naliya:

I have been thinking about this one post on a french law regarding organ donation that I have answered to earlier, and I figured out why I was so annoyed by it (the post in question here).

The discourse currently happening in its notes is symptomatic of everything that’s wrong with how this place operates as soon as it wants to discuss anything that isn’t about the USA or more widely the anglosphere. When you look at all the comments and re-blogs underneath it, you see a bunch of anglophones (mostly Americans it seems) debating among themselves about something that they are: a- wholly uninformed on, and b- doesn’t affect them in the slightest, and the worst part is that it isn’t in fact what’s most aggravating about it.

No, the most annoying thing when you go through it as a french girl watching falsehoods being spread like wildfire about your country, is how they’re completely ignoring any post made by actual French people on the issue. A few of us came in and gave our two cents, corrected wrong information and voiced our opinions, but are we being re-blogged or listened to? No, we’re not. We’re talked over instead. Anglophones are still happily ignoring us, still carrying on with their debates, judgements and condescension based on nothing but misinformation, without making any effort whatsoever to try and go seek french voices on an issue that was yet still first and foremost about us the last time I checked.

It’s funny how Americans are very consistent in forgetting their “don’t talk over the people concerned” golden rule as soon as the people in question are not Americans or anglophones - this problem sadly does not only concern and annoy French people. Two years after the whole Charlie Hebdo debacle went down, it is disheartening to see that nothing has changed, nothing has been learned, and the ethnocentrism plaguing this community is still growing strong.

P.S.: Just to be clear, I’m not saying that those people shouldn’t be allowed to voice an opinion, but they: a- should make sure they’re properly informed and b- they shouldn’t completely ignore and talk over the voices of those it actually concerns.