Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

righteous anger is not the same thing as snark/derision

Well part of the jargon thing is that academics have conferences, academics get published, academics get quoted in thinkpieces, and academics are part of the system that "wins" at tonal games, even if the material is NOT as reasonable, neutral, even-handed, self-evident, etc as the tone implies. If you want to hear people's real stories without jargon you have to go out and ask them, or join groups where normal people get the space to talk.

LL, I know for a fact that you DO hear people's real stories all the time and also that as a teacher you have a greater-than-usual interest in clarity and communicability.

the problem with academic jargon isn't whether or not white middle-class people understand it, it's that it marginalises a lot of people that those academics purport to represent and speak on behalf of

Murgatroid, i agree that ethically, the obligation to come to the table is on the oppressor, not the oppressed. but practically, the oppressed don't have the luxury of waiting around for the privileged to get on board from their own volition. the person who has the most at stake is the person who often has to make the most concessions - rhetorically if not politically.

indeed i do
also most of my students are WoC (i know this acronym; they likely do not), not privileged people too lazy/privved out to learn some new words

that was xp to IO, sorry

it's a shame that non-snarky, non-angry communications are considered tools of the patriarchy - being respectful, esp to ppl in your own movement with whom you disagree, is not a mandate from the oppressor.

What is considered "respectful" is not a one-size-fits-all constant, though!! Anyway, respect as a concept is maybe not the most useful, it's very intertwined with issues of status and the various ways of assigning status, and it's just super hard to make it work for you free of those associations. But if instead of respect, we operate out of LOVE, that's different. Love has room for ppl to make mistakes, and it's only possible WITH ACCOUNTABILITY. So anger experienced in love is different, and the options available to people that are in line with their dignity and self-interest and self-preservation are wider in an environment held together with love.

in other words lex super otm!!

In my experience w/ the kind of internet communities being discussed in the article, the anger is not the loving kind but the snarky/sarcastic kind. I don't want to pain too broad a brush, some ppl are excellent at making critiques that are easily assimilated. But on tumblr, twitter, ilx, etc, this is a rarity ime. Most of the time it's dismissive (and maybe justifiably so, but not productively so).

being earnestly nice and caring has never really caught on ime

anger experienced in love is different, and the options available to people that are in line with their dignity and self-interest and self-preservation are wider in an environment held together with love.

^^ bears repeating endlessly

xp Murgatroid, I'm unsympathetic to many complaints about jargon because the most important concepts aren't that hard to learn and grasp but "no obligation to make their message easy to swallow, including vocabulary" goes against every rule of effective political rhetoric. Anybody who wants people to listen and respond needs to think about the language they use, whoever they may be.

Anybody who wants people to listen and respond needs to think about the language they use, whoever they may be.
DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH
sorry

The thing is, the people who most often use academic jargon, as you guys call it, don't even seem to be aiming it at a wide audience. They are writing for the privileged, those who have the time and access to do their research as to not be alienated by the conversation. It creates a bubble, unfortunately, and as for how to stop this kind of circle from happening, I have no answers as I am a bit outside of it. I do agree with lex that sometimes, the language alienates those it speaks for, but I don't think the answer is to simplify things until the marginalized can't speak of their daily lives with precision.

This blog post from awhile back explains my stance better than I could: http://www.redlightpolitics.info/post/71842333716/i-cant-think-of-any-high-profile-white-uk-feminist (it's pretty academic in itself, I know)

"guys"

My apologies, "some of you"

when it comes to academic bubbles and jargon i basically think a bit of checking one's privilege would not go amiss, just as people in media bubbles with platforms are correctly encouraged to do. i cannot believe it's possible to speak on an oppressed group's behalf while simultaneously excluding them from the conversation.

(MK, as much as i respect her, was guilty of doing this when a WOC friend of mine attempted to talk to her about these issues a couple of months ago on twitter)

some of that jargon is created by oppressed ppl tho

ime academics (esp the tenured) are reeeally reluctant if not resistant to considering their own privilege. buttered bread and all that.

i obv feel that academic language can be used to gatekeep, and that needs to be avoided for obvious reasons, but for example the white feminist rejection of "intersectionality," a word created by WoC, on "educationalist" grounds - that was gross

yeah i agree

i don't know where the dividing line between jargon and useful concept falls - i don't think of "intersectionality" or "privilege" as jargon at all. it's more a way of writing but maybe more importantly a self-awareness about how you come across. when an academic tells a white journalist to go and google something because why should she do your work for you that's all well and good, but when she tells someone with little formal education who's pointing out academic privilege...not such a good look

agree
that's why it's important to know your audience!

*dies* https://twitter.com/hugoschwyzer/status/428580118693289984

lol

The thing about academic writing is that however fresh the idea being scrutinised, the academics themselves often fall on the 'plodder' side of the writing spectrum. Throw a few academic neologisms into the mix, and it can be very heavy going with no leg up for the reader outside academia. I don't really want to spend my time on Twitter suggesting various academic feminists sharpen their rhetoric, but sometimes I have to seriously sit on my hands not to type something to the effect of 'RMDE please find some flow in your prose style before I zzzzzzzzzzzzz.'

BTW saw that exchange between Lex's friend and the prof and was slinging virtual knives at the prof by the end of it.

id like to read a profile of mikki kendall

https://twitter.com/methadonna/status/428644144739672064

academic language is so bad and inaccessible i think at least partially because it evolved in a cliquish pedantic bad-faith toxic environment where everyone is always trying to tear each other down called academia

people with proper educations call it 'academe'

acadamn

http://quinnae.com/2014/01/03/words-words-words-on-toxicity-and-abuse-in-online-activism/

There's an essay that addresses the concerns about "call-out culture" in an intensely thoughtful and humble way without speculating that women are uniquely prone to in-fighting or any of that kind of nonsense.

And a long twitter response from Latoya Peterson:

http://storify.com/jaysmooth/latoya-peterson-the-work

Ultimately, I think we need to learn to listen past hurts and slights. It doesn't mean that we ignore them.

It means we focus and center our end goal in all that we do. Let our work be a testament to what needs to change.

And from Brittany Cooper's twitter tl just tonight:

My quibble w/ the piece is that it is sympathetic to white feminists in a way that does not characterize my work, beliefs, or approach. But I care most about building the political project of Black feminism & that means it can't be reactionary. So I called out the toxicity and I stand by those statements bc I find it unproductive for the world Black feminists are trying to build.

I have long argued (privately) that our current phase of online activism is very much hobbled by the logic of neoliberalism and its emphasis on the individual, in ways that many of us are completely unaware of. Much online activism exalts the particular at the expense of the collective, rewarding individual episodes of catharsis and valuing them with considerably higher esteem than the more hard-nosed and less histrionic work that sustains a community. This is the dark side of the anxiety over the “tone argument.”

feel like this is very insightful and could be applied to a lot of things

just like how the primacy of the individual is so fundamental to our culture as to be unquestioned

That's a great essay, particularly the section on the tone argument:

But in the process, “the tone argument” came to be understood less as a complex piece of social machinery than an easily identifiable trope; it then became a badge that could be waved at will in any discussion to absolve one of responsibility for their words. Even though we as leftists quite literally wrote the book(s) on why and how language matters, we suspend that understanding when it comes to our own community members because we have come to value the sanctity of their anger over the integrity of the wider group. Some of us excuse this on the grounds that we provide the only safe place for certain people to express anger without being shamed for it, and that living with oppression leaves us with pent up rage that demands expression.

The individual catharsis, then, comes to matter more than the collective, and responsibility to a wider community is blurred, if not quite lost.

It’s why it was difficult for many in the trans community to challenge the #DieCisScum hashtag, for example, because any who questioned it would be charged with “tone policing” and denying the community’s right to be angry. But the problem always was that this pseudo-therapeutic exercise in catharsis only made a few people feel better while starting a violently unnecessary and unhelpful discussion with hordes of cis people who laid their own hurt and anger at every trans person’s door. It took a tarring brush to the entire community for next to no meaningful gain, other than sticking it to “our oppressors” for the benefit of a handful.

thought that quinnae piece was great + otm

those tweets really valuable too IO, thx

from @prisonculture:

We don’t know how to live outside of oppression because it is like the weather, ever-present and so we replicate it, all the time. But we want liberation and so we must work towards it. And that work involves criticism, analysis, and grounded practice. As people who have and will continue to build projects and organizations, we understand that discussion/analysis and grassroots organizing are co-constitutive. Also, there isn’t a neat separation between the online world and a separate place called the “real world.” In the 21st century, these places are one in the same. As such the concept of “twitter feminism” strikes us as dismissive and probably a misnomer.

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2014/01/30/interlopers-on-social-media-feminism-women-of-color-and-oppression/

That is so so so good, thank you.

I think it's quite within the realm of possibility that, if what we want is some form of "radical democracy" and if we have abandoned emancipatory narratives, then that democracy might look something like what is beginning to emerge within (and you could even say is being modeled by) communities like you see in contemporary feminist discourse. a radically complex profusion of voices, perspectives, and criticism in which the members are constantly held accountable for who/what is excluded in the "unities" they form to take action.

I just want to EAT that Prison Culture essay and have it inside me forever in loving incorporation.

as a mathematician i love when leftist academics drop isomorphism :D

omg just busted out a mobius strip too <3<3

https://twitter.com/prisonculture/status/429005774338002944

I'm kinda curious how you do the heavy lifting of all this work on the Internet, which has a history of making everything terrible(I'm in the midst of reading the Nation piece). I mean, this seems like such a matter as needing folks to sit down and talk it out in person in real-time to reach consensus or compromise or some form of agreement. Is there a way to do that in an asynchronous form of dialogue on this group of networks that we've only had for a couple decades now and are still working out the kinks of productive online behavior and make sure that (most?) everybody feels heard?

In other words, is it currently possible to achieve some social goal without messageboard-style culture fucking it up?

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/31/the_fight_over_the_v_word/

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