-trade certified metal, but it’s a start. TTV might increase their efforts in the DRC if there were an email campaign.