Finn Gardiner

A rant about linguistic homogeneity

18th November 2015 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

People who know me well know that I have a particular interest in English dialects and the way they vary from country to country and region to region. Between my time living in a few other countries and my reading about different English dialects and their particular traits, I can do a reasonable amount of code-switching between some of them, though my typical writing style tends toward the Mid-Atlantic.

I happened to come across a site—and the associated Twitter account—that was mostly about design, typography, and art, written by a British designer. I found his writing style… kind of peculiar, to put it mildly. Why? Words like “colour” were missing their U—the most notorious Americanism of them all. I had a visceral sense of horror. “Wait a second. This isn’t a US-specific site. Why are you writing everything the American way?” It was like reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (as opposed to the original Philosopher’s Stone), wondering why the local colour of the story had been jettisoned in favour of Americanisation. I’ve seen this happen a few times in public-facing writing, usually by people who write for an audience outside the UK and Commonwealth and think that they need to Americanise in order to make themselves relevant. (And in the case of that specific site, it wasn’t even that good an attempt at Americanisation; see the aside below.)

It sounds like a silly thing to be horrified over, but there are reasons why I had the reaction I had: I don’t want to see the English language become a bland, flavourless, Americanised landscape.

Fake black shills online? No way.

5th November 2015 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

Apparently there are white people going around trying to pose as black people in order to back up problematic ideas they support. Laur Jackson has described this as ‘digital blackface’ – using racist tropes in order to simulate blackness as an attempt at humour, or to prove a point.

Um, no. You’re a really fucking horrible person if you don’t realise why this is a shitty idea.

There are two major problems with this kind of behaviour online: it’s disingenuous and tries to manufacture support for things that actual black people would be unlikely to get behind, and it resorts to tired old stereotypes about black people and the way we talk and express ourselves.

If your ideas are valid enough and grounded in anti-racism, you shouldn’t have to manufacture black characters to agree with you. All you’re doing is being demeaning towards black people and using a terrible (and really fucking racist!) rhetorical device in order to try to prop up your argument. If you want to defend the damnably offensive idea that it’s acceptable to host a ‘feminist’ retreat on the site of a former slave plantation, then do it as yourself. It says volumes about these people’s character that they would go out of their way to create phoney profiles on Facebook and Twitter in order to argue in favour of actions that would be widely interpreted as racist.

There’s also the assumption that if you’re going to present as black online, you’ll have to be a walking minstrel-show stereotype in order to ‘keep it real’, when real black people’s speech and writing patterns are as nuanced as anybody else’s. We don’t all use AAVE (African American Vernacular English) on a regular basis. This applies both to black people outside the US and Black Americans who may have backgrounds that don’t really include the use of AAVE, primarily those of us who are first- and second-generation immigrants from the Caribbean or Africa. I don’t really use AAVE at all, because it’s just not part of my specific cultural background. And those of us who do use it use it in a way that’s a lot subtler than what the fake black posters I’ve been talking about do. Just because your character isn’t called Stepin Fetchit, Buckwheat, Amos or Andy doesn’t mean you’re not dragging out the same anti-black stereotypes that have persisted for years. I already feel super self-conscious for not using AAVE in either my speech or my writing, and white racists like this who think that using AAVE is required in order to seem authentically black really don’t help.

If you want to defend your noxious attitudes, don’t use phoney black shills to do it. At least you could be honest about your intentions.

Stop presuming incompetence, Autism Parents.

1st November 2015 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

This is my entry for Autistics Speaking Day. There are content warnings in place for emotional abuse, shame-based training, anti-autistic sentiment and fundamentalist religion.

Edition to clarify, 1 November 2015: My family and teachers did know I was autistic; I was diagnosed at a very young age, in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Their actions toward me were an example of wilful ignorance and shame-based thinking, but it would be unfair to say that they didn’t know I was autistic.

My childhood predates the widespread phenomenon of the “autism parent” who infantilises their child well into the adult years, writes long jeremiads about how burdensome their child is and how much better off they would be if their child were dead, constantly presumes their adolescent or adult child’s incompetence, and avoids facing the reality that their child is an independent and autonomous person. Nevertheless, despite the different social landscape surrounding autism that existed in the late 80s and early 90s, I had much of the same destructive rhetoric and behaviour directed toward me throughout my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, primarily concerning the pervasive presumption of incompetence and ignoring the root cause of particular behaviour patterns.

The AutCom 2015 clusterfuck

28th September 2015 by Finn Gardiner Leave a Comment

I am utterly appalled by the lack of attention given to true accessibility and inclusion on the part of the non-autistic organisers of Autcom. Kassiane Sibley, one of the autistic presenters (and one of my co-presenters!) who also has a seizure disorder, has written about certain Autcom organisers’ callous attitudes towards the potential risks of seizure triggers like flash photography here.

People who make a big deal about presuming competence and supporting human rights for all need to practise what they preach. Don’t use fancy slogans if you don’t actually mean it, especially when this is literally a life-or-death matter. People can die from seizures and it’s one of the last things people should be taking lightly.

I had my own incidents of fail. They’re definitely not life-threatening like a seizure trigger, but they’re still shitty enough that they need calling out.

When I was there there was a woman who would constantly try to touch people without their consent. I’d feel a light tap on my shoulder or back nearly every time I passed her. You’d think she would have been told that this was an access issue because a lot of us autistic folks have startle response issues or sensory needs regarding touch, but no! I did hear somebody say ‘don’t touch’ to her once, but she didn’t stop and continued to do it throughout the conference. This woman turned out to be the sister of one of the people who was presuming incompetence on the part of the flash photographer so… I really don’t fucking know what’s going on, but if you want to talk about accessibility, look at your own damn family. I don’t like people randomly touching me at odd times without my express consent. Your right to do what you want ends where my body begins.

Later, I presented on a panel about autism and race with some of the only people of colour/non-white people who were at the conference: Kassiane, Lydia Brown and Morénike Onaiwu. My portion of the presentation was about racial profiling and how it intersects with autism, primarily about how ‘odd’ behaviour can be interpreted as seeming drunk or high, and how many people end up with dangerous – or even fatal – interactions with the police. At the end of the panel, Sandi (she of ‘maybe you don’t belong here if you have epileptic seizures’) asked me ‘as a black man, how are you afraid of the police’ (paraphrase). Like, seriously, what the fuck? I spent ten fucking minutes talking about why law enforcement is such a danger for black people and you ask me THAT question? If you’d actually listened, maybe you’d have avoided parting your lips to ask that nonsense.

(More from Wandering Autistic and Turtle is a Verb)

Don’t compare Rachel Doležal with Caitlyn Jenner

13th June 2015 by Finn Gardiner 1 Comment

(Editor’s note: this post is an expanded version of a Facebook status, made after some people were making one-to-one comparisons between the two.)

Please don’t equate the Rachel Doležal scandal with Caitlyn Jenner or other trans people’s transitions and gender identities. This is not only for people who wish to criticise both Doležal and Jenner, but for those who want to defend Doležal’s deception on the ground that her behaviour is no different from that of Caitlyn Jenner after she announced her gender transition.

This is why you shouldn’t equate Rachel Doležal and Caitlyn Jenner.

There’s a difference between gender identity and race. Gender is personal in a way that race isn’t.

Somebody’s race is bounded by the community or communities they were brought up in. It’s external. By contrast, gender is based on a lot of internal self-perception. There are several ways of expressing maleness, femaleness and non-binary identities, whereas ‘expressing blackness’ or ‘expressing East Asianness’ are based on phenotypic classifications of people. A skin colour isn’t even a culture; it’s just an appearance. When Rachel Doležal attempted to take on the appearance of a black woman for nearly a decade, she based that blackness on phenotype. She defined the community based on the colour of her skin and the texture of her hair, rather than by their culture and traditions. That act is in fact racist and deeply hurtful.

That’s different from gender identity identity in all its different permutations, which transcends different cultures and ‘races’. In any culture you will find gendered people.

It also seems as though Doležal has a background of lying to elicit more sympathy or to garner her more advantages. She’s lied about her childhood, claiming that she had to hunt for food with bows and arrows and that she was born in a tipi in Montana. She also claimed to have grown up in South Africa and Colorado, when her family and adopted brothers ended up living in South Africa on a missions trip after Doležal was an independent adult. She had, in fact, never visited them there. She lied about her family composition as well, claiming her adopted brother was her so and saying that an unrelated black man was her biological father and that her actual biological father was her stepfather.

And again, Doležal fabricated parts of her past in order to create a black identity; Caitlyn Jenner didn’t fabricate anything through her transition.

When people transition to reflect their gender identity, they don’t change their entire past to match a newly adopted identity. They don’t lie about who their parents or siblings or children are. They don’t say they’ve lived in countries or states they’ve never been to. This isn’t remotely the same thing. (Caveat: I know in the past many trans people were encouraged by doctors to hide their pasts in order to assimilate in the community, but this is 2015; it’s different for most trans people now. And yet again, gender transition is in no way, shape or form related to Doležal’s web of lies.) In any case her behaviour stinks of cynicism and opportunism.

I don’t have an issue with her being involved with the NAACP or teaching Africana Studies. I have an issue with her fabricating her past and trying to pass herself off as black so that she could get a job. I recognise that she may be struggling with some mental health issues or other difficulties. From that standpoint I extend the same level of sympathy I would towards any other struggling human being, but that doesn’t mean I will in any way, shape or form excuse her behaviour.

Please, please don’t equate the Doležal affair with gender identity with a simple one-to-one comparison like this.