Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[frogwoman]

He's getting quıte well known ın Turkey. I got told off the other day by one of hıs fans for lettıng my 3 year-old play wıth dınosaurs.

you need to check your dinosaur privilege.

 

[Idris2002]

you need to check your dinosaur privilege.

"Mammal privilege", surely?

 

[Steel Icarus]

Cheers for the link. I just typed out a reply to this but lost it.

I get the need to see we're not all in the same situation, it's vital imo to reach a common goal.

The problem is that where it should be about people looking outwards, about empathy, understanding, co-operation & commanality it's become about looking inwards, about divisions, projection, individuals and isolation.

Depressing stuff.

I've asked this same thing a few times - why concentrate on that which divides people, rather than what unites us? And always the answer "Recognising how you're oppressed in the same way as other people DOES unite!" aka recognising someone else who's into the concept, like a radical politics version of uniform dating dot com.

 

[frogwoman]

if i was being beaten in an arguement it wouldn't even occur to me to say "yeah but i'm a woman you should listen to me" wtf?

i mean actually wtf?

 

[Steel Icarus]

Aye; I understand the concept that p'raps a man won't have the same experiences on something as a woman; certainly a bloke shouldn't be telling a woman about being a woman (I will NOT use any stupid fucking portmanteau words) but it's a load of shite, this "you must defer to me cos PATRIARCHY" at the first hint of disagreement.

 

[audiotech]

and if you think about what she is saying audiotech it's still saying that only white christian men can have any kind of realistic perspective on world events and if anyone else is wrong then they can't help it!

Her views on Pakistani men and immigrants are well out of order too, which I challenge. I don't believe she is an out and out racist, but someone who is all over the place in her views of her immediate surroundings - very egocentric - this affected by her bi-polar disorder.

 

[frogwoman]

Her views on Pakistani men and immigrants are well out of order too, which I challenge. I don't believe she is an out and out racist, but someone who is all over the place in her views of her immediate surroundings - very egocentric - this affected by her bi-polar disorder.

for fuck's sake.

you've got more patience than i have, i can tell you that.

 

[el-ahrairah]

if i was being beaten in an arguement it wouldn't even occur to me to say "yeah but i'm a woman you should listen to me" wtf?

i mean actually wtf?

although if the argument was about e.g. a jewish woman's experience of social exploitation and a middle class goyim male was telling you how you experienced something contrary to your actual experience you should, quite rightly, pull the 'experience' card out!

 

[killer b]

I got told off the other day by one of hıs fans for lettıng my 3 year-old play wıth dınosaurs.

i think i need more explanation on this phil.

 

[frogwoman]

yeah but not on something that's got nothing to do with the topic. like why should somebody get away with talking bollocks just because they're from an oppressed group? and why shouldn't somebody be able to tell them so? i dont want to be treated like a kid.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Plus contrary to some schools of thought yes I do get to have an opinion on feminism, sexism, etc, because these things affect my wife and no doubt will affect my daughter as she gets older.

 

[phildwyer]

i think i need more explanation on this phil.

It was quıte strange.

I was ın the park talkıng to a guy whose kıd plays wıth my kıd, and I mentıoned that mıne lıkes dınosaurs a lot. Hıs face suddenly fell, he shook hıs head and saıd ''dınosaurs not good.'' I dıdn't know what he was on about, so I saıd ''yes they're quıte expensıve aren't they,'' and he shook hıs head even more and saıd ''dınosaurs problem.'' So I changed the subject.

Then about half an hour later he started talkıng about how the traıls left ın the sky by aırplanes are gettıng bıgger, and how the reason was to change the atmosphere to suıt reptıles. Then ıt clıcked. I saıd ''have you ever heard of a man called Davıd Icke,'' and of course he turned out to be a major fan. He's a nıce, ıntellıgent, professıonal bloke as well.

So next tıme I see hım, I've told my kıd to wave hıs toy tyrannosuarus at hım to see how he reacts. I told hım ''I thınk Uncle Ahmed ıs frıghtened of dınosaurs,'' and of course my kıd doesn't belıeve me. Well he's goıng to fınd out just how rıght I am!

 

[treelover]

Left Unity has just voted to have at least 50% of women on any committee/structure, etc, and 60% of the new team are women, laudable, but what happens if most of these women are middle class, comfortably off?, as many getting involved with LU clearly are, where will be the voices of the really marginalised?, it just becomes oppression bingo.

 

[andysays]

Clearly the popularity of dinosaurs as toys is a part of grand conspiracy to prepare us all to accept the emergence of our new lizard overlords with equanimity. The scales (boom, boom) have fallen from my eyes...

 

[killer b]

Then about half an hour later he started talkıng about how the traıls left ın the sky by aırplanes are gettıng bıgger, and how the reason was to change the atmosphere to suıt reptıles.

oh my.

 

[frogwoman]

Clearly the popularity of dinosaurs as toys is a part of grand conspiracy to prepare us all to accept the emergence of our new lizard overlords with equanimity. The scales (boom, boom) have fallen from my eyes...

You need to check your privilege, you don't know what it's like to be a lunatic who thinks fucking "lizards" are taking over the world.

 

[phildwyer]

oh my.

The thıng ıs, about 50% of what he says make total sense--the stuff about pharmaceutıcal companıes delıberately addıctıng people to Rıtalın, Prozac, Xanax and that ıs perfectly true.

But he leaps from there to how flourıde ıs actually poıson, and I thınk ''well maybe, but...'' and then he starts on about huggıng trees, and I thınk ''hang on a second...'' and the next thıng I know he's talkıng about how ıf you stare at a stone for 48 hours you begın to see what's really there, and I'm thınkıng ''I reckon thıs bloke's a nutter...''

 

[andysays]

You need to check your privilege, you don't know what it's like to be a lunatic who thinks fucking "lizards" are taking over the world.

While I applaud your curiosity in seeking to explore the weird wide world of intersectionality on the internet, I think you may have spent a little too much time there - it's starting to rub off...

 

[treelover]

So are the people reblogging it, do they have no idea how they sound?



Quite clueless.

it all seems a re-run of the 80's, at the local bookfair here at the weekend, one could even sense this growing move amongst activists, plenty wearing t-shirts with such slogans on.

 

[cesare]

it all seems a re-run of the 80's, at the local bookfair here at the weekend, one could even sense this growing move amongst activists, plenty wearing t-shirts with such slogans on.

Yes. I wanted no part of the destructiveness of it then, and I certainly don't now.

Edit: not that I have a problem with the idea of destruction, mind.

 

[treelover]

Having had a discussion with a woman recently with regards to her belief in the "new world order" and all things "conspiracy". I was informed that I didn't take her seriously because I'm a man and men are often irritated when a woman expresses a viewpoint and by implication it appeared I'm one of them. Err, I'm a man it is true I replied, it's just that I don't go along with your simplistic notions of "conspiracy theories" (by there very nature you can't prove them, which by that token makes it difficult for anyone to refute them), the ideas you are expressing about the illuminati and linking all that with Zionism, which to me sounds much like anti-Semitism. "Zionists are not Jews" she replied. Well yes some Zionists are not Jews, but Zionism was founded by secular Jews and significant numbers are in fact Jews. Apparently, she paid money to see David Icke and when I questioned her on the lizard idea being professed by Icke she shifted (not "shape shifted") somewhat and said a friend of hers would be able to explain better than her. Oh I said.

is there any particular reason why this bastardised form of identity politics is growing? is it just that all political awareness is growing, as in the 80's or something different

ffs, people are committing suicide because of cuts, and this is growing?

 

[andysays]

"Mammal privilege", surely?

Hah, you wait until the lizards take over and see how far your fucking "mammal privilege" gets you then

 

[treelover]

The thing is fwics (not really involved) women becoming more prevalent and yes, high profile, in left politics is happening, has been happening organically, I would say that at least 60% of the stalls at the bookfair were personed by women

 

[sihhi]

love detective, I haven't accused you of suggesting LP was exaggerating about the fact that she experienced rape and death threats in emails.
I said we have no grounds for believing that LP's presentation of such emails was/is exaggerated.

Some unpacking of LP's talk to the internet entrepreneurs/bloggers and cyber-sexism.
LP places together different types of internet abuse as part of the same self-standing phenomenon. I think there are four basic types

a. abuse from right-wing libertarians or MRAs who play normally on their own 'goad the lefty scum' or 'rile up the lefty women, it's easy'

b. abuse as part of bullying (for all sorts of reasons) amongst teenagers

c. abuse as part of a collective hatched targeted campaign over a particular issue/as a result of an article (anti-Afghan war, pro-Palestine, anti-libertarians) with suitable proxy efforts and internet cafes. [choose to confront any 'weakness' in a blogger, journalists eg David Aronowitch's Jewishness or Nick Cohen's Jewish wife as well as women journalists being women]

d. abuse from a 'stalker'-type figure that might lead to violence

Each one of these is unacceptable. Crucially, to a receiver of email abuse abuse a. and abuse d. is indistinguishable.
(Not too dissimilar from when the UDA etc used to give death threats to republican and civil rights lawyers, sometimes people who received just one death threat were shot dead, whilst others had received packs of letters with bullets and they were never shot at)

Sadly, the 'men's rights' movement - abuse a - is a reality - it is in the interests of all people to confront it head on (its bedrock is anti-socialism, supporting an order where many men are killed at work as a moral collateral to justify the gender pay gap)
For the first time ever I believe in 2011 a 'men's rights' activist (not simply a backward-thinking male business executive or male bishop) was interviewed as a witness to a Select Committee discussion of women.

On the Holocaust vs ongoing global violence against women controversy.

Men's rights activists - the type who seek out feminist blogs to send abusive death and rape threats to - anti-feminist trolls - themselves, as a general rule, do not seek to physically target these feminist voices. The whole modus operandi is to claim they are being silenced and denied freedom of speech (describing themselves as a men's human rights movement - painting feminist and socialist protests against them as 'denying free speech').

[However the organised MRAs who don't physically attack the feminist voices give succour to looser canons who do (the classic example is the École Polytechnique massacre with the MRA)]

This is what I assume delroy booth meant, when stating that the racist far-right movements have inflicted more physical damage on anti-fascists (attacks on minority bookshops in the 1990s, EDL ganing up to jostle anti-EDL meetings, attacking a UAF leafletter away from the main group) than anti-feminist trolls have on feminists. However, the psychological damage that anti-feminist trolls and e-abusers have inflicted is also very real and severe.

Obviously sexism (the backdrop) also manifests itself in huge levels of actual domestic violence and rape.

I think it's necessary to examine the political background of British internet 'cyber-sexism'. A quick look at the 3 prominent people who don't delete rape jokes and threats from. Old Holborn lives in a mansion somewhere in Kent.
Paul Staines/Guido Fawkes got rich as a manager of 'acid house' events. The guy behind Don't Start Me Off (which is where the garroting comment was left and not removed) is an estate agent manager. Staines was/still is a UNITA fan.
Old Holborn welcomed the leader of Libertarian Party UK posting that all NUT-member teachers abuse children. The Don't Start Me Off Guy thinks things would be better if politicians weren't so "politically correct" about immigration, ie deported quicker and better.

They want to bring working-class males into their movement by picking up men who experience middle-class women doing better than them, and a personal instance of misfortune with women esp. divorce cases and child custody (See Batboy). They do this, in part, by suggesting that women routinely exaggerate all kinds of male behaviour and that women attempt to silence any discussion of this fact by declaring it 'sexism' and 'sexism-enabling'.

So obvious truism: being accurate/precise with accounts of (one-on-one or no witness) racism, sexism, discrimination on grounds of poverty, disablism, homophobia and everything else is important.

Exaggerations do not help us in the long run. In the Spanish Civil War the Communists spread exaggerated claims, full of 'black propaganda' about the extent of Fascist support crumbling in Morocco and the Balearics. It backfired and then fewer did believe them when fascists in villages did set upon and murder prisoners-of-war being held in detention. Exaggerative propaganda works for their side, not ours.
Obviously the fascists are responsible for the deaths, but PCE/Moscow didn't help defeat the situation.

Once again there's no evidence LP is exaggerating, she has written about 'involved' issues:

To my mind the best one can ever do as a writer is be honest about your background and partialities and try to understand how they affect your outlook, to do violence to your own cliches, to practice compassion over caricature. That’s what I’ve tried to do, whilst learning on the job, where practical skills – how to take quotes properly, how to wriggle around libel laws – count for no more or less than emotional skills, like scoring out a line between propaganda and cowardice that you can walk along in good conscience and then, whatever the insults and death threats and character assassinations thrown at you from either side, continuing to put one goddamned foot in front of the other. The best journalists I know have found a way to walk their own line.

As more and more ordinary men, women and children without degrees in journalism acquire the skills and technology to broadcast text and video, the media has become another cultural territory which is gradually being re-occupied. Those on the ground do not have to wait for the BBC and MSNBC to turn up with cameras: they make the news and the reporters follow. They have grown up in a world of branding and they know how to create a craze and set the agenda. They occupy the media. And the media is starting to worry. Let’s not be naive, though: the professional press still has power, and lots of it. If it didn’t, activists wouldn’t be frantically writing press releases in one occupation and beating up Newsnight cameramen in another. The success or failure of any political action outside the ballot box depends on the participation of the press, and that’s a source of resentment as well as suspicion. Most journalists are employed to produce stories that will sell. If we write for tabloids, we are encouraged to feign a species of objectivity that often includes giving equal weight to the voices of the one percent of the population who believe that all billionaires were sent by Adam Smith to save the free world from socialism and should be rewarded with fruit baskets, tax exemptions and the comeliest of our firstborn children. The best I can do is what I always do: write what I see and believe to be true, and be prepared to take the consequences on either side.

 

[audiotech]

is there any particular reason why this bastardised form of identity politics is growing? is it just that all political awareness is growing, as in the 80's or something different?

It indicates to me that there is indeed a growing awareness taking place, but the reasons given of what, or who is to blame (I avoid the blame game and address it in social, political and economic terms) is being clouded somewhat by these conspiracy theorists and the YouTube videos they produce for the gullible to take sound-bites from, who then create a patchwork quilt out of what they see for all the ills in the world. Infowars, Alex Jones, David Icke et al being the main purveyors of such theories, sometimes plagiarised from other sources, whilst also making wild assertions (I hear Icke is being pursued by lawyers over some of his claims) doesn't add much to the discourse surrounding this crisis and is almost certainly counter-productive.

 

[ViolentPanda]

they got my gender completely wrong, its like they assumed because i disagreed with them i have never experienced any of this and am also some kind of sex pest, and they also have blatantly not read anything else on the site where i talk about racism and sexism.

check your fucking privilege ffs

There's the rub, froggie.
For people of this ilk "check your privilege" privilege is something they demand of others, not something they ever think to practice on themselves.

 

[frogwoman]

like if someone pulled me up for being racist or whatever i'd be horrified, because to me being racist is one of the worst things you can be. i always try to make sure that i'm not generalising my experiences to anyone else or whatever and i do try and listen to what people say. i dont always succeed though. I don't understand the reaction that says "yeah but you're not listening to me because i'm a woman" (or whatever) when somebody gets pulled up on something to do with privileges that THEY need to check if you see what I mean.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I never knew that.

However, Russian as a second language appears to be challenged over there, as love detective alluded to in his reply to me with the treatment of ethnic Russians. It was an interesting conversation with my co-worker, that they spoke Latvian (with being, like, Latvian) except in largely being crude, when vulgar Russian slang words are used. I didn't ask much about anti-Russian sentiment and xenophobia, which does exist.

I have no experience of Russian people, or others from former Soviet republics living in Russia, though. I have never been there, so I wouldn't really know what I am talking about.

One of the Ukrainian slang-phrases for "homosexual" told me all I needed to know about their attitude towards Russia. It was "man from Moscow".

 

[J Ed]

He's getting quıte well known ın Turkey. I got told off the other day by one of hıs fans for lettıng my 3 year-old play wıth dınosaurs.

That's the last straw

 

[butchersapron]

Monetise your hotness/weaponize your identity.

Two sides of the same (individual) coin.