Urban v's the Commentariat

[Greebo]

Cool, no probs - i just don't understand what you said though - not in a spikey way, i just find this stuff hard to follow.

Sorry, basically a lot of Neo Pagans etc were a bit politically correct and alternative anyway, so they began using "they" etc instead of "he/she" long before (20 odd years ago) the media caught up with it. This was also encouraged by the use of first or nicknames only, and by heavy use of the net before it had become mainstream.

Instead of pissing about with language and trying to pretend gender doesn't exist, why don't we spend our energy on attacking and resolving the inequalities that come with being born one sex instead of another?

Because one way to attack and resolve those inequalities is to make it as difficult as possible to work out which gender you're interracting with before you've got to know the individual. FWIW it's not a game. I don't pretend to be what I'm not, I just don't always make it that obvious either. The reaction to that can be quite enlightening and amusing.

In Spain some activists have taken to using @ or x in words which would otherwise denote gender, so todos/todas becomes todxs or tod@s. A bit silly I think.

Not as silly as you might think - Ms was a way of correcting the social injustice which made it immediately obvious whether a women is married, while men have more privacy around such matters. Making todas/todos neuter is a reminder that we're all human and, unless genitals or gender are directly relevant, they're completely ignored.

 

[el-ahrairah]

i'm more than happy with attempting to break down the whole gender bollocks shit. ungendered pronouns etc are a good way of doing this. so far though, they haven't really caught on. that's no reason to not keep trying, but it's not really that important a fight, to me. we've got a lot on our plate and we can deal with the linguistics later when we have the context of a wonderful shining socialist future. what too many of the intersectionalists do is use language as a shibboleth - you MUST use the correct words for their clique otherwise you're out. using he / she is NOT an indicator that the person speaking is a vile patriarch transphobe gender essentialist, just that they have different priorities eh.

i hope i made myself clear, i'm a bit pissed!

 

[Greebo]

<snip>what too many of the intersectionalists do is use language as a shibboleth - you MUST use the correct words for their clique otherwise you're out. using he / she is NOT an indicator that the person speaking is a vile patriarch transphobe gender essentialist, just that they have different priorities eh.

i hope i made myself clear, i'm a bit pissed!

As crystal.

 

[fogbat]

Still trying to make #pirvateedcuationsplaining a hash tag

 

[equationgirl]

Still trying to make #pirvateedcuationsplaining a hash tag

#etonsplaining is perhaps a little catchier?

 

[fogbat]

#etonsplaining is perhaps a little catchier?

I don't think PD went there, sadly.

Now I have to go search her articles for references to Eton posh boys

 

[Greebo]

Still trying to make #pirvateedcuationsplaining a hash tag

#privdsplaining?

 

[equationgirl]

#publicschoolsplaining?

 

[JHE]

In Spain some activists have taken to using @ or x in words which would otherwise denote gender, so todos/todas becomes todxs or tod@s. A bit silly I think.

As a purely written form it's fine. Trouble is: it is purely a written form.

How do you pronounce it? In Spanish @ is arroba. You could try saying todarrobas, compañarrobas, ciudadanarrobas etc, but obviously nobody does! Right-on types in Spain (or in 'the Spanish state' as they might tediously insist) revert to 'todos y todas', 'compañeros y compañeras', 'ciudadanos y ciudadanas' etc. It can be very long-winded, which of course is why, when writing, they opt for the (unpronounceable) arroba-based shorthand.

 

[smokedout]

#poshplaining

 

[weepiper]

Having had a discussion with a male peer and a male manager at lunchtime at work the other day where they both basically said women need to suck it up when it comes to the pay gap because we are always going to take time off work to have children I just can't bring myself to get worked up about calling someone who self identifies as male a 'lady'.

 

[equationgirl]

Having had a discussion with a male peer and a male manager at lunchtime at work the other day where they both basically said women need to suck it up when it comes to the pay gap because we are always going to take time off work to have children I just can't bring myself to get worked up about calling someone who self identifies as male a 'lady'.

Are both of them childless? What a pair of ignorant arses.

 

[weepiper]

Are both of them childless? What a pair of ignorant arses.

Yes. It wasn't said in a 'haha you have to put up with this lol' way, more in a 'this is just the way it is, it's the natural order of things and we think it's unfair too but y'know it's never going to change because women have babies' way. I did point out how perhaps the world of work ought to have got its head round the fact that women have babies by now and found a way of accommodating that beyond men having all the advantage of getting free childcare because women stay at home and take the lifetime pay cut that comes with that and they both went 'er' at that but I don't think it really sank in.

 

[equationgirl]

Yes. It wasn't said in a 'haha you have to put up with this lol' way, more in a 'this is just the way it is, it's the natural order of things and we think it's unfair too but y'know it's never going to change because women have babies' way. I did point out how perhaps the world of work ought to have got its head round the fact that women have babies by now and found a way of accommodating that beyond men having all the advantage of getting free childcare because women stay at home and take the lifetime pay cut that comes with that and they both went 'er' at that but I don't think it really sank in.

Clearly they don't see it as an issue that affects them, after all, if they choose to get married and have children then they won't be the ones dashing out of work to deal with a child taken ill at school or nursery.

 

[emanymton]

Clearly they don't see it as an issue that affects them, after all, if they choose to get married and have children then they won't be the ones dashing out of work to deal with a child taken ill at school or nursery.

No they will just suffer from their partner earning less and therefore the family as a whole having less money.

 

[Balbi]

#explainingfieldsofeton

 

[DaveCinzano]

Cleverland 'Splain Dealer

 

[Balbi]

A system where the privately educated form a structure which working class and less privileged people buy in and get nowhere?

My god, it's a Poncey Scheme

 

[J Ed]

It isn't a pyramid scheme, it's a reverse funnel system!

 

[rioted]

No they will just suffer from their partner earning less and therefore the family as a whole having less money.

argueing over slices of cake? We want the whole fucking bakery!

 

[butchersapron]

Turn down your wage rises do you? Or rises in benefits? Or do you just throw this tired rhetoric around?

 

[chilango]

Clearly they don't see it as an issue that affects them, after all, if they choose to get married and have children then they won't be the ones dashing out of work to deal with a child taken ill at school or nursery.

Tbf some men do.

 

[ViolentPanda]

All the painkiller drugs? Really? I could perhaps understand it if she was on fentanyl or morphine but I doubt she was on those.

Even morphine doesn't make you talk bollocks. All it does is disinhibits you, so that you might be more open to speaking your mind. Laurie blames the drugs for her "speaking out of turn". I'd say that the disinhibition was such that she forgot her intersectional formulae, and actually "spoke from the heart" for once in her miserable life.

 

[rioted]

Turn down your wage rises do you? Or rises in benefits? Or do you just throw this tired rhetoric around?

I don't turn it down, no. If someone offers me a pint, I accept. But I don't go around proposing that if everyone bought me drinks the whole world would be a better place.

 

[Theisticle]

Personal brand building over being a good ally? Is Suey Park the new Laurie Penny?

Portland, Oregon based writer and blogger of Navajo and Yankton Dakota descent Jacqueline Keeler pointed out that the explosion of attention given to #CancelColbert had meant that Natives had essentially been “edited out” of the conversation, with “one tweet supporting Native people for every 100 for #CancelColbert.” “Native people are messaging me that they feel their work has been co-opted,” she posted. “90,000 [people] go to stadiums EVERY SUNDAY in redface — how much hashtag trending would that equal in#CancelColbert terms? If our allies did that much twittering for us as they do for a satirical skit, redface would be banned from stadiums tomorrow.”

The whole piece is worth reading in regards to the limitations of hashtag activism.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/03/29/stephen-colbert-racism-and-the-weaponized-hashtag/

Park completely ignores the real issue of a racist charity the Redskins owner created (which Colbert lampooned) and instead becomes solely about her campaign: http://time.com/42174/we-want-to-cancelcolbert/

 

[butchersapron]

I don't turn it down, no. If someone offers me a pint, I accept. But I don't go around proposing that if everyone bought me drinks the whole world would be a better place.

What?

Tell us about the bakery again.

 

[rekil]

A bit of googling (oooh, creepy!) reveals that Suey Park, a university of Illinois grad, is from Lake Zurich, an affluent suburb of Chicago where median household income is about $110k compared to around $57k for Illinois state and $51k for the US as a whole. Makes you think. I'm not going to post a pic of her house or anything, but it's dead nice.

 

[treelover]

I remember meeting some of the early anti-CJA activists when they 'performed' at an event/rave I put on at my uni, earlier one of them had been 'crucified' on the gates of the main DHSS HQ building, a couple of years later there was a programme that feautured some of them and their 'family lives', boy, did they live in nice houses, etc. Later I met someone in RTS who's Grandfather had been Hitler's Adjudtant and others in the anti-capitalist movement who were very affluent indeed, though many were very decent people .

My point is these people have always existed, the net means they are more visible.

 

[treelover]

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/pages/staff

Have a look at the staff of 38 Degrees, certainly fit the demographic discussed all above, including someone who is on their second internship!

note a space- hijacker(and poster on here) is now working for them

again, don't know them personally, may be very switched on people, but disabled people had to drag them kicking and screaming to promote campaigns against ATOS/DWP benefits cuts, despite them being very prominent on members interests/nominees for campaigns.

 

[chilango]

I remember meeting some of the early anti-CJA activists when they 'performed' at an event/rave I put on at my uni, earlier one of them had been 'crucified' on the gates of the main DHSS HQ building, a couple of years later there was a programme that feautured some of them and their 'family lives', boy, did they live in nice houses, etc. Later I met someone in RTS who's Grandfather had been Hitler's Adjudtant and others in the anti-capitalist movement who were very affluent indeed, though many were very decent people .

My point is these people have always existed, the net means they are more visible.

in fairness in the early days of the anti CJB movement "rave" was one of the main issues. So not exactly unreasonable for some "wealthier" folk to be involved.