Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

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

Status
Not open for further replies.
seventh bullet said:
I don't quite know how I would react in a real life situation where I could get screamed at by a class inequality-denying middle class arsehole, wanting to use me as a punchbag to assuage their own poisonous, deep-down pathetic guilt.
Click to expand...

Bring it up with Morrisons training officer
 
J Ed said:
I don't think that there are many who actually deny class inequality, they just ignore it.
Click to expand...

Yes, they are aware of it, in reality they do think it means less - practically for people and as a basis for action - and that they have sorted out what to do which is roughly:-

1. do class struggle by compensating in cack-handed liberal ways for failing (on class grounds) liberal schemes (feminism and multiculturalism) that you klaxon about in any way you like "on a platform of intersectionality"

2. produce a no longer 'imbalanced' (too many whites, too many males, too many resident passport holders, too many able-bodied for the appropriate ratio of people on these isles) movement instead have one perfectly representing 'society'.

3. hence have nice things like a revolution

maybe step 2.a. produce psychological safeguards for the movement to assist in the correct balancing procedure while people call out/are called out. ?

Remember: "Not for the first time, following some conversations, it occurs to me we need a better mental health toolkit for hackers and activists."

Carry on activism but with more hand gestures, more empty phrases, more emotional (non)drama, more meetings about getting balances of groups right = dawn of new society, socialisation of production etc etc.
 
J Ed said:
Fallout from the Feminist Fightback party bust up

http://www.london-student.net/newspaper/news/ncafc-conspire-to-quash-phd-on-india/



This identity politics stuff is taken very seriously in London SUs it seems! Wine bottles being thrown, attempts to throw people off their PhDs... what's next? Drive by shootings? Do I need to check my privilege for suggesting that?
Click to expand...

One of the people who took part in that email exchange is in our neck of the woods (and I didn't think she was a student to be honest). The person that the weekly worker reported being genuinely distressed by a female member of the SWP disputes committee being at her workplace because she is a rape denier (despite, as others noted, there almost certainly being actual rapists and misogynists in there every day, and though I'm no fan of the SWP DC member I don't believe for a second that her presence is a threat to anyone). She's not someone I've really had anything to do with but when I have encountered her I've found her irritating in the extreme - she's one of those people who loves to speak in meetings, at length, about themselves and what they're doing - even when it's completely and utterly irrelevant. She's hardly alone in that mind you.
 
sihhi said:
Some of them - outside the student arena - have professional 'roles' in being charity types or providing custodianship over support for 'oppressed minorities' - w/c, women, immigrants, sexual minorities.

Note: Of course not all charity workers are like this, but that trend can develop within the third sector (and its progressive wing) and influence things.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. What also happens in that potentially toxic environment is that some of that third sector oppress their staff even more than the straightforward wage robbing. They use emotional blackmail to try and get them to do longer, unpaid hours "if you really cared about [X] cause, you would show that by [x y and z]".
 
J Ed said:
Well, she isn't alone in claiming to be a socialist while fawning over Diane Abbot.
Click to expand...

From the editorial meetings of the non-union New Statesman to the House of Commons bars, 'this is what a feminist looks like'.
From the sofa laughing with anti-union Andrew Neil to the gentrifying art galleries of New York, 'sisterhood is poweful'.
 
seventh bullet said:
I don't quite know how I would react in a real life situation where I could get screamed at by a class inequality-denying middle class arsehole, wanting to use me as a punchbag to assuage their own poisonous, deep-down pathetic guilt.
Click to expand...

I do

images
 
Is this person taking the piss? - bits of it read as pure agony, but is it real?:


All this is what makes living intersectionality hard. When I read the example, “White privilege is not having to feel uncomfortable while playing Bioshock Infinite. White privilege is not having to see demonized caricatures of your race in the game” my first thought wasn’t to consider this on its own, as something I’d never experienced before. Rather, my first thought was more along the lines of, “I know what you mean because seeing demonized caricatures of gay people is so aggravating!” Sometimes this is helpful; goodness knows I write and talk a lot about the ways in which the power structures underlying different forms of discrimination are similar. Plus, this reaction stems from a place of empathy and wanting to be able to connect to the experiences of others. “I feel your pain,” is basically what I’m trying to say.

However, sometimes (oftentimes), it’s really not the right reaction, because in that moment I’m not a queer person fighting to be heard. I’m a white person drowning out the voice of a person of colour. In that moment my attempt to say, “I feel your pain,” actually ends up becoming, “my pain is more important than your pain.” And all this can be really difficult to remember and consider before reacting to someone else’s expression of their oppression. It’s an odd thing to say, but in these moments I forget that I am white. I forget that I am part of the privileged group.

The thing is, not only am I not often consciously aware of my privilege, even when I become aware of it I don’t really feel it. I’m too consumed with feeling like a queer outsider to ever really feel like I’m part of the white mainstream. This is why, when someone confronts me with a specific instance of my white privilege, my gut response is to deny it. How could I be privileged? I don’t feel privileged. I feel quite the opposite of privileged most of the time. And depending on what exact example of privilege we’re talking about, it’s possible my oppression is actually kind of similar. So when I’m confronted with someone telling me, “You’re privileged because you aren’t sexually fetishized because of your race,” it feels as though that isn’t true. I am sexually fetishized, but because of my sexuality not because of my race.

So how do we make living intersectionality easier? Heck if I know. What I can say is that it’s always important when considering the oppression of groups to which I do not belong that I stop and think before I react to whatever is being said. Western culture is really bad for being reactionary, anyway, and in this case it’s even more important to not be reactionary. The phrase, “check your privilege,” gets used frequently and has actually turned into a bit of a joke among those who aren’t too fussed with social justice. But it’s true and it’s important. I should always just take a moment to stop and consider which social privileges and oppressions are intersecting and check where I fit into all that in any conversation about oppression and discrimination. And then if it turns out we’re talking about an issue in which I’m part of a privileged group, then instead of reacting at all, the first thing I should really do is listen.
Click to expand...
 
Last one for tonight:

banner.png



U of Wisconsin


II. Critical Thinking and Writing Skills:

Women’s Studies graduates should demonstrate competence in the following skill areas:

A. The consideration of issues from multiple perspectives
B. Identification and evaluation of theories and assumptions about women and gender
C. Self-reflection about the learning process
D. Critical analysis of written and visual texts
E. The application of key Women’s Studies concepts to activist projects, one’s life, and to non-Women’s Studies academic coursework
Click to expand...

If you "examine your privilege" in their dumb ways you do better on their courses. LOL
 
sihhi said:
Is this person taking the piss? - bits of it read as pure agony, but is it real?:
Click to expand...

I think it's genuine to be honest. I heard a couple of the old fellas from the pensioners bungalows across the road from my mum's having a conversation along similar lines at the allotments today.

Old Len was saying that he feels that he can relate to the feeling of powerlessness and exclusion felt by people in wheelchairs because he's almost blind and is excluded and disempowered because of that - but that he doesn't know whether he should say so because in doing so he might not be a blind person explaining his oppression but just another non-wheelchair user using his privilege to drown out a wheelchair user. Barry, who he was talking to, didn't say anything but later on he told me he'd wanted to say he knew how he felt because he has to use a colostomy bag and that makes him feel disempowered and excluded but he thought maybe he wouldn't be a colostomy bag user explaining his oppression but a non-blind person using his privilege to drown out a blind person. I asked if they'd heard of the progressive stack.

It's a fucking tight rope mate.
 
Well, 'brony' is new to me. I never played with My Little Pony toys when I was younger back in the 1980s, although at times I put down my Battle Beasts to play with my female friends' Sylvanian Families.
 
seventh bullet said:
Well, 'brony' is new to me. I never played with My Little Pony toys when I was younger back in the 1980s, although at times I put down my Battle Beasts to play with my female friends' Sylvanian Families.
Click to expand...

My auntie great auntie Florrie (who was the kindest person you could ever hope to meet but utterly barking) bought be a barbie mini metro for my action men :D
 
sihhi said:
Why did you not want to own this issue when asked? :mad:





The offering today is a bit weak - here's the conclusion of the 726 words :


"Traditional masculinity", like "traditional femininity", is a form of social control, and seeking to reassert that control is no answer to a generation of young men who are quietly drowning in a world that doesn't seem to want them. There can be no doubt that men are in distress. Society's unwillingness to let go of the tired old "breadwinner" model of masculinity contributes to that distress. Instead of talking about what men and boys can be, instead of starting an honest conversation about what masculinity means, there is a conspiracy of silence around these issues that is only ever broken by conservative rhetoric and lazy stereotypes. We still don't have any positive models for post-patriarchal masculinity, and in this age of desperation and uncertainty, we need them more than ever.

There's literally no one now or from the past to have as a positive male model for us to look up to - it just doesn't exist.
Click to expand...

The solution to everything seems to be to 'start an honest conversation'. In this 'age of uncertainty' (what's that?) we need 'positive models' to follow. Surprise surprise, who is going to lead us in this conversation that will sort everything out? Columnists! Like Laurie Penny! They will fearlessly break the silence!

Much modern feminism seems obsessed with discourse, in fact most of L.P's output centres around 'messages' that have a negative impact on women. Her writing is full of phrases like 'we were told' - we never find out by whom, but the idea is left hanging that state / society / culture is hovering like a victorian father saying things like 'you can't do that', and that what is needed is to replace this with 'yes you can' or some such. A glance at Penny's beat masterpiece 'Saudade' will show you what I mean:

Who dared to dance until dawn and were drugged and raped by men in clean T-shirts and woke up scared and sore to be told it was our fault
"There are more of us than you think, kicking off our high-
heeled shoes to run and being told not so fast
Who were told our whole lives that we were too loud to risky too
fat too ugly too scruffy too selfish too much and refused to take
up less space refused to be still refused refused refused to be
tame
Now there's obviously something self serving in this - i.e identify the problem as being solvable by replacing the bad messages with good ones and put yourself forward as the messenger. Remake yourself so you don't need to remake society. But I also wonder if we aren't seeing the result of 30 years of poststructuralism and linguistic theory in Universities. Discourses are now treated in themselves as being constitutive of social reality and also as the proper terrain of political intervention. Material, objective political relations have become rather passe. And that's why a lot of modern feminist writers spend their time analysing articles from women's magazines in an ironic voice. Then the solution isn't anything to do with structural change its...better magazines. Edited by someone in the golden circle. And featuring hard - hitting poetry by L.P.
 
seventh bullet said:
I don't quite know how I would react in a real life situation where I could get screamed at by a class inequality-denying middle class arsehole, wanting to use me as a punchbag to assuage their own poisonous, deep-down pathetic guilt.
Click to expand...

React appropriately. If someone screams in your face, assume that they're attacking you and lamp them.
Then you can watch them manifest some effects of class inequality when they call you a "violent chav" or some such. :)
 
The Pale King said:
But I also wonder if we aren't seeing the result of 30 years of poststructuralism and linguistic theory in Universities. Discourses are now treated in themselves as being constitutive of social reality and also as the proper terrain of political intervention. Material, objective political relations have become rather passe. And that's why a lot of modern feminist writers spend their time analysing articles from women's magazines in an ironic voice. Then the solution isn't anything to do with structural change its...better magazines. Edited by someone in the golden circle. And featuring hard - hitting poetry by L.P.
Click to expand...

I think this is spot on. And what a lot of people don't realise is that a figure like Foucault is wide open to criticism as a conservative thinker, not a radical or revolutionary.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

_Russ_
Penny Mordaunt
2 3
Replies
86
Views
3K
danny la rouge
danny la rouge
Fez909
Japanese attitudes towards immigration vs UK
3 4 5 6 7
Replies
197
Views
6K
krtek a houby
krtek a houby
Kid_Eternity
Collective - new left wing party?
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
153
Views
6K
redsquirrel
R
Kid_Eternity
New Labour government - legislative agenda
26 27 28 29 30
Replies
895
Views
30K
Kid_Eternity
Kid_Eternity
Bingoman
Alex Chalk time is up
Replies
3
Views
462
PR1Berske
PR1Berske
Back
Top Bottom