abuse culture says 'you'll get used to it'
2013-10-18
inspired by a dear friend on tumblr
abuse culture tells us
“you”ll get used to dirty looks and snickers”
if you don”t conform to conventions and normative means of dressing
(and, i swear to fucking god, i do not want to hear anything from white people on this. it isn”t the same and it”ll never be)
but the snickers and dirty looks are abusive. and they are coercive.
they are one way that we are slowly worn down into compliance
adn this is especially damaging to iaopoc
‘cause as many of us have learned…..
even if you do tone down the hair/clothes/makeup/face/body/etc
the snickers and dirty looks don”t stop
because the problem isn”t that we look ‘wrong”
but that we exist. for us, the hair/nails/clothes just give white people a ‘non-racist” way to snicker
and, yeah, it is worse for us since many of us come from cultures where body mods are traditional. and because white people made it into this counter-culture act of rebellion…
we end up being viewed similarly, even if — as the case may be — we are doing it to actually affirm our community ties, rather than trying to rebel against them
anyway. my message:
do not get used to the snickers and dirty looks.
we should never normalize the abuse we experience in our lives.