gryphonsegg

I really, really need to kick my fandomsecrets habit. There's always something that makes me want to throw furniture. This time, it started with some jerk whining about losing to a little kid in an Adventure Time-related contest. Then another jerk decided to commiserate because the second jerk once had to give up a chance to pet a tapir so that a little girl in a wheelchair could pet it instead, which brought on a chain of people whining about how children with disabilities shouldn't get special treatment (non-special treatment being whatever is appropriate for able-bodied adults) and the incident will teach the girl that she can have anything she wants because she is in a wheelchair and therefore make her whiny and spoiled. Trust me, people with visible disabilities know they can't have everything they want. They learn that pretty early. Then again, who would listen to me? I'm one of those awful people who believe adults shouldn't enter contests against children in the first place.

One of the frustrating things about discussing the obstacles society places in the way of people who fall into certain categories is that some of the people who get involved in the conversation tend to assume that when you talk about Category X, you are speaking of the LEAST marginalized members of Category X. For example, "women" is often taken to mean "normatively abled, thin, conventionally attractive, straight, white women who have great social skills and are loved by middle-or-higher-class white men and totally comfortable with that," whereas "disabled people" is often taken to mean "straight white men who either have disabilities that do not prevent them from holding down middle-class jobs or have family money that takes care of all their needs."

One particular type of this phenomenon has been especially prominently displayed recently: Women bloggers say, "Hey, men, this behavior right here? It scares women. Don't do it." Then a bunch of men (and sometimes a few women who feel that those mean OTHER women are being too harsh with perfectly nice guys) respond with, "But what about non-neurotypical people? What about introverts? What about shy people? What about geeks? It's ABLIST to tell men not to treat women in certain ways. The men are just socially awkward and clueless. They have Asperger's. They don't know how not to be creepy." In all the discussions of this kind that I've witnessed so far, the people on the pro-feminist side come back with some variation of "It's sexist and victim-blaming to expect women to know the difference between a guy who does something scary because he doesn't know any better and a guy who does something scary because he's planning to do something worse. We are outright TELLING socially inept men what they should avoid doing in order to avoid scaring women away. Ignoring these basic rules of social interaction can be interpreted as a sign that you don't care how the person you're trying to get close to feels about you and might ignore their wishes in general, and you can't expect women to know you're not quite THAT bad." That's a good point, but something's missing. Sometimes, a few people point out that those who genuinely don't know how to interact with others are usually happy to be explicitly told the "rules" of social interaction and apologetic about having unwittingly broken them and that whenever they've witnessed an adult get called on disturbing behavior at a social gathering, the adult in question responded like someone who had already known that he (it's usually a he in these situations) was skating on thin ice. Someone might bring up the idea that this is all a smoke screen because a genuine introverted geek with AS who gets a woman cornered is more likely to tell her about his model trains or his comic book collection and expect her to care almost as much as he does than to proposition her or touch her. Fair enough, but something is still missing.

What's been missing from the discussion so far is acknowledgment of the women (and people who get read as women by other people, regardless of whether they think of themselves as women) who are themselves shy, introverted, socially awkward, on the autistic spectrum, getting through life with anxiety disorders (including SOCIAL ANXIETY, HELLO?), coping with PTSD due to past stalking/sexual abuse/intense bullying (yes, it happens to girls too!), or any of the other things that might make them less well-equipped than the stereotypical feminine social butterfly to deal with getting hit on by a guy who either can't tell or won't admit that the woman he's chosen is not interested. What's missing is any mention of the people who have just as much trouble navigating social situations as any man but who are expected to have a natural talent for it because social interaction is supposed to be a special strength of girls, the people who have to deal with everything the ever-so-put-upon socially awkward men have to deal with PLUS years of cultural training that the most important quality they can or should possess is niceness. Another thing that's missing is acknowledgment that, just as not everyone who has social difficulties is male, it can also be said that not everyone who has social difficulties is heterosexual. Strangely, I haven't noticed anyone in these discussions defending the right of socially inept men to make disconcerting advances toward other men or even considering that such a possibility exists. Surely there would be some mention of this possibility if everyone who fits into these vaguely defined categories of people-who-can't-be-expected-to-interact-normally were really THAT oblivious to social cues. If Socially Inept Guy A can't even tell that Neurotypical Woman B is afraid of him, he probably can't tell that Neurotypical Guy C is straight either. If he genuinely is THAT clueless and/or THAT unable to control his actions, where are all the comments castigating Guy C for freaking out when a fellow convention attendee kept trying to give HIM backrubs outside the dealer's room? I've heard "creepy person coming onto me at a con" stories of the m-->m, f-->f, and f-->m persuasions, but I've only ever heard the creepers seriously defended and the creeped-out people scolded for ablism when the off-putting behavior was male on female.