Unseelie

I really appreciate your POV. Thank you for saying this, and thank you for taking time out of your life to answer those questions, even though they are invasive. I know not everyone has the energy or patience to tackle education. Here’s a “spoon” for you.

garden-of-inanna:

fuckyeahsocialjusticesally:

Education is definitely a privilege that many Sallies tend to forget, probably because they have it.

Any time I see a person of ANY minority say and do this, it rubs me the wrong way. There are SO MANY people out there without access to higher education, adequate technology, or correct information and it’s arrogant to think otherwise.

I’ve know people lucky enough to afford my local community college (if only with the help of the Pell Grant), that never had access to computers at home and our labs were not always equipped with enough for everyone to use when they needed it.

I’ve known people who DO own their own computers or have public access to one that find it difficult to locate correct information when researching something. Bringing up trans* issues as an example of this: I’ve had people ask me invasive questions (which I openly encourage for this reason) about what surgery or hormones will do to my body, or whether I’ll regret transitioning, or even how sex works and, when I answer, they offer me bewildered looks and tell me that what they found on the internet never mentioned -insert whatever I told them here- or instead they found what turned out to be bogus statistics.

Because I’m privileged to have a higher education and because I have first hand experience with social justice issues, it IS my job to educate others. I feel that relying on Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and Mama Meta Search to “educate” anyone about ANYTHING is one of the most irresponsible acts a person can commit.

For those who don’t want to educate others and wish to maintain their privacy: that’s fine and, yes, I realize there are people who simply refuse to read links provided for them. However, many people don’t go to the trouble of posting accurate information for the uninformed and there are people who genuinely want to educate themselves, but aren’t given the chance and are instead driven away from communities for daring to ask simple questions.

When someone says, “It’s not my job to educate you; go educate yourself” and the recipient to that comment does that, only to return with skewed or bigoted information, the person who made that comment really has no right to be surprised or angry that the other did not get their facts straight; they’ve merely set themselves up for that by not handling the questions to begin with. If one relies on someone or something else to teachfor them, they have forfeited all control of the information the initial inquirer will receive.

It’s this hypocrisy within the Social Justice community that was one of the many factors that quickly drove me away from it. Withholding information and justifying it in such a way is not socially just: not when so many people still suffer a lack of easily accessible, credible information.

(via syndoktyle)