You see something absurd. You hear something absurd. You read something absurd = Yeah,TNTG. Posts tagged intelligence.
it may be time for me to get rid of a few value judgments.
I’ve seen several posts by different people (and had others reblog my own posts disagreeing with some things I said) that have made me think on this.
For example, “strength”. It is an entirely subjective thing. Some people think it’s all about physical strength, other people think of emotional strength, and others still just don’t like the idea at all. I’ve found that I constantly toe this line in my head between “I am not strong, i’m just lucky”, and “I am a superhero with super strength”.
The “luck” part is what I am concerned about. Because my “strength” is derived from my sheer luck in having a family with strong values, decent financial and educational resources, having been born in a modernized country, etc. It would be much harder to deal with abuse and rape if I did not have these resources behind me— things which I take for granted and forget about existing around me all of the time.
Someone could say I’m strong for making X choice, but for others, they don’t even have the opportunity to make a decision in the first place (maybe they are from a poorer background, for example). So to call it all my own doing is just ridiculous and unrealistic. (Emotional) Strength is subjective. There’s no way to measure it in some quantitative way like you can with weight-lifting. It just is and it’s a different thing from person to person.
You also have to think about who is deciding these things. Who’s defining them? Because the mainstream idea of what strength is = white, able-bodied, neurotypical, cis gender man. It is all questionable.
Another judgement I worry about is intelligence— it doesn’t make sense to judge people just because they were born into crappy schooling, or they just think and feel differently due to genetics or upbringing. And it’s not even a binary path— there’s many different kinds of intelligence— many different ways of thinking and experiencing. Who decides what is the “best” or the “worst “?
“ Ableism must be included in our analysis of oppression and in our conversations about violence, responses to violence and ending violence. Ableism cuts across all of our movements because ableism dictates how bodies should function against a mythical norm—an able-bodied standard of white supremacy, heterosexism, sexism, economic exploitation, moral/religious beliefs, age and ability. Ableism set the stage for queer and trans people to be institutionalized as mentally disabled; for communities of color to be understood as less capable, smart and intelligent, therefore “naturally” fit for slave labor; for women’s bodies to be used to produce children, when, where and how men needed them; for people with disabilities to be seen as “disposable” in a capitalist and exploitative culture because we are not seen as “productive;” for immigrants to be thought of as a “disease” that we must “cure” because it is “weakening” our country; for violence, cycles of poverty, lack of resources and war to be used as systematic tools to construct disability in communities and entire countries.
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Mia Mingus, Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability (via classycoochie)
This is one of my fav quotes from her speech.
(via liquornspice)
