I found the
website for Dorothy Allison who wrote our assigned reading for Tuesday and wondered if people's first impressions were similar to mine.
The website has a picture of Dorothy; I always like connecting a name to a face or a voice because it makes the person more vivid than the mere words they write. I pictured Dorothy with short, grey hair, wrinkled skin and soft blue eyes. Well! ... I was wrong. She looks like neither the Victorian suffragette nor the stereotypical dyke images I had in mind. Simply put: she looks like Dorothy
should look, not the image I impose on her. I also expected Dorothy to be -- as Rush Limbaugh coined the deragitory label -- a Feminazi, a lesbian who uses reverse sexism against men, or a stereotypical South Carolinian -- a redneck who re-elects the oldest known racist Senator until he dies in office. She proved to be neither, and I found myself nodding and praising her article. I thought this was worth sharing as an example of confronting my prejudices.
Dorothy's article reveals the linguistic nature of discrimination that I also see: it's not what you mean;
it's how you say it. Using the third person, like "them" and "us", expresses discrimination despite sending a diverse message (I was going to include an example but found every attempt far too ... insulting for a public discussion
). I believe Dorothy would, as an author, say that I should use the first person, like "I" and "you", to hold myself accountable for what I say about a person rather than a group of "them"; lower a few notches on the teacher position.
How did everyone take Dorothy's article?