As I said before, there’s no single way of convincing everyone. It may not persuade you, but it may persuade somebody (or, at least, get them to stop and think).
See above. You can’t reliably say what will or will not advance the cause of social justice. The problem with attacking the tone, rather than the content (and I’m guessing the reason other posters are flippantly dismissing you), is that this tactic is often used to disingenuously dismisses legitimate concerns.
The only thing I may add is that posting “snarky lists” is therapeutic in the absence of meaningful change.
You are wrong, there is another way to do it: Change the balance of power such that it becomes difficult or impossible to continue oppressing the targeted group. Build the power of the oppressed group and erode the power of the oppressor.
Your claim is effectively that the only way to end an oppression is by appealing to the oppressor to change his ways. That puts all the agency in the hands of the oppressor, which is actually a very conservative way to view the situation, because it means you only win when your adversary decides you win. And your adversary has a very strong interest in not deciding that.
Runaway slaves did not change their masters’ minds on slavery. They used their own strength to run the fuck away and live life on their own terms. Exploited garment workers in the US did not convince their bosses that working young women 14 hours a day was cruel and unethical. They organized with each other to get the upper hand over the boss, and forced him to treat them better in spite of his personal views.
So yeah, maybe it’s not trying to persuade the oppressor of anything. Maybe it’s trying to rally the people who are already against sexism to feel more confident, to be willing to fight for ourselves and each other. If that makes you uncomfortable, ask yourself which side you’re really on.
Yeah. It’s definitely not my intent to concern trolley. I don’t want to silence anyone. But I think we’ve got to be able to have conversations about what actually works, what tactics actually advance the cause. (And that’s happening. Yay!)
I think it depends a lot on the nature of the oppression in question. If oppression is as simple as a gun pointed at you by your oppressor, you can end it by finding a way to take the gun away. If oppression is a complex web of beliefs and biases and laws and social norms, and you’re tightly bound to your oppressor through love or family ties, changing the power dynamic unilaterally is a lot harder, maybe impossible to do. These are extreme examples; I’d say that patriarchy is somewhere in between, if closer to the latter condition than the former.
Oppressors tend to frame social change as a zero-sum struggle for power. It recasts their oppression as self-defense, because for someone else to gain power they must necessarily take it away from those who already have it. But very few of these struggles are inherently zero-sum. Patriarchy is a pretty perfect example of this: it oppresses men as well as women, albeit to different degrees and in very different ways. Men have quite a bit to gain from ending patriarchy, even if many of them don’t see it yet. (This piece about toxic masculinity, published yesterday, makes these points more eloquently than I could.) But as long as they see it as a zero-sum power struggle, they’ll turn it into one. If the people seeking change buy into that dynamic, we endorse a view of the situation that both grants the oppressors the advantage and gives them an incentive to fight for the status quo. Maybe we can win under those conditions, but it’s a hell of a lot harder.
Point taken. I’m so tired of Internet snark that I find it demoralizing regardless of where it comes from, but obviously not everyone feels that way.
Sure, it’s more difficult, since it’s a much larger issue. But it’s far from impossible, it just requires different tactics.
A person who wields power using a gun can be physically overpowered. It is more complicated to overpower oppressors who wield systems like culture, government and economy, but it’s been done many times in the past. Those systems involve lots of people, and so influencing them does require lots of people working together. But that’s not the same thing as having to win over the opposition.
That’s certainly true, but there are obviously some forms of power which should be destroyed: the power to subjugate, to abuse, to infantilize, etc. These are powers which must be taken away from men, and the best way to do that is to develop the power of women to the point that they can contest and resist efforts to subjugate, abuse, etc.
I agree that both men and women will be better off once men have lost this kind of power.
Fair enough, but unless the conversations is specifically about effective debate tactics (or somebody has unfairly singled you, personally, out for abuse), bringing up tone is tantamount to derailment.
The Tumblr post mocks bad male writers (not even particularly harshly), specifically bringing up lazy characterization (reliance on sexist tropes), self-insertion, and tokenism. These are all things that happen, even in literary fiction, so (I feel) the discussion should focus on these criticisms, rather than on the way they are presented.
