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Woozy posted:My argument is very explicitly that LGBT are distributed across a number of different classes. On the hand, there's a class that is reduced to begging their friends and family for financial assistance, often unsuccessfully, in order to receive medical treatments that might go some way towards preventing the kind of suicide you cynically invoke in your defense of economic exploitation, and on another is a class who prattles on about "lived experience" from the comfort of their Manhattan apartments. Yes, your argument is that LGBT are identities. What lies beneath that, of course, is the fervent wish that we will be peacefully exterminated, dissolved into the general population. "Capitalism made you appreciate musical theater, or push the limits of gender roles, or refuse to comply with the gender assigned to you." It's a refrain all too familiar from communist, liberal, and reactionary alike. Gays, lesbians, trans people, bisexuals... we're a nail sticking up, to be hammered down. Hammered into acting straight, hammered into "sexuality is irrelevant" acting straight, hammered every which way. Contemptible. In any case, sneering about how I'm some rich Jew or whatever "Manhattan apartment" is dogwhistle for in your personal code seems a bit telling. Clearly, any real gay, any gay worth caring about, is going to agree with you and be poor. Nobody could possibly disagree with you without being part of the capitalist class or their direct servants, lol. Well, there's no point in getting into an argument over whether I'm a rich rootless cosmopolitan elite with 1,000,000 tickets to Hamilton and a close, personal friendship with Lena Dunham. Hell, assume I have over twenty quadrillion dollars. Does that make housing discrimination against LGBT people suddenly bad because I am for it, or is it obvious that I'm lying to destroy Woozy, the Voice of the People hisself?
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Dec 4, 2016 07:20
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I'm glad the most important posts were made on the first page, so nobody has to sift through what has become an endless chasm of pearl clutching and purity tests
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Dec 4, 2016 07:24
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Brainiac Five posted:Yes, your argument is that LGBT are identities. What lies beneath that, of course, is the fervent wish that we will be peacefully exterminated, dissolved into the general population. "Capitalism made you appreciate musical theater, or push the limits of gender roles, or refuse to comply with the gender assigned to you." It's a refrain all too familiar from communist, liberal, and reactionary alike. Gays, lesbians, trans people, bisexuals... we're a nail sticking up, to be hammered down. Hammered into acting straight, hammered into "sexuality is irrelevant" acting straight, hammered every which way. Contemptible. Ah yes, highlighting the class contradictions within LGBT activism--just like Hitler.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:24
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Brainiac Five posted:A pretty good example of the intellectual cowardice of the people who wail about the devil identity politics is that they decide to consider rudeness abusive. Since they generally are the kind of people to whine about safe spaces or sneer at "invented pronouns", what this amounts to is a sign that not only do they have glass jaws, their entire body is one big glass jaw. Okay man, continue turning your political project into a punchline. Whatever makes you, personally, feel like you're fighting the power or whatever it is you think you're doing.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:25
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One way in which all LGBT people share a particular experience is what you might call a Panopticon-sense, the need to either perform straightness or straight-adjacent gayness/transness, or to directly rebel against that sense of being watched by performing. I won't say that every LGBT person enjoys the sense of being among "family", but I will say that it's an extremely common experience, to have that relief from being able to shed the mask and the act and finally feel like your face is your own. But lol that's not about the means of production, so keep that mask on, human being.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:25
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Woozy posted:Ah yes, highlighting the class contradictions within LGBT activism--just like Hitler. No, I'm calling you an anti-semite because you're making bizarre accusations about me being a New Yorker. You could explain what you really meant with that slur, or you could just dismiss it all because fags aren't allowed to talk in the Worker's Paradise you envision. Nude Bog Lurker posted:Okay man, continue turning your political project into a punchline. Whatever makes you, personally, feel like you're fighting the power or whatever it is you think you're doing. All who exalt themselves will be humbled. Those who decide to play the game of "heh, you're turning your political project into a punchline while I'm doing real activism by calling people tankies" will be dragged down into the ground. Your only hope is to get off your high horse, man.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:29
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Brainiac Five posted:One way in which all LGBT people share a particular experience is what you might call a Panopticon-sense, the need to either perform straightness or straight-adjacent gayness/transness, or to directly rebel against that sense of being watched by performing. I won't say that every LGBT person enjoys the sense of being among "family", but I will say that it's an extremely common experience, to have that relief from being able to shed the mask and the act and finally feel like your face is your own. I'm not sure everyone has that same experience because economic power makes it much easier to find a welcoming environment (because it gives you more social access in general) and also lessens the material risk of rejection. In like, a very basic way perhaps but I wouldn't ascribe much commonality of experience to that in the same way I wouldn't ascribe much commonality of experience to someone who earns 100k a year and someone who earns 15k on the basis that they both have jobs. There's a pretty major discontinuity of experience inherent in that kind of power gap.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:30
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It's possible for an elite minority to still face discrimination and pressure without feeling it at the levels that a poor minority may face. There's nothing wrong with pointing out this gap when critiquing a movement, and it doesn't nean that the rich minority hates nonrich minorities. like, I'm sure you feel like you've accomplished something by killing the thread down enough that Effectronica and Stone Cold make up 50% of the new pages, but all it really does is display the repulsive power endless kneejerk overreactions to minor criticisms causes. Nobody wants to argue against someone hiding behind centuries of minority suffering to avoid minor valid complaints about their method of resistance. Well thats my .02 as a mentally ill gay man who was raised in 5+ different apartments and a car when times got rougher, I hope someone found worrh in these posts, namaste
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Dec 4, 2016 07:31
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Brainiac Five posted:All who exalt themselves will be humbled. Those who decide to play the game of "heh, you're turning your political project into a punchline while I'm doing real activism by calling people tankies" will be dragged down into the ground. Your only hope is to get off your high horse, man. Or what? Will I die? Will I be tortured by revolutionaries? Come on man, I'm almost there.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:32
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OwlFancier posted:I'm not sure everyone has that same experience because economic power makes it much easier to find a welcoming environment (because it gives you more social access in general) and also lessens the material risk of rejection. Economic power only makes it easier to find a welcoming environment in an abstract sense- your ability to access a gayborhood or attend a pride parade isn't linearly dependent on your income or wealth. It's arguably inversely correlated in the sense that the richer you get the more the LGBT people you know are ones who have internalized their performance completely. Anyways, are you an LGBT person? Because if not, it might be a good idea to tread a bit carefully when making assertions like this. Nude Bog Lurker posted:Or what? Will I die? Will I be tortured by revolutionaries? Come on man, I'm almost there. You'll probably have to live with the realization that you were a huge cock, unless of course that drives you into an existential despair.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:32
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Brainiac Five posted:Economic power only makes it easier to find a welcoming environment in an abstract sense- your ability to access a gayborhood or attend a pride parade isn't linearly dependent on your income or wealth. It's arguably inversely correlated in the sense that the richer you get the more the LGBT people you know are ones who have internalized their performance completely. Technically, I guess? I'm bisexual so of course I have the option of completely passing which is another good way that there's a limited amount of similarity of experience under the LGBT umbrella. As a union to advance collectve interests it's great but I'm wary of complacency about how natural that alliance is, we do not all want or need the same things or have the same experiences, and obviously I can very much consider someone an enemy because of their economic class regardless of their sexuality. Like, my experience isn't the same as someone who is say, trans and destitute. Because it doesn't cause me a lot of distress to just hide all of the parts of me that might be objectionable to the people I have to interact with, and my preferences don't incur a material cost. I should support them on all counts because they're on the lovely end of a bunch of different kinds of oppression, but it'd be pretty dishonest to say I share their experience in any meaningful way.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:39
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You're not wrong to feel that way; Human Rights Campaign (most notable for taking credit for local pride events they had nothing to do with and making people add red squares to their facebook) have always been low-key about trans rights, and have as late as the SC ruling been trying to shoo away trans allied protesters. We can pretend theres no intersection in fiscal and social leftism, but I don't think anyone will be surprised when fewer rich gay americans show up to the fight for trans rights. Though I wont be surprised if White Gays are used to scapegoat that eventuality.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:47
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OwlFancier posted:Technically, I guess? I'm bisexual so of course I have the option of completely passing which is another good way that there's a limited amount of similarity of experience under the LGBT umbrella. Who the hell cares if it's "natural"? All class understandings are necessarily synthetic. I mean, you could view it that way. You could view yourself as totally isolated, and supporting them solely out of charity and altruism. I don't think that's necessarily true compared to understanding the experience of being continually scrutinized for deviation as common between all LGBT people. Spoiler Alert: this sense of commonality is far more of a bulwark against neglecting disadvantaged family than noblesse oblige poo poo.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:49
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Brainiac Five posted:No, I'm calling you an anti-semite because you're making bizarre accusations about me being a New Yorker. You could explain what you really meant with that slur, or you could just dismiss it all because fags aren't allowed to talk in the Worker's Paradise you envision. It was an example: Edith Windsor actually does live in a Manhattan apartment. Look, the fact that you were challenged on a single point and immediately regressed to shrieking, full-blown anti-communism has done a better job of answering the question posed in this thread than any argument I could ever make. If I actually were a Nazi I'd be thrilled to enjoy your loyal opposition, brittle and fractious as it is.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:54
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Neurolimal posted:You're not wrong to feel that way; Human Rights Campaign (most notable for taking credit for local pride events they had nothing to do with and making people add red squares to their facebook) have always been low-key about trans rights, and have as late as the SC ruling been trying to shoo away trans allied protesters. Human Rights Campaign, noted for hating trans, had a, uh, trans woman speak for them at the DNC? gently caress you muchly.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:56
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Woozy posted:It was an example: Edith Windsor actually does live in a Manhattan apartment. Suuuurrrrre it was. What anti-communism? If it's anti-communism to point out that the record on socialist countries for LGBT people is, well, not good and that many socialist organizations and parties that are still actually socialist are also pretty bad on LGBT people, then I guess Chairman Mao was also an anti-communist, what with points two and three of Combat Liberalism and all. If it's anti-communism to suggest that reform now can reduce the period of transition through socialism into communism later, then I guess your leftism is basically bullshit. More likely is that you feel the need to stuff everything into categories. I yelled at you for sneering about how gay couples getting married is bourgeois, and so now I'm forever an anticom in the books of Woozy, People's Hero. I don't know how I'll ever recover from that blow.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:59
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Woozy posted:It was an example: Edith Windsor actually does live in a Manhattan apartment. Effectronica is either Ahuvia Harel or a alt right troll.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:01
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Squinty posted:Democrats and are currently in the process of burying Keith Ellison as an anti-Semite, so I guess chalk up another victory/casualty for identity politics you have a link for this? i'm genuinely interested
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Dec 4, 2016 08:04
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Crowsbeak posted:Effectronica is either Ahuvia Harel or a alt right troll. Nice. Transphobia. I am sure Neurolimal and Woozy, heroes of trans people, will beat you into the metaphorical ground for this. Aaaany second now.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:04
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stone cold posted:Human Rights Campaign, noted for hating trans, had a, uh, trans woman speak for them at the DNC? Following backlash from their behavior at the ruling, yes
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Dec 4, 2016 08:05
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OneEightHundred posted:The argument for diversity is that diverse membership is going to provide internal benefits through varied perspectives and/or external benefits from broader representation, that's not the same as a fairness argument. No, that's the excuse people give to folks who don't see the inherent problem with men consistently getting promoted over equally qualified women. People who don't understand "unequal treatment is bad" are usually "pragmatic" enough to bite on "diversity will totally increase the chances of getting a socialist in charge of a major US company, honest". Just because a female CEO or black judge have regressive opinions doesn't mean the halls of power should remain a "straight white men only" club. Sure, rich black people are still rich and are treated as such...but rich black people are also still black and treated as such! Does a black millionaire in New York have the same life experience as a black single mother in Detroit? No, of course not...but they don't have the same life experience as a white millionaire in New York either, and there are definitely significant aspects of their lives that they have in common with the poor black Detroiter.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:08
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Brainiac Five posted:Who the hell cares if it's "natural"? All class understandings are necessarily synthetic. It is fine to not care from where the solidarity comes as long as you have it, but believing that it stems from common experience when it doesn't runs the risk of assuming that people will naturally understand each others concerns when they don't, and might leave you wanting for support when you would expect it to come. Immediately, emotionally, I find it easier to feel class kinship with a poor LGBT person because they're poor than because they're LGBT, because everyone's hosed much the same by wealth inequality, but I probably don't have much of the same experience with them sexuality wise. Relying on a sense of commonality alone I think is insufficient. To the extent that you feel it that's great, but it's necessary to base your class consciousness on more than that, because there are things that won't just naturally come to you and to maintain an effective front people need to be willing to advocate for needs that they may not share. It's relying on feeling in common with people because of shared experience that leads to people excluding all classes but economic from their viewpoint. It's important to advocate also for those you don't share an experience with because for them, that experience may be more of their life than the things you want their support on in your life. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Dec 4, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 08:11
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Brainiac Five posted:Nice. Transphobia. I am sure Neurolimal and Woozy, heroes of trans people, will beat you into the metaphorical ground for this. Aaaany second now. Why do you assume Ahuviya's trans status is the source of the insult and not her partner abuse and preying on young transmen and transwomen? Or her multiple instances of Hypocrisy regarding her hatred of cis men followed by her enacting those same complaints towards her lovers?
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Dec 4, 2016 08:11
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OwlFancier posted:It is fine to not care from where the solidarity comes as long as you have it, but believing that it stems from common experience when it doesn't runs the risk of assuming that people will naturally understand each others concerns when they don't, and might leave you wanting for support when you would expect it to come. Well, dude, actually, Marxian class structures put 99% of the population into the proletariat. So there's by necessity a lot less commonality there. Neurolimal posted:Why do you assume Ahuviya's trans status is the source of the insult and not her partner abuse and preying on young transmen and transwomen? Or her multiple instances of Hypocrisy regarding her hatred of cis men followed by her enacting those same complaints towards her lovers? See, now you're defending the Encyclopedia Dramatica freakazoids and Crowsbeak, all because I call you names for posting like a loving idiot all the time. You and Woozy can got to hell together.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:15
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Business Gorillas posted:you have a link for this? i'm genuinely interested The ADL declared Ellison to be insufficiently pro-Israel because of some pro-Palestinian things he said a few years ago, and the Dem leadership ignored them completely because the ADL had previously been endorsing Ellison in spite of the fact that they knew he'd said things like that before. Somehow, in the eyes of hysterical Sanders supporters, this has morphed into part of an elaborate Democratic conspiracy to destroy the Sanders wing, rather than what it really is - pro-Israel organizations struggling to maintain an appearance of neutrality in a world where the US president hangs out with people who hang out with neo-Nazis. The Israel lobby has been destroying itself over Trump for most of the year, and the ADL's back-and-forth over Ellison is almost certainly in response to criticism from the right that theyre being too mean to Trump.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:17
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Neurolimal posted:Why do you assume Ahuviya's trans status is the source of the insult and not her partner abuse and preying on young transmen and transwomen? Or her multiple instances of Hypocrisy regarding her hatred of cis men followed by her enacting those same complaints towards her lovers? It's this. Ahuvia is a abrasive sociopath.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:17
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Crowsbeak posted:It's this. Ahuvia is a abrasive sociopath. Oh man, so you just see disabilities as insults. Very nice. An arch-conservative Catholic eugenicist.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:19
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Brainiac Five posted:Well, dude, actually, Marxian class structures put 99% of the population into the proletariat. So there's by necessity a lot less commonality there. Which is another good argument against relying on common experience for collective support, yes.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:19
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OwlFancier posted:Which is another good argument against relying on common experience for collective support, yes. But you're insisting that commonality is what generates "no war but the class war" stuff?
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Dec 4, 2016 08:22
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Brainiac Five posted:
It's possible for trans people to do bad things.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:29
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Brainiac Five posted:Suuuurrrrre it was. What the gently caress are you talking about? At worst, liberal capitalism has historically been no better than communism on acceptance of LGBT people, and in fact where Western nations have progressed culturally on this question beyond their left counterparts, such development is almost always wielded rhetorically in defense of murder, atrocity, and imperialism, as you now do--see Israel's pathetic invocation of this argument in defense of their own barbarity or the now fashionable line on Castro among American liberals. Arguments to the contrary generally trade in the kind of glib de-contextualization of world history that informs moral panic over the Soviet prison system or any other "human rights" abuses laid at the feet of left political ideology. So yes, repeating bourgeois lies and Nazi propaganda about the Soviets to score points in defense of elite domination of LGBT politics definitely amounts to anti-communism. Woozy fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Dec 4, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 08:31
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Neurolimal posted:It's possible for trans people to do bad things. See that former occupy member who joined the dark enlightenment.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:31
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Neurolimal posted:It's possible for trans people to do bad things. It is extremely interesting that he decided to make the assumption I was a trans woman, I would think, but you are a motherfucker congenitally.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:31
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Brainiac Five posted:It is extremely interesting that he decided to make the assumption I was a trans woman, I would think, but you are a motherfucker congenitally. Your politics matched Ahuvia and his abrasiveness. Also I cannot remember the name of that Japanese American Maoist who created that Amerikkka expression.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:35
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Crowsbeak posted:Your politics matched Ahuvia and his abrasiveness. Also I cannot remember the name of that Japanese American Maoist who created that Amerikkka expression. J. Sakai, who actually does produce an accurate and scathing critique of the history of racism and betrayal within left politics. This should be mandatory reading for leftists but unfortunately it doesn't contribute meaningfully to the question of how to get white racists to vote Democrat so you don't see it come up all that often in discussions of identity politics.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:38
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Brainiac Five posted:But you're insisting that commonality is what generates "no war but the class war" stuff? As in, if you don't have common experience with people who undergo forms of oppression other than the very basic Marxist economic sense, it's easy to think "well that's the only thing wrong with my life and Marx does say that everything ultimately boils down to class warfare so I think the guy writing in 1850 was 100% right about today's society!" Which, obviously, presents a problem in, say, America, where a soon-to-be-majority of the population is also on the receiving end of racial oppression and the world in general where women are on the receiving end of oppression, and every other form of oppression that generally falls under identity politics. In order to get a unified majority, it's going to be necessary for people to rely on more than their sense of shared experience, race and gender and sexuality and all that are legitimate classes, as surely as economic class is, in the sense that they are the subjects of common oppression by the powerful, and that power is not purely economically distributed. If you shot everyone with money overnight you'd still have racism and sexism. The poor are oppressed by the rich, but the black are also oppressed by the white, the women by the men and the gay by the straight, or at least the societal norms centered around the empowered group in those cases. So, a purely economic answer won't do because you're not dealing with a purely economic problem. It's not enough to say you will fight for whoever you share a common experience with because that's not going to be enough people, and it leaves you very vulnerable, politically, to Trump style populism which enjoys playing on that division. It is, ultimately, necessary to also fight for people with whom you don't share a common experience in order that they will fight for you as well. It's not going to work to say that other classes don't exist, or to rely purely on common experience to define allies and enemies, instead people need to fight for other classes who deserve justice as much as they do. Essentially my quarrel with no war but class war people is that I think identity politics represents an improvement, or at least a needed expansion over Marx of societal injustice and that the left needs to adapt to and incorporate that rather than saying "no that's wrong just focus on economics" OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Dec 4, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 08:39
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Woozy posted:What the gently caress are you talking about? At worst, liberal capitalism has historically been no better than communism on acceptance of LGBT people, and in fact where Western nations have progressed culturally on this question beyond their left counterparts, such development is almost always wielded rhetorically in defense of murder, atrocity, and imperialism, as you now do--see Isreal's pathetic invocation of this argument in defense of their own barbarity or the now fashionable line on Castro among American liberals. Arguments to the contrary generally trade in the kind of glib de-contextualization of world history that informs moral panic over the Soviet prison system or any other "human rights" abuses laid at the feet of left political ideology. So yes, repeating bourgeois lies and Nazi propaganda about the Soviets to score points in defense of elite domination of LGBT politics definitely amounts to anti-communism. It's not a bourgeois lie or Nazi propaganda to say that the USSR receded on LGBT rights, that it criminalized LGBTness and did so on the basis that LGBTness was bourgeois. It's not a bourgeois lie to engage in criticism of socialist programs as they exist. I don't know what all this poo poo about the Soviet prison system is meant to point to. I will say it's interesting how apparently Nazis just looooooved the gays in your mind. It's really loving telling. What is genuinely interesting is that apparently a liberal would want to corrupt your precious bodily fluids by suggesting communism isn't perfect on LGBT rights. Because it assumes that communism would be weakened if y'all didn't jack off about bourgeois decadence between two women. Or that communism cannot be modified. It's a paranoid kind of thing, but also really telling on how far your branch of communism should be trusted (less than it can be thrown). Ultimately, what this amounts to is lesser-evilism, the supposed great crime of the Democrats in 2016. We must submit ourselves and not say one peep about the crusty old Trotskyite or the unreconstructed second-waver denouncing "gender adventurism" or whatever cute little phrase they use. Because capitalism is worse. Alternatively, we could throw you bums out and have a homocommunism that isn't about demanding we suffer for the potential of liberation, but probably the reality of continued policing.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:42
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Woozy posted:J. Sakai, who actually does produce an accurate and scathing critique of the history of racism and betrayal within left politics. This should be mandatory reading for leftists but unfortunately it doesn't contribute meaningfully to the question of how to get white racists to vote Democrat so you don't see it come up all that often in discussions of identity politics. J. Sakai says blacks have it worse now then in the 20s when they were facing ethnic cleansings then now.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:43
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Crowsbeak posted:Your politics matched Ahuvia and his abrasiveness. Also I cannot remember the name of that Japanese American Maoist who created that Amerikkka expression. And now we're misgendering. Woozy, great defender of poor trans people, doesn't care, because that's identity politics now too.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:43
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Woozy posted:What the gently caress are you talking about? At worst, liberal capitalism has historically been no better than communism on acceptance of LGBT people, and in fact where Western nations have progressed culturally on this question beyond their left counterparts, such development is almost always wielded rhetorically in defense of murder, atrocity, and imperialism, as you now do--see Israel's pathetic invocation of this argument in defense of their own barbarity or the now fashionable line on Castro among American liberals. Arguments to the contrary generally trade in the kind of glib de-contextualization of world history that informs moral panic over the Soviet prison system or any other "human rights" abuses laid at the feet of left political ideology. So yes, repeating bourgeois lies and Nazi propaganda about the Soviets to score points in defense of elite domination of LGBT politics definitely amounts to anti-communism. Human rights for LGBTQ people: used for murder. Got it, I'll just keep my uppity mouth shut, breeder!
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Dec 4, 2016 08:44
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