Safe Space From Hate; Safe Space For Anger

So this is kinda but not quite an entirely new concept for me, stemming from this discussion at Questioning Transphobia on some waah-waah-being-called-cis-is-insulting dipshittery going on at Pam's House Blend. I can't seem to find the comment within which I found this concept, but it struck me as being perfectly relevant, in light of the tone argument:

We need a safe space for anger.

There will be times when we will find it an inhuman request for me to contain the rage that is borne from daily abuse and we want to let it out. Is it too much to ask for a space where the marginalized can go to vent their anger? To be as rude as possible in order to express their frustrations with the dominant, oppressing groups?

Without members of the dominant groups getting pissy and offended?

Taking into consideration that members of dominant groups get to troll around being hostile to members of marginalized groups, abusing them, anywhere, pretty much everywhere, there're so few spaces where the marginalized get to go to vent their spleen.

I'm quite sure it's not healthy for some people to keep in all that anger, so it does strike me as very important to have a space for this anger to be let out, without privileged groups butting in and derailing from that anger.

We need our spaces to name our troubles. We need our spaces to name the sources of our anger, wihtout said sources getting vocally offended and trying to turn the argument around.

I hope if this blog ever gets any amount of attention that I'll be able to remember this and shut down dominant voices effectively, so the marginalized voices can be heard, loud and clear.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Race in Cartoons

So I was moseying on to work this morning when I started hearing the theme song to 6teen in my head, and I was reminiscing on the time I used to have cable TV and I watched cartoons and the SciFi channel just about incessantly (okay, I also watched TLC). 6teen was an interesting show to me. The basic premise is that of six teens who hang out at a fancy lemonade stall one of them works at, and it follows their trials and travails as they figure out how to get by on their own, holding their jobs (or not) and how they work through their problems. It also happens to follow a very smart comedy formula, with multiple storyarcs within a single episode. The creators did a good job realizing that yes, a younger audience could indeed appreciate smart shows. The characters, being cartoon characters in themselves, are not exactly what one might call nuanced, but the creators certainly did try to explore different aspects of their characters. Jen, for example, works in the sporting goods store. She...
Read more

My Pidgin Does Not Signify Lack Of Intellect

I recently received in my inbox an email from my father, who likes to forward me a lot of things that he thinks will interest me. Except of course, he never really realizes just how easily antsy I can get, and how willing I am to pick apart an article. (I used to hit Reply to All whenever he'd send me an email to let all and sundry know what I thought and all the problems with whatever he sent me, so now he wisely BCCs people instead.) This article was about Miss Singapore, and I can't find the original article, but hree's another one about the same issue . While at the Miss World pageant in South Africa, she inadvertently slipped into speaking Singlish, the Singaporean creole that mixes English, Malay, Chinese and god knows what else. And this was a huge fucking deal because apparently, all beauty queens must be able to speak perfect English, the standard of which is probably set by the English-speaking world that is the UK and North America, I guess. And because Miss S...
Read more

May 13 Blogswarm Links Post

This is where all Malaysians and residents of Malaysia are welcome to leave links to their participation in the May 13 Blogswarm. For more information, check out LiveJournal and Facebook . Comments Policy:  Please note that moderation is turned on for comments older than 7 days. I try to check in regularly, but this may be hard as I will be traveling. Do not use this place to debate what others have said. If you do and you crash my site in due process, I'll get very irritated at you. That shit is rude. Don't do it. 
Read more