[Linkspam] my letter in the Spring 2009 issue of UU World

[edenfalling]

There was an article about 'rankism' in the last issue of UU World, which had a sentence that made no gramatical sense and could only be interpreted properly by relying on a learned, sexist idea of how the world is organized. I found that very interesting, especially in the context of an article about trying to combat prejudice.

So I wrote to UU World, and they printed a version of my letter!

...

Granted, their printed version publicly displays the thinko that I noticed a day after I sent the email -- "innate" instead of "ingrained" -- which makes me look a bit of an idiot before the world, but still. They printed my letter!

(My original version also contained a rather snide grammar lesson on ways to rewrite the sentence in a gender-neutral fashion, but it's probably for the best that those bits were cut.)

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ETA: Given that there is a privacy discussion going around livejournal (yet another iteration of RaceFail09; you can find some good starting links on metafandom), I should make a few points clear. The letter is written under the outer two of my legal names. I actually have two internet presences, each with their own email address: one for fanfiction and livejournal, and the other for family, business, church, and school. I am okay with linking from my fannish life to my everyday life, but not vice versa. Also, while I am okay with people knowing my outer two names, I ask that you not use them here, because I would like to make it at least minimally tricky for potential future employers to trace that identity back to me-as-Liz and realize what I do with my free time.

Thank you in advance!

Comments

[smokyglass.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

I just read your letter and I read she as the executive. You're totally right. Also, if I may ask: why is your internet name Liz?

[edenfalling]

Elizabeth and Culmer are my middle names. I used them as a pen name for years before I started writing fanfiction (not that it was ever a public pen name, because I didn't really show any of my work to anyone, but it was the name I signed to my stories) so when I wandered onto the internet and decided I didn't want to make it too easy for potential employers to spy on my private life, Elizabeth Culmer was an obvious choice of pseudonym.

(Also, I just like 'Elizabeth' as a name. Whenever I told epic Mary-Sue stories to myself in elementary school, the character based on me was always called by some variant of Elizabeth.)

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

...this letter published under a pseudonym for your protection?

[edenfalling]

Nah, those are the outer two of my four legal names. Elizabeth and Culmer are the inner two. :-)

I am generally okay with linking from this journal to stuff I've written under my everyday name (because it's all me, after all), but I never link in the other direction; that's my one real concession to paranoia and a desire for privacy.

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Bless you for sending that letter. Between the ugly layout, the mediocre writing, the muddy thinking, and the general downer attitude, I'm finding UU World nearly unreadable these days. When the only intelligent things in the magazine are the letters criticizing last month's articles, you know you're in trouble.

[edenfalling]

That article made me spitting mad. Because while yes, it's true that most forms of discrimination are an excercise in privilege (one group positioning itself 'above' another, and thus creating a rank difference), that doesn't mean you can collapse racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, classism, discrimination against the disabled, etcetera, into one giant, all-purpose -ism and call it a day. No. Each of those issues expresses itself differently in the real world, and they can compound or offset each other. They are related, sure; they have similarities, sure; but they are NOT all the same thing. It is an exercise in privilege to even think that you can conflate them.

*headdesk* Sometimes I am so ashamed of my religion.

I think that sense of shame is compounded because I do not have a college degree or a white-collar job. I have privilege because I am white and I come from an upper middle-class family with a lot of higher education, but at the same time, my current economic status is working class. This seems to make some of my fellow UUs uncomfortable. And also, I was raised UU, which means the common denominational 'story' of losing faith and feeling anger against your childhood religion completely and utterly fails to speak to me -- I feel excluded from the mainstream discourse of the religion I grew up in, for goodness sake!

Argh. Sorry, my issues are showing. :-)

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

*headdesk* Sometimes I am so ashamed of my religion.

I realize you're not just talking about the magazine here, but I do think that right now, UU World is doing a pretty poor job of representing our religion. The Unitarian Universalism I encounter in church is (almost) all about the joyful quest, while UU World lately seems to be mostly an exercise in agonizing, fruitless self-accusation. I don't need the magazine that purports to represent my church to tell me how much I suck. I need it to tell me how I could do better. 'Frinstance, if I met you for the first time at church and found out that you work retail, my response might well be the discouraging "Oh..." So, UU World, don't tell me what a pathetic and useless creature of privilege I am. Tell me how you and I could make that conversation a more positive experience for both of us, one that might advance us both a little bit on our free and responsible search for truth and meaning rather than sending us both home to our respective rooms to sulk.

OK, now my issues are showing. But really, between the inane "rankism" article and the deservedly skewered "buy organic" piece in that same issue, I sometimes wonder why I even bother opening up the magazine anymore. Must just be my cockeyed UU optimism. :-/

[edenfalling]

Yeah. I mean, I get that it is important and useful to point out places and ways in which we are in error... but there needs to be a balance! Religion cannot survive on moralism alone; we need connection and uplift as well.

I didn't even read the 'buy organic' thing, because I know from long experience that anything centered around 'buy local,' 'yay organics!' or 'vegetarianism is the only ecologically responsible choice, as well as much nicer to animals!' is going to drive me up the wall, even if it has some rational points. There is all too often a sense of smugness that radiates from those essays. (Which is not to say that they cannot make good points, and I do try to read them now and then, the same way I try to read conservative political essays, just to keep myself from living in too much of an echo chamber, but still.)

I actually have a very good experience in church (except for those job-related conversations, and even there I have gotten a little better about sort of powering over the 'Oh, um, well...' moment) but sometimes the discussion after a sermon can get to me a little. And I just cringe every time I hear our church advertising on the radio, because the text is so... 'smug' is not quite the right word. Naively self-righteous, perhaps? In a very Ithacan fashion, but ye gods, it rubs me the wrong way.