Feminism

[SuperBiasedMan]

Also, while an artist obviously does not get to decide how her art is interpreted or the effect it has on anyone, the fact that somebody does interpret her art in a particular way does not inherently mean there's actually a problem in every individual case.

I entirely agree with this I just think she chose to argue but missed what I felt was the point. I don't think I'm totally right, just voicing an opinion on that response.

[Apple Cider]

I think there's a hardening of discourse even talking about...talking about this stuff - self-segregating into self-reflecting chambers is also in some ways an individual's choice. There's a wide belief that social media absolutely should be a free forum of ideas, no matter how hurtful or even harmful those ideas are (dehumanizing would be a good word for this) versus a person's private or semi-public forum or even just social circle. We have to spend time with people who share no interests and actively hate or think of us as less human regularly because we are obligated to (work, school, family) but social media is perhaps a place where many people are given the ability to voice concerns or share ideas with similar people without any moderation. This is something I brought up in the social media thread because it destabilizes current power paradigms for marginalized populations. 

 

For example:

I got a lot of flak back when I used to talk about the intersection of feminism and World of Warcraft, and when I ended up having to block or otherwise unfollow people who were extremely mad that I didn't want to have the same argument again about how I am allowed to criticize WoW, I got the same "you're just enforcing an echo chamber!" comment. There's levels of difference in opinion and then there's also the lack of obligation to needing to hear everyone's say on topics in my Twitter mentions - especially if these people are coming it to hostile-y, aggressively in the first place because they don't even think I should be able to criticize.

 

I don't think this DOESN'T happen. I actually don't disagree that many of the issues we're all talking about DO happen but I feel like it is being formalized by people who seek to undermine vs. ameliorate.  

[Gormongous]

While I agree that this is incredibly frustrating, and unsurprising, I don't think anyone who already would react in that particular way would fail to feel that way or link any number of other things in the absence of this once piece.

I think a big reason I react the way I do to this whole issue is because, to me, it's all evidence of how incredibly polarized our political reality is at this point. I absolutely do not believe that every issue has two equally valid viewpoints, but I do think the degree to which each side is hardline and relatively unwilling to engage in meaningful discussion with those on the other side (and believe me I count myself among this number, as soon as I'm surrounded by, for example, conservatives in my own family, I can feel my intellectual shell hardening) basically guarantees this state of affairs will continue.

It just feels that the internet and the way our current media works allows people to self-segregate into self-reflecting chambers that disallow meaningful communication with those in other chambers. I don't know what I think anyone should actually DO about it. I really have no idea.

 

I wouldn't say it allows us to self-segregate, I would almost say it forces us to self-segregate, unless you're one of those few people with unlimited emotional energy to deal with knee-biting and back-stabbing.

 

And... I don't know. Over the past decade, I've grown immensely as a proponent of feminism, social justice, and LGBTQIA rights. I don't think it's a process of radicalization, but it's definitely a sincere change in my outlook from someone who was joking-but-not-joking as a half-hearted proponent of dictatorial government and military expenditures as a young teen, not exactly fertile ground for liberal ideas. I can't exactly trace the path I walked, but the path is there somewhere for real communication and I mostly walked it via the internet, so I'm not entirely despairing of the possibilities for dialogue, even if I don't see now how I would change my own mind, were I confronted with a fourteen-year-old me in some forum thread.

 

Either way, I just resent "here's what's wrong with the left" articles, because they seem to serve no purpose besides getting thrown in the face of left-leaning people in a way that doesn't really happen with other political allegiances. Why do left-leaning people keep writing them?

[Chris]

I wouldn't say it allows us to self-segregate, I would almost say it forces us to self-segregate, unless you're one of those few people with unlimited emotional energy to deal with knee-biting and back-stabbing.

 

And... I don't know. Over the past decade, I've grown immensely as a proponent of feminism, social justice, and LGBTQIA rights. I don't think it's a process of radicalization, but it's definitely a sincere change in my outlook from someone who was joking-but-not-joking as a half-hearted proponent of dictatorial government and military expenditures as a young teen, not exactly fertile ground for liberal ideas. I can't exactly trace the path I walked, but the path is there somewhere for real communication and I mostly walked it via the internet, so I'm not entirely despairing of the possibilities for dialogue, even if I don't see now how I would change my own mind, were I confronted with a fourteen-year-old me in some forum thread.

I would say I have evolved a great deal from my teen years as well, although more from someone who just generally didn't think about this stuff, into someone who does. I am enormously more conscious of these issues than I was 15 years ago, or 10 years ago, or 5 years ago, I just think at this point I feel as though I (and some other people) have perhaps overcorrected to some degree in some cases. I think the instincts to be conscious of issues of representation, marginalization, privilege, and so on, are very valuable and important to being a responsible and empathetic member of society, but I also think that they can turn into kneejerk affairs. (That can be a concern with literally any worldview though, I'm only talking about this one because it is the one closest to me and the internet and real-life communities I inhabit.)

 

Either way, I just resent "here's what's wrong with the left" articles, because they seem to serve no purpose besides getting thrown in the face of left-leaning people in a way that doesn't really happen with other political allegiances. Why do left-leaning people keep writing them?

I think part of being progressive is a realization that ideas need to be challenged and reevaluated, or at least that's part of how I see it. Thoughtful conservatives hopefully do this as well, but in general conservatism is inherently more about maintaining the status quo and so most of its practitioners are probably less likely to engage in this kind of self-evaluation.

That said, I think there is also a general human tendency for people to dig into and reinforce their own notions about things, aside from political affiliation.

[sclpls]

It just feels that the internet and the way our current media works allows people to self-segregate into self-reflecting chambers that disallow meaningful communication with those in other chambers. I don't know what I think anyone should actually DO about it. I really have no idea.

 

Honestly I feel like this last point is way more valuable than Chait's article where I think he correctly identified some unfortunate parts of our political discourse, but failed to really lay out any effective argument about how "PC" discourse is unique or exceptional in its shallowness or poorly considered responses. Shallow thinking abounds everywhere.

 

The way so many internet conversations are organized - twitter, reddit, tumblr, 4chan, etc. - are analogous to the open-office craze that has consumed American businesses, and they are bad organizations for discourse for the same structural reasons. Although I'm generally reluctant to engage in the sort of self-congratulatory pat on the back that you see from time to time in smaller forums such as this one, in this case I think it is warranted. The level of discourse you are going to see in smaller forums like this is going to be vastly superior to larger spaces. When the scale of discourse is more contained it makes it easier for people with higher than average social and emotional intelligence to operate, and this has been shown in studies to elevate the social and emotional intelligence of the whole group. But in big open groups this affect gets drowned out and everyone is worse off for it. And sometimes people become less willing to speak up. But this isn't a problem with "PC" culture (not wanting to offend women simply for being women or gay people for being gay, etc. is a good thing!), it's just a problem of big groups of people.

 

This is also, in a tangential sort of way, part of why I think reading literature, especially literature from another period of time written by someone with a very different background from your own, is uniquely valuable to our intellect. It's a way of short circuiting the gross assumptions of our own social environment.

[Akidu]

It just feels that the internet and the way our current media works allows people to self-segregate into self-reflecting chambers that disallow meaningful communication with those in other chambers. I don't know what I think anyone should actually DO about it. I really have no idea.

 

I'm hesitant to take a stab because I really am pretty clueless but i'll have a go and if i'm wrong maybe someone can enlighten me. 

I think a huge portion of people have absolutely no idea about whats actually driving their decisions. You mentioned "I can feel my intellectual shell hardening". To me that indicates a self awareness that many people don't have. I think that's one of the things many folks on this forum have in common. Its an ability to recognize those shitty pulls and pushes that try and take control and then resist them (though everybody slips up now and again I think you are far more ready for open discussion than many).

I currently think that educating people from a young age about how we make decisions and how easily we fall into subconscious driven behavior could be effective.. I mean I don't think it will stop it, but including basic psychology in schools as a core subject in the same way math and writing is could be really effective at teaching kids how their brain functions and what pitfalls to be wary of. 

 

Anyway I made a bunch of assumptions in there about peoples ability to understand their thoughts and ill admit i'm shaky on this opinion but its been bouncing around my head lately and I thought I should air it. 

[Bjorn]

Not to distract from the serious conversation here, but I was browsing through The Toast, and ran across a link to an article from last year about the NBA player's union electing Michele Roberts as their executive director (making her the first woman holding that job for any major sporting union).  In a speech laying out her credentials and why she deserved the job,
 

She said she was all too aware that if she was selected, she would represent several hundred male athletes in the N.B.A.; she would deal with league officials and agents who were nearly all men; she would negotiate with team owners who were almost all men; and she would stand before reporters who were predominantly men.

 

She did not flinch. “My past,” she told the room, “is littered with the bones of men who were foolish enough to think I was someone they could sleep on.”

[Mawd]

I agree, I guess I'm generally less liberal on the spectrum but there's a lot of stuff I support and I am often not even wanting to talk about any of this stuff anymore because it's just so divided as you said. It's exhausting and tends to make me not care anymore since I feel like talking online is like walking on eggshells (Facebook, forums, twitter, etc.) and may result in you being demonized even though you may mean well.

 

I guess now I always just think of this: http://natazilla.tumblr.com/post/22797932401/leosboots-i-love-the-art-and-the-style-and-the

Natasha Allegri is an artist that has risen to prominance and now has her own show starring a female character for once, but cutting down her stuff as sexist like this is terribly unproductive and maybe a little bit unfair (even if they have a point I suppose). She already has enough detractors that she's a woman who is only now famous because of riding the coattails of Pendleton Ward or that she "ruined" Adventure Time with her gender bending stuff. It's just in good fun and it's her job. So adding angry feminist accusations to her pile of criticisms just makes me frustrated even though I'm not her.

 

Wait what why's she sexist? I love Bee and Puppycat :c That character reminds me so much of a friend of mine.

So I summoned my courage and actually read a tumblr post plus some comments but, I don't know. Is it insensitive to state that I think that people with a problem with that image are overthinking it a little? Like they saw things that stuck out as overly wrong for them and ended up in a critique loop?

Which really just comes back to the bigger discussion occurring right now. 

 

edit: no they're not.

[thefncrow]

Catching up, man, that Chait piece is really ugly.  But I don't know if I would have expected much less from Jon Chait, who spent the vast majority of his career writing for The ("Even The Liberal") New Republic.  Who would have thought that someone that spent 15 years penning columns for a magazine focused on the interests of the centrist and corporatist elements of the Democratic Party would write a piece that strongly criticizes the progressive elements of the Liberal community and suggests that historically marginalized people need to quiet up so they don't ruin it.

 

Alex Pareene's article on Gawker fairly sums it up, I think:

Chait, like many liberal commentators with his background, is used to writing off left-wing critics and reserving his real writerly firepower for (frequently deserving) right-wingers. That was, for years, how things worked at the center-left opinion journalism shops, because it was simply assumed that no one important—no one who really matters—took the opinions of people to the left of the center-left opinion shop seriously. That was a safe and largely correct assumption. But the destruction of the magazine industry and the growth of the open-forum internet have amplified formerly marginal voices. Now, in other words, writers of color can be just as condescending and dismissive of Chait as he always was toward the left. And he hates it.

 

It has about as much credibility as Rush Limbaugh complaining about how argumentative pundits spewing anger and hate speech have ruined the civility of politics  Maybe Chait has somehow seen the light and this column signifies him changing his ways, but the way the article both fits the paradigm of so much of what came out of The New Republic and doesn't display even a modicum of self-awareness, I'm not exactly holding out hope.

 

As you can probably tell, I had a rather low opinion of Chait going into seeing that article, and that didn't exactly improve things.  I actually erased this post earlier and was just going to move on, but it just got under my skin.

[Argobot]

Chait has an unfortunate history and it's totally fair to bring in his other writing as a way to evaluate his overall mindset and worldview, but I don't believe it detracts from the central point of his article, which to me is not about white men being upset about the presence of formerly marginalized voices, but the larger issue of unconsidered criticism and overblown infractions that are so common among the Left now. Honestly, that strain of having an opinion is something I only observe in white liberals, who have the privilege to take a lofty, if pointless, position on a lot of these issues because ultimately they will never be as affected by them. The Pareene response (and Pareene is a writer I have followed and admired for years) brings up Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer who often discusses challenging issues of race and class in a very complex way that never boils down to a simple I'm Right and Everyone Else is Wrong argument. That's different from what Chait is railing against and I think a lot of the criticism against this article is willfully ignoring that fact. Again, I wish the piece was written better (for instance, that Bill Maher anecdote felt extremely out of place and counter-productive) but the core point is something I find myself agreeing with.

[Merus]

Obviously the appropriate way to comment on other people's bad behaviour is through a newspaper column.

 

It fosters an uninviting atmosphere and does nothing but encourage those with less than ideal values to remain entrenched in there thinking. 

 

[citation needed]

 

anecdotes are not data, but feminists calling out Penny Arcade is the only reason I have any exposure to feminist thinking. Call-out culture forces people, at least a little, to be afraid of what they say, and that's a definite improvement over the world where people could say whatever they wanted without having to think whether it could hurt someone. And to be honest it's not hard to get people to back off: you step back, you listen and acknowledge you understand social justice things, because it's largely enflamed not by the first instance but by fucking up the response and demonstrating that you're dismissing. Call-out culture is a proxy battle because the attitudes and people they actually care about are protected and defended by people who won't see the problems, particularly amongst their friends and family. (This is the problem Archie Bunker was intended to symbolise - a loving family man who's also really, really racist.)

 

I also think it's harder for people who can't pass for acceptable as easily as Chris can. A lot of people don't get to outgrow the thoughtlessly cruel comments, so they don't get the opportunity to let it go. Being able to live normally without being political is not a privilege everyone gets.

 

The other thing, about the Natasha Allegri thing, is this: do you agree that sexism is everywhere? If so, then it's not unreasonable that someone would use a poor example to argue that sexism is everywhere.

[Gormongous]

Chait has an unfortunate history and it's totally fair to bring in his other writing as a way to evaluate his overall mindset and worldview, but I don't believe it detracts from the central point of his article, which to me is not about white men being upset about the presence of formerly marginalized voices, but the larger issue of unconsidered criticism and overblown infractions that are so common among the Left now. Honestly, that strain of having an opinion is something I only observe in white liberals, who have the privilege to take a lofty, if pointless, position on a lot of these issues because ultimately they will never be as affected by them. The Pareene response (and Pareene is a writer I have followed and admired for years) brings up Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer who often discusses challenging issues of race and class in a very complex way that never boils down to a simple I'm Right and Everyone Else is Wrong argument. That's different from what Chait is railing against and I think a lot of the criticism against this article is willfully ignoring that fact. Again, I wish the piece was written better (for instance, that Bill Maher anecdote felt extremely out of place and counter-productive) but the core point is something I find myself agreeing with.

 

I totally don't mean for this to be as confrontational and adversarial as it's probably going to sound, but your response is very similar to a lot of the more considered ones I see from left-leaning people reacting positively to the article, namely that it speaks to a kernel of truth despite being poorly argued by a suspect journalistic authority using cherry-picked evidence. Because I don't trust asking this question on Facebook, I'd like to ask you, why do you think that is the case? I'm not sure myself, but I still find it somewhat worrisome that such a deeply flawed critique could gain so much traction among otherwise right-thinking people, for the most part because it confirms their own sneaking suspicions about certain segments of the liberal left. Isn't that part of an echo chamber like the one that we're supposed to be condemning here?

[Deadpan]

I feel like there's a vibe of "yeah this is an issue, but this isn't doing it justice" going on here so it doesn't feel to me at least like anybody is being unfair to the article.

 

There's something to be said, of course, for the pragmatics of working towards common goals regardless of other political disputes, but on the other hand that kind of surface level agreement isn't necessarily indicative of there being enough common ground to work with. In other words, it's possible to come to the same general conclusion about a thing for wildly different reasons, so how people got there is highly relevant. For instance, it's possible for a certain policy to be opposed by both men's rights activists and feminists. The former might do so because of its supposed misandry, the latter because it's ineffectual at achieving anything meaningful or works from a trans-exclusionary model of gender, etc. etc.

 

So just because somebody wrote a misinformed rant about something that also happens to be a genuine problem doesn't mean they suddenly have a point.

[Apple Cider]

I have to agree with Deadpan on this one, particularly as someone who spends a lot of time in places where this is a problem sometimes but has overall made me into a more thoughtful person.

 

see: my issue with Tumblr

[Argobot]

Obviously the appropriate way to comment on other people's bad behaviour is through a newspaper column.

 

 

It fosters an uninviting atmosphere and does nothing but encourage those with less than ideal values to remain entrenched in their

 

 

[citation needed]

 

anecdotes are not data, but feminists calling out Penny Arcade is the only reason I have any exposure to feminist thinking. Call-out culture forces people, at least a little, to be afraid of what they say, and that's a definite improvement over the world where people could say whatever they wanted without having to think whether it could hurt someone. And to be honest it's not hard to get people to back off: you step back, you listen and acknowledge you understand social justice things, because it's largely enflamed not by the first instance but by fucking up the response and demonstrating that you're dismissing. Call-out culture is a proxy battle because the attitudes and people they actually care about are protected and defended by people who won't see the problems, particularly amongst their friends and family. (This is the problem Archie Bunker was intended to symbolise - a loving family man who's also really, really racist.)

 

I also think it's harder for people who can't pass for acceptable as easily as Chris can. A lot of people don't get to outgrow the thoughtlessly cruel comments, so they don't get the opportunity to let it go. Being able to live normally without being political is not a privilege everyone gets.

 

The other thing, about the Natasha Allegri thing, is this: do you agree that sexism is everywhere? If so, then it's not unreasonable that someone would use a poor example to argue that sexism is everywhere.

 

Here is some evidence of the entrenchment I was speaking of. Also, by your own admittance that call-outs induce a sense of fear instead of a sense of thoughtfulness or reflection is enough to show what might be the core problem here. What did any of the Penny Arcade call outs achieve? Those who already disliked that website continued to dislike it, and the people in charge of the website have continued to double, triple, quadruple down on their beliefs. Maybe they have less social capital online now, although I cannot judge that accurately because to me they were never important in the first place, but the people making mistakes continue to do so with no incentive to change.

 

Citations: 

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/rolling-stone-uva-reporting-rape

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/12/the_year_of_outrage_2014_everything_you_were_angry_about_on_social_media.html

http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/

http://www.reddit.com/r/gamerghazi

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119412/feminisms-future-debate

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119674/lena-dunhams-not-kind-girl-and-burden-female-celebrity

http://www.theawl.com/2012/05/when-trigger-warning-lost-all-its-meaning

 

 

I totally don't mean for this to be as confrontational and adversarial as it's probably going to sound, but your response is very similar to a lot of the more considered ones I see from left-leaning people reacting positively to the article, namely that it speaks to a kernel of truth despite being poorly argued by a suspect journalistic authority using cherry-picked evidence. Because I don't trust asking this question on Facebook, I'd like to ask you, why do you think that is the case? I'm not sure myself, but I still find it somewhat worrisome that such a deeply flawed critique could gain so much traction among otherwise right-thinking people, for the most part because it confirms their own sneaking suspicions about certain segments of the liberal left. Isn't that part of an echo chamber like the one that we're supposed to be condemning here?

 

I don't agree with everything in Chait's argument, but as you say, there's a kernel of truth at the center that lines with my way of thinking on this issue. So if having a complex, if slightly favorable, reaction to an article is another version of being in the echo chamber, than that word no longer means anything to me. Because I do have an incredibly complex reaction to this issue. I often am afraid that the views I hold are somehow a betrayal of the values that matter to me. But I am so tired and bored of how predictable the script is on twitter and response articles to any instance of someone raising an objection to this current culture. I'm tired of it and yet still susceptible to that line of thinking, because I know how tempting it is to be a part of a group of people who will not question what you're saying as long as you're staying within acceptable territory.

 

The most recent example of that was with the UVA rape case. When Hanna Rosin raised her initial concerns over how Rolling Stone reported on that case, I was livid. I was absolutely furious that anyone, let alone a feminist woman, would dare to question a rape victim's story. But as more information emerged regarding the clear mishandling of reporting on this story, and other articles were written on how we have potentially failed rape victims by creating the kind of culture where seeking any kind of truth is met with hatred and vitriol, I started to come to what I hope is a more nuanced view of how we discuss rape and work to protect rape victims in this country.

 

None of this is easy to talk about, but at least we can all hopefully assume that everyone here is starting from a reasonable place, in that we all believe society is unequal and needs changing. And I really do believe that they way to achieve progress, to reach people who are not already starting at that good baseline, is to fight against this easy calcification of ideals. 

[Apple Cider]

The Penny Arcade thing was absolutely useful because I thought it blew a lid on how we see geek culture in general, honestly. For the first time, to me, it felt like we started to take a really nuanced look at what women have been dealing with in nerd culture (one of the reasons I stopped being friends with mostly guys was rape jokes, incidentally) for a long time and no one wanted to talk about. The fact that it was two dudes who reach a ton of people and promote that sort of thing and showed true faces on that matter was a big deal, to me. They might not be important to you, but they were or are important to a lot of people and what they say matters in that regard. 

 

They also stopped being people I wanted to not support financially or otherwise. 

 

I don't have much to say about Hanna Rosin or the UVA rape case because I didn't get to keep up on it.

 

I guess to me, letting things pass without comment is what keeps them in effect. 

[Argobot]

I see your point on it raising awareness and I shouldn't have downplayed that part of it. I'm glad that there were people who were able to come out of it with better attitudes to the culture and how it treats women. But those two guys still hold the same dumb positions that they always did, unless they've had a massive change of heart over the past few months. So while I can admit that this kind of awareness raising call out culture is great for people who are already on the fence about an issue, I still really believe that it does little or nothing to move those with more extreme views closer to a better understanding.

[Apple Cider]

Maybe it's because I took a lot of speaking classes in college but most of the time, rhetorical speech is often for the huge audiences who hear what you say, versus trying to persuade your opponent. Here's the two possible futures of Penny Arcade - either they apologized, rectified the situation and became better people, or they didn't. In this case, it looks like they didn't change or at the very least, they became more known to people as kinda terrible all along, but it raised the tide for me on what kind of stuff gets talked about. I know that inspecting what individuals do or say, especially with a huge platform, isn't often going to do much but you hope for the best and prepare for the worst. It is often the worst. But as people have even said in this thread, it turned the tide for them personally, I see that as a net benefit. I believe that discourse is the first step in many radical changes, combined with praxis in general. 

 

There's absolutely been cases where someone notable said something messed up and when they were approached about it, recognized what they did and moved forward, and that's always cool to see. I don't think call out culture is perfect, I definitely think it is a neutral tool in the hands of many people and that's what gives it magic or power (for good or ill, or whatever).  I also don't know if I see it as a codified culture so much as a device.

[clyde]

I just read the last four or so pages, my summary: "Best forum EVAR!"

That was such a good read. I have some things to add that have already kinda been stated, but for some reason I want to say them more generally.

I think that there is this idea amongst priviledged progressives like myself (let's refer to them as Pee-Pees) that they can eventually become so enlightened about systemic oppression and all the troubles of the less fortunate that they can then never have to worry about hurting anyone's feelings ever again! Then someone points out that yet another one of their word choices is rooted in white-supremacy and instead of submitting that additional bit of respect to the complaint, the pp says to themself "Haven't I given up enough?!"

Something that I am starting to acknowledge is that I will never be completely safe from hurting others. I don't know how much the need to accept this idea is for others, but for me it is pretty fucking important. I am obsessed with safety, my most selfish and personal power-fantasy is for a situation in which I don't have to consider my own potential to harm myself or others. This is a true story that might water down my point, but I keep wanting to include it. When I was 25 or so, my wife and I were walking in a shopping-mall and we saw an empty inflatable bouncy castle stationed by a bored highschooler. I asked how much it would be to go in since there were no kids in there and I had a hard time imagining one coming by and wanting admittance at the time. We go in, I climb to the top of this slide structure thing and my first thought is "I'm going to jump from as high as I can and land on my head because I never have the chance to do that safely!" First of all, don't do that. Secondly, this illustrates my saftey power-fantasy, but make sure to realize that the safety of others is the next most important thing to me after my own and when you apply some sort of multiplier involving convenience.

Anyway, we will never be safe from harming others, we just have to continue to try and minimize that harm and actively provide care when possible.

Think of Twitter as a bunch of houses with huge potential for connectivity that isn't always used. So anyone can be next-door neighboors with anyone else, but not with everybody. A neighborhood of marginalized folk end up creating some philosophies, culture, and art through their frequent interactions over a period of time. In some cases, they gain a larger prescence because of the distinct results of their insular nature. Then hipster pp's like myself go "Oh cool, that's neat and different! I want to be part of that!" And so we start populating the neighborhood. I inevitably will end up saying something offensive and get called out on it. I have a few options but we will keep it simple:

-I can submit to the small-scope, local institutional power of this tiny community and possibly even learn to adapt and appreciate the idiosyncratic views and priorities of this distinct culture.

-I can make a claim from the Rights of Good Intentions and cite the Law Against Double-Standard in an attempt to correct the well established members of the community.

-I can leave.

In the vast majority of cases, I want to avoid homogenization and assimilation of the distinct culture that attracted me in the first place. So I choose the first or the last option (which also happen to be the easiest and least stressful!)

I view a lot of call-out culture not as an attempt to get others to memorize a static list of no-no words, but as goal-post moving practice that maintains a tradition of local power in opposition to the attempts of outside-powers trying to extract and assimilate.

[Roswell47]

On a more light-hearted note. I just learned of the phrase '3rd wave feminist'. Does that mean that Anita Sarkeesian is the Reel Big Fish of feminism?

[Deadpan]

Maybe it's because I took a lot of speaking classes in college but most of the time, rhetorical speech is often for the huge audiences who hear what you say, versus trying to persuade your opponent.

 

I definitely think of it in similar terms. That can become problematic when the argument is entirely treated as a spectactor sport in which to score meaningless zinger points, but it's also feels very unfair to say feminist arguments are ineffective because they didn't manage to turn around that one colossal bigot on the spot. By bringing it up at all, probably a lot of people got to see a problem they might not have known of before. For instance, this is how I came in contact with feminism. So at the very least it feels weird on that personal level for people to ask what calling people out on stuff has ever achieved.

[Bjorn]

I keep writing, and then deleting, posts for this thread. 

 

Can someone actually point to concrete examples of when callout culture is truly bad and alienating? A lot of people here have agreed that it is (including me), but the more I've thought about it, the less convinced I am of that.  All of the examples I can think of are actually ones where the shit hit the fan not because of the callout, but because of the reaction to the callout, someone getting really shitty or defensive because an element of their speech or behavior was called into question (often legitimately).  And sometimes the callout is super mild, with a wildly disproportionate response. I saw that last week when the lady told an old friend on FB that his post in a thread was patronizing, and he threw a fit, writing an essay about a whole bunch of unrelated shit to prove he wasn't being patronizing. Then the next day he called and apologized, admitted he was out of line, that the original post was poorly thought out because of the context of the thread, and that he reacted like a shithead because he wasn't used to someone pointing out his shitty behavior that way. Her calling him on his shit wasn't the problem in that thread, it was his reaction. How often is that what we're actually talking about when we talk about the toxicity of this area?

[Mangela Lansbury]

I had a conversation with someone after I saw Dear White People. They asked me what I thought of it, and of course the conversation went to reactions to the movie, so I brought up how uncomfortable it made me that the black guy who I went with said the movie was ridiculous because that kind of overt racism just doesn't exist anymore. I stayed quiet in that moment and just let myself be uncomfortable for a while, but it left an impression on how I think about the movie now.

This still seems like a reasonable thing to me all around, but my friend called me out for silencing the voice of a person of color and discounting their opinion and trying to erase their viewpoint by talking over them and so on, which, I don't know, maybe I was doing that, but I just avoid talking about the movie now because I was told that the way I talked about it was just aggressively stupid.

So there's one example, I guess?

[Apple Cider]

I think that there's a lot of cases where social justice language is used in a way that is removed from the ultimate contexts and power dynamics they are referring to (see example of "mansplaining" being used to talk about a man speaking to another man, I wholly believe mansplaining is relegated to a man talking to a woman that implies that power dynamic). I cannot say myself (I'm white) if your reaction is somehow "more right" than your friends in this case, but it sounds analogous to a situation I see a lot with men chastising women on internalized misogyny - even if you disagree and you know why you disagree and you know that internalized misogyny is a thing, is it your place, as someone who benefits from sexism to necessarily check that vs. other women? That's a nuanced scenario I'm describing but it sometimes rankles me personally to see men do it because they still aren't removed from the system that creates that in the first place, and often, even monologues that are born from internalized misogyny are still subject to the power dynamics of whatever conversation takes place afterwards.

 

But all of this is probably what people grouse about "absolute identity politics" when really, in practise, it's not something you think about overtly as much. It's not my place, I believe, to tell people of color what they should think about racism as a structural institution is because I benefit from that structure existing - it would be more of the case of other peers of theirs in that regard, to check their POV. 

[sclpls]

Chait has an unfortunate history and it's totally fair to bring in his other writing as a way to evaluate his overall mindset and worldview, but I don't believe it detracts from the central point of his article, which to me is not about white men being upset about the presence of formerly marginalized voices, but the larger issue of unconsidered criticism and overblown infractions that are so common among the Left now. Honestly, that strain of having an opinion is something I only observe in white liberals, who have the privilege to take a lofty, if pointless, position on a lot of these issues because ultimately they will never be as affected by them. The Pareene response (and Pareene is a writer I have followed and admired for years) brings up Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer who often discusses challenging issues of race and class in a very complex way that never boils down to a simple I'm Right and Everyone Else is Wrong argument. That's different from what Chait is railing against and I think a lot of the criticism against this article is willfully ignoring that fact. Again, I wish the piece was written better (for instance, that Bill Maher anecdote felt extremely out of place and counter-productive) but the core point is something I find myself agreeing with.

 

We may have to agree to disagree on this point, but I truly don't believe that unconsidered criticisms and overblown infractions were a previously uncommon feature of left-wing discourse (in the 1960s the SDS eventually turns into the Weather Underground, or there is Mao's "Combat Liberalism" pamphlet), and generally speaking I think it is a part of all intra-political debate, on the left as well as the right. Chait argues that this current discourse is dangerously illiberal, but I'm struck by how relatively tame and moderate it is. It is mostly just a bunch of people talking... forever. So to that extent he is correct that it is exhausting, but that's simply a feature of people's endless appetite for discussion without synthesis or resolution. People need to learn how to disengage.