Voices

Yesterday was the first time since I got married that I experienced a specific concern that someone would assume from my name that I was not white and therefore take my opinion less seriously. The context was an email I was sending to the Archdeacon of London about a young black priest who tweeted an admittedly somewhat incendiary critique of the particular valorisation of Captain Tom Moore, the backlash of racist and homophobic abuse that followed along with calls for him to be fired, and the diocese's depressingly unsupportive response. I ended up phrasing the email in such as way as to refer to "our white privilege", although whether my guess that this might make the Archdeacon slightly less likely to discount my view as being motivated by personal bias has any sound basis I'm not really sure.

It did make me think about which voices we listen to, value, ignore, or aggressively silence. I'm going to use the lens of queer and straight voices now, because I feel a lot more comfortable doing so, which in itself is a part of the conversation. I know that there isn't an exact parallel between the power structure dynamics of race and those of sexuality, especially when it comes to people on the intersections of multiple marginalised identities, but I think there are enough commonalities that the conversations can inform one another.

I think that all of these things are true:
- Queer people have a far better and deeper insight into queer experience, and particularly the experience of being on the pointy end of homophobia, than straight people do.
- We live in a culture that treats straightness as default, so queer people have more insight into the straight experience than vice versa, but we still don't have the actual lived experience of being straight.
- Everyone has biases, and we are not immune. It can be harder to be aware of and adjust for our biases on issues that affect us deeply.
- Queer voices are not a monolith. (Neither are straight voices, but I don't think they are treated as such nearly as frequently.)
- In some conversations about queer issues, our voices get dismissed as being biased, whereas straight voices are erroneously assumed to be purely objective. This dynamic is more common in straight dominated spaces, which correlates highly with the power to make changes and decisions which affect our lives.
- In some conversations about queer issues, straight voices are made unwelcome or subordinate, on the assumption that straight privilege will prevent them adding any value. This dynamic is more common in queer dominated spaces, but is becoming more widespread, and is paid lip-service to a lot more widely than it is actually enacted.

I"m not quite sure where I'm going with this, but I think there's something about the disparities in the different ways and contexts in which establishment and marginalised voices are heard and responded to and acted on which particularly stokes the fires of 'anti-wokeness' and reactionary populism. Something about how the idea that the pendulum of social justice has swung too far might have some limited validity when applied to the narrow field of what views are socially acceptable to express, but that at the same time, has a long way to go when it comes to the actual power structures that enact justice (or injustice) in our society. Something about wondering whether if there was less reaction to people saying bigoted things that would leave us with more energy to make real changes in the world, or if it's a bit like saying that you should just ignore bullies to make them go away, and would instead just lead to them feeling more empowered to escalate.