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Self-identification on Barbelith - verification, authority, respect, and perhaps calling bullshit, too.

  
 
Glenn Close But No Cigar
16:23 / 09.04.07
I've been following this

Banning Thread: Epop

in which Epop both claims to be a survivor of rape, and employs this claim to support some pretty nasty ideas about rape's place in a determinist biological / evolutionary model.

Without wanting to re-hash the arguments in that particular thread, I think it might be worth thinking about how Barbelith deals with posters who claim a particular quality / experience, and then employ that claim to speak in a way which may be offensive to others who have / have had that particular quality / experience. An example of this might be a poster who writes that 'I'm from Norwich, and so I'm entitled to say that all people from Norwich have tails, being from there and all'. The problems of this are manifold:

1) Verifiability.

The poster claims to be from Norwich. Ze might have named Norwich as hir location on hir profile. Ze might post at times consistent with living in Norwich. Ze might even write in a Norwich dialect, and display what seems to be considerable knowledge of the city. Nevertheless, there's no way a passing 'lither could verify that the poster is from Norwich. Therefore, the passing 'lither must decide on the balance of available evidence whether the poster is telling the truth, or else form a IRL relationship with them in which they could indeed verify that they live in that Fine City by, say, visiting their flat. So the credibility of the poster's claim depends on a) their ability to express themselves convincingly, and / or b) IRL verification. These two routes to credibility are not available to all posters.

2) Authority.

What authority does the poster's claim grant them to speak about Norwich and its inhabitants? A large number of 'lithers are not from Norwich, and it would make sense to defer to Norwich-poster on Norwich-related matters, or at least hir experience of them. However, if we are aware of an anti-Norwich prejudice that's in wide circulation, and the Norwich-poster mouths this prejudice, should we accept that ze is correct, given that ze claims to speak from a position of authority?

3) Respect.

So, the Norwich-poster has claimed that all people from knowledge have tails, and we vehemently disagree. Is it disrespectful to do so, given that we are not from Norwich ourselves, and are approaching the topic from a (perhaps ignorant, and perhaps privileged) non-Norwich perspective?

4) Calling bullshit.

Now, we're beginning to suspect that the Norwich-poster is not from Norwich at all, but is merely pretending to be from Norwich in order to spread anti-Norwich prejudice without fear of attack. Our instinct is to call bulshit on them, but this too is riddled with difficulties. If we say 'you're not from Norwich at all, you lying fuckwad', they're likely to reply 'how dare you say that. You're just a fuckwadding Norwich-ist'. Again, this is irresolveable, without verification one way or the other. And what if we're wrong? Have we, the (perhaps ignorant, perhaps privileged) non-Norwich folk, stepped on the poster's Norwich-self-identifying toes?

Another question: how would we deal with the same situation, were that poster from Ipswich, but claimed to have a 'Norwich Soul'?

Thoughts?
 
 
*
17:21 / 09.04.07
I think I can see where this is going, and unfortunately I think claims of survivor status have special consideration for several good reasons:

1) Discounting claims of abuse happens all too often in the real world.

2) Discounting claims of abuse is a primary means of continuing oppression of people, including women, children, queer people, and people of color.

3) Discounting claims of abuse discourages people with histories of abuse from coming forward about the abuse they've experienced, seeking and obtaining care, and approaching the justice system for redress.

4) Discounting claims of abuse leaves abusers free to continue to abuse more people.

For all these reasons, I do not want to get into a situation where it is okay to challenge or dismiss a person's claimed history of abuse on this board on spurious grounds. ("I don't think someone who has experienced abuse would say or believe these things" counts as spurious, I believe.)

However, claiming a history of abuse does not grant someone ultimate authority. That person has authority to say what is best for hirself and what ze believes about hir own history of abuse. They do not have the right to generalize about what is true of all other people who have been abused—particularly not when their generalizations are oppressive, unsupported, and framed in an attacking manner. There are other people who are also survivors whose opinions and experiences count for something.

To put it another way—there are assuredly other people from Norwich on the board, there are people who have close friends and relatives from Norwich, and there are people who have been to Norwich. We can all agree that while we cannot disprove our interlocuter's own tailedness at this juncture, neither has he chosen to prove it—and we know from experience that his generalization does not hold true for others.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
17:26 / 09.04.07
I think id's pretty much on the money there.

I'd say that nobody has the right to "speak for" any group of people in the sense that their words should be considered as representative of the group as a whole, unless the group AS A WHOLE have agreed to it, unless it's understood that the "speaking for" thing is at best not binding and at worst speculative.
 
 
Glenn Close But No Cigar
17:38 / 09.04.07
Thanks for that, mri - nicely thought out.

I'm wondering, though, whether you'd feel the same way if the 'Norwich-poster' was not self-identifying as a survivor of abuse, but instead, say, as an African American.

This delightful fellow Hawksmoor
self-identified as an African American, and was roundly disbelieved by everybody on the board.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
17:42 / 09.04.07
Hmm... as one of "everybody on the board", I didn't particularly believe or disbelieve him. It just wasn't relevant to the matter at hand. I'm not sure without checking, but are you sure even a large subset of "everybody on the board" disbelieved him?
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
17:44 / 09.04.07
Who did disbelieve him?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
17:50 / 09.04.07
Hawksmoor _was_ African-American. However, at least one member has in the past claimed to be black, and has done so deceitfully to slow up response to racially offensive material they have produced. The response there - that it didn't actually matter whether or not they, personally, were black (which they were not), since they were not the only person entitled to decide what was and was not acceptable - probably gives us our precedent.

What Hawksmoor demonstrated was that you cannot indulge in oppression trading. African-American homophobes get banned just the same way Norwegian homophobes, Zimbabwean homophobes or homophobes from Burnley get banned.

The case of Epop is a bit more complicated, though. Will think further on this one.
 
 
Glenn Close But No Cigar
17:53 / 09.04.07
Oops, should have checked the Hawksmoor threads, and not posted from memory. Haus' point about oppression trading is, however, spot on.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
20:16 / 09.04.07
So when exactly did "everybody on the board" disbelieve someone as to their ethnicity? Personally I'm not aware of ever having done so.

"Speaking for" a group without its consent sucks. Sorry, but it does, whatever the circumstance.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
20:36 / 09.04.07
I'd also like to point out that a person who uses their survivour status to lend creedence to their arguments or to defend hostile, harrassing behaviours commits an act of (potentially quite terrible) emotional violence against all the other survivours reading what they write. Not everyone chooses to reveal their status, especially not in a public forum. To act in this way places people who are more private about their experiences in an ugly position, essentially dismissing their pain and trauma as meaningless because they do not choose to reveal it.
 
 
*
20:45 / 09.04.07
That's very true. And it applies whether or not their claim to being an abuse survivor is grounded in actual experience.
 
 
Glenn Close But No Cigar
21:12 / 09.04.07
So when exactly did "everybody on the board" disbelieve someone as to their ethnicity? Personally I'm not aware of ever having done so.

"Speaking for" a group without its consent sucks. Sorry, but it does, whatever the circumstance.

You're quite right, Stoatie. As I said above, should have gone on more than memory, to which I'd add that 'everybody' statements are at best unwise, even in the most seemingly harmless of contexts.

So, to broaden the scope of this thread, can anybody think of a 'best practice' for posters chose to self-identify as X on the board? Also, does anybody feel that that there is still something of worth (if there ever was) to be gained by i-d-ing online in a way that's other to one's IRL i-d, specifically in terms of potentially sensitive areas such as race, gender, sexuality etc? If so, what might the ethical parameters of doing this be?
 
 
*
21:27 / 09.04.07
When I was exploring my gender identity, I chose to spend some time on the board actively identifying as gender neutral. I did so to figure out whether it would be sustainable for me to remain neutrally-gendered in identity and social interaction. It wasn't. But I think it was a very good use of my time here, and I beg the forgiveness and indulgence of anyone I have harmed by doing so.

I would not, however, for the sake of an enjoyable fiction, adopt an identity of which I have no real-life experience. For instance, I have never been seen as a person of color, apart from two occasions where someone for whatever reason read me as Latino and assumed I spoke Spanish. I would think it unethical for me to present as other than white on the board, since my idea of what it is like to live in the world as a person of color is likely to be hugely affected by stereotypes and assumptions.
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
21:45 / 09.04.07
Self-disguise happens for a bunch of reasons, be they assumed comedy, "undercover research," an excuse for inappropriate behaviours, et cetera.

Self-identification is an issue that crops up on the Lith fairly regularly, it seems, in some form. I'm thinking of the problematic nature of the female-identified policy thread and its "male response" twin.

We feel the need to identify in various ways on here but none of them are ultimately that verifiable unless we provide proof (images, links to blogs, etc -- all of which can be faked, certainly), but even that identification ends up stretched out over the course of whole threads, you don't end up with a centralized profile of your biology, psychology, gender preferences and ethnic background. Consequently, even if you *do* identify as something, even falsely, that doesn't give you privileges that might normally be afforded (depending on social circle and position) in meatspace; reappropriation of the n-word or b-word or f-word (regardless of how appropriate people around you may think it) can't really follow through to the Lith because you *don't* really know who your audience is or who the speaker is and the wideness of geography, social strata and personal experience makes it impossible for us to agree on what's acceptable, precisely, even if two of us happen to identify in the same or similar way. While this might seem hindersome it encourages creativity in expression -- you can't use a word you might normally use in meatspace here, so what do you say instead? And does that have the opportunity to bleed out of the screen and into your day-to-day interactions?
 
  
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