Urban v's the Commentariat

[caleb]

It's also astonishing to think that Flavia is a white woman. But self-identifying as a 'WoC' on account of her hair, gives her some sort of right to attack other women.

 

[fractionMan]

It's also astonishing to think that Flavia is a white woman. But self-identifying as a 'WoC' on account of her hair, gives her some sort of right to attack other women.

wtf. Really ? Jesus.

 

[J Ed]

The more I think about what went down between Flavia Dzodan and Penny, etc. the angrier I get. What a fucking mental state of affairs where shouting (sexist) abuse at women is good feminism, but objecting to receiving that abuse makes you a racist.

Is there an end to all this?

Hoisted by her own petard so I don't care about her. What I do care about is the number of people who don't promote nonsense ideologies like intersectionality and privilege theory that are targeted by its adherents and the no doubt countless numbers of people who have been alienated by them and lost forever to left-wing politics.

 

[J Ed]

It's also astonishing to think that Flavia is a white woman. But self-identifying as a 'WoC' on account of her hair, gives her some sort of right to attack other women.

Very confusing. She lives in the Netherlands but she calls herself sudaca, a pejorative term (like wetback) used by racists in Spain. True, it's a term that has been reclaimed by some Latin Americans in Spain but it's so culturally specific I can't imagine that anyone gets called it in the Netherlands so it wouldn't exactly be necessary to reclaim it... she's just appropriating victimhood for the sake of fashion.

 

[caleb]

wtf. Really ? Jesus.

She's from Argentina and her surname is Croatian. With those credentials, I'm sure Penny's Irish - Jewish - Maltese mash-up would also entitle her to self-identify as a 'WoC', but, oh wait...

You gotta understand my hair is VERY curly and VERY textured. *Nothing* like a White woman's hair. And back then it was very long

Cool, that's settled then. Your hair is nothing like a white woman's.

Hoisted by her own petard so I don't care about her. What I do care about is the number of people who don't promote nonsense ideologies like intersectionality and privilege theory that are targeted by its adherents and the no doubt countless numbers of people who have been alienated by them and lost forever to left-wing politics.

Oh sure, and the fact Penny didn't just say "fuck this, why should I listen to abuse..." but rather apologised is pretty shameful. She had an opportunity here, where it was pretty obvious how fucking nuts the whole thing is, to not back down and to challenge them. But she preferred to "sit the fuck down and listen" (ugh).

 

[ViolentPanda]

imagine if we all stopped looking at twitter. imagine if the only people reading twitter were idiots like that. imagine how much work we could get done whilst they were arguing about who is the biggest racist?

The problem being that we know that some of these twitterers are "opinion-formers" and "influence-mongers", so we'd forever feel paranoid that while we were working, they'd be changing the status quo around us!

 

[butchersapron]

**nah scrub all that* - my mistake**

 

[frogwoman]

To be fair I've had people say out of order things to me and I've apologized, out of a lack of confidence not sure we should be having a go at lp about that

 

[weepiper]

Someone I follow on twitter sums up neatly how I feel about twitter feminists

 

[caleb]

The other latest twitter feminist thing is using "sex work abolition" as a term of abuse - this from self-proclaimed "anarchists" and "communists", and calling people who believe gender is a social construct "transphobic".

 

[ViolentPanda]

.

Or piles?

((((( friedaweed )))))

 

[ViolentPanda]

The more I think about what went down between Flavia Dzodan and Penny, etc. the angrier I get. What a fucking mental state of affairs where shouting (sexist) abuse at women is good feminism, but objecting to receiving that abuse makes you a racist.

Is there an end to all this?

You're possibly getting angry because you're not seeing that beyond this bullshit twitter intersectionalising load of flabby arse, there are feminisms that point and laugh at the likes of Dzodan and Penny, who think "get over yourselves, and do something for women not just for the single woman you obviously care so much about".

 

[butchersapron]

Btw, she pimps for the Abu Dhabi regime through the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (controlled by this prick) - attempting to give a cultured modern face to that monstrosity of a place.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Very confusing. She lives in the Netherlands but she calls herself sudaca, a pejorative term (like wetback) used by racists in Spain. True, it's a term that has been reclaimed by some Latin Americans in Spain but it's so culturally specific I can't imagine that anyone gets called it in the Netherlands so it wouldn't exactly be necessary to reclaim it... she's just appropriating victimhood for the sake of fashion.

As her class always do.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The other latest twitter feminist thing is using "sex work abolition" as a term of abuse - this from self-proclaimed "anarchists" and "communists", and calling people who believe gender is a social construct "transphobic".

Most of whom won't understand social constructionism beyond what they learned in A level sociology (insert customary lecture about the dangers of know-nothings using academy-speak in their arguments).

 

[rekil]

Curly hair? Could a claim to POCness be any more tenuous?

Dzodan is definitely going to get a nice priv-off matchup with someone.

 

[SaskiaJayne]

Most of whom won't understand social constructionism

I just googled that VP, & tbf it is quite hard to understand. I looked on wiki & it requires the reader to look at lots of other stuff as well like brute facts & teleology for example.

 

[Belushi]

It's also astonishing to think that Flavia is a white woman. But self-identifying as a 'WoC' on account of her hair, gives her some sort of right to attack other women.

That's fucking ace, what a playa

 

[caleb]

It takes lots of chutzpah, certainly.

 

[Belushi]

What's the opposite of chutzpah? We need another spoke on the wheel.

((( lauriepenny ))) comprehensively outplayed.

 

[Brainaddict]

The more I think about what went down between Flavia Dzodan and Penny, etc. the angrier I get. What a fucking mental state of affairs where shouting (sexist) abuse at women is good feminism, but objecting to receiving that abuse makes you a racist.

Is there an end to all this?

I wonder if someone (maybe LP herself) will suddenly get sick of it and do a 'controversial' denunciation of their former beliefs. Which will then be discussed for years on end by the same handful of people promoting this nonsense.

Sad thing is, I've read some intersectionalist writing I liked and it can be used more as a structural critique than a priv-off. I think it's important to distinguish between some of the more nuanced texts on intersectionalism and the kind of neo-maoist self-criticism happening here. People like bell hooks are worth reading even if you don't agree with them. The twittersectionalists are not worth reading. I think it's sad that they've managed to smear the term intersectionalism by their involvement with it.

I imagine many urbanites would find much to agree with in Class Matters for example, though you can argue her view of class isn't quite structural enough: http://www.feminish.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Where-We-Stand-Class-Matters.pdf

But there's stuff worth talking about in there, whatever you think of it, and it's a shame that a few idiots with platforms have managed to completely degrade the discussion.

 

[J Ed]

To be fair I've had people say out of order things to me and I've apologized, out of a lack of confidence not sure we should be having a go at lp about that

LP doesn't lack confidence, she has public school arrogance in spades, she's just following the rules of the game she helps to popularise.

 

[rekil]

What's the opposite of chutzpah? We need another spoke on the wheel.

((( lauriepenny ))) comprehensively outplayed.

She may be cheered by her breathtaking comeback and #victory in the priv-off with Camila Vallejo, if I ever get round to finishing it.

 

[butchersapron]

I wonder if someone (maybe LP herself) will suddenly get sick of it and do a 'controversial' denunciation of their former beliefs. Which will then be discussed for years on end by the same handful of people promoting this nonsense.

Sad thing is, I've read some intersectionalist writing I liked and it can be used more as a structural critique than a priv-off. I think it's important to distinguish between some of the more nuanced texts on intersectionalism and the kind of neo-maoist self-criticism happening here. People like bell hooks are worth reading even if you don't agree with them. The twittersectionalists are not worth reading. I think it's sad that they've managed to smear the term intersectionalism by their involvement with it.

I imagine many urbanites would find much to agree with in Class Matters for example, though you can argue her view of class isn't quite structural enough: http://www.feminish.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Where-We-Stand-Class-Matters.pdf

But there's stuff worth talking about in there, whatever you think of it, and it's a shame that a few idiots with platforms have managed to completely degrade the discussion.

But you can't just pick on people you like and say these are real intersectionalists. You need to ask how and why stuff that she helped popularise (and not just amongst elite graduates, not in her case) has turned into this shit. I like bell hooks, but all this stuff is a mighty long walk around the block only to end up back at "The white worker who has been displaced at General Motors has more in common with the displaced black worker than those larger white CEO's, and those Wall Street people who are determining their fate... whose thievery and greed is determining their fate."

 

[Brainaddict]

But you can't just pick on people you like and say these are real intersectionalists. You need to ask how and why stuff that she helped popularise (and not just amongst elite graduates, not in her case) has turned into this shit. I like bell hooks, but all this stuff is a mighty long walk around the block only to end up back at "The white worker who has been displaced at General Motors has more in common with the displaced black worker than those larger white CEO's, and those Wall Street people who are determining their fate... whose thievery and greed is determining their fate."

I don't suppose we'll agree on this but for me class-based politics always had a certain totalitarian potential - there is one right class, one right struggle, one right revolution, one way of seeing capitalism, one class enemy etc. I do see the authoritarian communist regimes as to some degree produced by Marxian thought. A grand unified 'correct' way of seeing the world requires a unified interpreter and enforcer - which turned out to be the party, which turns out to require violence to ensure everyone is engaging in the struggle in the 'correct' manner.

So (a) the same critique you apply to bell hooks should be applied to the more orthodox class-based perspectives - which is to say, what did it develop into?
and (b) to some extent I feel the above-mentioned flaws of the strongly class-based perspectives do need balancing out, perhaps even with some stuff from the intersectionalist side, even though it is also flawed and has clearly led to some bullshit.

 

[butchersapron]

I'd ask you why you first paragraph is telling me/others this? Why you're offering such an absurd caricatured position - how have you arrived at such a crude misreading? Which should explain why i don't think the second para says very much at all. I'm not at all interested in talking to people who really genuinely think that to argue for class readings of society means that all that exists is class, and that as only class exists there must then be one single position, and if one position, then one party and so on. It's ludicrous. It really is. After ten year on here you still think this?

 

[DaveCinzano]

for me class-based politics always had a certain totalitarian potential - there is one right class, one right struggle, one right revolution, one way of seeing capitalism, one class enemy etc.

This makes me think you are a bona fide idiot.

Congratulations! You win a prize!

(I not be no heap big clever dick like you but, come on, if lumpen fools like wot I is can understand class in more nuanced, more accurate terms than that, then you deserve opprobrium and mockery.)

 

[Brainaddict]

I didn't say that is what class-based politics is. I said it always had a certain potential within it, which did find expression. Likewise bell hooks writing has the potential within it to be read as a splintering identity politics. People's un-nuanced readings of texts shouldn't mean the texts should be dismissed but those readings may help us identify problems with the text. This twittersectionalist bullshit is descended from bell hooks thought. And authoritarian communism was descended from Marxist thought. I think that in both cases it is possible to identify the flaws within each that left them open to those misreadings.

 

[Brainaddict]

This makes me think you are a bona fide idiot.

Congratulations! You win a prize!

(I not be no heap big clever dick like you but, come on, if lumpen fools like wot I is can understand class in more nuanced, more accurate terms than that, then you deserve opprobrium and mockery.)

Never had a shiver go up your spine when you heard the chant "One solution: revolution!"?

 

[DotCommunist]

of anticipation?