I cannot take responsibility for your enlightenment (or vice versa)

This was prompted by rmjwell and cakmpls discussing whether it is the job of people in oppressed groups to educate people outside those groups:

One of the things people mean by "it's not my job to educate you about X" is "I've done this already, I've answered these questions a hundred times, I refuse to spend my life doing so because so many people won't pick up a book on the subject, or watch a video."

That's doubly so either when it's a relatively small minority experience--there are a lot more heterosexuals who need to educate themselves about what it's like to be queer than there are articulate, out lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men to do the educating.

It's doubly so when the thing that people need to understand is in itself a major burden--someone mentioned having a child with Asperger's, for example.

It's doubly so when part of the burden is being looked at as an outsider, and the questions are phrased as "tell me about your people" rather than as "you're one of us, I'd like to understand this aspect of your life better."

I cannot take responsibility for your enlightenment (or vice versa)

This was prompted by rmjwell and cakmpls discussing whether it is the job of people in oppressed groups to educate people outside those groups:

One of the things people mean by "it's not my job to educate you about X" is "I've done this already, I've answered these questions a hundred times, I refuse to spend my life doing so because so many people won't pick up a book on the subject, or watch a video."

That's doubly so either when it's a relatively small minority experience--there are a lot more heterosexuals who need to educate themselves about what it's like to be queer than there are articulate, out lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men to do the educating.

It's doubly so when the thing that people need to understand is in itself a major burden--someone mentioned having a child with Asperger's, for example.

It's doubly so when part of the burden is being looked at as an outsider, and the questions are phrased as "tell me about your people" rather than as "you're one of us, I'd like to understand this aspect of your life better."

Long day

I got home just after 8 this evening; cattitude expressed surprise when I said "I came straight home from work." I was there until 7:15, making copies of corrected PDFs before they went back to the printer.

The only thing unusual about this was the timing, which was late because the design side of proofreading did a second pass after someone noticed how bad the contrast was on some of the illustrations. Other than that, the usual selection of minor fixes, things I caught by sheer chance because there was no special reason to even look at that line at this stage of proofs, and one significant catch in the latter category: we're reprinting the Gettysburg Address as part of the "Read Aloud Anthology", selections of stories, nonfiction, and poetry for teachers to read to their classes and discuss. (There's quite a bit of other good stuff in there; light-years above Dick and Jane.) I'm not sure why I actually looked at the text, but I did. Thus, I noticed an important missing word: "little," as in "men will little note nor long remember what we say here." I then went back to my desk, let Google take me to the Library of Congress's collection of Lincoln's papers, and printed out one of his drafts of the Gettysburg Address. I was right: "four score," two words, and "upon this continent," not "on."

All well and good, it will be fixed, and I'm pleased with myself--but it should have been caught sooner, except that it's far too easy to not actually see text that you know well.

Long day

I got home just after 8 this evening; cattitude expressed surprise when I said "I came straight home from work." I was there until 7:15, making copies of corrected PDFs before they went back to the printer.

The only thing unusual about this was the timing, which was late because the design side of proofreading did a second pass after someone noticed how bad the contrast was on some of the illustrations. Other than that, the usual selection of minor fixes, things I caught by sheer chance because there was no special reason to even look at that line at this stage of proofs, and one significant catch in the latter category: we're reprinting the Gettysburg Address as part of the "Read Aloud Anthology", selections of stories, nonfiction, and poetry for teachers to read to their classes and discuss. (There's quite a bit of other good stuff in there; light-years above Dick and Jane.) I'm not sure why I actually looked at the text, but I did. Thus, I noticed an important missing word: "little," as in "men will little note nor long remember what we say here." I then went back to my desk, let Google take me to the Library of Congress's collection of Lincoln's papers, and printed out one of his drafts of the Gettysburg Address. I was right: "four score," two words, and "upon this continent," not "on."

All well and good, it will be fixed, and I'm pleased with myself--but it should have been caught sooner, except that it's far too easy to not actually see text that you know well.