there's our catastrophe

there are so many people with a liberal arts education who should just not be allowed  to have one.  like.  some people are too manipulative and self-centred to be allowed to extend their skills in rhetoric. 

anyway what I’m saying is that there should be a law against it and if someone can find a way to make such a law practicable and effective and put it in effect then that is it, statists you have won the great debate, I take back anarchism

there is a big difference between “making space for others” and “lazy rationalisation of your unwillingness to engage”.

a boycott is not a movement.  inaction is a form of action in that it impacts the world but it is not a substitute for positive action.  refusal to learn about other cultures than your own on the grounds of wariness of cultural appropriation is lazy.  not saying anything when your friends are getting harassed is not respecting their strength and autonomy, it is weak as shit.  only eating out or shopping or living in already-gentrified communities is not fighting gentrification.  not going to solidarity events you’ve been invited to attend because you’re wary of taking up space is paternalistic.  not participating in solidarity movements because you’re afraid of saying the wrong thing and offending someone is the rankest exercise of the privilege of comfort.  being more concerned with not fucking up than with doing good is about your personal purity, not about the effect you have on the world, and very few people have the resources to maintain this illusion of purity for themselves.  I hear so many rationalisations for staying within your comfort zone under the guise of “solidarity” and I have to say that they all strike me as utterly self-indulgent and self-deceiving.   push yourself or don’t, but don’t try and recast your every action or inaction as anti-oppressive. 

at some point I am going to have something more than dot points to say about

- how “geek culture” is, in my experience, just like hipster culture but with a slightly more developed persecution complex and slightly less self-aware status jockeying and, actually, more sexism and sexual harassment; subtitle, the deadening familiarity of nerd banter in cadence and content, a critique from an escapee

- the misogyny and narcissism of queer men who complain to you that most men are dickheads and it’s all right for you because there are more radical women out there and you can get laid by an anti-imperialist anarcha-feminist but how is he supposed to find a boyfriend? i.e. “most people like me are comfortable with their lot in life and therefore kind of reactionary but instead of connecting with them and trying to change this, a useful act of feminist solidarity, I’m just going to complain to women about how massively self-congratulatory subcultures that purport to have feminism as a shared value actually do, surprisingly, end up appealing to and centering women, and who cares about women’s experience of misogyny from potential male partners, amirite, let’s talk about the real victims of men’s shitty attitudes: queer guys!” (this is actually a thing I’ve heard from a number of queer guys and is not specific to any one individual, swear to God, if it sounds super familiar that’s because these conversations are all the same)

- basically the misogyny of men who purport to be immune from it just because they perceive themselves not to be right at the top of the alpha male hierarchy, plus some other stuff about complacent “outsider” subcultures

re: the class position of cops

this “cops are part of the working class and should be supported” thing is ridiculous, and also I’ve only heard it from a) stone cold amoral union bureaucrat bastards and b) a certain type of self-consciously “privilege-aware” middle-class activist. 

cops don’t just fail to join in solidarity efforts; they break them up.  routinely.  it’s their job.  they cross picket lines every day.  everything they do is against the ethos of trade union and working class movements. 

the fact that it’s just their job and they might not want to do it is an irrelevant objection here.  the trade union movement does not include business owners or lawyers, regardless of how personally left-wing they are, because their class position is such that on a mass level, they cannot be counted on to offer solidarity.  because for them it’s not solidarity, it’s going against their role, it’s rebellion or maybe charity. 

I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to reach out to cops as individuals.  I personally refuse to, but I won’t say you’re wrong.  but anybody who thinks you can work with the police as a group by offering them solidarity — that if you do stuff like support their pay claims they’ll support you, the way that if you support the electricians’ pay strike they’ll stand with you at your rally or maybe wire up your HQ — is living a total fucking pipe dream.  people I’ve organised with and I have tried this, multiple times, in a couple of different collectives, with the best of faith, and been miserably disappointed and betrayed. 

not to go all Marxist on you but I think a lot of this is because people prioritise cultural studies analyses of class (basically I mean ones that use the term “classism”) over any material or systemic analysis.  cops get pretty good wages and conditions.  they are the enemies of most working-class and migrant people and people of colour, especially young people of colour.  they also sometimes have people assume they’re meatheads because of their interests and the way they speak.  which one of these is the most relevant, overshadowing all other considerations?  if you said c), congratulations, you’re a dickhead.  class is complicated and just as it’s not just about money, it can’t be reduced to cultural capital alone. 

but ultimately I guess that’s not my point.  some cops are working class in some lights.  doesn’t mean you can work with them as part of a social movement.  if you think you can you’re indulging in the worst kind of tokenism.  some women are misogynist.  some immigrants want to stop the boats.  some working class people sell out other working class people.  don’t work with these people just because of their social position.  don’t fetishise their social position over what they actually do.  get a grip. 

There was a post on a social anxiety tumblr which basically went, ‘When I go to a nail salon and the person who’s doing my nails turns to a co-worker and start talking away and I start getting scared because I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

torayot:

I am tempted to say that it’s not social anxiety but racism.

I think it’s very probably both.  I see a lot of people trying to avoid interrogating their shitty behaviour because it’s interconnected with their mental illness and I’m super sick of it.   If you’re scared of people not speaking English, or speaking with an accent, or whatever, you can be both a) actually frightened and b) frightened because of your racism.  mental illnesses aren’t just some creature from the planet Zorg that take over your brain and fill it with weird shit, they work with the fears and ideas and preconceptions that are there.  and (because I just know someone is gonna go there): yes, I’ve lived with severe anxiety and panic attacks. 

side note: this is one reason why I think the debate over whether terms like “homophobia” or “xenophobia” are appropriative/slanderous of medical phobias is misguided.  people can and do have oppressive phobias. 

god, how I loathe yarn-bombing

I just can’t take food metaphors for sex.  no matter how well-crafted, I find them a) laughable, b) acutely anxiety-inducing, and c) vaguely nauseating.  this is why I can basically never read erotica, esp. lesbian erotica.  damn. 

on “call-out culture” and why I’m not into it

(and, side note, don’t think it’s a bullshit evasive term like “politically correct”)

firstly: to me, calling someone out primarily means calling them out for abuse or assault.  that’s the context I first heard the term in.  like confronting a rapist, for example.  therefore, I really dislike the use of term call-out to mean political critique; I think it’s appropriative, and also paints the situation as much more serious and black-and-white than it likely is.  but I’m gonna use it here because I think these associations of the term is part of why people use it and part of the dynamic I’m criticising.  plus almost without exception it’s people who actually use the phrase “call-out” whose behaviour I have an issue with.  they’re often people who seem to have read guides to calling out an abuser and over-applied that dynamic to relatively minor infractions. 

basically the issue I have with the callout is that personal reactions to it are coded as irrelevant defense mechanisms.  when the personal is totally and only political, it ceases to exist as a category worth paying attention to.  so the only valid response to a call-out that you think is unfair or cruel is to deploy a counter-callout.  it becomes a kind of theoretical arms race, and the winner is the person who can spot the most structural influence on an individual shitty interaction.

see: all the posts talking about how call-out culture can trigger anxiety, or rely on racist or classist norms of language use, or in some other way reinforce oppression.   all these things are true!  but sometimes I think the salient issue is just that people are being total fucking assholes. 

yeah, everything is political on some level, but that’s not always the only or even the most important thing going on in an individual interaction.  (see also: people mistaking their individual feelings of alienation for political marginalisation.)  and while being an asshole affects marginalised people in particular ways, and has a political element like everything does, sometimes the best and most useful way to conceptualise someone’s behaviour is just “god, what an asshole”. 

in particular, while it’s nobody’s especial duty to hold people’s hand, I think it’s unreasonable to expect to maintain a personal relationship with someone you are constantly harshly critiquing.  that’s an unequal dynamic and it can verge on psychological abuse. 

like, do people know the history of the radical political critique?  we know that we’re not the first people ever to think of anything, right?  it’s not always good and healthy.  forcing people to submit to political criticism they were not permitted to answer back to was a key tactic of totalitarian Leftist re-education schemes in the twentieth century; it was also a key factor in the brainwashing of radicals into cult-like terrorist collectives.  so telling people that they cannot ever argue with a critique — that they just have to suck it up and apologise — is kind of terrifying to me.   those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it, and all that. 

when I criticise people’s politics, particularly people I expect to have personal contact with in non-activist settings, it’s really important to me that I do it in a way that respects them and doesn’t degenerate into personal abuse.  yeah, it’s easy to say that they shouldn’t take it personally, but if you KNOW that a particular way of framing a critique is going to reduce someone to a puddle of cringing self-consciousness, why the hell would you go ahead and do it that way?  that’s not ethical and it’s not effective. 

and don’t tell me you just can’t control your rage, that’s bullshit, you’re not talking like that to your shitty sexist boss, are you?  I get pissed off as much as the next person.  but I do the mature thing and vent to my friends or, like, my tumblr (that’s what it’s for!).  when I’m trying to figure out how to tackle an issue I have with an individual, I wanna focus on what’s effective, not on what I think will make me feel better. 

and, yeah, on what’s KIND.  kindness by definition is not given to people because they deserve it.  I want to stop focusing on who deserves what.  it’s so gross.  we all deserve nothing and everything.  

and it’s true that sometimes people are acting in bad faith and you just need to blast them and make it clear that what they’re saying is completely unacceptable.  but sometimes people are open to learning.  while a lack of evil intent certainly doesn’t make oppressive speech or action harmless, it does and should change the way I want to speak to the person responsible. 

basically this whole issue reminds me of an interaction I observed many years ago.  a younger female friend of mine was being introduced to an older, much larger, male friend.  she reached out with her left hand to shake hands. 

he said “that’s SO rude, don’t you know it’s the RIGHT hand” and, looming over her, grabbed her right hand and shook it, squeezing the knuckles painfully. 

using the “rules” of etiquette to establish dominance

using your superior knowledge of something that is supposed to make human interactions better to make them worse

just

stop it