Tag: power

How Could You Have Known? –You Already Did.

“The one thing ignorance is not is innocent, it is about having the power not to know and not to care… and we simply can’t afford to be naive enough to think otherwise.”

It’s actually the power to know and not care.

There’s a widespread trope that trans people are super rare and new, that most people have never heard of us and thus can’t know what to say. And of course, “[y]ou can’t blame people for not knowing about something that they might never have encountered.” But here’s the thing: they have.

I don’t care that you’ve never met a trans person before, I don’t care that you’ve never had a women’s studies course before, I don’t care that you’ve never had a trans 101–you can find out what we want to be called from the worst transphobic screeds and jokes. Making fun of trans people is a widespread cultural trope, it’s not something you’ve never heard of.

Combatting “Combatting Ignorance” Part 2: How Could You Have Known? –You Already Did. | Taking Up Too Much Space.

Whose Ignorance/Who’s Ignorant?

Targeting the ones that get culturally pre-defined as “ignorant” might be tempting, because their offenses are frequently the most highly visible, and (relatedly) least culturally sanctioned, but it’s those culturally pre-defined as “knowledgeable” that do me the most damage, and thus, through a privilege+power rubric, are most transphobic. Who’s worse, the most “ignorant” “redneck” (supposedly) embodying every awful anti-rural stereotype, or J Michael Bailey, who has a PhD and sits in the halls of knowledge?

So when we construe transphobia as about “ignorance,” not only have we engaged with classism, racism, and colonialism, we’ve shot ourselves in the foot and let the worst offenders off the hook.

Combatting “Combatting Ignorance” Part 1: Whose Ignorance/Who’s Ignorant? | Taking Up Too Much Space.

Status Flight and the Gendering of Google Glass

Status Flight and the Gendering of Google Glass

masculine-cellphone-original

Think back (if you’re old enough) to when very few people had cell phones, back when they were huge and expensive. When you picture someone using one of those cumbersome early cell phones, whom do you picture? Is it a white guy in a suit, maybe wearing a Rolex and 1980s sunglasses? Yeah, I thought so. When they first came out, cell phones—like pretty much every brand new, expensive technology—were status markers. A cell phone said, “I am wealthy, I am powerful, and I am so important that people must be able to reach me even when I am away from my home or office.”

Cell phones got smaller of course, and less expensive, and more common. Elites were saved, however, by the arrival of the touchscreen smartphone. Though not as pricey as the first cellular phones, the first iPhones were still expensive and hard to get; even with a $499 price point and a mandatory two-year contract with AT&T, people stood in line at Apple stores for hours to get their hands on one. The iPhone became an instant status symbol in 2007—but fast-forward to 2013, and what now? There’s roughly a zillion different touchscreen smartphone models on the market. The iPhone itself is available on all four major US carriers (without unlocking); from three feet away, a brand new $849 iPhone 5 is pretty much indistinguishable from a used $90 iPhone 4. Once an exciting status symbol, even the touchscreen smartphone has become plebeian and mundane.

Here’s a thing that happens: elites (and people in general) like status symbols, but when status symbols become too easy to obtain and thus lose their status-signifying power, elites begin to dislike those things—and to look for new status symbols to replace them.