memes as microbes, compassion+education as cure / the worst is 'inherent/inevitable difference' meme
Memes are like microbes. They can survive the most hostile environments, they reproduce endlessly with the slightest encouragement, and they transfer from person to person without the person even noticing. A meme can reproduce simply by indirectly mentioning it: for instance, asking someone to put their name on a test can reinforce the impact of gender stereotyping (if, like most names, it is gender-specific). That is ALL it takes.
As someone who is invested in social justice, my main focus is stopping the reproduction of oppressive memes. It's about as hard as hunting microbes one by one. They reproduce faster than anyone could ever wipe them out; people have to develop individual immunities to them. But there is only one kind of immunity that I have found, and that is compassion followed by many rounds of education. In order to resist oppression, you have to understand it, and to do that you first have to give a shit about people different from yourself. Education is never the first step; a person has to care before they can be educated. Compassion alone is also useless: owning a machine will do you no good if you do not know how to turn it on.
Maybe some people have learned about the suffering of others and THEN started caring, but I haven't seen it. What I have seen is instances like a white person becoming friends with a black person and then caring about racism, or a man loving a woman who ceaselessly, patiently explains how his behavior is a problem and because he cares about her he reconsiders his actions, or a cis person seeing their trans friend suffer and starting to care about how transphobia harms people. In all these cases, if they didn't care about the person experiencing it, they would not even notice/acknowledge the oppression much less care (and doing something about it is completely out of the question). Love for an individual does not always create compassion, nor is it always necessary, but for most it is the quickest route to learning compassion that extends beyond one's own group.
The only way to begin inoculation is by teaching people to relate. This will not happen when differences are held up as innate or inevitable: if a man thinks that he is inherently different from a woman, he will not empathize with suffering from sexism, any more than he would empathize with or even notice an ant getting stepped on. Instead he will rationalize it as 'not that bad' and thus not worth effort. Intellectual understanding of the indirect effects of oppression is not a strong motivator because privilege is an excellent shield from those effects. There are countless strains of oppressive memes, but the deepest and most powerful meme of oppression is the idea of inherent and/or inevitable difference. If I had a choice to eradicate only one meme from all of humanity, the fallacious concept of inherent and/or inevitable difference would be ruthlessly eviscerated.
As someone who is invested in social justice, my main focus is stopping the reproduction of oppressive memes. It's about as hard as hunting microbes one by one. They reproduce faster than anyone could ever wipe them out; people have to develop individual immunities to them. But there is only one kind of immunity that I have found, and that is compassion followed by many rounds of education. In order to resist oppression, you have to understand it, and to do that you first have to give a shit about people different from yourself. Education is never the first step; a person has to care before they can be educated. Compassion alone is also useless: owning a machine will do you no good if you do not know how to turn it on.
Maybe some people have learned about the suffering of others and THEN started caring, but I haven't seen it. What I have seen is instances like a white person becoming friends with a black person and then caring about racism, or a man loving a woman who ceaselessly, patiently explains how his behavior is a problem and because he cares about her he reconsiders his actions, or a cis person seeing their trans friend suffer and starting to care about how transphobia harms people. In all these cases, if they didn't care about the person experiencing it, they would not even notice/acknowledge the oppression much less care (and doing something about it is completely out of the question). Love for an individual does not always create compassion, nor is it always necessary, but for most it is the quickest route to learning compassion that extends beyond one's own group.
The only way to begin inoculation is by teaching people to relate. This will not happen when differences are held up as innate or inevitable: if a man thinks that he is inherently different from a woman, he will not empathize with suffering from sexism, any more than he would empathize with or even notice an ant getting stepped on. Instead he will rationalize it as 'not that bad' and thus not worth effort. Intellectual understanding of the indirect effects of oppression is not a strong motivator because privilege is an excellent shield from those effects. There are countless strains of oppressive memes, but the deepest and most powerful meme of oppression is the idea of inherent and/or inevitable difference. If I had a choice to eradicate only one meme from all of humanity, the fallacious concept of inherent and/or inevitable difference would be ruthlessly eviscerated.
I can't stand the one where they put a picture of that little girl that probably has Down Syndrome and put rude comments.
I like some of the sarcastic Wonka things people make, but some are highly offensive.
Sometimes, I wish people had filters on their mouths and fingers that didn't let them post such things. Yet, you know a person by their fruits and that makes things obvious.
I guess I'm the minority then? It wasn't a love for a specific person that made me start to care about racism, it was having my eyes opened to the reality of racial oppression. I already had people of color in my life who I loved, but they never really talked about modern racial oppression, so I never really thought about it. (My uncle, for example, would tell stories of being ordered to the back of the bus when he was a young man, but he never spoke of anything recent.) I thought racism still happened, but wasn't as widespread as I now believe it to be. I used to believe in "reverse racism" and other such bunk, and it was only in making a whole shift in how I viewed oppression that my mind was changed. Though my shift largely begun in accepting my own oppression, and then spreading that view to oppression that didn't negatively affect me. So I don't know how you'd class that, really.
The ones with that colorful design that are okay are the ones with the little baby making the fist that have messages that are pretty much like "aced it!" I'm not a fan of them, but those aren't offensive.
It's even more vile, in my opinion, then the "go-to-the-kitchen" or "make-me-a-sandwich" memes, because nobody seems to have a problem with it!
ETA: and you also do a great job of explaining the social constructs tied to memes without drowning us in jargon :)
Those were just called "tank Ts" where I grew up, and the whole 'wifebeater' thing was such a shock.
Let's not trivialize something so offensive by applying it to a freakin' style of t-shirt!
I agree with you that compassion, however we arrive at it, is what makes a difference in reducing oppression.
That we have so many leaders and politicians who REJECT compassion is tremendously frustrating to me. Decades ago, we would have called them heartless pigs. They still are. :(
I applaud your efforts at attempting to educate and do it with compassion. That takes an energy that most people don't even acquire, let alone use in that manner.
Aside from Jane Elliott's work, it's difficult to look for places where those who have never been oppressed in their lives can at least, for a few hours, or even moments, get a hint of what it's like. To me, that's one of the few ways people can get a sense of it and have it stick - empirical knowledge.
Good piece and good work.