sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Oppose the capitalist oil industry because the people in Dallas hated each other and tried to commit suicide?
That's the level Malcolm Harris's article is at.
Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags
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Oppose the capitalist oil industry because the people in Dallas hated each other and tried to commit suicide?
That's the level Malcolm Harris's article is at.
rekil
to menny cranks
Crabapple bidding to expand her brand.
She made 10k for each drawing plus the kickstarter mug cash? Is that right? Cor. Amazing scenes.
Tom A
Goat among sheep
As a footnote, I actively avoid any political links that are from Tumblr, since that place is just a festering ground for this toxic nonsense. I once knew and was Facebook friends with a trans* person whom when asked if all cispeople are effectively guilty until proven innocent, was to say that they were. I wasn't sure if they were joking or not, but later on I encountered the "Die Cis Scum" meme (if you fancy looking at more car crashes, I dare you to Google it), and whilst I wasn't stupid enough to argue "cisphobia" or "reverse oppression", made my feelings clear about how short minded, judgemental, and just plain pathetic and "full of shit" it was. This same person fully approved of this meme, and later on when I put as my status "die people whom go die X scum" was to say that "I think your status update is really full of shit". They disappeared from FB after that, and it took me a while to find out if I was unfriended or not since they started a new profile (which I wasn't invited to be friends with).
I acknowledge that this person may have been under a lot of tension due to unknown factors, and any recent, transphobic experience may have induced them to lash out at the nearest cisgender person whom got in their way, but I still feel this is not the way to go about building a better society for ALL people, regardless of how relatively oppressed or privileged they currently are. Sometimes I wonder if when people go "that's oppressive", what they really mean is "this offends me personally and I am going make you feel shit for making me feel that way".
I acknowledge that this person may have been under a lot of tension due to unknown factors, and any recent, transphobic experience may have induced them to lash out at the nearest cisgender person whom got in their way, but I still feel this is not the way to go about building a better society for ALL people, regardless of how relatively oppressed or privileged they currently are. Sometimes I wonder if when people go "that's oppressive", what they really mean is "this offends me personally and I am going make you feel shit for making me feel that way".
andysays
Love and solidarity
Revolution is an opportunity to sell lots of trousers - Malcolm McLaren's Law
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Well, no, not quite. But it certainly does reflect a bored kids take on the pinnacle of the suburban dream rather than a more serious critique of capitalism. Which is why the "Daria" comments strike home more effectively than pointing out that Palo Alto is a wealthy enclave.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
I note she does this AFTER she's made the money.
...and I presume she isn't giving away the physical originals.
Rubbish.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
I think that's Vivienne Westwood's law. . .
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
To the privilege/intersectional view of the world, all oppression consists primarily of personal experience of marginalisation. Which neatly confuses the results of oppressive structures with their essence.
andysays
Love and solidarity
McLaren has been quoted as saying he invented the Sex Pistols in order to sell lots of trousers.
John Lydon has expressed a contrary position...
andysays
Love and solidarity
Should perhaps read
"all people who I don't judge to be oppressed in the way I define myself as being are considered guilty until proven innocent..."
but other than that, spot on
Tom A
Goat among sheep
Technically I'm an "oppressed person" - as I explained a few posts back, I'm disabled because I am on the autistic spectrum. True, if people were to call me a "spazz" or a "mong", I would probably have a lot of unpleasant to say to and about them. However, I don't go looking for disablism everywhere I go, although I will highlight issues where a situation could have been made less problematic if people took proper account my disability, and made the effort to include me, but I don't want patronising pity either.
Meanwhile, I look at the opinions of autistic rights and disabled people's rights activists, and it seems their whole lives are dedicated towards telling people what a horrible life they lead because "the disablist system" keeps them down. I am not denying it sucks to be disabled, I am not arguing we shouldn't protest in order to fight for our rights, but I hate this "us and them" mentality, and I personally have more in common with my "neurotypical" friends than most of the people on the autistic spectrum that I have so far encountered.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
In fairness, (and I realise that I'm coming across like I'm defending these people which isn't really my intention), that's more than most professional artists do. It's fucking tough to make a living as a professional artist. It's one long grind of begging for grants and patronage, unless you are one of a handful at the very, very top.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
You don't need to tell me that...
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
My fave is http://thisiswhiteprivilege.tumblr.com which has of course blogged the rules of how to be an ally.
Chock full of 'hey allies, never speak, only repeat' alongside hundreds of social circumstances of people making assumptions of various kinds, repeated in the same white privilege is setting:
White privilege is being welcome at any and every event on campus for different cultural groups and not having someone think you are lost because you are darker than beige and decided to support a friend and check out something new. Because obviously you don’t go here and must be visiting.
It has thousands of followers (try one demanding anyone middle-class shut up and you won't get far).
At the other end of the spectrum you get people who parody it implying all its concerns are nonsense with stuff like this:
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
That your line of work? Didn't know that.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
Wow, almost every single post is rude and mean spirited.
Tallies with own real-life experiences of these people, I'm yet to meet someone who subscribes to privilege theory who isn't a nasty piece of work. It really seems to attract bullies, not surprising really.
el-ahrairah
forward communism, forward gerbils!
i guess it's a natural response in many ways - we see it enough times on urban when a man decides to tell women what their feminism should be. it's a way of trying to deal with that shit. but not really a good way. it suggests that people have given up on debate and discussion, or just kicking out / blocking idiots. understandable, but not right-minded.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Tom A
Goat among sheep
Another thing I find completely irksome (and tried to become a proponent of before I realised that it was, in the main, bollocks), is the concept of "cultural appropriation", which is apparently a racist attitude which white (who else) people adopt by displaying the symbols of an oppressed culture. Examples being the white person with dreadlocks even though he isn't a Rastafarian (okay, it increases the probability that they are a middle-class hipster douche but that's by the by), the use of the pentagram/pentacle by those whom aren't pagan (even though neopagans never had the monopoly on that symbol in the first place), wearing Native American headdresses as part of fancy dress costumes, which is quite popular on Halloween in the US, which supposedly acts to degrade the symbols of a highly marginalised people - although in that instance I somewhat feel that they have a point, although all the same, banning ignorant idiots from wearing headdresses isn't going to suddenly eliminate the terrible poverty which the majority of Native Americans suffer under.
Tom A
Goat among sheep
You place an @ before the name of the person you want to tag.
andysays
Love and solidarity
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
What a bizarre dichotomy, actually this bit reminds me of a few discussions I've read/heard recently at my university. Student socialists informed by privilege theory often seem to be very surprised when Muslims they consider allies on Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan do not fall into their dichotomised perception of the world as falling into righteous Third World (especially Muslims as a monolithic bloc) and imperialist West. Seen similar discussions surrounding Western role in the Balkans, turns out that Islamists think it isn't imperialism when they think they are benefiting, weird isn't it?
andysays
Love and solidarity
Well, well, well. You can teach an old dog new tricks...
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
Spot on, it's always funny to note how a lot of the people who complain about cultural appropriation are middle-class people appropriating working-class fashion. One of the people I know who is keenest on exposing 'cultural appropriation' is middle-class but has taken to wearing a combination of trackies and a flatcap.
Tom A
Goat among sheep
I used to have some quite bitter arguments (including when I was on Urban the first time round) about how the Left is allying with some pretty unpleasant and reactionary people in the name of opposing the bloodshed in [insert newsworthy Middle Eastern country here], and very soon you are deemed "Islamophobic" for stating that these Islamists, if given the chance, would do a lot of unpleasant things to the people they ruled, both Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
They've just won the argument there, that's your x,y,x privilege shining through. You've proved you haven't progressed from "being a shitty human being" at all, hence you are "a shitty human being".
Yeah I can see a need for the white privilige thing, even if the contributions are often either banal or trolling or badly thought out. The fat privilige one though, that's where it ends up. And there's no use saying "ah but that's privilige theory being abused" really, is it? Coz my worry isn't that it's the abuse of a good theory, my problem is that this isn't an abuse of theory, it's consistent with the same line of thinking as the whiteprivilige one, as are the Tumblr accounts where people sexually identify as pokemon characters and denounces others privilige for not taking it seriously, as are the people who identify as a piece of toast and discuss toast privilige. I'm not saying that skin-colour racism is on a par with the oppression felt by some of the waifs and strays found on the limits of tumblr, just the logic used to justify them is the same. People get into this line of thinking and it becomes really dogmatic, and those who raise any objection to the dogma are dismissed arbritrarily on the basis of their skin colour or gender, the takfiri of the liberal-left, and this leads to the formation of a crude heirachy of legitimate opinion based (usually) on crude skin-colour racism, crude liberal "more women in the boardroom" feminism and other things that were once more honestly called political correctness until it went out of fashion. Intersectionality and privilige might've had roots in idea's like Maoist white-skin privilige, and might be grounded in good, materialist class politics, but when you see it simplistically grafted onto vapid post-class estabslishment liberal identity politics it's very dangerous. This is a mistake and a danger and I point it out repeatedly not because I'm desperately clinging onto my white privilige, but because I'm concerned the damage this will do. Politics that unite people are shared material necessities and beyond sectarianism.
The other worrying thing is the assumption that being an ally must = uncritical and total support. That's not my idea of being an ally. If I were present at a meeting of feminists and their allies, and one of those speaking started saying the holocaust was a hoax, would I in that situation be unable to criticise that? There's literally no means by which anyone can criticise what's said unless you fit certain racial and gender criteria, basically implying that if you are oppressed you can remain unchallenged no matter how bigoted your statements unless someone who outranks you on the oppression heirachy calls you out. The idea this stuff can call itself anarchism is hilarious, but we've already seen the fringes of the British supposedly class-based anarchism capitulate to this stuff rather than meaningfully interrogate it.
That's not how you take people seriously. What kind of ally would keep their mouths shut in and pretend all these problems just don't exist? Do you not think if people who are self-identifying as either feminists or allies, anti-racists, far-left etc are having misgivings here then the rest of society reaction will be any better? Or it's just all their fault? If you can't win over us then good luck with everyone else.
The other worrying thing is the assumption that being an ally must = uncritical and total support. That's not my idea of being an ally. If I were present at a meeting of feminists and their allies, and one of those speaking started saying the holocaust was a hoax, would I in that situation be unable to criticise that? There's literally no means by which anyone can criticise what's said unless you fit certain racial and gender criteria, basically implying that if you are oppressed you can remain unchallenged no matter how bigoted your statements unless someone who outranks you on the oppression heirachy calls you out. The idea this stuff can call itself anarchism is hilarious, but we've already seen the fringes of the British supposedly class-based anarchism capitulate to this stuff rather than meaningfully interrogate it.
That's not how you take people seriously. What kind of ally would keep their mouths shut in and pretend all these problems just don't exist? Do you not think if people who are self-identifying as either feminists or allies, anti-racists, far-left etc are having misgivings here then the rest of society reaction will be any better? Or it's just all their fault? If you can't win over us then good luck with everyone else.
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