Keep Your Shit Frosting
CW: feces-analogy, bigotry and “allies”
It’s A Metaphor
Them: “I made you cookies, I’m sure you will like them!”
Me: “Oh thank … wait, what is that on the cookies?”
Them: “What do you mean?”
Me: “There’s brown frosting on them and it stinks…”
Them: “What? I made you cookies!”
Me: “… is that frosting… shit?”
Them: “What are you on about?”
Me: “You’re offering me cookies with shit frosting and then you expect me to like them?”
Them: “You’re ungrateful. That’s not shit in the frosting, and even if it was, it’s just the frosting, the cookies are fine and I really thought you’d appreciate me baking you cookies.”
Me: “I really do like cookies, but not frosted with shit! You wouldn’t like that either.”
Them: “I’d never be so rude as to insult someone who made me cookies. That must be the reason why no one ever bakes you cookies.”
It’s An Insult
So this happens often enough for me to come up with a name for it. Of course it’s not literal, but maybe that would be preferable, because at least then I could throw the physical cookies after people.
Shit frosting is not just someone raining on your parade or an aspect of a thing you would otherwise enjoy that ruins that enjoyment for you. Shit frosting is specifically something that marginalized people experience at the hands of people that claim to be sympathetic to them and aware of their oppression.
Shit frosting is when “allies” express their allyship for you by invoking your oppression but expecting you to be grateful for it. For example by saying that they totally support <your marginalized identity> because you people simply can’t help yourself being <prejudiced assumption against your marginalized identity>. Or they garnish it with some harmful stereotype or trope about <your marginalized identity> that they think is sensible, but really, really isn’t. They say these things and think of themselves as aware and righteous, as your saviors and better than their peers for at least being educated on your plight. And even on social media they manage to look at you with that expectation of gratitude for having being served a cookie with shit frosting.
And if you are not grateful, you are treated to whatever indignant ally rant is currently in fashion, that will inevitably blame you for people offering you shit frosting in the first place. Because how dare you not consume some feces with your cookie. Obviously you think of yourself as too good for cookies, otherwise you’d accept a little shit in your food. And I mean, aren’t you people kinda used to eating shit? What does a little more hurt, if it makes an ally feel good? The ally totally meant this as a nice gesture, and you’re being rude and hostile by starting an argument that instantly makes the ally regret having cared at all. Maybe you simply deserved the shit frosting after all.
It’s Collateral Damage
A different form of shit frosting is spicing an otherwise good message, especially those that are critical of, unpack, expose or otherwise tackle one form of oppression, with an awful one. Quite often this happens by invoking or even leveraging another form of oppression against it. People will make a sensible point and then end it on a punchline that invokes a different form of oppression. Or they will use slurs against bigots that are — often unbeknownst to them, but still — bigoted and oppressive themselves and will harm not the bigots, but the actual recipients of that oppression. And while this is about as common among marginalized as privileged people, it usually comes from people who are not marginalized by the specific oppression they invoke and leverage.
And this makes them quite righteously angry when you point it out, and a lot like the indignant “allies”, they will have none of that and pivot on a pinhead and claim that you’re the problem and probably in cahoots with the oppression they spoke out against, making it clear that they think of the oppression they themselves invoked or leveraged as second grade and the people affected by their reproduction of oppression as less deserving of protection and defense than themselves.
It’s an Example
I wanted to keep this short and sweet and frankly could not decide on what examples to use, as it would inevitably lead to me giving a platform to some and erasing another. But I do think that every marginalized person can give you an example. If you’re one of them and you want to share your example, let me know. Share your favorite shit frosting examples with us by sending it to me on the platform of your choice and I will add it here, with or without name. As an example for an example:
Cat:
It feels like very second anti-oppressive message either has an ableist/sanist slur as an opener or as a punchline, like “Nazis are idi*ts”, as if that wasn’t the same eugenics languge the Nazis used themselves. Another favorite are cis feminists that clamour on about how (cis) women are erased and oppressed while at the same time using horribly transantagonistic terms and comparisons that erase trans and polynary (non-binary) people.
