I saw this over on the Virtual Stoa, and thought i’d reproduce it here because it strikes me as the best thing written by anyone on the entire Griffin-Irving debate.
loneraven: “Maybe I’ve as little chance of getting attacked on the street tomorrow as I do any day. But here I am, thinking about it. Here I am, going to sleep at night thinking, there are far-right groups in Oxford tomorrow, oh dear. And why should I have to think that? Why? See above where I’m a human being, where I deserve to feel safe every second of the time in my home city, where white people don’t have to worry about visual indicators and I do. How dare the Union blithely invite RACISTS into my city, so safe in their straight white male privilege that they don’t have to think about the consequences of what they’re doing? I am not straight, white or male, and I have no uncomplicated identity, no simplicity or belonging – but I am an Oxford student. No one is allowed to contest the basis upon which I’m here, at this place and at this time. How dare they take the one thing that I have all of my own, my home, and compromise that?”
28 November, 2007 at 7:57 pm |
That’s a damn good point. Whoever said it, well said and cheers for republishing it here Sagar.
However, speaking as a straight, white male I’m always looking out for the visual indicators ‘loneraven’ mentions.
28 November, 2007 at 9:57 pm |
I’m pretty sure it is from Iona’s blog
29 November, 2007 at 11:51 am |
Well, regardless of Iona’s seething, relentless and completely unparalleled hatred of me, I think she’s made a good point here.
29 November, 2007 at 11:58 am |
However, the rest of the post, which you can read here
http://loneraven.livejournal.com/568946.html
doesn’t quite reach the same standard.
Apparently if you repeatedly assert that something is not a free speech issue, and repeatedly explain that you don’t mind getting wet and being cold, then that proves the matter.
4 December, 2007 at 3:18 pm |
I’m sorry. WHAT?
NO-one gets to pretend they have some automatic right to a city above other people, be they the racists, homophobes, or anyone else. Any more than all those people who feel physical discomfort at me walking down a street with a boyfriend have any right to tell me to fuck off. There is more than one side of the minority preference issue to find oneself on, as Iona should damn well know, and claiming that ‘thinking about it’ has some moral weight is a really dangerous thought.
“I deserve to feel safe every second of the time in my home city”
No. It would be nice. There is no sense in which you, or anyone else has a desert-claim here.
“No one is allowed to contest the basis upon which I’m here, at this place and at this time”
Sorry. They just are. In the same way that you contest their right to be at this place and at this time. You both get to pontificate to your hearts content, and that is the only way people that disagree about things can possibly live together.
These people are scum. That is not a sufficient reason to shut them up.
4 December, 2007 at 4:31 pm |
Hi Will.
Welcome to the blog. Been a long time coming….