Nessus posted:Makes sense. Is this where the MRA people are going 'well I may be middle/upper-middle class, white, healthy, more or less without disability, but women won't have reproductive sex with me now who is the oppressed one??' There is a negative aspect to it as well, however. For example, there's a number of people saying that if you're a man, you should avoid walking directly behind women or close to women so that you don't intimidate them. Consider how this applies to a black man and a white woman, given the huge part of anti-black racism that amounts to "where all the white women at?". Now, you might say that intersectionality demands that a meeting ground be created between them, but that's not how people use it. They use it as a way to cut off perspectives- if feminism is predominant for them, the racial aspects are meaningless because they're coming from men. Anti-racism must be intersectional or it is bullshit. If anti-racism is predominant, the sexual aspects are meaningless because they're coming from whites. Feminism is for white women. You can say that this isn't what intersectionality should be, but that's how it's been used recently.
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Dec 3, 2014 22:42
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Xibanya posted:The issue is that all these things are an evolving process and many things that seem weird now are there to address a previous issue. Regarding men walking behind women - it's that men sometimes walk right behind women for the purpose of intimidating them. When confronted, they would say "I didn't know what I was doing was scary!" (the cousin of "Can't you take a joke?") Being able to separate the genuinely clueless from the malicious is doable on a case-by-case basis but to save time, some have issued the blanket "Don't walk right behind a woman," as a way to try to stop these people who are trying to lawyer their way out of the consequences of knowingly acting in bad faith. Like the privilege theory discussed previously it is often applied in a shallow manner not entirely in keeping with its original purpose. Hmm, thanks, but I was already taking it as meaningful.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:37
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Marxism and liberalism and feminism and anti-racism all were formulated academically/intellectually, however.
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Dec 5, 2014 01:06
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Helsing posted:Academically and intellectually aren't really synonymous, and both those words have multiple meanings that themselves are not perfectly synonymous. Could you explain what exactly you mean by this statement? Montesquieu, Locke, Rousseau, Paine, Smith, Ricardo, and other liberal thinkers mainly developed liberalism through the academic modes of the time, as did Marx and Engels and Proudhon for socialism/anarchism (scientific socialism). W.E.B. du Bois, Ida B. Wells and many of the early founders of civil rights were trained academics. Even Elizabeth Stanton was trained academically, although suffragism (as opposed to the later feminists) was less academic and more practical. But even then, it was still primarily an intellectual pursuit with argumentation and the like over the rights of women. And of course the second wave of feminism was largely kicked off by The Feminine Mystique and The Second Sex. Most of the really powerful social movements have had academic and intellectual bases to work from- gay rights is about the only one where the academic basis was exogenous to the movement, but even then it still relied initially on the work of people like Hirschfeld and later Kinsey, although in a very different context from feminist writers using Friedan or Steinem.
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Dec 5, 2014 02:37
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Balnakio posted:As a white male it's this kind of poo poo that is driving me away from the left. To be fair, the center and right are just as inhuman when you get down to it. Effectronica posted:Montesquieu, Locke, Rousseau, Paine, Smith, Ricardo, and other liberal thinkers mainly developed liberalism through the academic modes of the time, as did Marx and Engels and Proudhon for socialism/anarchism (scientific socialism). W.E.B. du Bois, Ida B. Wells and many of the early founders of civil rights were trained academics. Even Elizabeth Stanton was trained academically, although suffragism (as opposed to the later feminists) was less academic and more practical. But even then, it was still primarily an intellectual pursuit with argumentation and the like over the rights of women. And of course the second wave of feminism was largely kicked off by The Feminine Mystique and The Second Sex. Most of the really powerful social movements have had academic and intellectual bases to work from- gay rights is about the only one where the academic basis was exogenous to the movement, but even then it still relied initially on the work of people like Hirschfeld and later Kinsey, although in a very different context from feminist writers using Friedan or Steinem. Oh, hey, I just realized that I left out the definitions. I'm using "intellectual" to refer to thoughts, arguments, and discussions predicated on reasoning, and "academic" to refer to things built around academic formalism. John Brown's arguments in the dock are intellectual but not academic, while Oscar Wilde's poems about the love that dare not speak its name are neither, and, to fill out the fourth little box in this system, someone arguing that whites can never have meaningful things to say about racism because they can never experience racism is academic but not intellectual.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:47
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Exclamation Marx posted:I wonder if majority groups would have less issues with privilege theory if it was more accurately called 'relatively lower levels of oppression theory' I think that people are largely opposed to structuralist theories like privilege and patriarchy because of the disconnect between them and lived experience/daily culture, so changing words around wouldn't helped that much. Nor do I think that privilege should be treated as the sole kind of oppression, but that's me being pissy.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:04
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Blue Star posted:How is it an argument for separatism? I was just criticizing the essay. The whole essay is a tone argument. "Stop being so angry" If everybody white is racist, inherently so, and the goal is to eliminate racism, how far is that away from slaughtering all white people with grenade launchers and bazookas? Not that that's what you want, but it's something that's not very far away from that sort of rhetoric, because of the essentialist nature of this confusion between privilege and oppression.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:41
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SedanChair posted:I am unironically in favor of destroying the village of structural racism in order to save (some) of the people in it. Are there going to be casualties? Sure. There have always been casualties though, it's just that they were out of sight to the privileged. You are not John Brown.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:46
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SedanChair posted:However, you are Franklin Pierce. That's a really nasty thing to say to someone. I don't think you're willing to consider what other people are saying, given how rude you are. Kyrie eleison posted:Actually, yeah. What are these left-wing ideas you consider attractive? Effectronica fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 04:58
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SedanChair posted:I thought we were comparing one another to historical figures? If you don't want to play don't give me the ball I think you misunderstand what I was attempting to say. You are not John Brown. Killing a few people, or martyring yourself, is not something that is going to have a meaningful effect on structural racism as things stand due to the nature of it, unless you somehow did it in such a way as to expose the basic evils of the prison complex, etc. in much greater detail than before.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:10
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ryonguy posted:Careful man, you might slip on that slope; it's pretty heavily greased. Another individual poor in brains. When you treat racism as something essential to the white existence in the USA, and talk about eliminating racism, the final conclusions are either separatism or genocide. Racism is not essential to anyone's existence in leftist theory, but privilege (which is inherent) is something that is increasingly conflated with racism and oppression and the ability to change the structure is something that is either glossed over or implicitly denied in the language of an increasing number of people, which leads to the conclusion that whites are inherently racist and will always be so, and this in turn leads again to separatism or genocide. No one carries these out to their logical conclusions, but the intermediate conclusion of "boy this person really hates me" does happen, and of course you will insist that this is unimportant, that leftism can survive and thrive, let alone triumph, when it is falsely believed to be about hatred and condemnation. Balnakio posted:Probably not calling for my extermination would be a good start. Would you mind giving an example of how you feel people are calling for your extermination? Just for purposes of discussion.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:15
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ryonguy posted:Yeah, when people are talking about "all whites are racist" it means "whites are privileged and need to be made aware of that fact". Unless you got some sort of PC education camp in mind for that, that's not really separatism or genocide. Racists can change. Ah, yes, you didn't read my post. Maybe I should have rewritten it in words of one syllable. Then you would have seen that what I actually wrote still responds to what you said. I know reading is counter-revolutionary, but do try.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:20
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ryonguy posted:I did, it's a lot of words for "slippery slope". Also, you're dumb. And smell like poop. Would you care to explain where the slippery slope comes in? I thought I was writing about things that exist right now, in the present, and not in the future, which is usually what is meant by the slippery slope, but perhaps I was wrong in my use of tenses! SedanChair posted:Or you could, you know, quit being so racist. Privilege isn't something that you can stop benefiting from except by withdrawing from society. This is like solving poverty by giving individual people financial advice. Scratch a theory-deficient red or pinko, and you find a reactionary coiled beneath, it seems.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:23
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ryonguy posted:Are you really surprised? I am talking about a process of thought. You have not said anything at all about how this is false. I don't see how you can, really, and your little gibes are just reinforcing my perception of you as a congenital dipshit. I said that, if racism is inherent to white people, and you want to get rid of racism, you must eliminate white people, either by segregating them, or killing them. I then pointed out that leftist theory does not say this, and then advanced the claim that people are starting to believe it and/or miscommunicating it, for various reasons. You have failed to engage with this.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:29
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SedanChair posted:Wow if you think that's what people want no wonder you have gotten on a strange track. Nobody wants you to stop benefitting from your privilege, only to be aware of it, talk about it, and do your part to extend it to people who don't have it. SedanChair posted:Or you could, you know, quit being so racist. Looks like you're a philosophical zombie, and they really are able to be distinguished from human beings after all! Or you're accusing me of being actively racist, which is a cool thing to do in a discussion. When did you stop beating your girlfriend, SedanChair?
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Dec 5, 2014 05:32
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SedanChair posted:If you're saying that it's impossible to engage with the concept of privilege, and to do so would usher in white genocide, I'ma call you racist. We can discuss how racist you are... That's not what I said. Are you, perhaps, illiterate? I actually said it again, in slightly leaner language. Go back a page and scroll up and you will find it.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:48
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Balnakio posted:Seriously, are you that sheltered on-line? Twitter, tumbler there's a whole internet out there. Would you mind answering my question? Effectronica posted:Would you mind giving an example of how you feel people are calling for your extermination? Just for purposes of discussion. SedanChair posted:So is it important to identify privilege or not? Don't get upset about what angry minorities say and concentrate on doing your job. I literally do not see what this has to do with what I wrote, so I'm going to give you another chance to read it, and then I'm just going to treat you as delusional from here on out.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:50
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Kyrie eleison posted:They aren't going to own up to anything, dude. They're just going to attack you now like the OP describes because you dared go against the hivemind. Hey, would you mind answering my question? Effectronica posted:What are these left-wing ideas you consider attractive?
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Dec 5, 2014 05:53
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Minarchist posted:Most of /pol/ is poo poo but RadFems and the modern college leftist outrage mentality are seriously messed up. Hey there's poor people everywhere with no political power why not help them out a bit in tangible ways instead of raging against the patriarchy or white oppression on twitter? How?
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Dec 5, 2014 05:56
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GlyphGryph posted:It's not a slippery slope to point out the the logically consistent result of the stances you espouse. If you hold stances that argue for outcomes you find acceptable, this is a good sign you should question those stances. This is why the LGBT movement didn't argue that "anybody should be able to get married to anything" as their reason for supporting gay marriage, and if they had and someone pointed out that it meant they were arguing that people could marry their infant, toaster, or dog if they got their way, that would not be a slippery slope argument. That requires the point being that the thing someone is arguing for could lead to another thing both parties agree is unacceptable. "Two consenting adults should be able to marry each other!" countered with the same response would be a slippery slope argument, because the person in question isn't arguing for a solution they find acceptable, merely one that might lead to one (as the counterargument goes). You're mistaking what I'm saying. I'm not accusing anyone in this thread, or anywhere else, of sincerely believing in essential racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/classism.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:59
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GlyphGryph posted:I... didn't say you were. But okay, can you tell me what you were actually trying to argue? Well, I'm arguing that for various reasons, people involved in pop-leftism have begun espousing things that look like essentialism or lead to it, due to things like conflating privilege with all oppression, and so on. Then, I would go on to suggest that this is due to much of pop-left stuff being the blind leading the blind, with the main source of references being other pop-left websites and blogs, and that the only real solution is to promulgate rigorous theories that can be guiding lights for people to agree with, disagree with, cite, and build on. The issue then would be doing this. Easier than fixing poverty, but not so much a small task, and one fraught with elitism.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:07
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Privilege is meaningful. White people have certain advantages that are almost entirely unavailable to other races. Heterosexuals are much more acceptable to society that homosexuals or bisexuals. It's just not everything.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:14
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Space Whale posted:It's not it's own end, it's something worth pointing out when someone goes "I got here all by myselfs." Those are just representative examples, duder. You don't need to be condescending.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:17
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Space Whale posted:That's more directed at the tumblrs who just go "CYP" at the drop of a triggerword. Sorry I vented at you! NBD. SedanChair posted:So LGBT folks talked about their experiences and engaged in activism and built communities, and straight people educated themselves and became allies. That's really all checking your privilege is. You're turning privilege into something meaningless by making it cover virtually everything.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:22
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Minarchist posted:Straight, white, AND male? Feels good, man. It absolutely could, and frankly, much of privilege is something the average person-with-the-privilegia doesn't benefit from except in small ways. Like, you might have been able to get a better job through family connections because of whiteness, but probably not a really good job.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:24
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Casimir Radon posted:Not being completely hostile towards everyone else certainly helped. How quickly we forget that ACT UP supposedly shat all over churches...
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Dec 5, 2014 06:35
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Space Whale posted:Almost everyone would almost certainly not rob or rape me or anyone else. Almost everything we do wrong is because of emotional bullshit. I'm going to say that the /pol/ guy is correct about people acting cultish about this, because I've witnessed it happen and it's disturbing to see. What's fascinating is that this is a cult without any central leadership. But anyways, a large part of cults is the use of fear of the outside world to control the membership and the lengthy litany of trusting no-one who isn't ideologically pure and as intersectional as possible is an excellent way to use fear. Trigger warnings as implemented are another nice tactic of control, too.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:43
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Awareness is important, but mostly for the oppressed group. Consciousness-raising sessions were aimed at women, and increasing gay visibility at liberating closeted people outside of areas with strong gay communities. Awareness of yourself as part of a larger group and of that group as powerful is something that can be very meaningful. So why creating a sense among whites that they are powerful oppressors is supposed to fix problems I don't know. From what I see, all it does is promulgate self-loathing.
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Dec 5, 2014 13:44
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UP AND ADAM posted:I don't go on tumblr, but I always thought that privilege theory was just an adequate framework for understanding how some dynamics of our world work. The arguments against that kind of discussion have always seemed like bad-faith testimonies or anecdotes amplified beyond their significance, by people interested in dismissing progressivism or trolling. If there are situations like the post below describes, how are they different than activists from the days of old conforming to the slogans and behaviors of their contemporary activist groups, turning off mainstream thinkers with their own unpalatable methods and extremism? The internet offers new and exciting ways for ostracized people to gather and put on airs of superiority, but as far as the actual general population of potential leftist activists in academic circles, it seems to me to be filled with the same combo of laziness/ignorance/insulation that has typically made them the wide-eyed child branch of the movement. The problem, as I see it, is that these generally involve distortions of leftist thought and there's nothing that's being done to counteract them. This can (and arguably is) leading to people developing unjust theories via these distortions. I don't see the grand public menace people are claiming exists, but I do see an internal problem for leftists.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:50
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GlyphGryph posted:Are you just... trolling? You can't be serious. His mechanism is that when people recognize that they have institutional advantages over other groups of people, they instinctively act to redress these injustices. This of course falls apart at the second item even if we adopt a naive interpretation of the Civil War for the first.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:00
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Do you really think that southern whites weren't aware that they were superior to blacks under Jim Crow?
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Dec 5, 2014 15:17
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SedanChair posted:The issue had to be concentrated and put in really stark terms. Allies were created, mostly northern. OK. Northerners were not involved in Jim Crow. They used a separate system of segregation, one which is still largely with us. Jim Crow was a deliberate system that involved a constant reinforcement of white superiority and black inferiority. Your depiction of it as something that was solved by white people navel-gazing (not to mention that the mostly Jewish early allies of the civil rights movement were barely white) is insanely dumb. It's possibly even dumber than saying abolition happened because white people realized that slavery meant that black people were being treated as inferior, but probably not.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:32
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SedanChair posted:poo poo moron, I guess I got confused by you talking about Jim Crow. I was talking about slavery. But in the case of Jim Crow northern allies helped to end it as well. Freedom Riders? Reread what I said, if you dare.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:38
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tsa posted:The problem with privilege theory is very simple : you can't apply population statistics directly to individuals. The whole thing is just garbage. I have never, ever, seen anybody talk about privilege theory who wasn't denouncing it. It does not exist.
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Dec 5, 2014 21:12
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Helsing posted:This is a dangerous argument, because you could say the same thing about patriarchy. You can find descriptions of what patriarchy entails, whereas nobody ever bothers to explain what privilege theory is that isn't just privilege. It's also ridiculous to treat the complex of behaviors in question as a theory, IMO. And I don't think that the second part of the debate is really relevant, except in the tired left-vs-right slapfight where people end up having to smack themselves for lack of opponents.
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Dec 5, 2014 21:26
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Helsing posted:Well whether or not it should be elevated to the status of "theory" I think there's a sense that on some parts of the campus left we've reached a point where talking about privilege has become more of a form of social signalling or status building than an actual tool for dismantling oppression. I've certainly met people who seem to be using it that way (usually they are white dudes, no less). I think that the fact that it isn't a theory is important. There are critical weaknesses (well, maybe not for someone as self-aware as that guy, but frankly, depressives are easy to shut up) in the way of thinking because there's nothing holding it together, it's just people repeating "check your privilege", "solidarity is for white women", and other catchphrases. This means that it's much easier to attack than, say, someone who sincerely believes that you need two X chromosomes, a vayjayjay untouched by the scalpel, and a womb in order to be a woman, because you have to out-maneuver their theory and they can just sit within it (granted, trans people are exactly what all the tedious anger about identity politics is about, probably) untouched and almost untouchable. But someone who believes that all leftism has only improved the position of white people can have Vietnam, or Algeria, or any other anti-colonial movement that was at least notionally leftist, or hell, the ANC thrown in their faces and all they can do is succumb to despair, disengage completely, or recognize that things aren't all bad. And people that are verging in that direction can have those counterexamples shot right at them to alter their trajectory. The Snark posted:I am of the opinion that was a really very insightful article that would help many people to actually pursue improvements to society instead of figuratively blowing off their own goddamn feet while screaming hyperbole. Frankly, I would rather have you outside the tent pissing in than inside the tent pissing out.
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Dec 6, 2014 01:01
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:Your entire post history in this thread is a bunch of dumb loving one liners So can I take this down as the official GIP policy position regarding D&D? *scribbles "not tedious and straitlaced enough" into notebook*
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Dec 6, 2014 01:03
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The Snark posted:I'm sure many others feel the same about many others in the tent. As do I. No, like, I don't loving care about the vast numbers of people alienated away from leftism because of this, even if they're in the double digits. Many of those people have no real sympathy for leftism like Kyrie, have broken brains like you, or can be brought back in with alternatives. What's more important for me are the people being led down into a sucking void of despair and learned helplessness.
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Dec 6, 2014 01:06
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The Snark posted:Would it pain you to learn I would rather no one be led into a sucking void of despair and learned helplessness either? Maybe you can write it off as a broken clock being right twice a day, ye paragon of mental health. I never said that you were a bad person, or mentally unwell, so no, it's not going to pain me, go ahead and say that, with extra snide. GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:I'm not allowed to speak for GIP but I can refer your question to my forums superiors Okay, can I quote you as background for forums opinion then? I have a deadline for QCS posts coming up.
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Dec 6, 2014 01:19
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Space Whale posted:"I want to change society. gently caress parts of it that aren't with the program." I don't know if you know this, but the Pareto principle is junk used to enforce the status quo. You can't actually change things without hurting people in some way. So in order to do anything at all, you need to be willing to gently caress over parts of society. That said, you don't know what I'm talking about, so fly away, star dolphin.
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Dec 6, 2014 01:22
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