A month or so prior to the writing of this blogpost a Facebook page entitled "Wendy Quiet" was established amongst the Wellesley community. Students and alumnae were encouraged to "send in secrets" and other messages that they wanted to be broadcasted but remain anonymous. What started out as a useful outlet for general frustrations about the college/life or even small encouraging messages quickly turned into a vitriolic rant-fest of epic proportions. Not only were several groups on campus targeted, so too were major demographics such as heterosexuals and first years. (Side note: I would like to point out that if someone were to bring those posts to the administration[even though they are anonymous], they would be considered hazing, which is not something the college takes lightly.)Most recently was the post about "reverse discrimination" which received(in my humble opinion) a lot of really violent backlash from people, as though they couldn't possibly fathom why someone might feel like they were being "reverse discriminated" against.
For the record, no-I did not send that in to Wendy Quiet.
I do however understand where they might have been coming from.
The activist culture at Wellesley is very vibrant and very vocal. If someone things you are being privileged(by not being accepting of those of another sexual orientation, class, race, gender etc), you will IMMEDIATELY be informed of their thoughts, and most of the time not in a respectful way. There was even an instance where someone wanted to be a stay at home mom and was subsequently called "a waste of a Wellesley education". While I think that it was a bit of a misuse of the term "Reverse discrimination", it's understandable that some people may feel that they are being penalized for being born into a life which makes them more privileged or more sheltered than other students at the school.
While I completely support peoples differences in being, thought and action, being disrespectful to your peers is something I absolutely can not condone. Nothing, not your sexuality, gender, class or ethnicity gives you the right to treat your peers disrespectfully. And to be clear, if this were the reverse case where it weren't minorities being volatile, you can be absolutely sure that I would be saying the same thing. You are allowed to be think/act/be any way that you see fit, but you are not allowed disrespect others because they are different for you. Just because you're responding to a majority does not give you the right to patronize them and it does not make issues they have less legitimate. (edit: also, I have posted to that group 3 times(not telling you which) and each time I have gotten roughly 40 likes by members of the LGBT*QIA community and straights alike so you cannot tell me my experience is not legitimate). I'm not really sure what the posters were trying to achieve with lashing out the way that they did. Respect is a two way street which a lot of people seem to be forgetting.
It's really quite unfortunate that the page evolved the way that it did. I think that having the knowledge that you were not alone in your struggles here was invaluable for some students. There were posts about feeling alone, feeling like not fitting in, feeling not good enough. These feelings I think were really helpful as a reminder that everyone is struggling here, that no one was perfect. It was a great platform for humanizing the community again, which I think was the creator's intention. It's sad that people couldn't find a better way to vent their frustrations in a more productive way.
So what does this say about Wellesley? The past month has demonstrated that, given enough time the Wellesley community ultimately succumbs to hatred and is unable to sustain a supportive network when you hear what the students are really thinking about one another. Frankly, I think that's part of the reason people have such negative feelings about the school environment; people are spewing negative energy at eachother like it's absolutely nothing and no one is calling them out for it. While we like to think of Wellesley as the liberal, progressive and accepting place, I think this shows that we still have a lot of work to do because the student body is still ultimately divided to a certain extent.
To the creator of the page, it was a good idea. Just crappy timing. I hope we as a community can work through this.
LOVE this post! I'm a white student at wellesley, and if the subject of race ever comes up, I'm automatically "privileged", which also means I don't understand anyone else's point of view. It's gotten to the point that if race/sexuality/class is brought up, I leave the conversation immediately or not say anything, even though I DO have valid opinions. I actually would love to comment on that thread, but I'm too chicken because I don't want to get hated on for being white/heterosexual/not poor. So I'm totally chickening out by writing anonymously.
ReplyDeleteOne person commented, "Rich people can't understand classism like poor people. White people can't understand racism like people of color. It's fact."
That comment is classist and racist in itself!!!!!
THIS is what the OP means.
I fail to see how the color of my skin or what is in my bank account influences my intelligence. I know I don't oppress anyone based on race/sexuality/class.
Another person commented "the reason we talk about racism, heterosexism/homophobia, transphobia, and classism/economic inequality (and sexism) and not "reverse discrimination", OP, is because these injustices are part of the way our society operates--to *systematically* deny groups of people rights and opportunities. I've yet to see a case of "reverse discrimination".
With the exception of gay marriage, nobody is society systematically denies groups of people. It's against the law, for one. It's also 2013. Additionally, I have yet to see any real facts that prove "white privilege" exists.
Anonymous Cont:
DeleteMajority groups don't sit around a table and plan their agenda to "oppress" minorities. And when majority groups are put in that kind of negative light, it's just as racist.
Snaps to you both! I'm glad that I'm not the only one who feels this way; I don't agree that "white privilege" isn't a thing-I've seen examples outside the Wellesley community but I'd like to think that all of the students here are capable of having an intelligent and productive discourse about it
DeleteI cannot begin to tell you how ignorant this is. I feel like I agree with most of the blog post above, but this comment is just offensive. I don't think you don't understand my point of view because you're white. I think you don't understand my point of view because you "have yet to see and real facts that prove 'white privilege' exists." Please don't be so egotistical to think that you have gotten where you are by your own intelligence, hard work and dedication. I don't know who you are, or anything about your background or work ethic, but I do know that your parents probably took you to the library when you were a child. I know your high school guidance counselor probably said things like "when you go to college..." and "after college..." and I know that you were probably able to rack up volunteer hours and club memberships in high school because you weren't expected to work at an afterschool job to save for your own college tuition. Have you ever fathomed that these are not luxuries that everybody is blessed with? So no, you're right. There are no majority meetings planning the best minority oppression strategies. I understand that you didn't choose the privileged life you were born into and no one expects you to feel guilty for it. The least you can do, however, is to respect the struggles and accomplishments of people different than yourself and know that we didn't all come to Wellesley from an even playing field.
Delete(from the OP)
DeleteThank you, Anonymous at 3:32. You proved my point exactly.
I wrote a perfectly valid opinion, and you rudely called me "ignorant", "egotistical", and assume that my life has been lived a certain way. All in the name of "justice", right?
Guess what? You're not god. You don't dictate what's "right" and what's "wrong". That's unbelievably arrogant and wrong.
I was completely respectful in my first post. This is exactly what I the person who wrote the Wendy Quiet post was meaning. Any other point of view is shot down by intransigent in a bully-like fashion. And they're automatically wrong because they're white. It's very closed-minded. If you're AT Wellesley, you're "privileged". We are extremely fortunate to be here, all 2500 of us. Privilege is a ridiculous concept made to have people feel badly or attacked for what they have. I can't help that I'm white anymore than an African American person can help her skin color. Why should I feel badly having "privilege" because I'm white and heterosexual? I've done nothing wrong! I fully support equality, but that doesn't mean it's okay to be disrespectful to other people.
YOUR'RE the ignorant one because you are clearly so blinded by your "cause" that you ignore or disregard everyone else's opinions that don't agree with yours. It's like you choose what "facts" you want to use and what facts are disregarded because they don't follow your agenda. Not only are you ignorant, you're absolutist, tyrannical, and insolent.
I have a right to my opinion whether you disagree with it or not. And my points are extremely valid. So if you don't like, you can stop reading and press that X on the corner of your screen. What is not right is to be mean.
For both of you:
DeleteSo the point of this post was that I had a problem with the way that members of the Wellesley community were speaking to eachother. Everyone was being pretty rude to one another and that was something that I didn't like. I have no issue with things being discussed so long as they are done in a respectful manner.
I'm not trying to alienate either one of you but this is quickly becoming the situation I was describing. As this is my blog, I intend to moderate it so that there is only civil discourse on here, otherwise you have missed my point. This will not become a breeding ground for more hatred because I think we've had quite enough of that on Wendy Quiet. I respect both of your viewpoints and I'm glad that you've had the time to let them be known. However, I do require that you respect eachother as well.
Ignorant? You talk about ignorant, then rant on about how people do not get in to Wellesley for their own characteristics, but because of their race? And then go on to say that they did not have to work to get to where they are now? That is quite literally, and I say this after 6 years of debate team experience, the worst case of over-generalization I've ever seen in an argument. Talking about how parents help you, guidance counselors help you, all presumably because you're white and average? That world is one far from the one we live in. Unless you're saying (and I know you aren't) that parenting is a function of race or sexual orientation, parenting has nothing to do with it. Yes, some people have more of a struggle than others to get where they are. And when they make it, they've done that much more for themselves than everyone else. But tying privilege into sexual status, or race? THAT is completely uncalled for.
DeleteOP - you're really upset, and from some of the things you said, I can see why. I hope that I can give you some clarification about some of the things you're upset about.
Delete1. "I fail to see how the color of my skin or what is in my bank account influences my intelligence". No one doubts your intelligence at all. There is a difference though between intellectual understanding and understanding derived from life experience. I'm not black. I can sit through 500 sociology classes until I fully understand everything about everything in our society that has constrained black people, but I will never understand what it really is like to be a black person.
Case in point: I'm gay. I've held my girlfriend's hand in public and been taunted by a car full of high schoolers waiting at a stop light. I can brush it off and say, oh kids, but that experience of being jeered at for something I can't control has stuck with me. A heterosexual girl holding her boyfriend's hand at a stoplight is less likely to be taunted. She can intellectually understand the discrimination I face, but she will not know what it was like to be publicly humiliated like that.
2. "Privilege is a ridiculous concept made to have people feel badly or attacked for what they have". This is an interesting comment. I'm assuming you think privilege has visible repercussions. If you think that, then it is easy to see how it seems stupid. After all, it's not like black people can't vote and women have to be slaves at home for their husbands anymore, etc. So yes, on that front you are correct. However, I would push back and ask whether you think privilege is an obvious phenomenon. Privilege may be extremely subtle. It simply is a special advantage available only to a certain group.
Case in point: Using privilege defined as a special advantage, I consider the ability of heterosexuals to show small signs of affection in public (in all states) an advantage, I consider the less stress they have in wondering why they have such "weird" attractions for the same-sex an advantage, I consider the less bullying they receive an advantage, etc. These are not legal. These are social. I was in a class once, and a black student shared her experience about being followed around shops in the ville as though she was suspicious. Another girl shared her experience about being a particular minority and always being detained at the airport because she was a potential terrorist target.
3. About having to feel badly about your "whiteness" - I don't think anyone wants you to feel bad. I wouldn't dream of wanting you to feel bad for being heterosexual, just like how I don't wake up everyday hoping my parents and friends are suffering for their heterosexualness. That's ridiculous. I think that when people talk about understanding privilege, they are talking about the ability to understand where people are coming from, and how societal norms can have serious impact on the everyday lives of people. Drawing again from my personal experience, I don't want you to kowtow to my gayness and tell me I deserve more than you. I just don't want you to brush aside the struggles I've had, calling my life an "agenda" or a cause". That's the kind of stuff that anti-gay marriage advocates say as they deny LGBTQ folks the right to marry. They say, "well these nut case activists are just whining and complaining about their fucking cause. Why can't they just get on with life and stop bitching out us heterosexuals". Perhaps because I worry all the time about which states I can live in, where I can work, whether I can have children, whether I can commit legally to the person I love, and so on. I'm not trying to be an activist. I'm just trying to live my life.
To J. Please do not take this as a challenge to your comment overall, I just have to address a very difficult issue there. I do not mean to say that your experience as a gay person is not valid in shaping who you are.
DeleteI just have to say that as a White, middle class, (mostly) straight person, that #3 is actually true.
I have been explicitly told by several community members that I need to feel bad for all the oppression my skin color causes. Yet, when I genuinely asked and offered ways of how I could change the oppression, I was called a racist, classist, martyr, savior complexed. Most clearly, "I'm not going to let you get of this conversation because you need to be educated because you're a racist." As a P&Jer, I intellectually get many of these issues, and do not need to hear all the time about the damage other white people have caused.
It was humiliating, to feel like I was not able to work for Social Justice because of my skin color but yet it was my skin color causing the problem. And while I have never been intentionally racist, or directly causing oppression, I would feel I could never be good enough to be a part of a social movement.
There really is a divide and hypocrisy there, and no one seems to be confronting it. What I've gotten is: It's fine to complain about how white/straight/otherwise privileged people have it so great, but when one of them offer help for a "cause", it's inherently problematic and needs to be seriously overthought. At this point, the White/Straight/Privileged person will take their energy somewhere else, and then leave the "cause" behind.
This has not only been me, but also that of my "white" Hispanic friend. People do not realize that she is a POC and therefore, and assume her whiteness. She has reported that she often feels in a similar way.
fuck da community
ReplyDeleteIf you're willing to share, I'd like to know what was said that you found rude or hateful. There were some brief, slightly snarky replies of dismay (on the scale of the Internet as whole, they were teatime niceties), but I felt that almost all the people who commented in response in depth to the post were very patient and respectful. They simply did not agree with the sentiment expressed and hoped to persuade the anonymous poster to reconsider. Being able to disagree with each other and criticize each others' behavior respectfully but directly is /part/ of being a functional community. (In fact, it's what you're doing right here! Kudos to you! You are contributing to Wellesley civil society.) That's how communities self-regulate and establish norms of behavior, or at how their members open each others' eyes to what they may not have noticed before and ask them to be more senstive. I'm just not getting a substantive sense of how you think this should take place if you found the exchanges on Wendy Quiet unacceptable, and I'm curious to understand what you mean.
ReplyDelete(I'm one of the posters who replied with a critical comment that I do stand behind, and I'm commenting anonymously for privacy reasons.)
First-thanks for commenting! I'm glad you took the time to read this and I'm glad that that you still think I'm being respectful. Also, yes I know that compared to places like Reddit and 4chan they were pretty nice responses. However, I think we can do better than that. Re-reading the post, I think a lot of the resources suggested were really good but I think that the fact that people were surprised showed a general lack of empathy so I wanted to use this post as a way to rectify that to a certain extent.
DeleteAlso, this post was more based on a series of events. Firstly, someone attacked an org of mine personally so I was a little bit miffed about that but it's something I could get over. However, there was another instance that was really important. I think it started with someone saying how they understand that first years who are heterosexual might be frustrated with an all women's environment. However, there was immediate backlash from people that implied that they felt no sympathy whatsoever towards the first years and that they as non heterosexuals had a much harder experience.
My issue here wasn't that I don't think non-heterosexuals' problems are illegitimate. That would be incredibly close-minded not to mention just wrong. However, I did have an issue with the way that they trivialized their problems, to dismiss them as though they didn't exist.
The goal of this post was to encourage the community to be a little bit nicer to eachother, that is all. I acknowledge that people on both sides have issues to work out but I think we can do so in a much more productive and polite way than we we're doing now.
Sorry, that was long but I wanted to give you a good response
I support this post, and think it is long overdue. Thanks so much.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, this comment-"Rich people can't understand classism like poor people. White people can't understand racism like people of color. It's fact." is the most ignorant thing I've read in a while. And I'd like to make it clear that as a white, straight, upper-middle class student, I do feel targeted by the minority community at Wellesley, and feel very little sympathy for people who decide that the way forward is by constantly alienating people who did not CHOSE to be white, straight, or from a certain socioeconomic class, just as you did not CHOSE yours. The kind of ridiculous discourse about "oppression" only coming from the white/straight/"rich" community is bizzarre and makes the posters of these kinds of comments sound uneducated and childish. You get nowhere in life by whining your way through it- you didn't come from an even playing field? You have two options- a. Whine about/complain about/annoy everyone who isn't in your situation to evoke some kind of change, which, in the real world, doesn't really go the way it does at Wellesley, or b. work hard, get to that point where you don't need to use your race/class/sexual orientation as a way to get people to feel like you're qualified. If you're not good enough, then be good enough. It's simple. Wellesley gives you the tools to work hard, graduate with the same diploma as those "elitist" privileged girls you continuously attack. Step up to the plate, stop attacking others for things you and they cannoy control, or you can continue to complain- once you get into the job market, lets see which gets you further in life.
LOVE this. Agreed x 1,000,000
DeleteThis post is a huge problem. It actually is a fact that you can't understand what it's like to be poor, or black, or gay. Because you aren't any of those things (unless you are, but I doubt it because I don't think you would have said the things that you just did in the way that you did). I'm gay, and I'm sorry, but you DON'T know what it feels like to come out to really homophobic parents. You DON'T know what it's like to get yelled at in the Ville because you're holding hands with someone you love. Does that matter? No. I don't really care that you don't know what it's like. But stop pretending like you do. I wouldn't have "targeted you" had you not said what you just did. I don't care that you're straight, rich, or white, and of course you didn't choose to be any of those things. That's fine with me and I'll never blame you or want you to feel bad about that. But I DO care that you say things like "stop whining" and "don't use your race/class/sexual orientation as a way to get people to feel like you're qualified." Where did THAT come from?
Delete(I'm the OP of this particular post, responding to the Anon above); the kind of rhetoric on the Wendy Quiet page consistently implies that the gay/minority/etc experience is one that merits special treatment. I disagree, strongly, because I believe in a meritocracy. It's not okay for you to get yelled at for holding hands with your girlfriend- definitely not. My comment was directed purely at the discussion that implies that these groups deserve special treatment at the expense or in rival of white/straight/well-off students, which is ridiculous. I also do genuinely feel that making every conversation ever revolve around your race or sexual orientation is pretty tiresome, and out in the real world, people really do not care to listen to this kind of banter all of the time, which is what I was getting at. It just highlights insecurity and an underlying feeling of inadequacy, which is something you need to deal with yourself, not expect it to go away by vocalizing it 150 percent of the time.
DeletePS- upper middle class doesn't mean "rich." It means upper middle class.
DeleteTo the OP- I completely support your second statement. Everyone should be treated equally in social situations, no matter the minority status. Economically, politically and otherwise is another case but socially, we all should just forget our pasts and try to be friendly and respectful and so much shit would just disappear.
DeleteI'm sorry that people do have to go through so many difficult things, but to treat siblings as if they intentionally meant to target you seems to be a bit overblown. It was probably not knowing the correct terminology, miscommunication or accidental. I think this should be assumed over the opposite. Just ask for clarification, people notice their dumb mistakes pretty damn fast when noted and then they'd apologize.
ok, last post of the night because frankly I think that how this discussion is way beyond my experience. also because I have a midterm to study for.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that you have all read this and thought about this post. But I happen to think you're reading into this more than I intended. Namely, that all I wanted is for the Wellesley community to be more civil in the way they address eachother. That is all.
We all come from different backgrounds, we all are different people. This is nothing that we should ever have to feel like we need to apologize for. But the way that some people talk to eachother makes it seem like we do and starting fights on this blog is undermining the message of this post.
Snaps to Tiffany for her courage to tackle this.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, here's the thing about the internet (Wendy Quiet). Individuals who make less than well-thought out arguments that are probably only reflective of that individual's views get a lot of attention. Probably they have a point or experience that we could learn from, but we only have their short comment to go on. Part of this is because we respond to controversy, part of this is because those individuals have less control of how their comment is interpreted by other readers on the internet (because body language and tone of voice are missing).
Does this mean that Wendy Quiet is doomed? no. I think haters are gonna hate. Does it mean that we could have compassion for others while being offended? yes.