Feminism/Racism 101 link request

[steuard]

I'm planning to add an entry about racism/feminism issues to my "Wow, Good to Know" page, and I want to give a useful link for each one. But (and I hope this doesn't come across poorly) I've had a lot of trouble finding "Feminism 101" or "Racism 101" pages that sound like they were written by someone who was actually in the mood to teach. (Many of the sites I've found are, quite understandably, written by people who are clearly fed up with people asking basic questions that distract from more nuanced discussions. That's fine, but I'm looking for a place where I can send clueless people who haven't just derailed a conversation somewhere.) I suspect that something like a wiki format would be better than a blog format, for what it's worth (or more generally, a structured site rather than a series of entries).

So, any suggestions for sites that feel like an actual "Feminism/Racism 101" course rather than elaborations on "Boy, do you need some Feminism/Racism 101!"?

Comments

[feuervogel]

Finally Feminism 101 is a good resource. I'd suggest one of the LJ anti-racism communities, but the Kremlin seems determined to kill the site.

http://akiko.livejournal.com/1083281.html

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Alas, Finally Feminism 101 is exactly the reason that I wrote this post. The whole site is framed as a place to send people who have been clueless in a conversation about feminism. That absolutely has value, but I think it works best in the intended context. (They even directly acknowledge their sometimes "sarcastic" tone, but impossibly ask well-meaning readers not to "bother being offended by it.") Quite frankly, when I back there last night as someone just looking for a good introductory resource to share, even I started feeling defensive.

Similarly, a lot of the links that you've got on your blog, while really valuable, are not at all formatted as a starting point for learning this stuff. The "links for clueless white people" list, for instance, makes no attempt to say "start here for the basics": as far as I can tell, it's just a bunch of potentially helpful links in the order that they were found. For my purposes (getting people who may never have thought of this before up to speed on the basics in a friendly way), what I really need is a site that's at least somewhat self-contained for at least the most essential bits (but perhaps with links to outside discussions to give various firsthand examples). I'm reasonably convinced that no blog or collection of links to blogs can serve this purpose (both from this topic and from good and bad experiences other times when I've tried to get up to speed on a longstanding discussion from scratch).

I'm really hoping something like what I'm looking for exists out there. (Maybe even an honest to goodness "Gender Studies 101" online course would do the job?)

[feuervogel]

The "links for clueless white people" list, for instance, makes no attempt to say "start here for the basics": as far as I can tell, it's just a bunch of potentially helpful links in the order that they were found.

Well, yes, that's how delicious works. It's a social bookmarking website.

It's true, a lot of feminists online are sick of dealing with people asking them the same question the 1000th time (and thinking that "doesn't FEMinism mean you hate men?" is so original), and it's not our job to handhold them through the basic things, like "women are autonomous human beings with individual desires, not a monolith," and "women aren't inherently inferior to men," and "patriarchy is the problem," and "civil rights isn't a zero-sum game." Especially the ones who think they're so original with lines like "you just want to replace patriarchy with matriarchy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_theory

[steuard.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree with anything you've said here, obviously, and I wouldn't begin to blame feminists online or off for being sick of dealing with newbies (especially deliberately nasty folks like the ones who make most of the comments you've quoted in particular) or for responding to them with sarcasm. And as I said earlier, I think it's helpful and important to have sites like Finally Feminism 101 to respond to accidental or intentional derailment of more sophisticated conversations.

All I'm getting at is that I'm having trouble finding a 101 site (on any of these topics) that really feels like a 101 level class. That is, a resource for folks who want to be good people and good allies, but who maybe haven't even realized yet that doing so isn't easy. I'm absolutely not knowledgeable enough to write such a site, but I'm maybe envisioning something that would 1) start with an explanation of the (probably unfamiliar!) way in which the term "privilege" is used in this context (accompanied, or better, preceded by a few examples or arguments to help newbies understand how real it is), and probably also explain other terms used in possibly unfamiliar ways (like "derailing", "racism", and "sexism", among others: a lot of folks hear "racist" and think "Klansman", after all), then 2) point out some of the common ways that privileged people can cause harm without meaning to (and how to avoid doing them), and finally 3) provide some nicely categorized links to firsthand discussions of how these things affect real people. (Looking at your blog links, mystickeeper's "101 Primer" may be somewhat close to what I'm picturing, but I'm hoping for something more self-contained and with less of a "sit your ass down" tone.)

(Those Wikipedia links are great as discussions of feminism as a movement and as a philosophy, and give lots of detail on its history and structure. But they're not really what I'm looking for as a basic introduction to the ideas of the subject.)

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

I don't have primers.

However, I often find the Feminist Hulk's Twitter commentary makes sense of things that bug me. In particular, I like the comment (regarding Anthony Wiener) "Straight, Cisgender Men: You forfeit cred for feminist politics if you use them to pick up women. Be a full-time ally."

Phaedra Starling's essay on Schrodinger's Rapist can be a little rough for some people to read and hear, but it's as gently written as it can be, given what it is. And it's really important.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Oh, good call: Schrödinger's Rapist is a really valuable discussion of some of these issues. I've got a good place to include that link.

(Feminist Hulk is maybe not so much what I'm looking for here, but yeah, that feed can do a good job of boiling things down to their essence. Twitter can be good for that, I think; in fact, every main topic on my "Wow, Good to Know" page is written to fit in a tweet for that reason.)

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Hey, look at this: "Check my what? On privilege and what we can do about it". It was a couple of link-layers down from where I started, but it comes awfully close to having the feel that I'm looking for (as do the links that it chooses to point to, as far as I've seen so far). Even though it's a blog entry. :)

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Related question: can anyone point me to the page that included a story about a high school teacher asking the class to list what precautions they'd take when walking to their car in a parking lot late at night? (The difference in response between the boys and girls was really striking to me: it felt like a great way to show someone "this is real".)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Although I personally feel somewhat meh on it, the unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack exercise is often used for privilege 101 in educational settings, so it might be close to what you need (and might be found in company with other things you'd find useful).

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Douglas Hofstader. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Oooh, yeah, I've liked that for a while. I hadn't thought of it quite in this context, but it's tempting now that you mention it. Hmm.