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

[J Ed]

This irony or not:

https://twitter.com/HarryShotton/status/352144126512340992

Do you reckon that anti-Shia bigotry counts as Islamophobia to this lot?

 

[Balbi]

Good lord

Perhaps people fail to be intersectional because it is difficult. Intersectionality makes you call out friends, family and comrades. In some circles it may mean you’re the one who always brings gender into the discussion, in some you’re always making it about race. Intersectionality means you complain about inaccessibility of events that may have been fantastic in every other way. It means you find faults in people’s favourite songs, films, books, or fashion items, because they perpetuate racism, sexism, homophobia, trans*phobia, disableism, islamophobia, or other oppressive attitudes. Intersectionality means people may start to find you very annoying.

Intersectionality is especially difficult if you don’t face much oppression. It means being an ally to a lot of people, and it means recognising your own privilege and educating yourself on problems some people face, that you may never have to.

But as difficult as it is to be intersectional, it is so necessary. So long as the left is splintered and incoherent as we all struggle individually, we can never build the kind of strength we need. As a movement, we have to challenge and fight each facet of capitalism simultaneously and with equal amounts of energy and commitment.

Is this ripe for parody copliker?
The Secret Diary of Intersectional Albert Mole Aged 18 and 3/4.
A student goes around telling his parents how antisemitic they are for going to Wagner operas, his friends how sexist they are for still listening to My Chemical Romance records and his comrades how racist they are for not dancing along to Beyonce songs.

Would it be seen as too heartless or too much of an easy target?

I've got a mate who's an intersectional feminist. She's black, queer and fucking smart enough to recognise that what this says is not just fucking stupid, it's not doable. So she'll fight the causes, recognise the intersections and complain a bit about Kanye's new album being all sorts of wrong. It's not about being an annoying isolated fuckwit who can't engage in culture without engaging in 24 hour criticism.

 

[sihhi]

Do you reckon that anti-Shia bigotry counts as Islamophobia to this lot?

I missed the conference so I don't know.

http://proletariandemocracy.wordpre...ia-and-lebanon-an-intersectionality-analysis/

 

[J Ed]

Antisemitism rarely figures into intersectionalista's concerns tbh.

That highlighted part is mental (sorry, ableism) though, yeah.

I can't work out whether the passage you bolded is indicative of self-awareness or a lack of it

 

[J Ed]

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...has-opposed-american-involvement-in-the-past/

Big majorities of the U.S. public (as well as the publics of many countries in the Mideast) have opposed the idea of the U.S. sending weapons to the rebels — something that President Obama this week decided to do after his administration concluded that the Syrian government had crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons against its opposition.

In a survey conducted last December, 65% of Americans opposed the U.S. and its allies sending arms to anti-government groups in Syria, about the same number as held that view the previous March. About an equal number (63%) of Americans said the U.S. did not have a responsibility to get involved in the Syrian conflict.

I like how the ISN manages to be more pro-war than the American public on this lol

 

[sihhi]

I can't work out whether the passage you bolded is indicative of self-awareness or a lack of it

That was my first thought - but it says "Intersectionality means people may start to find you very annoying." then nothing challenges that point and it later concludes also "as difficult as it is to be intersectional, it is so necessary." ie it's necessary for even other leftists and your relatives to start finding you annoying

 

[frogwoman]

Antisemitism rarely figures into intersectionalista's concerns tbh.

That highlighted part is mental (sorry, ableism) though, yeah.

I don't meet any "intersectionalists" (and I haven't met any tbh as far as I know) in real life, left uni in 2009 and i think the intersectionalist milieu (yeah i know...) is largely confined to student politics, which i managed to avoid when I was there, but a good deal of the anti-semitism I've experienced in recent years has been from political types

also, some people in the muslim community are quite anti-semitic, heard some nasty views from muslim people when younger, (including out once on a demo about burma, when i was giving leaflets out a muslim guy asked me "thats very well but what are you going to do about the jews?") some people in the jewish community are quite islamophobic though so i'm not saying that one is worse or whatever, but i suspect laurie etc wouldn't have very much to say about that

 

[frogwoman]

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...has-opposed-american-involvement-in-the-past/



I like how the ISN manages to be more pro-war than the American public on this lol

I thought they were meant to be all about smashing imperialism and zionism and and that

 

[frogwoman]

That was my first thought - but it says "Intersectionality means people may start to find you very annoying." then nothing challenges that point and it later concludes also "as difficult as it is to be intersectional, it is so necessary." ie it's necessary for even other leftists and your relatives to start finding you annoying

It's all part of your sacrifice for the struggle comrade. Trots selling papers to friends and family might be found annoying as well, but only to the backward layers

 

[frogwoman]

Christ that's bad.

To be fair he was talking businesses below a certain size, but still

 

[J Ed]

http://revsocs.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/rape-assads-secret-weapon/

The fact that the rebels also use rape as a weapon of war seems to have passed them by?

 

[frogwoman]

I thought the left the swaps to get away from this shit.

 

[J Ed]

I suspect that a lot of the ISN think that one of the problems with what went on, and failure of leadership, was a result of a lack of intersectionality/identity politics which I'm sure is an idea that was compounded by the leadership accusing them all of being autonomists and rad fems.

 

[el-ahrairah]

i'm getting quite sick of the term Calling Out.

i don't want to Call Out my comrades. Where i believe they are wrong, mistaken, or ignorant I want to have a polite word, a bit of the old dialectic, understand where they're coming from, try and explain where i believe they are wrong. I have learnt from this process, giving or receiving.

i might, however, make a public Pointing Fingers At; Denunciation of someone who isn't a comrade, some dickhead who is so far wrong that they will go straight to the fucking gulag without passing go. you Call Out wankers, fake comrades, arseholes who deserve their arseholes to be exposed and mocked.

is there a difference, i wonder?

 

[sihhi]

i'm getting quite sick of the term Calling Out.

i don't want to Call Out my comrades. Where i believe they are wrong, mistaken, or ignorant I want to have a polite word, a bit of the old dialectic, understand where they're coming from, try and explain where i believe they are wrong. I have learnt from this process, giving or receiving.

i might, however, make a public Pointing Fingers At; Denunciation of someone who isn't a comrade, some dickhead who is so far wrong that they will go straight to the fucking gulag without passing go. you Call Out wankers, fake comrades, arseholes who deserve their arseholes to be exposed and mocked.

is there a difference, i wonder?

If they respond well to someone having a word, but get annoyed at people calling them out in public, then they're racists (or whatever).

Remember the manual

I don’t care about how hard your privilege is. I don’t care if it wasn’t intentional. These are not facts to bring up when you are called out. If you mess up, you need to own your mistake, not dance around it.

The intention of posts here might be to laugh at the middle-class socialist intelligentsia, but if someone else thinks it's homophobic bullying of a brave bisexual voice, and you mention your intention you've started dancing - game over, you lose.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Laurie Penny ‏@PennyRed
2h
Spent lots of last night talking feminism, communism, ambition and nerdery with two amazing 18y/o lasses. Very excited for generation Z.
Uh, "communism [and] ambition", lol.

A lass at uni called me sexist for saying lass once. Does the fact Laurie said it mean it's not misogynist or does it mean Laurie's a misogynist? I think we really need to know.

 

[barney_pig]

A lass at uni called me sexist for saying lass once. Does the fact Laurie said it mean it's not misogynist or does it mean Laurie's a misogynist? I think we really need to know.

She is also a northerner now

 

[SpineyNorman]

She is also a northerner now

Cultural appropriation

 

[cesare]

I've got a mate who's an intersectional feminist. She's black, queer and fucking smart enough to recognise that what this says is not just fucking stupid, it's not doable. So she'll fight the causes, recognise the intersections and complain a bit about Kanye's new album being all sorts of wrong. It's not about being an annoying isolated fuckwit who can't engage in culture without engaging in 24 hour criticism.

I bet she's a bundle of laughs.

 

[SpineyNorman]

What does queer actually mean? Only I'm pretty sure it used to be homophobic.

I refuse to use intersectionalist language. If I have to refer to the ethnicity of a black person I will call them black and not a person of colour color (if it's good enough for the black people I know it's good enough for me), if I have to refer to the sexuality of a gay person I will call them gay (if it's good enough for the gay people I know etc) and if I have to refer to the gender of a woman I will call her a lass (if it's good enough etc).

I'll probably end up looking very politically incorrect like my (communist, staunchly antiracist) grandad who insisted on calling black people coloured up until his death in 1998 because he thought black was racist and coloured was the nice way of saying it (if it's good enough for him etc) but I think that's preferable to having my language policed by Laurie fucking Penny.

 

[cesare]

What does queer actually mean? Only I'm pretty sure it used to be homophobic.

I refuse to use intersectionalist language. If I have to refer to the ethnicity of a black person I will call them black and not a person of colour color (if it's good enough for the black people I know it's good enough for me), if I have to refer to the sexuality of a gay person I will call them gay (if it's good enough for the gay people I know etc) and if I have to refer to the gender of a woman I will call her a lass (if it's good enough etc).

I'll probably end up looking very politically incorrect like my (communist, staunchly antiracist) grandad who insisted on calling black people coloured up until his death in 1998 because he thought black was racist and coloured was the nice way of saying it (if it's good enough for him etc) but I think that's preferable to having my language policed by Laurie fucking Penny.

Most people don't tie themselves up in knots over thinking this shit. You just pay attention in normal day to day stuff and maybe adapt your language from (eg) coloured to black just as a gradual thing. Queer used to be a derogatory term, now it's not. It's not that big a deal.

 

[cesare]

Do normal people differentiate between the avid intersectionalists and the avid anti-intersectionalists?

 

[SpineyNorman]

What does queer actually mean though? Is it basically the same as gay?

 

[DotCommunist]

I don’t care about how hard your privilege is. I don’t care if it wasn’t intentional. These are not facts to bring up when you are called out. If you mess up, you need to own your mistake, not dance around it.

how long before these clowns bring back self-criticism sessions?

 

[Superdupastupor]

What does queer actually mean though? Is it basically the same as gay?

someone who is either not heterosexual, hetro-normative or identifies as their born sex .... so i think asexuals, people in polyamorous set-ups....... hmmm i wonder if a *patriarch with multiple concubines would count as 'queer' that kind of thing

*or the other way round.

 

[Balbi]

I bet she's a bundle of laughs.

She is. Her night bus rant about Owen Jones and Laurie Penny would have fitted in perfectly here.

 

[DaveCinzano]

What does queer actually mean though? Is it basically the same as gay?

Not gay as in happy but queer as in FUCK YOU

 

[frogwoman]

People used to call gay people etc queer when i was at school, I generally don't use it because it brings back some bad memories.

 

[emanymton]

A lass at uni called me sexist for saying lass once. Does the fact Laurie said it mean it's not misogynist or does it mean Laurie's a misogynist? I think we really need to know.

When you say it it's misogynist when Laurie says it it's hip and ironic.



Actually I do dislike the word lass, could someone who bothers with this twitter shite have a go at her for me. Thanks

 

[killer b]

What does queer actually mean though? Is it basically the same as gay?

it's an umbrella term for LGBT these days i believe.