CLAUD

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Why Bother

Why bother, to convince others of what you are saying, to educated people, when they obviously are not interested in what you are saying.

I am listening, but are others doing the same? Sometimes, despite contrary to the evidence, people still hold fast to their opinions because they WANT to be right, not because they think they are right.

So why do I bother being in the fore-front of avant garde thinking, when no one bothers to understand. Is it possible to be marginalised, just because you are intellectual and insightful? I am starting to believe so.

The many times I've said, that life is not simple and that there are multiple perspectives to be considered, people don't listen. They shoot me down, and tell me that 'you don't know how it feels to be (gay, stupid, disabled, in-this-situation).'

Then let me tell you this:

I have tried to put my personal feelings a side for a long time now, because I respect the idea that to make insightful commentary, and to transcend present ways of thinkings, we have to take a step back and think how we think and see where people are coming from.

But for now, I have reached my limit of putting my personal feeling aside and now let's just get personal.

Trying to gain sympathy from the public is NOT going to reduce people's perception of your predicament, whether it be poor, gay, bisexual, disabled or being a woman. The more you differentiate 'us' and 'them', the more people are going to draw lines and marginalise you based on that. The more you identify with a certain status, the more you are being identified with that status, and it just gives people ammunition, and political justification to marginalise you.

Imagine, that they abort 'gay babies' - "I don't want my baby to be like them, doctor please abort this child so I can have a normal child"

Imagine, the millions of female babies in India and China are illegally aborted because societal differences in opportunities. (why female?)

Imagine, a deaf person wanting to hear because it gives him/her more jobs. (why shouldn't we accept a deaf person for who they are? They have a culture, a language, and like any other cultures and languages over the world, they deserve a place in society. Imagine if I ask an angmoh to dye hair black and wear brown contact lenses to be Asian. Doesn't makes sense rite?!)

They are all marked by their master status, by what defines them and society therefore reacts to them according to this marked status. There are other 'you-s' that are present in your position, you are also a son/daughter, a brother/sister, a student, a friend, a lover, a skilled worker etc. Why should these master statuses, totalise you as a person?

My point is, if you want to be integrated, you need to be normalised, not antagonised. Resistance is going to be met with more resistance and this will not end. This is not a game of tug-of0-war, this is a game of discourses: whoever is able to disseminate those discourses wins.

The reason why I am in academia, is to transmit discourses - not ideology, not ideals, and certainly not 'truths'. Students must know the various viewpoints and decide for themselves what they want to shape their society to be in.

And right now, I'm a student, I want normalisation to occur, that is why those in power have to be challenged by organisations to fight for laws to be changed. THAT is what you all are fighting for, not to just simply say 'you don't understand our plight' or 'you cannot imagine how we're feeling', or 'I want to be accepted'. The political process is not so simple - that is the simplicity I am talking about. You must know where to divert that power, or you'll never win the fight.

I have experience discrimination based on my unconventional body-size EVERY TIME I walk into a shopping mall. Will you know how that feels? No, nobody can unless you are you. That's why, don't give me that 2-shit smuck of a justification that, just because I don't know how you feel, I cannot stand by you to fight for the same cause. I strongly believe in certain causes because I believe in social justice. However, as big as your problem may be, you must also have known, that yours is not the only problem in society. So have a little empathy? Think for the others as well?

Women have done it since 1980s, with the feminist movement, they have succeeded in normalising women into workplaces, into universities, into many places which they previously had no access, when the thought of a woman entering university was appalling (to imagine that this was just 50 years ago). You can normalise as well - and normalising is an inherently political process, one that requires understanding who and what kind of power you're standing against.

22:56