Do Not Date Bedlamites
While interracial dynamics always add a layer of work to romance, it’s important to note that I’m white. Because when you’re a white person in an interracial relationship, there’s this whole – ohhh, ya know – white supremacy thing hanging in the air. And that has to be acknowledged – and dealt with – constantly.
At this point, the opening paragraph, we could probably cut things short. I mean, if you’re considering dating someone who thinks it important to mention their melanin levels and thinks that “white supremacy” is a feature of any future relationship, something to “acknowledge constantly,” you should probably walk away, quite briskly. Seriously, just get the hell out of there. However, for the morbidly curious among you, Ms Fabello has a list of “things to remember as a white person involved with a person of colour.” It begins thusly:
As a feminist and a woman, I could never be in a relationship with someone who didn’t feel comfortable talking about patriarchy.
Hey, baby. Wanna talk about patriarchy?
Gender (and the social dynamics therein) is a part of my everyday life, both in how I’m perceived by the world and in the work that I do. So if I tried to date someone who felt discomfort to the point of clamming up every time I brought gender into the conversation, that “It’s not you, it’s me” discussion would come up quick.
Note the words “every time.”
The same goes for race… While it’s okay for conversations about white supremacy to make you uncomfortable (hey, we should be uncomfortable with that shit), being generally aware of how race plays out and feeling fairly well versed in racial justice issues is important.
And feeling mutually awkward while sharing identitarian dogma and confessions of “white supremacy” is what binds lovers together, surely? Sadly, these moments of shared discomfort, however frequent and interminable, may not suffice:
While it’s important to be willing to talk to your partner about race and to feel comfortable bringing it up, it’s just as important to be willing to step back and recognise when your whiteness is intrusive… Not all family structures operate the same way… Maybe it isn’t appropriate for your partner to take you home to meet their parents.
Apparently, the thing to take away from this is that if your partner-of-colour’s family-of-colour don’t want to meet you, a person of pallor, or have you in their home, then, obviously, it’s your fault. Because “you represent an oppressive system” by “virtue of your privileges.”
Because as white people, we’ve been socialised racist.
In short, honkie germs. And for the excruciatingly pious, further complications can loom in the bedroom:
It’s important to remember that as a white person being sexual with a person of colour, you’re in a position of power… And it can be difficult for a marginalised person to feel comfortable expressing their needs without a safe space being intentionally created by the person of privilege… The power dynamics bestowed upon us by our fucked up, oppressive society don’t disappear just because you’re intimate with someone… Sex should be considered in relation to social power.
If you’re creasing the sheets with someone and you’re continually fretting about pseudo-sociology and imagined racial power dynamics, and about who’s being “marginalised” by virtue of their melanin levels, and thinking about sex “in relation to social power,” then it doesn’t sound like a relationship so much as an elaborate fetish.
Seemingly oblivious, Ms Fabello goes on to stress the wickedness of “racial fetishization” and of “exotifying” sex with “people of colour.” “It’s never appropriate to stereotype people,” says she. And yet her own article is premised on “othering” and “exotifying” people with browner skin than hers. Chiefly by viewing them as eternal victims of some all-pervasive “white supremacy,” which apparently renders them “marginalised” and powerless, and in need of endless, neurotic accommodation by immensely sensitive white people, even in the bedroom.
Still, if further agonised uptightness is what floats your boat, there’s always number-crunching:
I’d love to be able to give you a formula – some kind of fool-proof ratio of number-of-white-to-POC partners – to help you determine if you’re racist.
I bet you would, madam.
But such a thing simply doesn’t exist.
Oh calamity. How will I let people know that I’m Officially Not A Racist™…?
Dating is hard. And being responsible for the ways in which your whiteness affects the world – and your relationship – is hard work, too. But you know what’s harder? Being a person of colour in a white supremacist world.
And everyone wants a relationship that’s hard work and based on pity.
Ms Fabello is a “community educator” and a “fierce feminist activist.” As an expert in relationships, “she currently lives in Philadelphia, PA, with her cat.”
Spotted by Scott Farquharson, an avid reader of empowered lady journals.
“You have to say Latinx not Latino now by the way.”
And what do you say if the Latinx identifies as a cat or a horse or a skunk? 😉
If a white woman is dating a black man, who has the most social power? The white woman because of white supremacy, or the black man because of the patriarchy?
The white woman because of the patriarchy.
And what do you say if the Latinx identifies as a cat or a horse or a skunk? 😉
caballx or zorrillx
Just wear those thinking caps like rally caps and it all makes sense.
I’m confused. If a white woman is dating a black man, who has the most social power? The white woman because of white supremacy, or the black man because of the patriarchy?
I don’t know, but I do know that if you asked a Guardian reader that question, then his head would explode.
How do you pronounce “Latinx”? La-tinks, or la-teen-x? I need to write a limerick.
You have to say Latinx not Latino now by the way.
Well that’s blatant imposition of US values* onto Latinate languages. Disgraceful.
*for a tiny, tiny subset of the US
“Othering” — i can’t imagine sex without it. I suspect this woman simply feels guilty for enjoying it.
How do you pronounce “Latinx”? La-tinks, or la-teen-x? I need to write a limerick.
It’s an Asterix character names addition reference.
View the author here, wart, piercing and all
http://abeautyfullmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bodyimageheroes_melissa.jpg
without a safe space being intentionally created by the person of privilege
Sounds like the White Man’s Burden, 21st-Century Edition.
If I were a Person of Color, and some white person asserted that I can’t get a safe space except whitey creates it — never mind that I don’t need no damn safe space — I’d pop that white fool in the mouth and run, not walk, elsewhere.
View the author here, wart, piercing and all
The thing is, she is beautiful. Her extreme preciousness is evident, too – it seeps from every digitalised pore of her being – but there you are.
I’m blaming the lousy economy. What we have today is a vast surplus of young people trying to eek out a living by being blog writers, since there are no real jobs to be had.
A few decades ago someone like Melissa would’ve been too busy as a rising editor at a publishing house to write click-bait bilge like this.
And please. Leave the cat out of this. I like cats.
Perhaps the economy wouldn’t be so deep into the suckage were it not for the vast sums of money we have “loaned” to young people to have their souls nourished through beauty, contemplation of our world, and identity studies. Why, otherwise their existence grinds into mechanics and dust. I shudder to think what would happen to such snowflakes in such unsafe spaces as Fluid Mechanics or Thermodynamics classrooms.
If perhaps Melissa were to, I don’t know…get a job making sammiches, she, the taxpayers, and most everyone else would at least be a skoosh better off. Could probably afford to feed her cat on her own dime as well.
I doubt this SJW had a man stick around long enough to experience genuine power dynamics of a relationship. I’ve Been married to a genuine South American Latina with lots of Indian blood for almost 10 years. White privilege? Ha! The heavy hand of Hispanic oppression is feared in our home and not taken lightly.
I would guess she spends a lot in this aisle: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/08/heh-14.html
Link fixed.
Read this
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201311/6-signs-narcissism-you-may-not-know-about
Then read her article and play Personality disorder bingo.
Is this about you, David? 🙂
https://twitter.com/fyeahmfabello/status/634479148375908352
Is this about you, David?
I’ve no idea. If it is, Ms Fabello has apparently taken care not to comprehend the substance of the post, or to link the thing so others might judge for themselves. If it is about the post above, Ms Fabello seems to believe that to mock her mannered, dogmatic and question-begging claptrap, to point out its contradictions, is somehow to endorse not talking at all. Which is quite a leap, and somewhat self-flattering.
Is this about you, David? 🙂
This is a good one:
When people are like “I don’t FEEL privileged,” I wanna be like, “Well, I don’t FEEL like you understand the concept of privilege.”
Says the thin, white, woman. Isn’t there something about motes and beams somewhere?
White woman’s burden.
Right. The sun is shining and I’m heading out into the countryside. Do try not to oppress anyone with your whiteness.
Wow. My mother never taught me to look at color as a condition to like, dislike or not love someone. My mother taught me that if someone treats you well and with respect that all the other bullshit one can try and find, fault or none is beside the point. If you love someone and you close your eyes, can you see the color of their skin or are you FEELING what is in your heart? Not everything must be labeled as something. JHC. #SOS
Oh the irony. The people attempting sooooo hard to prove they are not racists – are the ACTUAL racists in this country – BY DEFINITION! Get out your Funk and Wagnals and look up the definition of the fucking actual word you asshole!