Anti-Oppression Resources: Annotated version

[sd_admin]

Anti-Oppression Resources

scans_daily/noscans_daily strives to provide an atmosphere which is LGBT-friendly, anti-racist, anti-ableist, woman-friendly, and otherwise discrimination and harassment free.

Last August we posted a list of resources, compiled to help members of scans_daily/noscans_daily educate themselves on anti-oppression terms and issues touched on in our Community Ethos. We have expanded this list and are re-posting it.

We recognize that not everyone starts from the same place when it comes to discussions of discrimination, oppression, and privilege. Our hope is that this list will continue to serve as a valuable resource for both members and moderators, and help facilitate discussion and better understanding of topics such as privilege, racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination and oppression.

As a medium, comics are extremely diverse and wide-ranging in terms of their content, style and subject matter. We believe it is important to provide a safer space for all fans to discuss, criticize, celebrate, and enjoy comics, which is why we strongly encourage you to explore the links provided.



The 101s

These resources are 101 level - they're designed for readers who are new to the anti-oppression conversation, or who are new to particular parts of the conversation. Are you a committed feminist who's learning about transphobia? An anti-racist who'd like to learn more about anti-ableism? Or someone who's exploring this stuff in depth for the first time? This section is for you.

• Anti-Oppression Glossary


• The FedEx Arrow And How To Deal With It
  "Here's the thing though, some people can't see the arrows. Some people don't want to see the arrows. Some people are quite happy living in the world where "FedEx" is just five letters, and stories are just fictional tales.
  
  That's OK. It is, it's fine. I am not going to hunt you down into your personal space and insist you see the arrow. But if you claim there isn't an arrow, that everyone who sees an arrow is deliberately looking for arrows that aren't there; if you come into posts discussing arrows and complain about how arrows are just in our imagination, then you're going to come off a little bit like a dick."


• Models of Disability
  "Models of Disability are tools for defining impairment and, ultimately, for providing a basis upon which government and society can devise strategies for meeting the needs of disabled people. They are often treated with skepticism as it is thought they do not reflect a real world, are often incomplete and encourage narrow thinking, and seldom offer detailed guidance for action. However, they are a useful framework in which to gain an understanding of disability issues, and also of the perspective held by those creating and applying the models."


• "BADD: On Oracle and Ableism", Never That Easy
  "[T]his post is going to instead focus on the ablism inherent in the online discussions of Oracle - that is, the arguments over her fitness as a superheroine, her perceived uselessness when being "confined to a wheelchair", and the unapologetic ablist terminology & attitudes that were displayed in these various discussions."


• Ableist Word Profile
  "Ableist Word Profile is an ongoing FWD/Forward series in which we explore ableism and the way it manifests in language usage.
  Here’s what this series is about: Examining word origins, the way in which ableism is unconsciously reinforced, the power that language has.
  Here’s what this series is not about: Telling people which words they can use"


• Thoughts on disability and respectful language
  "But something holds me back from being too strict with myself, and others in the atypical realm, on the language issue. Sometimes, I feel like embracing the commonly-accepted language to describe my disability-pride, body-positive, radical acceptance politics might help change exactly what concepts come to mind when people use that language.
  
  Thing is, this isn’t something that can be done in every instance. There are words which simply aren’t going to be reclaimed to a point where even non-group members can use it without calling forth all of the hate and pain associated with them. There is absolutely no acceptable use of the word “retard” or any derivative thereof."


• Disability 101: Defining Disability
  "Ableism refers to discrimination, devaluation, misconceptions, stereotypes, and prejudice—conscious or unconscious—of and against people with disabilities, the chronically ill, and people with chronic health conditions. As a culturally-based structure that often intersects with other oppressive “isms,” systems of privilege, and “-phobias” (such as racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, white privilege, cisgendered privilege, class/economic privilege, and transphobia) ableism assumes that able-bodied people are the “norm” in society, and as a result, culture, various institutions, attitudes and social mores are formed in accordance with the needs of able-bodied people."


• T-Vox: Transgender and T-Vox: Transphobia
  "Transphobia (by analogy with homophobia) refers to various kinds of aversions towards transsexuality and transsexual/transgendered people. It often takes the form of refusal to accept a person's new gender identity and is rarely rancorous.
  
  Whether intentional or not, transphobia can have severe consequences for the targeted person; also, many transpeople experience homophobia as well, from people who associate gender identity disorder as a form of homosexuality."


• Why Anti-Oppression Is Serious Business
  "So, hate crimes are those things that, when someone is attacked for being in a perceived group--and that night i was perceived as trans, gay, whatever, and because of that i was attacked, and no one at any point, on the train, on the platform, from the officer, at the precinct, no one offered to help. And that is a hate crime. And i'm here tonight to let you know it happens; it happened here on campus; my friend Annette was attacked here, verbally attacked on this campus and they threatened to shoot her.
  
  And we need to understand that it's borne out of ignorance, and it's condoned by people who have a problem with our lifestyles and they think that it's okay to hurt us."
  [Warning: triggering!]


• Whipping Girl FAQ on cissexual, cisgender, and cis privilege
  "[G]ay rights activists began challenging this notion. They pointed out that all people have sexualities (not just homosexuals). The so-called “normal” people weren’t really “normal” per se, but rather they were “heterosexual.” [...] Once one recognizes that heterosexism is a double standard, then it becomes clear that (whether they realize it or not) heterosexuals are privileged in our society. [...] By describing and discussing heterosexism and heterosexual privilege, LGB activists have made great gains over time toward leveling the playing field with regards to sexual orientation in our culture.
  
  One can easily understand the potential power of cis/trans terminology by simply replacing “heterosexual” with “cissexual,” “heterosexism” with “cissexism,” and “heterosexual privilege” with “cissexual privilege” in the above analogy."


• Feminism 101 and Rape Culture 101
  A survey of common arguments and rebuttals relating to feminism and rape culture. Links to full articles on each topic are included.
  
  "On Divorcing Slurs from Their Contexts: There are men (and women) who would swear up, down, and backwards that they're not homophobic, and may even genuinely be supportive of full LGBTQ equality, but nonetheless continue to use the word fag to malign other men—or use "gay" as a negative descriptor. They just like the words. They don't want to give them up, because they haven't found anything else that feels quite so good rolling off the tongue as "What a fag!" and "That's so gay." Who's it hurting? I totally don't hate gay people! And that's why we get these tortured explanations of how they're not using them "in the gay way."


• Don't Be That Guy
  "I keep thinking about all the subtle little cues and clues I personally use to separate Okay from Skeevy when people approach me. Talking in the comments there made me realize that I do have a list. It's my list, and it's not the be-all and end-all of everyone's list. Most everyone has a different subset of The List."


• Racism 101
  "An ever-expanding list of common understandings we share as anti-racists."


• Racebending - racism discussion policies
  This is a policy document for the Racebending community, but can be used as a 101 article as it contains definitions and conversational guidelines.
  
  "Institutionalized racism: a form of racism that takes place in institutions of societal power and influence. The difference between individual bigotry and institutional racism lies in the set policies and practices of an organization that actively or unintentionally discriminate against an ethnic group and subsequently disadvantage that particular group or race. These policies and practices are generally set in place and remain unwavering because:
  
  1. they have been in place for decades/centuries, despite the evolution of civil rights
  2. they are advantageous to the people who are part of this institution, whether they know it or not"


• Homophobia 101
  This is an anti-homophobia training outline designed for use in schools, by both staff and students. [PDF]


• helpful hint for the colorblind: BE LESS BLIND
  BLIND is not a moral positive. BLIND is an inability to perceive what the non-blind people around you can clearly fucking see. My grandfather was red/green colorblind. His family also had a strawberry farm. His father used to beat him for not obeying instructions to pick only the RED strawberries and leave the GREEN ones on the bush.
  
  Now, I'm not recommending regular beatings for the colorblind. That wasn't a nice thing to do (my great-grandfather was not a nice person in general, for oh so many reasons). But the thing is, my grandfather's colorblindness? Was a problem, because there is actually such a thing as color when it comes to strawberries, and it's easier to work on a strawberry farm when you can see it."


• Tough Guise: Masculinity Crisis
  This is a very accessible documentary about masculinity and media representations of manhood.

Links Lists

Looking for even more 101 content? The following are prepared reading lists at the 101 level. Some contain explanatory notes, while others speak for themselves.

• It's great to learn... 'Cause knowledge is power!
  "This post has been percolating in a bookmarks folder for a while. I'm going to do my best to give it a kind of structure (IN LINKSPAM? UNHEARD OF!), starting off with 101/introductory posts, then going into posts about language, and then finally all the odds and ends about inclusiveness, activism itself, and a few stray bits media analysis."


• For Clueless White People
  This is a Delicious archive of articles and blog posts on racism. The archivist has included everything from criminal justice statistics, to media analysis.


• Various links on racism and intersectionality.
  A compilation of resources regarding womanism, feminism, black feminism, and womanism vs. feminism.


• RaceFail09
  This is Metafandom's Delicious archive of links relating to RaceFail09. RaceFail09 was a wide-ranging discussion about racism in SF/F fiction and fandom that included both professional creators and fans.

Accessibility and the Internet

Is your code accessible?

• Nerdy PSA: Accessibility and HTML
  Most people know enough quick-and-dirty html to give their LJ posts a wee bit more formatting without having to work in the dreaded Rich Text Format.
  
  But DID YOU KNOW that there's a right way and a wrong way to use these wee bits of formatting and functionality?



• HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (text)
  Another accessible HTML guide.

Privilege

What is privilege? Privileges are rights or immunities which are granted to some, as part of an office, title, or membership in a group (eg. executive privilege, spousal privilege). In anti-oppression conversation, 'privilege' refers to the unearned benefits of being a member of a dominant or advantaged group (eg. white privilege, male privilege). Privilege works to systematically overempower the privileged, while disempowering the dis-privileged. The fringe benefits of privilege are generally invisible - taken to be natural, or taken for granted - by the privileged. This aspect of privilege also makes invisible the disadvantages experienced by others.

This is a short list of resources on privilege.

• "Check My What?" On privilege and what we can do about it.


• White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack


• The Privilege of Politeness


• The Male Privilege Checklist


• Shall We Talk About Privilege


• Black Adversity

Appropriation and Representation

Cultural appropriation: Borrowing symbols, artifacts, modes of dress, myths and other cultural products from another, different cultural group. Think tribal tattoos and First Nations headdresses on the high fashion runway without any context, understanding or respect for their origins and the people to whom they belong.

Representation: Media representations shape our understanding of ourselves and others - representation matters. Stereotypical depictions of disprivileged groups can have wide-ranging, and harmful effects.

• Appropriate Cultural Appropriation


• I Didn't Dream of Dragons


• Why I Support Exceptional Minority Media


• Writing The Other


• Visibility Is Not Progress


• Writing Gay Characters


• Media Representation Links


• The Smurfette Principle

Tone

Feminists, anti-racists and other anti-oppression advocates are often told that "you'd catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." The argument being that more people would listen if you'd stop being so angry, pushy, aggressive, emotional, hysterical, etc. Instead, you should your point calmly, rationally, and without causing undue offense. This is the 'tone argument,' and is used both by concern trolls, and by derailers. It is a conversational tactic, designed to discredit the 'angry' opposition, and their arguments at once.

• The Tone Argument - Geek Feminism Wiki


• What I learned About Tone


• The Tone Argument


• On Anger


• I Don't Like Your Tone Missy


• The Privilege of Politeness

Derailing

What is derailing? It is literally, to run a conversation off the rails. Derailing happens when someone comes into a conversation and demands that it change course, stop in its tracks, or back up long enough for them to jump on. Derailing can be deliberate and malicious, or well-meaning and ignorant, but in all cases it makes a mess of a delicate and complicated anti-oppression conversation.

This is a short list of resources on derailing.

• Derailing For Dummies


• How to Discuss Race and Racism Without Acting Like a Complete Jerk


• The Art of Defending Racism


• How to Suppress Discussions of Racism


• Moff's Law


• Wite-Magik Attax

Conversation and Strategies

Finding these conversations difficult because you lack the vocabulary, or need new tactics? These resources are for you.

• "How To Tell People They Sound Racist."


• The Do's and Don'ts of Being a Good Ally


• This Is What An Activist Looks Like


• I'm For Gay Rights, But...


• Defending what entertains us

Communities, Blogs and Sites

Looking for safe spaces, or places to learn more about anti-oppression theory and activism? We've got some links.

Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, JournalFen, InsaneJournal communities

• Racism 101


• Fight Derailing


• Dead Bro Walking


• Fans Of Colour United


• Debunking White


• Black History


• Torchbearers


• Sex and Race


• Feminist


• Transgender


• Queer Activism


• Post Queer


• Metafandom


• Racebending

Blogs

• Stuff White People Do


• Racialicious


• Shakesville


• Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog


• When Fangirls Attack


• Questioning Transphobia


• Black Superheroes


• Social Justice in Spandex


• TransGriot


• JasmyneCannick


• RCVBard


• FWD/Forward: Disabled Feminists

Magazines and Sites

• Jezebel


• Girl Wonder


• Racebending

Exceptional Minority Media

This list is heavily based on member submissions. Please submit your favorites!

• The Your Recommendation Series: Ladies First, POC Edition, LGBT Edition


• Anne & Me


• Celebrating Black Superheroes


• Doorq

This list is only a start. If there is a resource you would like added to, or removed from this list, please let us know. We consider this project a work in progress to be updated and revised on a semi-regular basis.

Comments

[recognitions.livejournal.com]

Giggity giggity.

[foxhack]

Sorry for co-opting this post, but what the heck happened to the community layout? The CSS for ordered lists appears to be broken, and there's a triangle thingy before cuts now.

[suzene]

The triangle is kind of neat. Click it and it unpacks the entry below the cut without taking you to comments.

[angelophile]

It appears to be a new feature introduced by Dreamwidth.

[nezchan]

But...but...but the comments are the best part!

[suzene]

Why, It's just DW protecting us from ourselves! Sometimes all it takes is to say "No, you'll have to click TWICE to get the comments!" to remind someone that they really did have work to do that morning...

[punishermax]

How will people know if I said something funny!? HOW!?

[lencannon]

I wouldn't worry too much about it, hoss.

[lencannon]

I'M HERE ALL NIGHT

[punishermax]

My...my internet cred....~disappears into a flashing point of light~ noooo....

[tacobob]

Wooh-Hoo! It's all mine now! *Flees!*

[mullon]

Oh for crying out...which one of you did what this month? Come on, fess up; I don't feel like going through the old posts looking for the 200+ responses.

And on a different note, what happened to the request's posts?

[zemo]

No one did anything (afaik). The mod team just wants to show that there have been updates in the sources they provided. Seems fair and the easiest way to inform those that care. Those that don't can just ignore, which probably applies to the majority of the users.

[kingrockwell]

No need to overreact, the new resources is something we've been working on for a while. We mentioned in the recent policy post that we'd be unveiling them soon.

As for the requests, things have been a little busy lately, but I'd imagine the June requests should prolly be up within the week.

[schmevil]

Requests usually go up mid month. I did a May request post, and will be doing June soonish.

[elf]

It'd probably be nice to link the annotated & quick links versions to each other, especially for use as a later resource, when people remember what they are and just want to quickly scroll through the list to see what's new or find a specific link.

I'm not sure Racefail09 counts as a 101-level reading list. (Not sayin' it should be removed, at all. Just noting that ... that's an awful lot of very complex stuff, for a 101-level rec list.)

Other links:

access_fandom: "free-ranging discussion about how to improve access at conventions and conferences, how to make fandom more disability-friendly, and other disability-related topics."

40 Examples of Christian Privilege

Anti-oppression blog roundups:
ibarw: International Blog Against Racism Week, on or around 1st week of August

Blogging Against Disablism Day: May 1 at Diary of a Goldfish; BADD 2007; BADD 2008; BADD 2009; BADD 2010
(I don't see a simple way to give a single link that connects to all of them.)

I know I've seen a couple of other recurring roundups but can't remember the details at the moment.

[zemo]

Christian privilege? I'll read through it, but I always thought the thing behind any religion is privilege. You know, the underlying assumption that you've got it right and therefore will go to heaven, or an equivalent thereof O_o

[zemo]

Addendum:

Yeah, went through the list. It's not really a list of Christian privilege, but of religious privilege depending on regions. Most Western nations have a Christian culture, so it applies there. But even then not entirely. No Hindu would jeopardize anybody around him by declaring they are a Hindu. It's more of a Muslim/Jewish thing. On the other side, if you were in the Arab world, it becomes Muslim privilege. India would be Hindu. This is not appologia, it's a matter of fact.

Nice list nonetheless, but I guess it should be called Religious Privilege (meaning any religion depending on region, and not being privileged in favour of atheists) instead of Christian.

[flidgetjerome]

On regionalism, "White Privilege" is also very regional and like Christian Privilege doesn't fit a universal situation. Different regions have different sets of racial/ethnic/cultural privileges, for example we get a lot of manga on this com and you'll almost never see a character of Korean ethnicity there, despite there being about a million people of Korean ethnicity living as part of Japanese society. Isn't there a term available that doesn't assume a Western social context?

[freddylloyd]

Isn't there a term available that doesn't assume a Western social context?

In many cases, these attitudes would fall under the umbrella label of "Majority Privilege."

But of course there are societies in which a minority enjoys such power. So the even larger set would be, um, "Privileged Privilege."

[elf]

Monotheist religions have a tendency to push the "we're right & everyone else is wrong" message; polytheistic & pantheistic religions don't have that as part of their core message. (Which doesn't mean individuals won't push that; some people will grab *any* excuse to say "my lifestyle is correct & good; anyone who's different is doing it wrong.")

The Christian privilege list is skewed toward the US and other English-dominant countries. (Someday, I will write long detailed essay about Christian bias in English linguistics. Someday.) I can understand if the focus is too limited to include it.

I'd be disappointed--I'm very used to religion being left out of discussions of privilege, and used to my own religious convictions being dismissed as "that can't possibly be religious"--but there is no horde of irate Pagans, or horde of oppressed & discriminated-against Pagans, who need scans_daily to recognize them.

(That probably sounds more snarky or bitter than I'd like. Issues, I has dem. *I* will be annoyed if a list of anti-oppression resources doesn't acknowledge the existence of religion, especially considering how much Christianity and other official state religions are used to reinforce other privileges, but that's the end of it. And I really don't expect a large community to cater to my annoyances.)

[kingrockwell]

Our approach to religious discrimination has been one we've been discussing lately. Personally, I really liked that link you provided.

[elf]

Thank you.

Religious privilege doesn't get discussed in the mix of other topics, in part because a great many people think that "all religions are equally valid and have the same basic principles" is not a statement of privilege. (It boils down to "I don't have to know anything about your religion, or make any allowances for it, because it's essentially just like mine.") And in part because mild agnosticism/atheism is very popular in intellectual communities, which includes a lot of online communities & a lot of activist communities, and there's a lack of acknowledgment of how much that agnosticism/atheism is based on (progressive Protestant) Christian principles.

Um. I could come up with more resources, if there's an interest, and I won't be offended if they're not used; I'm aware that I'm more than a little obsessed with the topic. (dark_christian comes to mind; it's an anti-Dominionist watch/info comm.)

I believe religious privilege, specifically Christian in almost all English-speaking countries, ties into & reinforces other forms of privilege. I'd be very happy if that were acknowledged somewhere in the resources; how much attention it gets depends on a lot of other factors, including intended audience and overall goals of the resource collection. ("Fight oppression" is a big goal; gotta have a more specific focus than that. "Inform people" requires limiting the set to links they won't backbutton from in the first paragraph. And so on.)

Again--thank you for listening. I'm aware I have serious buttons around this issue and am prone to ranting on a moment's notice.

[adamant_ink]

Thanks for doing this.

[endis_ni]

This is really useful, not just for S_D but for being online in general. Thank you for this!

[sobsister]

This is really helpful. Thanks.

[theletterfour]

Okay, so I got into a bit of discussion on another post, and perhaps it's a good idea to suggest some asexuality-related links for this list.

As far as 101 stuff goes:
The AVEN wiki: and more specifically
The overview on asexuality
The various FAQs

And as far as more advanced resources go:
asexual_fandom is a community here on dreamwidth discussing asexuality and fandom and representation and all that good stuff
Asexual Explorations, a website about the academic study of asexuality
Asexual Explorations Blog, the blog corresponding to the above website.

[kore]

This is really neat. Thank you.