weexist-weresist:

i’m in a better place to articulate this now but part of the reason why it bothers me to paint occupy ws as somehow divergent from the interest that people of color have (and part of the reason why i do not give a shit about how many jobs you gotta get to to feed your family, as if no one is poor besides pocs) is because of how we are representing this mob of people…

it brings up the issue of representation as reality or trope, because half of the people decrying the folks at occupy ws as privileged fucks are citing pictures or news stories that are representing these folks as privileged fucks, while there are just as many talking about how there are legitimate organizers out there and blahblahblah.

so in these singular glimpses of thousands of people, it is hard to come up with a single narrative that effective captures the realities of those involved. and it is counterproductive to try to squash such a diverse group of people into a single set of interests or claims. remember that the subaltern is probably the most heterogenous group of people.

at the end of the day

-1. i dont buy that this is a cause that pocs cant get down with

-2. i dont think this is a serious movement because it is not well thought out and focusing on a shallow critique of capitalism

-3. i am unsympathetic to pocs who think that we can never tackle the issue of class alongside race alongside whites

-4. i dont buy into any singular homogenous narrative of who these people are and who they arent. i dont care for your sob stories because i’ve got my own, and i think you can shove your separatism up your ass.

 Yes, this partially articulates what I’ve been thinking…

I would say to point number 2:
Because of the diversity and broad appeal of the occupy wall street protest, it’s an easy critique to make to say that the goals of the occupation are not focused enough, don’t speak in one clear voice with one clear political/theoretical position. Like you were saying before, it’s bound to be a heterogeneous group. And what with the non-hierarchical formation, the movement doesn’t have one notable mouthpiece as far as I am aware, but if they did I think the media would either not show them at all or try to individually defame them.

The problem with having a mouthpiece is, the movement can be dismissed more easy because it can be reduced down to personality politics or identity politics. I wanna bring up slutwalk again because I think it’s relevant. People on Tumblr kept trying to dig for who was the mastermind behind slutwalk, who wrote the fliers, who organised the meetings (it was like police procedure or something). It’s a dodgy mentality to try to reduce a movement down to a figurehead and in a lot of SJ blogs it came down to ‘yeah but is the organiser white?’ Because if the movement could in some way look like it is being ‘controlled’ by a privileged person then it can’t possibly be beneficial. I think we have been brought up with a mentality that we can’t make a difference, and our individual contribution to a movement doesn’t affect the movement, so we should just look for a figurehead to define it.

But these are the tactics of the right wing press, here in the UK when UK Uncut occupied luxury shop and tax dodgers Fortnum and Mason, the press were quick to undermine the action by identifying some ‘rich’ or ‘famous’ members of the crowd. You can see their frustration with not finding the narrative they wanted: ‘if you are rich, you shouldn’t care about issues that affect the poor, how can we dismiss the whole protest as a gang of self-interested and envious, unemployed and leeching yobs if people who have nothing to gain attend the protest?’ So they returned to their familiar narrative of divide and conquer and envy, ‘look at this spoilt rich brat attending a protest, how dishonest, they don’t deserve to be rich, YOU deserve to be rich, why not do the lottery?’

Yeah, and I also see the press coverage of occupy Wall Street as in need of critique. When this becomes a critique of the movement itself I think people need to do some media studies 101 so they can tell the difference.

And while I’m not too keen on the 99% thing, I get the reasoning behind it and I think the criticisms of it are willfully misunderstanding how statistics work. They are all in the 99% under one statistical criteria, making a point that ‘yeah but not everyone in that 99% is the same’ is like, well, duh. It isn’t ‘we are the 99% of citizens who all fall under exactly the same economic and cultural background and also have the same colour hair and are also identical in every way’, isn’t it simply ‘we’re not part of the uber-rich 1%’?

So yeah, I’m not bothered that the movement isn’t perfect, because I think that these actions should be just routine and casual, constant presence and constant resistance. It’s sad to see people trying to tear a movement down because they are hedging their bets that it isn’t ‘the One’ that will cause a revolution and change everything. A lot of people seem to think they should limit themselves, waiting for the perfect revolution to come along, that one that’s already tailored to them specifically, it doesn’t happen, you go and add yourself to the melting pot, right? I’m in solidarity with all these movements unless I disagree with their politics.

(Source: cosmopolitan-fascist)

Internet. It’s Time To Talk.

wishingthehoursaway:

juthikakijawani:

iamwhoiamandidontgiveadamn:

waiflike:

swanblood:

miraclesaremadeofluckandtime:

kiriamaya:

meloukhia:

There’s a thing I would like to talk about. It’s a big thing.

I described it recently as a key, saying, “I feel like I am trapped inside a room and I want to swing the door open and say ‘look, there’s more stuff here,’ but I can’t turn the key and I hate myself for it.”

That thing is bullying and abuse in online social justice communities.

This thing is something which is never named. Never addressed. It is allowed to continue and we are all complicit in it. We all tolerate it when we turn our backs and say nothing. When we say “well, maybe this person has a point…” When we see it and we will not articulate it, say it, “this is bullying,” we are a part of it.

Way back in the day I had a teeny little website that got three hits a week. Then it started to grow, in fits and starts. It’s bigger now. And I remember back when I was a teeny tiny blogger I used to write about whatever the hell I wanted to write about. I was bold and fearless. And I sneered, inside, at those big name bloggers who didn’t talk about Issues.

“Here they have this big platform,” I would think, “and they aren’t using it. This site used to be so much better when it was small and now that they’ve sold out, they’re not talking about anything important.”

I hate myself for thinking that because now I understand. Oh, I understand. So much. Those people didn’t sell out. They were silenced. They watched the number of topics they could talk about narrow and narrow and narrow because they were bullied. They watched their own community turning on them and so they got quiet. And they talked about more fluff. And they stuck to their established areas of “safe topics” because to put one toe out of line is to be attacked.

I’m not talking about holding people to high standards. I’m not talking about asking people to be accountable for their actions and words.

I am talking about bullying. I am talking about vicious personal attacks and erasure. I am talking about communities which remain silent while this happens out of fear and dread. No one wants to be the one to speak up because the ones who speak become targets for the bullying too.

I am talking about people who write these incidents off as “blogwars” and “interpersonal conflicts” instead of recognizing bullying for what it is: A massive, systemic problem.

We can talk about how bullying and shaming of rape victims/survivors hurts communities. We can talk about how it’s wrong and how we need the centre the conversation on rapists and how to stop rape. But we can’t talk about how bullying is tearing our own community apart. We can’t call out bullies when we see them.

We are trapped in a culture of fear and silence.

I have wanted to write this post for over a year and I have been too intimidated and terrified to do it.

But I want to turn the key. I want to open the door.

And I want people to stop being silent.

Bullies use the tools and the language of social justice to do their work. They literally weaponise the very tools we have fought so very hard to create and work with. And they rely on this to maintain the culture of silence.

Because when someone uses the right keyphrase, anyone who speaks up and says “you are being an asshole” is clearly Not A Good Ally. If someone claims that something is a social justice issue, people who care, passionately, about social justice will remain silent because they think somewhere deep inside that maybe the person has a point. Because they don’t want to seem like they are using a tone argument.

They say “well I am just not going to get into this” and that excuses them, they think.

Well, no, it doesn’t. It’s not an excuse. I’ve used it and it’s not an excuse. It’s been used by people who have stood silent while I was being abused and it wasn’t an excuse then. It’s never an excuse.

We must be able to identify bullying when we see it, and to call it out. Because this cannot be a productive community, a healthy community, when people are too terrified to speak.

Multiple times a week, I think, “I’d really like to do a post on…” and then I think “but I don’t have the energy to deal with the bullying.” The same holds true for many other bloggers I have talked to. Large and small. They are afraid. They don’t have the energy. They remember what happened last time, whenever last time was. They remember what happened to someone else. Someone else who may now be silent.

And “it’s ok to take a break” seems to be the best response people can muster to bullying. Or private commiseration, in whispers: “Yeah, this sucks, I am so sorry.” “This happened to me and it was really tough. Hang in there.” “Don’t say anything, or they will win.” The other day, I saw a bully in the early stages of the bully-victim relationship, cultivating someone for a fall, and I didn’t speak up. I couldn’t speak up. I was stranded out of fear.

We do not think that these things are acceptable in the outside world. We do not think that it is ok to tell rape victims/survivors “don’t say anything, or they will win.” We do not think it’s ok to tell victims of abuse “it’s ok to take a break” because we know that there is no break. There is no stepping back.

There is no value in silence here.

Give it a name.

Bullying.

And make it stop.

It’s hurting me. It’s hurting you. It’s hurting our community. And there is no reason on earth that we should tolerate this.

This is not going to be an easy conversation to have. I’m really scared to publish this and there’s a reason it’s going on Tumblr and not one of my websites. Because I am afraid.

Scratch that. I am terrified. I deliberately didn’t name names or point to specific incidents here and I am still afraid. I am afraid of the messages I have internalized, the messages which say “talking about things like this is just stirring stuff up/holding grudges/being unwilling to be wrong/fomenting blogwars/dragging private matters out in public.” Those are all messages I’ve internalized about other forms of abuse too, not just online ones.

The culture of fear which leaves our community unable to tackle bullying is the same culture which allows so many hateful things in this world to exist.

ETA: I know that Tumblr etiquette facilitates and encourages reblogging, but I want to note that people coming here who are not from Tumblr are also welcome to reprint this at their own sites (or link it, with thoughts, if desired), although this is not required, if they want to join the conversation. I may or may not be able to engage with all responses to this, but it would mean a lot to me if people could pick this up and keep rolling with it because this is a conversation we need to have.

This. I’m scared of making any posts other than “this is what I did with my day” posts in case I upset someone, because I’ve seen that you can’t just say sorry if you fuck up, you pretty much get chased away. Or often that seems the case. (And you know, the social anxiety doesn’t help…)

I think that I agree with this post, but it’s hard to tell because it’s so unspecific; I could be thinking about certain tumblrs in relation to this post but actually to some people, the victims could seem like the bullies if their voices are viewed as more dominant or hold more weight with someone for some unknown reason.

I don’t feel like I can post about some things because there is a specific strain of tumblr SJ blogs that see certain topics as NOT-UP-FOR-DEBATE-EVER and therefore whenever someone wants to question the logic of a post they are shot down with swear words and deliberate misinterpretation of the argument, straw-man arguments and emotive demonisation. I feel like it would do a lot of worthy causes a lot of good if we discussed our points logically and rationally rather than making it a competition about who can be the most outraged or offended. I like to feel like I am disputing someone’s argument rather than tearing them down as a person, often if a poster is assessed as the ‘more privileged one’ this leads to personal attacks being seen as fair game when really if their argument sucks their argument sucks, I don’t care who they are really, so why does it have to be personal all the time?

Feminism’s failings?

hmm..

seems to me that when we bring up the supposed failings of feminism, they are eerily similar to the pitfalls of the patriarchy.

I mean, the criticism that feminism comes under from its own side (i.e. not the nonsense spat out by sexists) is usually centred around how individuals who call themselves feminists have either failed to be feminist enough or failed to adhere properly to other positive parallel movements. I have heard of people who call themselves feminist being transphobic, homophobic, racist… time and time again this nasty fault is linked to them also identifying as feminist.

I believe, as many of us do, that we live in a rather unfair world which encourages the alienation and oppression of certain groups of people; there is no reason to think that prejudices that lead to institutionalised oppression and alienation will not leak into positive movements. I take issue with many people’s point that this is an inherent failing of the movement. A movement for women’s rights is always going to be for women’s rights, nobody, not even Sarah Palin, can change that, no matter how much she might call herself a feminist. It can’t be more than that, and it will never be less than that. I call myself a feminist but it’s not the only thing I am. I’m an activist in many fields, I’m an ally to many causes. There are some people who are feminist but also free-market capitalists. I don’t think this changes what feminism is, I think it’s a cause, and you can be part of it or not.

I’m a big fan of anarchist ideals. I am also aware that almost all anarchist gatherings and groups are populated and dominated by men. These men could be utter bastards (let’s face it they probably are), this doesn’t change what anarchism means. Anarchist groups may have patriarchal leanings, may have sexist members but this isn’t because of some flaw in anarchist doctrines, this is because we still exist in a patriarchal world and anarchist groups unfortunately do not exist in a vacuum.

So maybe next time we talk about how someone who identifies as feminist fucks up, we shouldn’t say ‘that’s the problem with feminism’ or ‘some feminists are like that’ because it isn’t accurate or constructive to do so, oppressive behaviour is much much much more likely to be a product of the status quo than of a positive civil rights cause.