- It's yet another mistranslation, yet another skewing (as of gratitude exercises to snide and condescending "count your blessings"), I think?
(yes, I think this is the same species of problem as gratitude exercises->"count your blessings," and is also in the same species as "there are brainhacks you can use to turn your pain level down a notch or two"->"just ignore your pain".)
Something I'd like to poke at there (looking at your reaction to other people's reaction, and M's reaction to your post) is whose mistranslation it is, who is skewing it.
- this is one of those discussions that's distributed across space and time and not always in dialogue with each other/part of the same conversation, and more like people recurrently independently rediscovering the same insights (love/care for your body! you don't have to love your body! positivity helps! forced positivity hurts! and so on) and because of that people can think they're having the same conversation as someone else when they're not (and that's been happening with this specific topic since before Tumblr even existed)
- BUT ALSO there are some forces within society and governments and the health industry who are very strongly and deliberately trying to skew the narrative and translation toward the individual effort/wellness as moral virtue/positivity = happy thoughts = shut up about your problems = you are now Well = you are now moral (elseif it didn't work it's your fault for not trying hard enough = you are now immoral) version. Because (As You Know, Alex-Bob) if people with chronic conditions that are difficult or impossible to cure or treat stop asking for help, that's obviously very convenient for a whole lot of forces (not least Just World Fallacy carriers who'd rather not be reminded that non-temporary pain and disability even still exist in this year 2017.) And the gaslighting is very strong with them.
- so, like, you have a good practice that is beneficial and important to you, and you see someone else's reaction to the vicious, harmful, fucked up Smile Or Die version they're getting peddled to them (or being required to undergo at the hands of their social services or healthcare professionals or employers under pain of losing access to income or healthcare or job, and/or they're being given this instead of, not as well as any other form of mental health care or chronic pain care) and you say "that's a distorted, skewed mistranslation of what it means to love one's body!"
- and it is (modulo how loving one's body can mean different things to different people, obvs), EXCEPT that without a lot of clarification, that's going to come across to the people complaining about what they're being subjected to, as though you said "YOU are distorting/misunderstanding/confused about/etc what it means to love one's body!" and they're not. They didn't make up a straw version of the concept to hate. You're talking about different things. And it's not those people's fault (not that I think that you're blaming them, just that they're already copping a lot of blame and getting instructed to take a lot of things that are not their doing onto them) that the distorted version is out there. (It's not your fault either! You are on the same end of that firehose of bullshit as the people criticising "love your body". But they might not realise that.)
- I would suggest that some other phrase might help, like "care for your body" or "be kind to your body" except that the wellness industrial complex is coopting terminology as fast as we can come up with it. If we talk about sensory seeking, they'll put actual attempts to communicate nonverbally down to sensory seeking, not purposeful communication. If we talk about agency and self-determination, they'll cut the number of hours of aid people get and call THAT agency and self-determination. They'll twist anything into privatisation and service cuts and bootstraps. So I don't think changing the way you talk about the concept would even help. :(
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2017-09-13 06:20 am (UTC)- It's yet another mistranslation, yet another skewing (as of gratitude exercises to snide and condescending "count your blessings"), I think?
(yes, I think this is the same species of problem as gratitude exercises->"count your blessings," and is also in the same species as "there are brainhacks you can use to turn your pain level down a notch or two"->"just ignore your pain".)
Something I'd like to poke at there (looking at your reaction to other people's reaction, and M's reaction to your post) is whose mistranslation it is, who is skewing it.
- this is one of those discussions that's distributed across space and time and not always in dialogue with each other/part of the same conversation, and more like people recurrently independently rediscovering the same insights (love/care for your body! you don't have to love your body! positivity helps! forced positivity hurts! and so on) and because of that people can think they're having the same conversation as someone else when they're not (and that's been happening with this specific topic since before Tumblr even existed)
- BUT ALSO there are some forces within society and governments and the health industry who are very strongly and deliberately trying to skew the narrative and translation toward the individual effort/wellness as moral virtue/positivity = happy thoughts = shut up about your problems = you are now Well = you are now moral (elseif it didn't work it's your fault for not trying hard enough = you are now immoral) version. Because (As You Know, Alex-Bob) if people with chronic conditions that are difficult or impossible to cure or treat stop asking for help, that's obviously very convenient for a whole lot of forces (not least Just World Fallacy carriers who'd rather not be reminded that non-temporary pain and disability even still exist in this year 2017.) And the gaslighting is very strong with them.
- so, like, you have a good practice that is beneficial and important to you, and you see someone else's reaction to the vicious, harmful, fucked up Smile Or Die version they're getting peddled to them (or being required to undergo at the hands of their social services or healthcare professionals or employers under pain of losing access to income or healthcare or job, and/or they're being given this instead of, not as well as any other form of mental health care or chronic pain care) and you say "that's a distorted, skewed mistranslation of what it means to love one's body!"
- and it is (modulo how loving one's body can mean different things to different people, obvs), EXCEPT that without a lot of clarification, that's going to come across to the people complaining about what they're being subjected to, as though you said "YOU are distorting/misunderstanding/confused about/etc what it means to love one's body!" and they're not. They didn't make up a straw version of the concept to hate. You're talking about different things. And it's not those people's fault (not that I think that you're blaming them, just that they're already copping a lot of blame and getting instructed to take a lot of things that are not their doing onto them) that the distorted version is out there. (It's not your fault either! You are on the same end of that firehose of bullshit as the people criticising "love your body". But they might not realise that.)
- I would suggest that some other phrase might help, like "care for your body" or "be kind to your body" except that the wellness industrial complex is coopting terminology as fast as we can come up with it. If we talk about sensory seeking, they'll put actual attempts to communicate nonverbally down to sensory seeking, not purposeful communication. If we talk about agency and self-determination, they'll cut the number of hours of aid people get and call THAT agency and self-determination. They'll twist anything into privatisation and service cuts and bootstraps. So I don't think changing the way you talk about the concept would even help. :(