What is a voice?
In general, a voice communicates, whether by one person, or by a group of people expressing a similar sentiment. It’s not always verbal. People use hand motions, body language, to express themselves as well. A voice can be loud, soft, insistent, strong, weak, an echo. A voice can be angry, melancholy, happy, mischievous.
A voice can tell a story, just through tone. Emphasis, sarcasm, happiness, calmness, rage…in some ways, emotions are just as important, or at times more important, than the words they accompany. A voice isn’t just tone and words, however. There’s intent. What do you mean to say? Did you express yourself correctly, or did people misunderstand? Did people listen to what you said, or did they misinterpret it?
There’s a song by Miranda Sex Garden that struck me when I first heard it, and it still affects me today. “Lovely Joan” is an old song, a traditional English round (#592). Miranda Sex Garden only used the first verse, repeated over and over. It begins sweetly, becomes ominous quickly, and by the end, you know exactly what the fine young man did to Joan—and it’s all conveyed through tone. The ugliness at the end is followed by a strained “sweetness” recovery, a bid to overcome and cope with what happened but the voice weakens, fades, and is ultimately silent (this is a contrast to the original, where Joan uses her wits to escape the unwanted advances of the young man).
The initial regularity, the ugliness, the silence at the end; it’s how I feel about politics right now.
People want to be heard, taken seriously. They want their ideas expressed and discussed. Even if the person they are speaking to does not agree with what they say, disagreement can happen in a mutually respectful way, both sides debating the issue rather than using screaming, being dismissive and scornful, or conveniently ignoring what is said to shut down the conversation.
But sometimes respect doesn’t happen. Sometimes people speak and their voice is drowned out by others. Sometimes people speak and they dislike that others don’t agree and become aggressive in their stance. Sometimes people speak and believe theirs should be the only voice in the discussion, and if others disagree, they are the enemy. I’ve seen the latter more often than I want to admit, associated with causes I once believed in.
Several years ago, I became interested in skepticism. My father had drunk the Pox on Humanity kool-aid and the stuff falling from his lips made me shudder. Many times I had facts, proof, on my side, and it never swayed his opinion. He refused to believe his lying eyes (a recent experience for example: my father said that, because of minorities and drugs, Salt Lake City killings had skyrocketed to at least one a day. The entire state of Utah only saw 90 homicides in 2016, far less than the one a day in its major city that my father claims. But the right wing media told him so!!! Government stats be damned).
I began reading blog posts and familiarizing myself with skeptics and those in the atheist community who had skeptical leanings. I wasn’t the serious serious skeptic sort, but I did appreciate thinking, doing research, on topics rather than just accepting the “Authority Figure told me so, so it must be true” line. I’d studied that mentality in college (medieval lit/art history) and it never struck me as effective in anything other than keeping the already powerful in power. As a librarian, I had seen countless people ask for books that would not help them with the subject that concerned them, but someone they thought of as an authority figure wrote it, so it must be good advice (Billo’s book on bullying is a good example. Grandparents checked it out to help their grandchildren deal with being bullied, but the advice never seemed to work out for those grandchildren. I wonder why…).
And then Elevatorgate happened. Rebecca Watson entered an elevator at a conference and some dude followed her in and hit her up. She called him out on it, saying she was a single woman in a foreign country, and that being approached like that creeped her out. And shit hit the fan because HOW DARE SHE?
Richard Dawkins came up with his “Dear Muslima” reply to the incident, which said that women in other parts of the world have more terrible issues than those in America, and that those issues should be addressed first before any attempt is made to deal with FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS TM. Of course, this argument can go on forever, because you can always find someone worse off. What an easy way to ignore any problem, anywhere; just brush it off as “someone else has it worse, fix that first” and go back to whatever you were doing that’s obviously far more important. This is a familiar argument to anyone interested in racism and sexism, prejudice and bigotry, in America; “Well, I know you only make 70 cents to the dollar as a woman, but women are beheaded in India! That’s much worse. Fix that first.” or “They’re arresting and disappearing suspected gay men in Russia. Why are you worried about bathrooms when you need to fight to save someone else’s life?”
This argument denies a voice to those experiencing sexism, racism, bigotry and prejudice. “Someone else has it worse” can be used to deflect and annihilate any argument so it can simply be ignored, no matter how pressing the issue.
After Elevatorgate, members of the skeptic community began to write damning articles and blog posts about people they disagreed with (and by the tone of several, felt threatened by), and the targets happened to be many of the individuals whose writing I followed—women, minorities, LGBT activists—anyone who thought sexism and racism, bigotry and prejudice, might have negative effects on said skeptic community because it provided an easy way to discount and exclude anyone who did not fit the typical mold (in skepticism, that mold was wealthy white male, from the Enlightenment on). Those in favor of keeping the status quo were older white men (Dawkings, Harris, Schumer among many others) who had guided the modern thought and beliefs of skeptics and atheists, and suddenly had to contend with other voices speaking out and not agreeing with them on every subject, or finding another issue they felt more pressing. Those in power believed they had lost control, and did their best to bring the outspoken people to heel, or cast them from the skeptic community completely. Women and minorities who had risen in prominence with the benevolent support of these men were some of the harshest critics of those who did not follow in-step with the larger footprints of the thought giants.
So much for skepticism and a focus on facts over superstition and fantasy. The intense vitriol surprised me, then saddened me, then made me angry.
I realized at that point skepticism at large held nothing for me, so I stopped bothering. What’s the point of supporting old white men who thought I was inferior because of my gender, and that the only way my voice might be heard in their tight-knit community was if I threw myself at their collective feet and begged for a place among their exalted presences—but only if I mimicked what they said and did and refuse to cause trouble by voicing my own sentiments. They were the authorities, after all. They hardly needed the likes of little, squishable insect me telling them what’s what. They already knew.
I see the same thing happening in politics—only politics is far more important to me, to life in America, and to the world, and I can’t just drop out and leave the threatened old white men to it (though, after Drumph won, the need to do so and save my sanity was intense). I now sit down at my computer and read about Bernie Sander’s tours, and I read about how Hillary Clinton needs to go away because she lost—that, despite his own loss in the Democratic primary, the old white man’s voice is so much more important than the woman’s because he “get’s it”. I read about how we need to seriously consider how to bring racists and sexists and bigoted and prejudiced people into the Democratic fold because their side won, and therefore deserve a renewed voice that is listened to in politics, unlike the millions of women and minorities who voted for Hillary Clinton. Those people lost, so should mute or have no voice at all (winning the popular vote by millions means nothing because the ultimate goal was not reached).
I read articles and Facebook posts and blog comments about how Clinton (and now Pelosi) needs to go away and provide an empty space for younger, more meaningful voices—and wonder if those people realize that means ditching Maxine Waters and Elizabeth Warren because, let’s face it, they’re not spring chickens themselves. Unfortunately, I’ve come to believe that this argument, after experiencing it, is more directed towards Clinton’s supporters than Clinton herself. For instance, when someone says Clinton is too old and out-of-touch to have a meaningful say in modern political discourse, what are they telling her older female supporters who voted for her because they believe the same things? You don’t count, either. You’re too old, too womanly, too out-of-touch. No one should listen to you, especially since you supported someone who lost. Make way for the younger lot who gets what’s important to Americans. We women know this; how many news agencies interviewed older women after the election to ask their take on it? Or did they go to the heartlands and speak to a white, conservative, working-class man sitting in a local greasy diner bemoaning illegal immigrants while packing heat? There’s our future desirable voter who wins elections according to the MSM—and many on the left have agreed. The millions who voted for Clinton over Drumph—mute, disavow, ignore, degrade their voices, because that’s the only way to even get greasy diner man to look a Dems way (it hardly matters that the white people who voted for Drumph actually make more money than the average conservative, working-class man who supposedly won the election for the Repubs, but MSM is selling an image that sticks much better in people’s minds than dry facts).
There’s also the “purity of thought” belief that is plaguing so many on the left. This “purity” is “Dear Muslima” revisited. It’s a way to shut down discourse and silence those who do not believe the exact same things they do. It’s very easy to use, and has the added benefit of eradicating their opponents without ever having to discuss the issues. One doesn’t even have to think about or absorb other viewpoints, and perhaps change their mind. Nope. They can easily say, “You’re too old/young/womanly/manly/black/white/brown/gay/straight to understand”, “You’re too out-of-touch to understand”, “You’re too Wall Street to understand”, “You’re not progressive enough to understand”, and wash their hands of those views and opinions they don’t already believe. (Understand what, you may ask. Not relevant when your goal is just to ignore others’ voices. It hardly matters what they think, it’ll be dismissed anyway.)
This purity of thought seems to have one issue at its front; economic disparity. And, following in the footsteps of the “Dear Muslima” argument before it, everything else is a lesser problem. Once this particular problem is solved—and yes, it is a problem that affects millions in America—then other issues can be visited, if fixing the economic disparity hasn’t cured them. And how long might that take? If healthcare is gutted, someone who has cancer and can’t afford the treatments without ACA can’t wait until the minimum wage increases to care for their health problem. The LGBTQ community can’t wait years for someone to revisit current bills going through state legislatures that deny them jobs and housing and public bathroom use. Minorities can’t wait for however long it takes to fix economic problems to see relief from racist cops. We’re human beings. We can take on more than one problem at a time and make great inroads to fixing them, even if they aren’t completely solved immediately. Yet I’ve read that only one important issue can be on the docket until the authority figure declares a win, and then a change of focus can naturally occur.
And who is this authority figure who speaks for the left? Not the black man, he’s no longer president (and apparently the only black voice in the room? John Lewis, Eli Cummings, Maxine Waters…who are they again?) Not the old woman who lost (because, just like ‘if Wonder Woman had failed at the box office, who in their right mind would ever think about making a female superhero movie again?’, we cannot contemplate a woman in charge. Her failure reflects on every single one of her gender, hence Pelosi, Warren, Harris hate). Not the Latino (he took over the DNC chair and we all know the Democratic party is dead-man-walking because Clinton lost, therefore has no platform or relevance or voice, so how can we listen to a word Tom Perez says?). And, god-forbid, we have multiple voices rising up, together, in chorus, without an explicit conductor (protest protest protest).
No, the relevant authority figure is the old white Independent (not Democrat, they lost) who may have been defeated in his primary bid, but who gets the younger generation excited about income disparity and who can maybe/possibly/probably/sometime in the future draw the white working class conservative man into his fold by railing against the powers-that-be who caused said man so much economic grief. This economic issue is what wins elections, and therefore should be the only one of import until the authority says otherwise.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence economic disparity is the primary focus of so many, especially since the MSM emphasizes again and again how working-class whites experiencing job loss and economic woe cost Clinton the election. It’s obvious we should raise those voices up, listen to them, give them what they want and everything else will fall into place and be just fine when they win us the next election.
Those other voices?
They lost, so they can’t possibly understand.
