4 ms·
Some of us have walked in the others' shoes, at least in this limited case of discrimination based solely on clothing. Guess what? Humans discriminate on clothi
by Jach 14y ago
Some of us have walked in the others' shoes, at least in this limited case of discrimination based solely on clothing. Guess what? Humans discriminate on clothing! You can drum up the social justice network and try to remove this neural programming without drugs, good luck with that. You can try and fight it, again, sincerely, good luck, I agree that clothing is irrelevant when judging other people, but I don't think you'll succeed.
However, unlike discrimination based on someone's skin color or gender, discrimination of clothing has a very easy solution for the person being discriminated against: change your outfit. Some people who love their t-shirt and jeans need to wear a suit every now and again if they want to be treated well or taken seriously by certain people (and vice versa depending on social context--some formal suit-loving people need to dress more casually if they go to certain conventions for a talk). If I were a muslim girl getting discriminated against for wearing a hijab, I'd stop wearing the hijab.
- wpietri 14y agoTerrible analogy. People aren't discriminating because they think hijabs are unfashionable. They're discriminating because they correctly interpret the hijab as a religious marker. Did you notice that your advice basically amounts to "do your best to look like a straight, white, middle-class Christian"? And that you are basically blaming the victim? Both strike me as terrible advice.
- guylhem 14y agoSorry if this is rude, but this post feels like a bleeding hart white liberal voluntary experiencing with discrimination caused by obvious self sabotage - and then discovering that discrimination exists indeed, and blogging about her discovery. The obvious next step is converting to some religion or faith which requires unusual clothing or body painting, to "make a statement"/ taunt/provoke and then complain about how unfair the world is, for her VOLUNTARY CHOICES. It's not about blaming the victim - here I would like to blame someone who wants to play the victim, while people are actual victims. Such a voluntary self sabotage is insulting to people who suffer from discrimination for something they can't change (such as unusual appearance coming from different ethnicity, disease, etc.)
- wpietri 14y agoIt's rude, and also poorly thought through. You're spinning imaginary scenarios and then getting your balls in an uproar about them. Relax. Ela did not "play the victim"; she is not asking for sympathy. She did not sabotage herself; she is whole and unharmed. I also am dumbfounded that you think it's offensive to victims of discrimination to try to understand them by experiencing discrimination.
- guylhem 14y agoI'm sorry it got me in an uproar, but I really think what she did is offensive. She made a change, noticed the negative difference - end of the story. Some people may want to make a change (even if they know it's vain to try and conform to other people expectations) to try and experience a positive difference - but they can't. What is offensive to me is how unfair it is for some people to complain about they own choices why other suffer from their lack of choice.
- wpietri 14y agoYou might have a point. If she complained about her choice, that is. She didn't, though. She said, "This experiment gave me a huge wakeup call." That's the opposite of a personal complaint; she's thankful for her experience. Are you also offended by the book "Black Like Me"? Because I've never heard an actual black person be upset about it.
- LockeWatts 14y agoHow about we just look like people, not religious entities? Never understood why people like wearing symbols of oppression.
- icebraining 14y agoWhat you wear -or don't- sends a signal just like hijabs do. Just as you see one and consider the wearer looks like a "religious entity", someone else will see you in jeans and consider you a "consumerist drone", or see your cellphone and consider you a "decadent bourgeois". That you don't consider that part of "looking like people" is not the hijabs' wearer problem.
- supersaiyan 14y ago"like wearing symbols of oppression?" - According to whom is this a symbol of oppression? This is exactly the problem, if you ever to encounter a girl with a hijab you would automatically treat her differently because of her clothing, you've already attributed a persons religious clothing as a form of oppression. The point is to be respectful of others beliefs, not judge based on your own.
- Jach 14y agoI am not blaming the victim, just offering a solution for the victim's discomfort. It is not equivalent to the type of victim-blaming usually done against raped women--precisely because what a woman wears isn't strongly correlated with whether she is raped or not, few decisions on her part could have helped her situation before or after, so she can't reasonably be blamed for failing to e.g. never leave the home. (And discrimination triggered by a piece of clothing is recurring, meaning one's behavior can change before and after.) I did notice my advice has similar forms, except I wouldn't generalize to middle-class or Christian. Another piece of advice I'd offer anyone in America is to learn how to speak Standard White English if you don't know already. But I'm not nearly the first to offer this: "In class - in my English class - you will have to master and write in Standard Written English, which we might just as well call "Standard White English" because it was developed by white people and is used by white people, especially educated, powerful white people. [RESPONSES at this point vary too widely to standardize.] I'm respecting you enough here to give you what I believe is the straight truth. In this country, SWE is perceived as the dialect of education and intelligence and power and prestige, and anybody of any race, ethnicity, religion, or gender who wants to succeed in American culture has got to be able to use SWE. This is just How It Is. You can be glad about it or sad about it or deeply pissed off. You can believe it's racist and unfair and decide right here and now to spend every waking minute of your adult life arguing against it, and maybe you should, but I'll tell you something - if you ever want those arguments to get listened to and taken seriously, you're going to have to communicate them in SWE, because SWE is the dialect our nation uses to talk to itself... And [STUDENT'S NAME], you're going to learn to use it... because I am going to make you." -- David Foster Wallace, Authority and American Usage Another piece of advice I'd offer is: grow a thicker skin. Not always a good piece of advice--I would recommend it to an atheist in the US struggling with discrimination from their family and local community, I wouldn't recommend it to an atheist in Egypt--they should get out as quick as possible. I'll explain to you the core of where my position on this matter comes from. I'm an engineer, and if I see a problem, I look for a feasible solution. The problem expressed by the submission is "people are being discriminated against--whether they deserve it or not, whether they're even muslim or not--because of a piece of clothing that in American society gives off a bad first impression." There are three obvious solutions: stop wearing the hijab, force away the concept of first impressions (not really a good idea) from human minds, or force everyone who harbors resentment towards muslims in general to stop it and love them. Only one of these is easily accomplished. Furthermore, it opens the door for real cognitive dissonance that can actually change people's minds. "Oh, you're a muslim? But you don't wear the thing!" "Not all of us do, and those that do don't just wear it for religious reasons..." Very few people ever learn to notice themselves completing a cached pattern of thought, and even they don't always notice consistently. People typically have to face with premise-defying reality to really change their minds.
- ktizo 14y agoIf I were a muslim girl getting discriminated against for wearing a hijab, I'd stop wearing the hijab. So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc. Not only is your suggestion frankly both offensive and pretty idiotic, but the world it would lead to would have even more discrimination than now and be a hell of a lot more boring.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- guylhem 14y agoExcellent point. But "if the result of happiness_from_identification_with_current_religion + happiness_from_how_people_make_me_feel" is negative, maybe a) you are unhappy, b) it's not an untractable problem because c) there is something you can change in the equation, and there is something you can't change. You know the saying - you can't change the others, only yourself.
- icebraining 14y agoSome things are worth being unhappy about. "The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became."