privilege as a meme

and i feel like i've mentioned this before itt, but not everyone has your goals, not everyone is looking for full-on revolution and just cause that's what you think should be endgame, doesn't mean they have to agree -- many people are just looking for comfort, therapy, community, friendship. things that may come easier in a totally different world but who's going to hold their breath waiting? shit is tuff. there is no "we". there are people doing what they feel is best for them. it's a problem when people can't talk about marginalization (as in, the ways in which they personally feel marginalized) without being instantly linked and compared to organizing institutions they may want no part of

this is well taken and i'll have to think about it further.

It took me a while to understand this stuff as "internet activism" or "tumblr politics" or whatever, because for the last three years this has just been the content of the daily conversations I've tried to navigate, and in a context where you're working with people on a campaign to pass a city council bill or hold onto a house or pressure a business, things like 'tone' go from the nature of a text comment to rippling reactions between people that are ostensibly friends, and it can get a kind of meaningfully painful that I wasn't previously familiar with.

i feel like i'm suzy'ing when i say stuff like that, i'm just trying to contextualize that the changes in 'internet discourse' or whatever have had a real and sometimes painful impact on my daily life

i know yr not stupid hoos i luv u hoos i just don't know why you make posts like that sometimes and i'm highly allergic to them

i should clarify that i do think the majority of the people in question would like to live in a vastly different world but they should never be condemned for not wanting to partake in the systems aiming to change "everything" ("capitalism"). it's not a mark against someone for fighting their fight in the bounds where they feel they have power or the possibility to make change, no matter how small. and it seems odd to alternately condemn people for limiting the scope of what they want to tear down and for not limiting their scope to "polite, forgiving attitude towards people who act like shit". it comes off "you're doing this wrong, you're letting capitalism win by playing within its bounds" vs "you're doing this wrong, you need to let people bloom within their own bounds". not aimed at you personally hoos

xp

i feel you

I've been really heavily influenced by people like Harsha Walia & Chris Crass who argue in their own ways basically that dudes like me should work on cultivating liberatory attitudes in people that look and move like us while we work alongisde people working to dismantle the larger systems that oppress them and I guess I feel like there's no space to articulate the unique exhaustion entailed by ~that~ niche of work, and that even expressing it almost feels culturally unacceptable in person & likely to be met online with "at least it wasn't for 200 years" online.

A few years ago some of us here tried to start like a 'men's group' with the intent to be a space to explicitly work with one another and express different kinds of feelings about our work on the outside, but I was disheartened by how fast it turned into exactly the kind of manarchist "why are we wasting time on this ~sexism/racism~ shit when there's a CLASS WAR to win" bullshit you're identifying here. I don't really know what to do about it. And maybe I'm just slicing the passing-for-white-dude identity pie even thinner by half deafly insisting "but I'm one of the good ones." I don't know what to do about this.

i'm cynical about organizing and my gut response is "lol get enough anarchists in a room and just start the timer on that shit" -- i think in cases like those, like it's important to have an outlet and someone to talk to about being a ~*~activist of privilege~*~ but you'll never find it in big groups (bcz big groups suck), it can be enough to find just one person who's on the same page as you. if i'm having trouble wrt this stuff i'll always go to an individual friend or my girlfriend rather than mention anything publicly. when it comes to organization i try to never forget the long history of well-meaning 'allies' being allowed into marginalized activist groups and literally destroying them from the inside, and that even if people think i'm a really swell guy and they don't want to see me having trouble, it's probably in their best interest to not set the precedent of giving people like me too much time with the conch

yeah thats solid

Like, "understanding the mentality of cops" is part and parcel of understanding how these things become our norms, if not among the most important part--most of our cultural institutions don't walk around with guns and a wall of silence prepared in case they kill you.

― creating an ilHOOSion usic sight and sound (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Thanks for being super-patronising and talking about "royal we" and all that shit, I really appreciate that kind of thing, it's soooo inspiring and not at all condescending and so completely different in its self-congratulation from those awful, terrible, back-patting #twitterfeminist call-outs!

However, in the culture where I come from, people talk about "the police mentality" and then go on to talk about the whole "oh, one bad apple" trope whenever the police do something terrible, as if these things are totally disconnected from and independent of the systems of privilege they support. And if there *is* a problem (which there really isn't, because if you just "talk more nicely to the police", it will go away) then it is *just* "the police" and "that one bad apple" which needs addressing, rather than looking at the corrosive system of race and class privilege and their our parts in it.

Basically, my point (and the point of that whole article I posted), you are reiterating it, but don't let that get in the way of a good zing, especially not on Christmas morning!

i long for the days when "life hack" meant cutting a juice bottle in half and using it as a desk tidy.

― caek, Tuesday, December 24, 2013 10:57 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's worth noting that the Altucher article that jendziura (?) links to does not mention "life hacks" at all. She seems to have introduced that phrase into the discourse. I don't see line-jumping as being the same thing as life hacking at all. Please continue to use discarded household items to better organize your life. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

oh, it's Jen Dziura!

Reminds me of something from Jay Haley's dated but great satirical essay on pschyoanalysis:

To phrase these terms in popular language, at the risk of losing scientific rigor, it can be said that in any human relationship (and indeed among other mammals) one person is constantly maneuvering to imply that he is in a “superior position” to the other person in the relationship. This “superior position” does not necessarily mean superior in social status or economic position; many servants are masters at putting their employers one-down. Nor does it imply intellectual superiority as any intellectual knows who has been put “one-down” by a muscular garbage collector in a bout of Indian wrestling. “Superior position” is a relative term, which is continually being defined and re-defined by the ongoing relationship. Maneuvers to achieve superior position may be crude or they may be infinitely subtle. For example, one is not usually in a superior position if he must ask another person for something. Yet he can ask for it in such a way that he is implying, “This is, of course, what I deserve.” Since the number of ways of maneuvering oneself into a superior position are infinite, let us proceed at once to summarize the psychoanalytic techniques as described in the three volume study.

However, in the culture where I come from, people talk about "the police mentality" and then go on to talk about the whole "oh, one bad apple" trope whenever the police do something terrible, as if these things are totally disconnected from and independent of the systems of privilege they support. And if there *is* a problem (which there really isn't, because if you just "talk more nicely to the police", it will go away) then it is *just* "the police" and "that one bad apple" which needs addressing, rather than looking at the corrosive system of race and class privilege and their our parts in it.

― MU-MU is and is not a theorem of the JAM-System (Branwell Bell), Wednesday, December 25, 2013 9:46 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm struggling to understand your meaning here, not zing you--i don't know you well enough to know what gets under your skin, but my claws come ready when i see my friends here sneered at, so i apologize for my tone. i don't come in here to lob snide grenades.

i think i might have found where our wires are crossed here--aimless suggested that your initial story about your brother might have said more about the mentality of cops than it did about anything else, and you argued that the racial and class privilege (even if you were just 'passing,' as i do, for something other than you are) involved in the situation played a bigger role than the attitude of a single policeman.

where i screwed up was in directing my reply & it's tone about the codification of police attitudes to you alone--what i was getting at was that, just as you seem to be saying here, the systematization of white supremacy and classism into the culture of policing is the relative problem to be solved here--or if you like, "the mentality of cops," is the problem, not "the mentality of a cop."

TY, hoos, for considering me a friend on ilx.

Not long after my most recent post to this thread I discovered I was operating in the dark in regard to Branwell, who I now know is a long time ilx poster under other names, who has recently returned to ilx using this name. Ironically, I was considering pointing Branwell to search out and possibly revive old posts made by the name she used before, so she could see that the issues she has been raising are not ones that have gone undiscussed here. As it happens, we've talked past one another many times before.

zach otm. I feel like this post really captured my feelings on the usefulness of online activism: http://darael.tumblr.com/post/58579735938/online-activism-changed-me-from-a-woman-who

http://25.media.tumblr.com/2c1d27bcd76b5c20bda21f7002a169da/tumblr_mym0lufAx51s71q1zo1_1280.png

i'm pretty new to social justice twitter squad, what twitters should i follow for race, gender, LGBQT, econ whatever discussions?

@pushinghoops

Off the top of my head:
Kiese Laymon
Darnell L. Moore
Brittney Cooper / Crunk Feminist Collective
Gradient Lair
Molly Knefel
Ned Resnikoff

Crunk Feminist Collective

does this include mikki kendall? love her.

nvm she's at hoodfeminism

karynthia (mikki) and blackamazon were my first two thoughts but only bc i'm not on twitter and i just know they blew up this year. BA's tumblr is what turned me into an annoying self-righteous SJW in the first place, always love her writing

yeah i follow both of them already! im not on tumblr but just got on twitter in a real way the past few months and kinda rabbitholed into SJ, mercifully

otherwise it wouldve been the same ed reform arguments everyday

@caulkthewagon
@tressiemcphd
@aurabogado
@babeeeinstein
@andreagrimes
@melissagira
@susie_c
@e_stoker
@The_WPCA

Only time Aura Bogado has ever appeared in my Twitter TL was when she insulted Jamelle Bouie's (I think it was him) interracial relationship during a spat, which left a sour taste and definitely deterred me from ever following her.

xp Oh good ones. I like Melissa Gira Grant.

So this blew up on twitter and I just learned about it today, thanks to #reclaimintersectionalityin2014, which I didn't understand the facts behind until I followed the twisty ball of string to this synopsis:

http://www.redlightpolitics.info/post/71842333716/i-cant-think-of-any-high-profile-white-uk-feminist

And for reference, apparently this is the first exploration of intersectionality, written by a Black academic feminist in 1993.

http://www.redlightpolitics.info/post/71842333716/i-cant-think-of-any-high-profile-white-uk-feminist

Sorry, that second link should be http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/files/socialdiff/projects/Article__Mapping_the_Margins_by_Kimblere_Crenshaw.pdf

...which is a 60-page PDF, just sayin.

Only time Aura Bogado has ever appeared in my Twitter TL was when she insulted Jamelle Bouie's (I think it was him) interracial relationship during a spat, which left a sour taste and definitely deterred me from ever following her.

― Murgatroid, Thursday, January 2, 2014 5:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i honestly don't follow her any more because i'm not a fan of lots of the things she says (my interview with her turned into a fight), but i think she's a good follow to get a feel for what's out there

i never saw that jamelle bouie thing though, thats nasty

with that in mind

@jbouie

caulkthewagon is my old skool occupy boston homie robin i recommend her to all peoples

https://twitter.com/WhiteFeminist

lol

@tressiemcphd

she is amazing, she is my favorite writer about anything right now, also she has RT'd me like twice yayyyyyy

no whey jeal

Meh at @whitefeminist. I really have little time for humor based on mouthing oppressor logic. The worst is when people jump in my twitter mentions with that type of shit.

@bad_dominicana has been a favorite lately.

I like @The_WPCA cause they kinda hit at the same target-area @whitefeminist does, in a funny way, but critically

no whey jeal

― creating an ilHOOSion usic sight and sound (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, January 2, 2014 12:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes guey!

ps thank you hoos and in orbit for the recs. ive seen many of these in RT and there was a piece i read by kiese earlier this year that knocked me on my ass.

in fact it mightve been linked on ilx, probably because i read like 5 things ever.

Thumbs up, he's amazing.

I haven't read his novel but the book of essays is phenom and includes an exchange of letters with some other remarkable men/writers.

And for reference, apparently this is the first exploration of intersectionality, written by a Black academic feminist in 1993.

lbr intersectionality has been 'explored' at least as long as black women have been writing about feminism

I just grabbed that from Mykki yesterday, who said "You do realize that intersectionality is a legal term created by a Black American woman right?" and linked to Mapping the Margins a bunch of times. Maybe "explored" was a bad/inaccurate term, sorry about that.

Sorry, MIKKI, not to be confused with Mykki Blanco, who I once had to see while on a date.

i read some of her stuff in law school but i didn't know she invented that word

Need to also recommend @suey_park for AsAm and AsAm Feminism issues

she cited this 1989 article of her own in the footnotes of mapping the margins http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Crenshaw%20Demarginalizing%20Intersection%20Race%20Sex.pdf