A lot of discussions would be improved if participants would explain at the start how they’re using critical terms. Which, come to think of it, depends upon people acknowledging that the meaning of critical terms could be ambiguous, or in dispute.
Denying that works great if you’re trying to conjure up the illusion of consensus where there isn’t one, or if you’re trying to draw up a Glenn Beck style conspiracy map.
Fair enough, but he was less concerned with the issues she raised, which was my point in regards to some leftists. She still argued for women have a shared condition overall and thought that needed to be directly addressed, no?
Or maybe it’s just a bunch of people on a message board with a wide variety of ideas having a conversation about a controversial subject, who might not agree, but are often doing so in good faith? And the occasional trolley to annoy us all…?
Maybe, but that sounds pretty cumbersome. I do avoid some meanings that I know others – let’s say, the uninitiated – haven’t heard yet, such as the structural definition of racism that says that POC can’t be racist because the overarching system is white supremacist, etc.
Also, it does depend on who’s participating and what they know already. All the same, it can get pretty damn exhausting to constantly have to explain one’s terminology to the uninitiated, and worse yet, to buttheads who don’t want to hurt their brains with “PC” language and so on.
Actually Brust’s position is basically that adopted by Martin Luther King in his latter years, leading up to the multi-racial, class-solidarity Poor People’s Campaign of '68. King argued that the “problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war” were all tied together: “we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” A movement of class solitary among poor, working, and middle class people of the type proposed by King and Brust would represent a legitimate challenge and danger to the status quo; articles like Penny’s which speak exclusively to the concerns of a relatively pampered middle-class not so much.
Were you raised in a bubble? Did you parents not let you go to school, or go outside, or watch TV, or look out windows, or talk to people that weren’t them? Look, as a parent, I can tell you, as much as raising children is on the parents, you aren’t doing it alone… you don’t socialize children alone, because we don’t live in little bubbles. Kids are influenced from outside, and there is not much you can do about that, other than give them your take on the fucked up world they live in, and try to give them the tools to navigate that world as best they can. They are going to find their own path in this world, and that path will in part be influenced by things that aren’t you. I can see that in my kid everyday. The older they get, the more they want to be elsewhere to with others. It’s a “natural” process that you have no control over.
Culture, the world around us - nothing is a blank slate, it is flush with meanings, often deeply layered meanings, sometimes the meanings are so obvious as to be clearly ideological (a political ad or a movie clearly meant to inculcate one into one view point or another)… other times, the ideological layer is hidden and hard to parse. The world is not a meaningless place onto which you press your own meanings, rather it’s a place full of meaning that is derived from any number of things - from your family, religion, or lack thereof, from the state, from non-state actors (corporations, mostly in the developed west), your friends, etc. To think that parents can just say over and again that “you should treat people right and respect them” will end racism, sexism, and homophobia (or whatever else) in our society is just… naive at best. It takes all of us saying that these things are NOT acceptable and that we have to actively work to change it, to change it in the systems we live within, and within each other, whenever we see it.
I think that these things go along with how society is structured. Back in the Jim Crow days, many white people (especially in the south) raised their kids with the idea that racism was natural, that integration was an evil that must not happen, that people of color were lesser than them, no mattter their education level, place in society, etc. The surrounding culture and political structures reinforced that - films had racist portrayals of black people, African Americans were often lynched for doing well economically if it meant they stepped out of “line”… You could say the same about women in the postwar world - when a woman could be fired for getting pregnant, she was paid less, and could only go so far (and no, the exceptions only prove the rule). Was the continuation of Jim Crow mentality only “personal responsibility” then? These racist and sexist structures still haunt us and affect our society today. There are plenty of people who think the civil rights movement “went too far” or that women are “unhappy in society because they aren’t at home, baking pies”… Some of these people are still in power today. Some of these people are in Silicon Valley.
Look, I can’t go into families and change them, nor can Laurie Penny. We CAN make comments about the structure of society and how that impacts OUR lives AS WOMEN. We can say, this MAKES US FEEL LESS THAN HUMAN… And you are free to continue to ignore that, or derail, or say that how we FEEL is beside the point. Or you can maybe listen when we talk about this, and take us seriously. That is all up to you, because you are personally responsible for yourself, your views, and your circles in life, as we all are. You can point out injustice when you see it, or you can turn a blind eye to it. So, yes, it can be about personal responsibility, but that doesn’t negate discussions about the structure of society that is still clearly sexist and racist.
Anyone that uses SJW unironically is now officially called a GRA. Which stands for Giant Raving Asshole. Both acronyms are equally useful in discourse and conversation.
I kind of agree, but it seriously depends on the woman. Do you really think that having 100 Sarah Palins or Michelle Bachmans in office is going to help? Or even some Hilary Clintons? Having women can help, but not if the women are all backwards and retrograde, or political opportunists…
I disagree, you still have to deal with the structure of society. Just having more POC, gay people or women in visible places can help to some degree, but…
Which is great and more people should think about it. But not everyone who questions society agrees with what the problem is. Nor does that negate the specific issues faced by POC, women, gays, religious minorities, etc.
She acknowledges her privilege, I think. Doesn’t mean sexism isn’t real… [edited to add] You could also say that working class women have a different set of struggles than middle class women.
Yes, basically, but that’s not what Brust is saying. No way would King have agreed, for instance, with this:
But the working class is kept divided by, among other things, racial prejudice. So, no, I do not benefit from racism. If my sex, my race, my sexual preference, and even more, my fairly comfortable (if uncertain) middle-class income mean that I am less oppressed than many of my brothers and sisters, this does not mean I benefit from racism.
Say what now? White men don’t benefit from racism? Only a blinded white man could say such a thing, and again, King certainly wouldn’t have said it.
By my reading, Brust isn’t saying we should tie all oppressions together; he’s saying we should overlook sexism and racism (Hush, you whining women and people of color, listen to me, Supposedly Objective White Man!) and focus exclusively on issues related to social class divisions. As if that would solve the other problems. As if asking all people to unite under that banner wouldn’t raise once again the very problems he’s asking people to overlook.
Say what now? White men don’t benefit from racism?
I have benefited from racism. My father benefited from racism. My great great great grandfather directly benefited from racism.
I have benefited from sexism. My mother was disadvantaged because of sexism (which sucks when you are a single parent with two kids). My grandmother was economically hobbled because of sexism.
I just don’t know where to go with this type of argument, even though those that take a different line of thought are well educated and articulate. I am not even a generation away from the cold, cruel implications of bias.
I didn’t get to where I am by boot straps or plain hard work. I was lucky enough to be a certain color, a certain height, a certain gender, and exactly average at everything else.
That’s a good point and worth making.
I think so, but she’d qualify that with the argument that it should be working class women taking the lead on women’s issues, and that women should ally with working class movements. She was often arguing against liberal feminism, referring to it almost always as bourgeois feminism, with the understanding that when class was omitted from the discussion, it meant accepting bourgeois leadership.
I think it’s also worth pointing out that, over time, I think feminism in general has shifted left, and is more inclined to take issues of class into consideration. That’s not universally true, of course – Lean in! Ready for Hilary! – but I think a lot of leftists underestimate this, partly through a tendency to lean too heavily on literature from the glory days.
To be fair to me, I’ve read only a little about Kollantai, and it was a while ago! 
I think I remember that. She was still a communist, after all.
I hope so. But I think there is a battle within feminism over this stuff which probably hasn’t helped the cause of women’s rights more generally.
I used to use an argument like this. The problem with it is that it takes it as assumed that the long term benefits of opposing racism, the potential success of a multiracial working class movement, is so obvious that the short term benefits of accepting racist privilege is negligible. But after generations of defeats and decline for labor movements, the long term potential for success is not at all obvious. Making it worse, of course, is that it’s so easy for white people to ignore how white privilege works.
But after generations of defeats and decline for labor movements, the long term potential for success is not at all obvious
That’s a depressing start to 2015.
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.
But does FOX News know what it is doing? Half of their viewers are 68 or older. Selling fearful reactionary politics to fearful reactionary people isn’t the sign of a master manipulator. Where are they going to be in 20 years if they keep doing the same thing?
But more than that, the essential message of the American right wing, embodied by FOX News is that people are stupid sheep who need to be governed by a powerful elite who really know what they are doing. Using machiavellian tactics is a good way to sell that message because it is embodying that message - it is being the change you want to see in the world.
The feminists who are saying “You’re part of the problem” are also living the change they want to see. Talking to people honestly about complex problems is showing respect for people, which is a good step toward creating a world where people respect one another. When I see people saying that feminism needs a slicker sell, like I say, I want to be given evidence. Is that how the suffrage was won? I’m pretty sure women got the vote because at some point, under immense pressure, a society of adults had to say, “Yeah, this women not voting thing is actually pretty stupid.”
If we take seriously the idea that people are all a bunch of idiots, then we have to be a little loopy to think that we, as a subset of those idiots, know how to control those idiots.
That’s how I felt reading it as well. Even if we all agree that class divisions are more fundamental than race and sex divisions, that’s just saying that we are basically all on the same team. And if we are all on the same team, shouldn’t that mean that white men should care about the issues faced by women and people of colour? Reading the Brust piece linked above I got the sense that he instead concluded that we should only work to solve problems that exist for all members of the team, that is, the ones faced by white males who aren’t in the top 1% earners. Come on with that.
Yes, a thousand times yes. And that is what is so maddening. We are on the same team. Rising tides raise all boats. Common analogy to reinforce said quote.
Indeed. And just why they don’t is a Big Problem.
I think that because white men aren’t forced by problems brought about by simply BEING white men to be more aware of the fact that they are white men, they’re discouarged from realizing as well as others do that being categorically perceived in various ways really does matter – in bad ways sometimes, in good ways at other times. They (falsely) see themselves in more individualized terms. And then they think others should do that too. It’s maddening.
I’ve opened a separate comment thread for those who want to discuss the story Aaronson was discussing which lead to this whole debate.
