Online Bullying – a New and Ugly Sport for Liberal Commenters--The UK Guardian--Oct. 2012

[Zorra]

121. Yes, good points, but every day we see examples in the news of

continuing widespread racism, sexism, and homophobia.

If we simply blow off and accept what are essentially kinder, gentler forms of expressing these ugly phenomena that are so deeply rooted in many cultures. what does that say, and what does that do?

Thirty years ago it was commonplace for straight people to call LGBT persons all kinds of derogatory slurs. If we did not resist, and protest, and most progressives did not join us, nothing would have changed.

Dominant groups often have a bit of difficulty understanding the position of minorites. What seems like a silly trifle to a member of a dominant culture might be another little brick that minority groups are struggling to remove from the wall in order to bring that wall down. And it is very often extremely difficult for us to get many members of the dominant culture to see it, because you don't, and have never, had to live it.

There are many intuitive, insightful, and intelligent members of minority groups here. When they try to post about issues that are well known within the group, but not even recognizable to the dominant culture, they're not doing it for their health, popularity, to be a bully, ,etc. They are trying to make the domination culture feel what they feel in their experience, in order that may further and more deeply understand that experience.

We are doing it to try to remove one more little piece of the wall, and we know it will take great persistence and determination to do so.

Because it always has. You apparently don't understand what the fuss is over benevolent sexism, how it is a holdover cultural institution rooted in the widespread all pervasive misogyny that existed in the past, and stuck as another "just the way things is" brick in the wall of the present.

It's difficult. We unsderstand that you are on our side, but just not fully cognizant of what we are trying to do to move us further down the road toward the ultimate goal of genuine equality.

Dentist, gotta go.

peace