Yvain wrote a very interesting blog post about structural power and social power and y’all should go read it, and I feel very sorry for yanking three paragraphs out of context in the middle to argue with.
Just to use race as an example, fifty years ago, there were explicit laws keeping black people down, and scientific racists in universities were blithely speculating on the cranial capacity of “Negroids” without a second thought. Today, an impressive amount of the Western world’s academic output by weight is now devoted to yelling about how much we hate racism and homophobia. We have successfully reached the point where a single ambiguously racist comment can bring down pretty much any politician in the country, and where people who use the word “fuck” like it’s going out of style are terrified even to quote, let alone use, ethnic slurs. In terms of progress in deploying social power against racism, we have come pretty darned far.
Yet the black/white income gap, which is probably the best objective measure we have of structural/unconscious power, worse today than forty years ago when good records first started being kept. Fifty years of feminists telling people to rape less has resulted in a trend line for rape that looks exactly like that for every other violent crime. The biggest success of the anti-inequality movement, higher incomes for women, seems to be an economic transition that had only a little to do with any kind of a social justice movement (citation admittedly needed, but that’d be a whole post in itself).
So what if social/conscious power just isn’t that good a lever? We know that in at least in a business environment, promoting diversity has zero positive impact and in fact may just make people more racist. If this is true on a social level, it would fit nicely with the stagnant/disimproving structural/unconscious power situation despite the vastly improved social/conscious power situation.
First, I have to point out that his source for the rape thing is the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, which are notoriously shit about rape. During most of the period when that data was being collected, the UCR defined rape as “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will“, which excluded male rape survivors, female perpetrators, non-forcible rape, anal and oral rape, and rape with body parts other than a penis. (Also, marital rape was not illegal in most states during a substantial amount of the time period in question.) Furthermore, half of rapes are not reported to police, which makes it somewhat hard to include them in the UCR statistics.
All of that about the UCR is actually fairly irrelevant, because RAINN, which uses the actually pretty decent* National Crime Victimization Survey data, suggests that there’s been a 60% decrease in rape since 1993, which is actually basically in line with the chart in question. And the data is so muddy about the prevalence of rape anytime before about 1980 that it’s terribly hard to come up with a trend line. But I really hate seeing people citing the damn UCR data and it’s my blog so I’m allowed to rant.
I think the fundamental problem with Yvain’s conclusion that social/conscious power doesn’t work that well is that it makes the unwarranted assumption that social justice advocates have any idea what they’re doing.
Social/conscious power works really well for some kinds of marginalization. Historically, social justice movements have been amazingly effective at getting rid of structural** marginalization, perhaps because social power is really really good at convincing people to give you what you want so that you go away and stop being annoying. “Christ, fine, we’ll stop gender-segregating want ads and start drawing up a sexual harassment policy, just stop walking around outside waving signs and yelling.”
But direct use of social power falls down when it comes to the other kinds of marginalization.
It perhaps works best with conscious interpersonal marginalization. If people have factually mistaken ideas or ideas that hurt people, social power enables you to explain that those ideas are false or hurtful, and then at least some people will stop believing them. (I may be overestimating people.)
Furthermore, using social power against sexism makes being sexist unpleasant– “wow, every time I say something sexist I get in an argument with an offended feminist.” Of course, it also gives feminists a reputation as humorless man-haters, makes the sexists convinced that they are Nobly Saying The Truths The PC Police Don’t Want You To Hear, and leaves people afraid of asking me honest questions in case they accidentally say something sexist and I yell at them.*** So it’s not a perfect strategy.
And with internal marginalization and subconscious interpersonal marginalization? Shit.
There are some tactics– the consciousness-raising group and its descendant the feminist blog– to help people unlearn internal marginalization. But if that worked perfectly I wouldn’t be having conversations on Twitter about how we know the idea of What A Genderqueer Should Look Like is stupid and yet we hate ourselves for not living up to it. (I imagine that you could steal some concepts from cognitive behavioral therapy to use to work on internal marginalization. Has someone done that? Report to me in comments.)
And for subconscious stuff… shit, I have no idea what the optimal strategy is. There used to be huge hiring bias against women; now the bias is only marginal (although obviously still very real). The hiring bias against people of color, however, is still huge. Why did the hiring bias against women decrease and people of color stay mostly stagnant? Some studies suggest that people who are more aware of cultural racial stereotypes are more likely to see an unarmed black man as armed. If that generalizes to all kinds of subconscious interpersonal marginalization, then use of social power in social justice movements isn’t just useless, it’s actively harmful. (Everyone! There’s no racism in America! We live in a colorblind society!)
I think the “privilege” concept is part of the problem here, because it creates the unstated assumption that all social justice problems are, on a fundamental level, the same problem. Which is stupid. Racism is probably the result of our brains’ natural tendency to see people who don’t look like us as The Other; classism is probably a side effect of a capitalist economy; homophobia is basically a vast cultural squick with a religious patina. (Yes, these are vastly oversimplified.) Why would you assume that you can use the same tactics to get rid of things with different causes?
So basically I think that we need to put a lot more study into figuring out how to get rid of internal marginalization and subconscious interpersonal marginalization and not just assume that the answers are, respectively, “we won’t have that come the Revolution!” and “we will yell at you until you stop being racist! Be aware of your racism, horrible racist person!” Also we should stop assuming that, as a movement, social justice advocates have any idea what we’re doing.
*except for its classification of most rape of men by women as “forcible penetration” which incidentally is the worst thing
**Shit, I just realized that having both “structural marginalization” and “structural power” as completely unrelated concepts is going to make this blog post hella confusing. They’re completely unrelated concepts. Sorry about that.
***For the record, I am not going to take offense at honest questions. Ever. I promise.
I always feel like social justice needs a lot more carrot and a lot less stick. I don’t mean, like, pay people to not be racist or something, I have no idea how that would work–but put a little more thought into motivating people besides “this will make you somewhat less of a bad person!” or “you better watch out if you don’t!”
I think “this will make you somewhat less of a bad person” is sufficient motivation to get people to watch their speech. And “otherwise we’re going to protest you and/or sue your pants off” is often the force that gets institutions to change.
But when it comes to things that are too subtle to sue and too deeply ingrained to socially pressure out of polite society… I don’t think we have a strategy for that.
And I don’t really want to propose one. What I’d like to propose, while I’m dreaming, is an Institute for Anti-Bias Studies. Where different approaches to social change are systematically tested for long and short term effects, in the lab and through statistical analysis. Where “whatever gets results,” is the highest priority, and theory is developed from data instead of discourse.
I want to SCIENCE away injustice, dammit.
I know for a long, long time I just did not understand a lot of issues involved. I was an entitled nerd, and I was indignant to any criticism of ‘geek culture’ being sexist or racist.
But part of it was I didn’t understand the issues at all, because of lot of the arguments were presented as being super obvious and self evident, and to me they weren’t at the time!
I’m thinking specifically of the Penny Arcade ‘dickwolf’ incident, here. To me it’s really obvious why it was problematic now, but me five years ago? Totally thought it was a great joke.
The best I’ve been able to figure out how to help is have wider racial, gender, and sexual preference representation in stuff I write and draw and design. And also be mindful of the stuff I’m watching more. And just be more mindful in general. And listen to people who are from different backgrounds than me.
Yeah…that was a ramble but it’s a hard topic that I still wrestle with a lot. I agree and stuff.
“I imagine that you could steal some concepts from cognitive behavioral therapy to use to work on internal marginalization. Has someone done that? Report to me in comments” – I was thinking about th work of “Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was a Martinique-born French-Algerian psychiatrist,[1] philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism. Fanon is known as a radical existential humanist[2] thinker on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization.[3]” How to de-colonize your brain, if you are black in Martinique? is a question somewhat resembling yours. Altrough I guess he wasn’t a cognitive-behaviouralist.
Feminism fails where anti-racism succeeded because feminists are far more interested in policing their own ranks than they are making broad-appeal arguments to the public. The “safe space” mentality has caused the movement to be too inwardly focused.
I’d add to Yvain’s post in general that both social/conscious power and structural/institutional power have different forms. Both types have a usually zero-sum, agentic form and a non-zero-sum, non-agentic form (which I like to call ‘armor’ because it mostly protects you from aggression). Armor is much more common in general than power, and extremely rich, powerful people have absolutely gigantic quantities of institutional armor compared to any other form of power.
Social armor is the most invisible form of power, even when it’s missing: When it’s missing, you get lack of self-respect and neuroticism, I think. I think that this sort of thing is happening with race right now.
I’ve gotten really, really worried about the zeal with which some feminists and anti-racists strip away the armor. It sometimes becomes synonymous with privilege, while removing it is a downright terrible idea (rather, remove unfair concentrations of power or provide both types of armor to those who lack it?)
Thank you for pointing out the link between capitalism and class stratification/whatever in a way that does not turn the word ‘capitalism’ into a boo light that has little to do with actual freaking capital.
@Cliff: YESSSSSSS.
Long-time lurker here
I’ve been through this kind of change of deep-seated opinion–I went into college as homophobic as heck and came out finally accepting of my bisexual self. I think I can pinpoint the exact day my beliefs began to change, although there were plenty of gradual influences on me. It was not the spirited and respectful arguments with my friends. It was not one of my friends coming out as a lesbian. It was not the lengthy and well-researched theological arguments in support of different sexualities that I read. All of those helped. But the thing that made me willing to listen to all those influences? A play I had to see for a class, with a story that made me sympathize with the gay characters. I think that what really has power to change people’s hearts and minds is good art and good storytelling.
(I imagine that you could steal some concepts from cognitive behavioral therapy to use to work on internal marginalization. Has someone done that? Report to me in comments.)
I’ve, um, tried? By which I mean that I recognize more often now when I’m having internal-marginalization thoughts, and I’m more often capable of reminding myself “hey, those are a self-defeating shit trap and you don’t have to believe them,” and that I got there by applying the skills I learned in CBT for dealing with my chronic pain to internally-marginalizing thoughts, because those are also chronically painful albeit in a different way than fibromyalgia is chronically painful.
But I haven’t made as much progress with CBT for internal marginalization as I have for chronic pain, and I’m not sure why. I’d say about 90 percent of the time now – excepting when I’m in a really bad flare and my meds have just worn off – I know the difference between being in physical pain and identifying with that pain (aka “suffering”), and I can decide not to suffer even when the pain is intense. But my success rate for identifying the difference between having internally-marginalizing thoughts and believing them (aka “suffering”) is much lower – it’s much harder to let the tape run without believing it.
I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t have a secure alternate “landing place” for internal marginalization. I can tell myself “you don’t have to believe that,” but I haven’t identified what to believe instead, and there’s still that nagging voice in the back of my head going “but if you good enough you wouldn’t [insert marginalized quality here] in the first place, and it’s okay for everyone else to [quality] but not you because you’re not good enough.” Which I have started recognizing is circular, but haven’t really booted in its ass yet.
Rhubarb: Except if you read my post you’ll notice that part of my confusion was about why feminism was fairly successful and anti-racism keeps not working. Do you care to revise your beliefs in the light of the evidence?
Krause: Well, I appreciate capitalism! It’s very good at some things, like distributing goods. It’s not very good at social equality though.
Clarsair: Interesting. (I still want Cliff’s Institute of Anti-Bias Studies tho.
)
Ozy,
I read the post, and I stick by it. I am specifically speaking of the rates of rape falling mostly in line with general crime trends, the inbility to make taboos around sexism stick and the persistence of feminism’s image problem.
You touched on it with your series on call-out culture: so much effort is expended on playing pronoun police and dismissing arguments because they are made by people at the wrong end of the privilege spectrum. Personally, i stopped reading a lot of feminist blogs because they have devolved into little more than policing within feminism and endless rageface over the most trivial pop culture. And they wonder how any woman could not identify as feminist!*
*According to a recent Feministe post, it is acceptable to not identify as feminist only if you are doing so because of trans or race issues. Though I do identify as a feminist, I do not appreciate being told how to identify.
Rhubarb, what do you actually mean by “pronoun police”?
Your journal article link leads to a USF login page. Here’s a direct link to the abstract.
Doug: Shit.
I’ll fix that.
Rhubarb: I believe that the rate of rape declining *since 1993* more or less in line with general crime trends as such is less to do with the problems you identify and more to do with feminism not really knowing what it’s doing about rape. The idea of preventing rape, as opposed to just doing harm-reduction with women’s shelters and so on, is relatively new; there was a big effort to try to prevent rape via banning porn, which has the unfortunate flaw of not working. Right now the strategy seems to be “tell people not to rape people,” which… eeeyeh. With luck, further research on the psychology of rapists can help people figure out how to actually reduce the rape rate.
I find it non-obvious that there’s a stronger taboo around racism than sexism, or that anti-racists have any less of an image problem.
I second Justinas’s question about what you mean by the pronoun police.
Just to use race as an example, fifty years ago, there were explicit laws keeping black people down, and scientific racists in universities were blithely speculating on the cranial capacity of “Negroids” without a second thought. Today, an impressive amount of the Western world’s academic output by weight is now devoted to yelling about how much we hate racism and homophobia. We have successfully reached the point where a single ambiguously racist comment can bring down pretty much any politician in the country, and where people who use the word “fuck” like it’s going out of style are terrified even to quote, let alone use, ethnic slurs. In terms of progress in deploying social power against racism, we have come pretty darned far.
Shelby Steele wrote that the reason the ABOVE is true but the income gap (etc) is still operative, is that this is the kind of racism makes white people look bad. Thus, whites want to use the right terms to look good. Its the *appearances* of whites (and their/our egos) that matter, not the *truth* of black people’s lives. White narcissism, in effect.
Steele wrote that in the context of being yelled at (literally) for questioning affirmative action… white college students shrieking at him (a black man who grew up going to segregated schools!) that he is racist. He realized this made them FEEL BETTER and morally superior. The fact that many black students do not go on to graduate (his whole reason for questioning affirmative action; he thought it might do more harm than good to black students who are not yet ready for college/didn’t go to adequate schools in the first place) did not concern them. He described sitting at some dinner party where some affluent liberal white woman refused to talk to him because of his position, and he asked her point blank, what we should do about the poor rates of black graduation, did she care about THAT? She refused to argue with him, and in doing so, adopted this morally-superior attitude, that she did not have to even grant his (inferior, of course) ideas a fair hearing. She was *above* that.
He came away from this debacle 1) calling himself a “black conservative” instead of a liberal and 2) concluding that its white feelings of moral superiority that are behind the fear of using the racist words… when it comes down to actually trying to implement social equality, most don’t care. This paragraph is therefore about whites feeling good about themselves and looking enlightened to each other… not about results.
He has a point, yes?
Also we should stop assuming that, as a movement, social justice advocates have any idea what we’re doing.
Well, that is why I started with deconstructing that very first paragraph, which I do not agree with… thus, I can’t agree with everything that came after. I think that’s wrong.
I know exactly what *I* am doing.
(rageface appears) Yesssss, ssssso I undersssstand that it isssss all about white fee-feees assssss long assss thossse ffffeeelingssss are ssssomehowwww baaasssseeee and viiiiiile…
(rageface fades, replaced by faint shame and frustration)
I don’t think that’s really true. The things you described… One sounds like just some random defensive idiot. The other one… not quite sure. But it sounds to me like they mostly were too fixed on a really simple view of Things That Are or Are Not Racist that had been drilled into them by something (which might have been white anti-racists).
If I said something racist in public, a significant number of the people shouting me down for it would be white, and I *do* care about their opinion. However, a majority of the people who would hear it in the first place are white. And I don’t think that in normal communities the pressure towards showing off your antiracism is neccesarily that strong; many of them would be criticizing me because they thought what I said would offend or bother or microaggress or otherwise harm people. Anybody can (almost) always just not say anything.
It’s harder for anybody to judge the structural power stuff.
Does anybody do moral actions for any other reason? I mean, it kind of sounds like you are assigning motives to people, when the motives are not all that different. I will do this because it is the right thing to do vs I will do this because I want to feel good about doing the right thing.
Oh, also, some of this stuff might be the completely logical result of using social disapproval and antiracist culture as a way to advance Black goals.
Does anybody do moral actions for any other reason?
Sure. All the major deities ordered us to.
erm great blog, first time poster and all.
I’m going to speculate wildly
I think that the reason that feminism has succeeded with some of it’s aims and ‘anti racism’ has failed has to do with what you can achieve by changing personal attitudes, what forces in society are in the way of a solution and also the culture and make up of movement members.
For example, I think a key factor in the persistence of racism in the US is the presence of large high crime, urban ghettos and the ‘need’ for the state to ‘warehouse’ (in prison) ‘surplus’ urban populations of men. That creates the social distance that perpetuates ‘othering.’
There are similar prejudices where there are large suburban ghettos in Europe irrespective of race.
For a social justice movement to end racism (against blacks) in the US, I think at the very least it would have to restructure the US economy to promote full employment, a liveable minimum wage and other things to reduce the social distance between people.
As far as I know this is complete anathema to the main stream of anti racist movements in the US who’s concerns seem to be ensuring minority participation in certain educational and career avenues and changing social attitudes, but not the structural factors which create them.
I listened a while ago to an interview Doug Henwood did with Adolph Reed where he critiques the black anti racism movement
(I can link but I’m scared of the spam filter for a fist time poster)
‘anti racism’ seems to have been focused on middle class people of colour entering the mainstream of US society and it has largely achieved this aim.
The things feminism has succeeded best at is entering middle class women into the public sphere of work and politics (or at least political advocacy).
Interestingly as far as I know 2nd wave feminists (and others) in the social democratic Nordic countries achieved much better results focusing on economic issues initially, I think this is because they could change the economy of their societies (raising women’s wages initially, then cheap childcare, paid parental leave split between spouses and such) to promote more gender equality.
That is an incredible stat on the rate of rape declining with other violent crimes.
Super tentative opinion:
I wonder if an effective way to reduce rape would be the similar to reducing other violent crimes. i.e. draining the swamp; social policy aimed at having a more humane society which creates less people prone to violence. I haven’t seen any evidence that rapists will listen to being told not to rape and so you’ll just be stuck telling men who don’t rape not to rape.
“With luck, further research on the psychology of rapists can help people figure out how to actually reduce the rape rate.”
Isn’t this leaning a little too close to the idea of ‘rapist’ as a sort of discrete psychological entity, as opposed to some guy (or less likely, girl) that we might know?
The idea that rapists are an identifiable subgroup and reducing rape is best accomplished by dealing with them, as opposed to working with a rape-enabling society as a whole, seems a rather pre-feminist idea.
@Derpington -
Not necessarily, and they aren’t mutually exclusive. If our rape-enabling society is what makes most rapists rape, any person is a potential rapist who just hasn’t stumbled on opportunity yet. That viewpoint doesn’t fit the stats, IMO. Another way to phrase what is essentially the same research question would be, “Given that most men do not rape, what separates them from those who do?” And rape enabling culture is certainly a part of that – possibly a huge part. But it’s still worth questioning which parts are the most toxic, what sort of beliefs or experiences lead one to make the decision to rape.
(on the other hand, the popular press write-up of this hypothetical study would probably match your fears exactly – I can see the headline now: “SCARY MONSTER RAPISTS ARE TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM YOUR SWEET NEIGHBOR, BECAUSE BRAINS”)
Derpington: Actually, ‘rapists’ are an identifiable group. Most rapes are committed by a relatively small group of repeat rapists (look up Lisak’s research on undetected rapists). It’s just that you can be a nice normal guy and *also* a member of the relatively small group of repeat rapists.
In regards to the “pronoun policing”, I think it’s a simplistic way of framing a certain issue with *how* certain people tend to approach issues. To piggyback on @DaisyDeadhead’s explanation of Steele’s position, the problem is that sometimes we see individuals who loft the “theoretical ideas” above practical solutions. It is often made worse because in a vis-a-vis exchange, the individuals who are more concerned with theory tend to gravitate toward being the louder voices in the room, and when it’s someone arguing a pro-Feminist position vs. someone who isn’t necessarily playing by the “Feminist playbook”, support and backing will go to the “pro-Feminist” position, regardless of the actual content of the speech.
I can probably illustrate better by example (and it is example, not set-in-stone “truth”): I run in my local kink community, which has been, over the last two years, in a rocky place because of the tensions that exist between Social Justice advocates and activists and those who aren’t particularly interested in mixing politics with pleasure. Now, that’s a simplistic explanation, but the heart is true in many variations.
So what I have seen, over and over, is that it isn’t about actually accomplishing anything concrete, but about ensuring that people employ the right words in the right way. There are many loud, loud voices who say they’re trying to make people safer and stop violence/rape/assault, but those efforts begin and end with shaming and attacking those who have issues with the highly theoretical concepts that make up the pillars of “Feminism”.
The issue comes full circle, because these individuals (again, who are usually the loudest voices) apply macro-concepts like “Rape Culture”, “Male Gaze” and “Privilege”, etc., to micro situations of specific, acute phenomena. These individuals come in and start chastising people and referring to Derailing for Dummies and pretty much ensure that individuals who are more “moderate” in their political approach end up alienated and drawn further and further away from Feminism.
It’s, potentially, Steele’s hypothesis that it isn’t about what helps, it’s about what makes people “feel good about themselves”.
In my own experience, I (as another individual described) “bent over backwards” to try to find a * compromise* between a radical solution the majority thought went too far and the current little that the kink community does (although I think the kink community gets a lot of bad mouthing when in reality it discusses consent and enthusiastic participation far, far more often and at greater depths than the rest of society). What happened? I wasn’t “Feminist enough” and I was driven away. So instead of something imperfect but agreeable, we ended up, again, with nothing.
Further, when this all hit the fan in my local community, I reached out and tried to gain traction to start a volunteer “mediation” program to assist people with finding a neutral, fair means to discuss non-threatening/non-emergency issues between individuals. I was honestly surprised that pretty much no one wanted to actually do anything. It didn’t stop people from continuing to yell and scream and accuse people in insane numbers of being “rapists” and “rape apologists”.
I actually feel like there are more parallels to the “Gay Marriage” struggle circa-2000ish than to anything else. The biggest difference being that the LBGT community welcomed almost anyone who wasn’t a bigot into their ranks of allies. They finally, after many, many decades, achieved a ton of success. In large part this success was because they managed to gain the support of a huge portion of normally “moderate” individuals by being open, easy accessible and in lacking the sort of “purity tests” that Feminists, now, seem to hold before you can be a part of the conversation.
There’s a huge chasm between actually being a misogynist who works to oppress women and being skeptical of the theoretical side of a lot of Feminism. I fall into the latter category, and while I have problems with the theory, I have no issue with work that achieves goals and makes people safer. However, if I slip and make known that I think that certain theoretical concepts are simplistic and off-mark (my own opinion) that negates any value I may have, regardless of my desire to assist.
In the end, the result is just depressing: loud, straw-Feminists tend to have the bullhorn often, and they employ their soapbox to actively avoid, shame and terrorize individuals who they determine aren’t ideologically in-line enough. I think, from my own very broad experiences with these sorts of issues, that you’d have a flocking of support if we’d try to be inclusive and to engage not in an iron-clad political position, but on the continual and compassionate process of education and action.
I guess the tl;dr is that closing ranks and instituting specific language/thought policy you’ll lose the very “swing” support that is necessary to make actual change. When Feminism’s face is nasty, aggressive and aimed at shaming it’ll drive away people who would enthusiastically support good work. I’ve seen too many people give up because they were made miserable.
Danni, I really appreciate your comment. I was worried I hadn’t made Steele’s concept clear.
I am really startled to learn that the same rift (theory vs action; self-righteous posturing vs ‘getting it done’) is replicating in other communities… but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
Using the “right language” seems to have become paramount and in many cases, has even supplanted activism. At the risk of sounding old, let me say that this appears to be a relatively new development (as in, the last decade or so) that has dove-tailed with the rise of internet-culture. This is where all the “derailing for dummies”-type commentary originated. If you are a victim of the digital divide and don’t know what ‘derailing for dummies’ IS (i.e. that term assumes you know what blog-threads are for, how they work, and what ‘derail’ means in that context), you are considered backward, rather than someone with little/limited internet access or that you have not learned to how to find these kinds of discussions. (I still have a friend who doesn’t know how to comment on blogs, for instance. He isn’t dumb, his online-time is just very limited by circumstances. He reads my blog and then tells me in person what he thought of my posts.)
The internet is a great place to nitpick over language and words and ideas… and when the ‘word-people’ (theory-heads) suddenly meet (what we used to call) the ‘action faction’ (activists)–there is often this major social clash. I think it hurt the Occupy movement also. When the activists blurt out some now-uncool word (example: “handicapped”) — there is this uneasy silence, and there is a good chance a theory-head will swoop down on the poor clueless soul and read them the riot act. (sigh) Never mind that they might have been asking important questions about accessibility, that no one else seemed to notice until they asked. Using the right word is the important thing!
This makes me wanna tear out my hair. As someone in my mid-50s, I get most of the words wrong. I often don’t even understand what people are saying; the slang is incomprehensible and I think people are joking (when they aren’t) and/or serious (when they’re joking). In person, I rarely have these kinds of issues since I am very good at reading facial expressions and body language. Online, though, people mostly pause to fuss at me for using the wrong words, and therefore don’t engage my points.
Thank you for listening and actually engaging.
Danni: I guess the tl;dr is that closing ranks and instituting specific language/thought policy you’ll lose the very “swing” support that is necessary to make actual change.
Yeah… and as I said, aside from the reality of law enforcement mowing down Occupy, an ongoing fixation on using the right language has infected the overall Leftist Body Politic. When homeless people (who really have every reason to hate the current political system), started showing up at Occupy, they brought their digital divide with them… and affluent Occupiers could then pretend that Occupy was being taken over by Bad Elements, rather than be honest and admit they didn’t like having to associate with homeless people. They could use their language-policing as an excuse to stop engaging with them and never admit what was *really* happening.
@Daisy
I actually came across an article written by an individual who studies “Academic mobbing” which pretty succinctly puts together the cognitive clash between “modern” and “postmodern” discourses. It’s, in part, about a technology divide, but further it is about a change in academic approach which has been passed down via the internet/academy.
http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/regiftedxmas12.html
The basic idea is simply that current Feminist discourse, as we’re exploring, is based on elevating “non-offense” to the paramount “bast function” of language. This is contrasted by “modernist” discourses which prize questions, exploration and direct involvement. Modernist discourse is also bound, eventually, to offend someone.
I think you’d enjoy the article!
Yes I did and thank you!
Really good article. It does seem to undervalue real issues of harrassment, and mix up some of the qualities of the two discourse types, but I do think it makes some good points about why so much discourse becomes such a mess and also why the Inclusivity Wars that come up from time to time in groups that suck at intersectionality are so freaky.