Don't Compare, Start your Own Discussion

Today I learned a new thing. I never considered myself to be problematic, it's usually something I detest. But there's always new things to learn, always parts of our conditioning by society that haven't quite been scrubbed out yet. I am in no way a perfect activist. I merely try, and when someone finds something wrong with whatever it is, I take it in and consider whether or not it's true. It's okay to make mistakes.

The thing I learned was taught by people in a WOC group I'm in on Facebook. I was ripped a new one. Whether that was the right way to go about it or not was slightly talked about. One person said, that's not how you talk to a fellow WOC trying to understand your point. Others said it wasn't their responsibility to teach me their point. Yes my feelings were crushed, but they had great valid points to bring to the table. Their reactions are their own and in their own right. Just like I have a right to be upset by the aggressiveness of it all. We all have rights to feel things.

In my article on 'What it means to be a POC/WOC' I talk about my experience as WOC and my journey on feeling hesitant to belong to the term/s POC/WOC. I posted in this group, an unpublished version of it where I do in fact mention the discussion on African American struggle. I was told that it's not my discussion and I can't talk about black rights because I'm a black Aboriginal, not an African American. Again, I was upset to be told that I am speaking problematically, extremely upset. No one would explain it further, I was told it was emotional labour to ask them to explain to me what they meant and that I should find it myself. Fair enough.

A lovely human messaged me explaining it, and did it extremely well. The point of today's article is to share that explanation because it encompasses something most feminists have come across.

When you start a discussion on a racial issue, and talk about another non-white issue to compare the two, it might seem like you're trying to take the spotlight away from their issue and not have your issue as well as their issue. She explained it like this: When a woman says she's been raped, men often chime in and say men get raped too instead of starting their own discussion on their own separate matter. It can look like men are trying to take the focus off the woman's issue in a way to promote their own.

I didn't know I wasn't allowed to talk about black rights, and I never spoke for African Americans. However I will be more careful from now on in how I bring across my issues as an Aboriginal/Vietnamese WOC, because we're not all the same and our issues are different.

If I ever encounter an instance where this happens, I will make sure I explain this to whomever. I don't want them to be left in the dark in terms of where they've gone wrong. I want people to understand instead of being confused and told to 'google it'. 

If someone asks for help, asks for more explanation, doesn't demand it and is genuinely stuck, I will always give insight. It's the quickest way to helping not only that person, but the quickest way to making sure it doesn't happen again. Yes, sure, no one owes you help, and if you demand it, then you're a part of the problem. But if you ask for it, if you have the best interest at heart, if you genuinely don't know and want to learn what you did wrong, I will be what that lovely human was to me, and help you understand.

Today I learned a new thing. I never considered myself to be problematic, it's usually something I detest. But there's always new things to learn, always parts of our conditioning by society that haven't quite been scrubbed out yet. I am in no way a perfect activist. I merely try.