Intersectionality

[cesare]

i think the current attacks on benefits and support for people with disabilities is pretty darned oppressive

Also the carers, and if it's the same household it's really fucking oppressive.

And although employers are getting better, there's still a lot of discrimination particularly against people with "invisible" disabilities.

 

[J Ed]

another thing is that an awful lot of these 'oppressions' aren't anything of the sort. the 'attractiveness/ugliness' 'oppression' spectrum is one example, as if the one group were directly persecuted by the other. it's fuck all to do with that, it's just unfortunate and there is nothing anyone will ever be able to do about it so to be frank stop fucking whining and crying. the other one is this 'able-bodied privilege'... seriously the scale of melodrama involved in labelling disabled people 'oppressed' is truly fucking offensive. this isn't Nazi Germany, the disabled aren't getting offed in prison camps. no-one has to be found to 'blame' for the fact that having a disability makes a person's life harder - some things are just shit like that. this isn't an argument against compassion or access initiatives, just a commonsense recognition that the one shit thing isn't a product of the 'privilege' of another.

not to mention that it is genuinely fucking sickening to hear middle-class lgbtqrsvwxyz student "activists" crying about their social oppression in their cossetted university existences where the vast, vast majority of people in their generation and their surroundings couldn't give a shit about who they want to shag, in what costume or for what purpose. this whilst expecting a decent degree and professional/semi-professional decent paid roles in teaching and social services to last them out the rest of their bureaucratic existences. i can think of one Sheffield 'queer activist' in particular, who went to Altrincham Grammar before arriving at uni, has flagrantly never suffered in his entire life yet cannot fucking stop asserting his grotesquely inflated sense of self-entitlement to every social nicety known to society whilst constantly insulting life-long activists and socialists by labelling them as prejudiced, racist, blah blah blah blah blah.

these people are an exhaustive cancer on the movement and need to be blotted out as offensively and insensitively as possible

Liked because I think the lad you are talking about is awful but disagree on the disabled bit. This may not be Nazi Germany but I think the way that Atos have been allowed to behave under this government can legitimately count as persecution.

 

[belboid]

Taking the whole thing more seriously than it deserves..

If I get it right, the saner intersectionalists are looking for the mechanism through which the various oppressions (whatever they might be) inter-relate, the thing that actually brings them together. But isn't that simply the existentialists notion of 'the other,' and oppressed peoples are subjected to 'othering' - it certainly sounds like a development of what Husserl & Sartre argued (seen easiest in Camus' L'Etranger). The problem with accepting that, for intersectionalists, would be that there is no 'over-arching' oppressor, the specifics of any such 'othering' being dependent upon time and place, and, gulp, boring old development of productive forces.

 

[ViolentPanda]

TBH I think a lot of disabled people suffer a lot more than is obvious to a causal observer.

Surely "causal observer" is oxymoronic?

 

[revol68]

the problem is that the wheel of fortune, splits into binaries, abled/disabled and such, there is no reference to anything outside this relationship, as such the oppression obviously stems from the non oppressed group looking to gain from keeping the other down. there is no systematic analysis, nothing external to these individual relationships. When class appears, it is simply one oppression amongst others, individualised to the relationship between rich and poor, classism stands in place of capitalism.

 

[Das Uberdog]

Liked because I think the lad you are talking about is awful but disagree on the disabled bit. This may not be Nazi Germany but I think the way that Atos have been allowed to behave under this government can legitimately count as persecution.

yeah it's awful, but whether or not it should be called oppression i don't know. disabled people are obviously dependent upon social services, employment legislation and other services in a way which is out of their control, and they get disproportionately hit when those services are slashed. as far as my use of the term goes though, 'oppression' refers to the dominance of one over another, the artificial reduction of the oppressed person's life potential for the benefit of the oppressor. axing benefits, reducing working rights etc is more of an indirect benefit to 'capitalism' as a whole rather than a policy specifically designed against those who happen to benefit more from such benefits and reforms... so unless we're going to come up with the essentially meaningless statement that 'capitalism' oppresses the disabled i don't think the term is apt for the situation.

on top of this, the able-bodied privilege stuff actually has real world bad consequences when applied into the political arena. one of the Shef Uni occupations was scuppered because the students occupied a basement room in one of the University's lecture theatres. the room had a lift, but the occupiers hypothesized that management could hypothetically shut off the lift and thus create an 'access issue' whereby those in wheelchairs (at the time representing 0% of those engaged in the occupation) wouldn't be able to get down the stairs. after able-bodied privilege arguments were bandied about for three days, totally dominating all discourse and neglecting the original reason for the occupation entirely (the fact that cleaners at the uni weren't being employed on a living wage) the occupation dissolved, demoralised and having achieved nothing - not even a coherent statement on the cleaners issue. throughout the entire period not a single person in a wheelchair came anywhere near the thing.

apologies if that first post came across enraged, i am enraged, modern identity politics scum are pure vermin in my mind. i've only ever experienced them engaged in what are essentially wrecking operations on other people's events, or otherwise directly setting up their own events in complete contempt of 'ordinary' 'mainstream' (i.e. working class) people/culture.

 

[ViolentPanda]

i think the current attacks on benefits and support for people with disabilities is pretty darned oppressive

Agreed, but disability itself is only an "oppression" beyond the everyday issues it causes if social circumstances (say, attacks on benefits and support) make it so. I don't see as many disability activists taking the "disability is oppression" line as did 10, 15 or 20 years ago, possibly because we've (thankfully) moved far enough beyond a purely medical model of disability that some disabled people don't have the kind of victim-consciousness that was previously in play, and are a lot more forward about making demands on society.

 

[ViolentPanda]

agree completely, but i think the point that's being made (unless i've completely misunderstood) is that the people going on about oppression are the ones that AREN'T actually being "oppressed"

Or are sometimes claiming as an oppression, things that are a minor feature of their identities and/or everyday lives. So we get Penny claiming to be oppressed as a queer (even though, by her own lights, she's bi) because someone uses the word in a way she doesn't like, in a way comparable to the "oppression" someone getting queer-bashed is subjected to.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Well, oppression is a very loaded term, one I don't think is particularly useful. But I think it's fair to say that a lot of disabled (differently abled ) people are needlessly, and far too often consciously excluded from stuff we "normals" take for granted.

Whenever someone uses "differently-abled" near me, I suffer a near-maniacal urge to show them that I'm not so differently-abled as to not be able to headbutt them.
It's such a mealy-mouthed wanky phrase!

 

[Idris2002]

the problem is that the wheel of fortune, splits into binaries, abled/disabled and such, there is no reference to anything outside this relationship, as such the oppression obviously stems from the non oppressed group looking to gain from keeping the other down. there is no systematic analysis, nothing external to these individual relationships. When class appears, it is simply one oppression amongst others, individualised to the relationship between rich and poor, classism stands in place of capitalism.

I know someone at home whose mum made a smart remark to a soldier at a checkpoint in Belfast one night in the bad old days. Despite being dragged off to Castlereagh, neither her mum nor her dad got bounced off the walls like a jai-alai ball.

Probably because the car they were driving was a Daimler.

 

[DotCommunist]

differently abled makes it sounds like you have aquired a magic power in exchange for the loss of a standard human thing. Like say, you lost a hand but gained the ability to stir tea with the power of your mind alone

 

[Pickman's model]

differently abled makes it sounds like you have aquired a magic power in exchange for the loss of a standard human thing. Like say, you lost a hand but gained the ability to stir tea with the power of your mind alone

or drink through your finger

 

[laptop]

Surely "causal observer" is oxymoronic?

Is quantum

 

[ViolentPanda]

Also the carers, and if it's the same household it's really fucking oppressive.

And although employers are getting better, there's still a lot of discrimination particularly against people with "invisible" disabilities.

As there's no compulsion to hire the best person for the job, regardless of physical status, and because employers do not have to account for why they are not employing disabled people, it'll always be a problem. I'm really not sanguine that any advances made in the last 10-15 years won't go down the crapper again, as the govt's strategy seems to be "give that crip a temp job and we'll pay you good cash money for employing them". Government and employer both benefit, but Joe Crip doesn't, except for being off JSA for a short while.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Liked because I think the lad you are talking about is awful but disagree on the disabled bit. This may not be Nazi Germany but I think the way that Atos have been allowed to behave under this government can legitimately count as persecution.

You're wrong.
They haven't been "allowed to behave" like that, they've been explicitly encouraged to behave like that, not least because of the quotas-that-aren't-quotas the DWP set them for shaving the claimant count down.

 

[ViolentPanda]

apologies if that first post came across enraged, i am enraged, modern identity politics scum are pure vermin in my mind. i've only ever experienced them engaged in what are essentially wrecking operations on other people's events, or otherwise directly setting up their own events in complete contempt of 'ordinary' 'mainstream' (i.e. working class) people/culture.

Identity politics taken to the extent of attempting to establish hierarchies of oppression (and the Top Trumps comparison really is apt - I recall several local authority meetings I attended where different interests groups would vie to produce speakers with multiple "oppressions" because they believed that quantity purveyed validity) can only ever be a wrecking operation, because it acts against all those outside of the inner circle of initiates, even those who suffer their own multiple oppressions, but don't find it necessary to qualify everything they say via a "speak as a...." statement.

 

[Idris2002]

differently abled makes it sounds like you have aquired a magic power in exchange for the loss of a standard human thing. Like say, you lost a hand but gained the ability to stir tea with the power of your mind alone

Very perceptive. You surprise me.

 

[revol68]

The other problem is that it's contagious, once the oppression top trumps starts you find yourself working within that game even if to critique, "well speaking as a .... I feel qualified to say intersectionality is balls".

 

[TruXta]

Whenever someone uses "differently-abled" near me, I suffer a near-maniacal urge to show them that I'm not so differently-abled as to not be able to headbutt them.
It's such a mealy-mouthed wanky phrase!

Hence the

 

[TruXta]

Surely "causal observer" is oxymoronic?

BAH... casual. You knew what I meant you Pickmanesque purveyor of nitpickery.

 

[DotCommunist]

Very perceptive. You surprise me.

I only pretend to be boorish and thick, honestly. I'm hiding my light under a bushel

 

[Idris2002]

I only pretend to be boorish and thick, honestly. I'm hiding my light under a bushel

 

[frogwoman]

yeah it's awful, but whether or not it should be called oppression i don't know. disabled people are obviously dependent upon social services, employment legislation and other services in a way which is out of their control, and they get disproportionately hit when those services are slashed. as far as my use of the term goes though, 'oppression' refers to the dominance of one over another, the artificial reduction of the oppressed person's life potential for the benefit of the oppressor. axing benefits, reducing working rights etc is more of an indirect benefit to 'capitalism' as a whole rather than a policy specifically designed against those who happen to benefit more from such benefits and reforms... so unless we're going to come up with the essentially meaningless statement that 'capitalism' oppresses the disabled i don't think the term is apt for the situation.

on top of this, the able-bodied privilege stuff actually has real world bad consequences when applied into the political arena. one of the Shef Uni occupations was scuppered because the students occupied a basement room in one of the University's lecture theatres. the room had a lift, but the occupiers hypothesized that management could hypothetically shut off the lift and thus create an 'access issue' whereby those in wheelchairs (at the time representing 0% of those engaged in the occupation) wouldn't be able to get down the stairs. after able-bodied privilege arguments were bandied about for three days, totally dominating all discourse and neglecting the original reason for the occupation entirely (the fact that cleaners at the uni weren't being employed on a living wage) the occupation dissolved, demoralised and having achieved nothing - not even a coherent statement on the cleaners issue. throughout the entire period not a single person in a wheelchair came anywhere near the thing.

apologies if that first post came across enraged, i am enraged, modern identity politics scum are pure vermin in my mind. i've only ever experienced them engaged in what are essentially wrecking operations on other people's events, or otherwise directly setting up their own events in complete contempt of 'ordinary' 'mainstream' (i.e. working class) people/culture.

is a lot of disability related oppression not also related to class though? because a lot of disabilities affect your ability to do certain jobs or do certain types of work full time, (and therefore affect how much money you get and how much control you have over work) rather than necessarily being that much of a problem in a society that wasn't so focused around work

 

[DotCommunist]

up the gary (returns to form like a champ!)

 

[Kizmet]

The other problem is that it's contagious, once the oppression top trumps starts you find yourself working within that game even if to critique, "well speaking as a .... I feel qualified to say intersectionality is balls".

Oppression trumps, academic trumps, same sort of thing... its all basically the "I know better than you because.." competative bullshit but with a snappy new name.

So, revol....are you oppressed? And what by?

 

[revol68]

Classism, heightenism and imperialism

 

[TruXta]

Classism, heightenism and imperialism

Too tall or too short?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

heightenism

 

[revol68]

Too tall or too short?

My people have suffered too long at gigs and cinemas, to suggest that the tall are oppressed is to make false equivalence aimed at masking our suffering and tall peoples active role in it.

Look at Bono, he is the short Michael Jackson, our society has made the small man hate himself so much he is forced to circle the world in lifted shoes, never at home anywhere, least not his own shortness.

 

[Kizmet]

Classism, heightenism and imperialism

And how do these types of oppression manif3st in you? Apart from platform shoes?