Sunday, December 10, 2006

Once again, Black Amazon is right,

(film at eleven)

in calling out not just the usual suspects but those of us who were willing to soften a bit for what looked like doing the right thing (yeah, i said "thank you," too, like it was gonna register, but i thought, a gesture).

Quoting Usual Suspect:

Well, the root cause really does go back to agenda-setting. People really look up to Fire Dog Lake as a blog where they don't have this hostility to "identity politics", but in fact see the big picture here, and the importance of having the liberal resurgence be about economic progressivism AND foreign policy issues that are based in trying to keep peace AND opposition to oppression by race, sex, and sexual orientation. Markos and the Sensible Liberals out there want to see these goals as somehow opposed, but I think that will are fixing to see that they are intermixed.

And Nancy Pelosi's rise to Speaker is going to be huge for us peddlers in mere identity politics. Sensible Liberals are always seeking what goal they have to compromise on to get another, and while they were debating---do you give in on the war? do you give in on women's rights?---a woman rose to the 3rd most powerful position in the country, and controls the agenda of DC now and guess what? She was against the war from the beginning and a supporter of women's rights. Compromising your principles to get things done turns out to be the exception, not the rule.

And now we're seeing the damage that the widespread tolerance of sexist slurring is going to do to the Democrats because this whole arsenal of attacks against Pelosi will be handed out in the mainstream media that wouldn't be there if sexist language was as shameful as racist language. And it's going to hurt the people who were against the war all along, because she's been there with us. If more people would got on board with this antagonism to sexist language that feminists demonstrate, then we could have had a much better chance of minimizing the damage of these attacks. The reason tensions are high right now is the people who mock the "PC police" were often doing so, like Markos, to make us seem inconsequential so people like him get to set more of the agenda. And in doing so, they shot themselves in the foot. I think the whole cloth liberals who think all these issues are important are seeing this happening, seeing that we were right, and getting pushier because of it.



BA speaking:

First off the ENTIRE thing is constructed on the premise that the severity of the problem is linked to what ladies and gentlemen. POWER

...Number one I am amused by the fact that it's beleieved Nancy Pelosi will change one iota because of these slurs. I am not that big a fan of her but that woman has an iron core . PLUS Who are sensible Liberals? The ones who make deals . or the ones who minimize others by portraying their concerns as trivial or baseless. ( see the links to rummages for cutlass and read the comments)

Then the slider i n the humdinger the one that gets my goat, my ipod nano and my bouncy ball.

if sexist language was as shameful as racist language

HAMINAH HAMINAH WHO?

ARE WE REALLY DOING THIS SHIT AGAIN?! REALLY

It's small I know right. I should let it go . Except NOPE.

STOP. JUST STOP.

I would really really really like people to stop using sneak attacks and sliding in racism vs sexisms while they do their teary eyed utopia dreaming stumpbox speeches...



You know what; so would I. And I apologize for not reading the fine print enough to catch that one.

Racist language and institutionalized racism aren't magically shameful now. They aren't LESS accepted by anyone. Considering these posts did not show up for TRex's lovely opinions on Japan ( what the fuck is it with white folk who go to japan and are shocked it's not America ?) and most responses to it ignore TRex's racism . If I was some equivacating bean counter I'd say the tip on THIS issue is that sexism will get a rise out of folks faster than race.

The folks taht tend to make the huge kerfuflfles about race ARE STILL POC . So when " racism is less accepted" it boilds down to is " all the colored folk won't shut up" , white america didn't magically act right , it didn't kill it dead and jump the hurdle . Non white america jsut became a very powerful voting/economic/might burn shit if ya ain't careful voice.

So when WHITE feminists keep mewing that sexism is still OK while racism isn't, especially in application to the THIRD IN LINE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

while we still cant get enough colored folk to field a basketball team in senate ...



And may I just interject personally: I am more than a tad skeptical about the idea that simple categorical representation means (much more than) squat all by itself; if it did, Maggie Thatcher and Condi Rice would be just the greatest boons to women and POC ever.

I like Pelosi okay, I guess. As with anyone else, we'll see what she actually does with her upgraded status. But

1) as BA notes, you can't have it both ways. Either representation matters or it doesn't. If it's so all-fired important that the Speaker is a WOMAN y punto, then it bloody well matters how very few POC are in congress; and, corollary, if we ("what do you mean 'we,' white man...") somehow are managing to hurt her position by tossing around sexist slurs, then perhaps "we" also ought to consider how much it's "our" fault that POC have such little representational pull in the Big Time. of course, as BA also notes, Pelosi is a tough cookie and i doubt that a bunch of 'Net jocks spewing shite that was ripp'd straight from the Andrew Dice Clay routines on which these born-again Progressive Warriors were undoubtedly raised is exactly the biggest thing she's going to have to worry about.

2) Personally, I sort of glossed over the rationale that's apparently fuelling this latest spanking of fdl by a lot of people: to wit, "yer making us all look bad." Maybe it's because I'm a cynical little bastard myself and do see the need for realpolitik. Too.

But. It's a bit of a giveaway, framed in such terms, isn't it? "Compromising your principles to get things done," yes indeedy.

Except for, it's not really clear that that's what's happening here, is it, is it.

See, there's a flaw, I think, in the thinking here. The idea behind this seems to be that kos, fdl, etc. are willing to throw "identity politics" under the bus because they calculate that "we" (whaddya mean 'we,' white/straight/cisgendered/ablebodied/middleclass/First World woman?...) are expendable in the ultimate goal to WIN. And that--here's the mistake--they are mistaken in such calculations.

What isn't really examined here is what WINNING means in the damn first place.

Basically, it means "we" get in power. Yes?

So, technically, as long as "we" draw the boundaries around "us" pretty carefully, and then do everything in our power to make sure we win (the election, the Representation, the goodies, the book deals, the ad revenues, the limelight...the POWER, which is of course like everything else a very scarce commodity indeed)--well, in fact we're not being hypocrites at all, are we.

We're being remarkably consistent, in fact.

And so we see that in fact we are rallying here primarily not even so much because of Class Woman but because Pelosi is One Of Us, a much smaller, more select pool of "us" that is; and we protect our own.

Oh, right. Principles. We were talking about that at some point, weren't we.

Lookit. The problem here isn't whether fdl is "punk" and wonkette is a sellout, or punkass blog will be up against the wall whereas kos will be enjoying the fruits of his sellout labor. The problem isn't even "sexism is bad; racism, what racism?" although that's closer to it, and certainly A problem, oh yes it is.

But the main problem here is this:

People forgetting that this isn't a damn football game. It's not about anything so abstract as points or even principles, ultimately: it has very very concrete, tangible results for REAL PEOPLE. Just because those real people may not be "us" at the moment doesn't make the people it DOES affect any less real; nor does it mean that "we" won't be next.

So you see it's not about "compromising your principles to get things done;" it's about, the things "we" want done are not the things YOU want done, because you are not us, and you don't rate. That isn't compromising principles; those ARE the principles.

Which leads us to this question:

How does the apparent widespread if not universal consensus belief that "there's only so much to go around"--only so much ANYTHING, power, resources, love, even bloody atttention--go with what i thought were supposed to be progressive/liberal/small-d-democratic-what-you-will Principle?

Answer: It doesn't.

There is a reason why the pyramid model keeps getting recreated over and over and freaking over again, no matter how bloody low the actual stakes in real world terms; and, more important, why so many people seem to immediately buy in to the idea that they are somehow SPECIAL and CHOSEN (hi, TRex! hi!!) as soon as they reach a certain level of visibility or influence.

It is the same reason why the people who are ideologically more comfortable with the notion of an "elite" always seem to have an edge in this System than the ones who are vaguely, uncomfortably aware that something is wrong with this picture, although they can't quite figure out what.

Republic of Palau at Progressive Gold tags this as a particularly American (U.S.) symptom; since I don't have the same outsider's perspective, I can't say for sure in comparison to say anywhere else. I suspect it's not that simple; it never is.

What I do know, though, is that, yes;

there is this idea of the American Dream. Anyone can make it if sie just works hard enough. There's enough for everyone. This land is made for you and me.

Simultaneously: and yet, there is an Elect; there is Manifest Destiny; and that, too, is the American Dream.

We're Number One.

We HAVE to be Number One; or else we are An Loser.

but anyone can Make It if sie really tries!

therefore:

We're ALL Number One; except some of us. Well no actually most of us. Because...they...you... didn't...try...hard enough,...aren't good enough...oh, right, that's what They think, isn't it. Well, we aren't Them! We're, um. That is, um. Let's, uh, well...prum prum prum...hey, look! Over there! Bad People!

lather, rinse, refuckingpeat.

Oh yeah. We are all completely sane.

Meanwhile, as Progressive Gold also notes, the what one would think is a very basic principle of telling the insane overgrown child, look, finally, just plain NO, well, that principle seems to have gone by the wayside, on account of, what, he might wish us all out to the cornfield? Something:

For every minute Bush tries to deny the inevitable, for every moment the people around Bush pander to his madness, the more they stand frozen like rabbits in the headlights as sycophantic impotence personified, more people die for no good reason, civilians and troops alike.

The cowardly Democrats don't have the guts to do a damned thing either (except for Cynthia McKinney, whose parting shot to Congress was an impeachment bill). And, in the middle of a constitutional crisis the likes of which the US has never seen, what is the Democrat political hopeful doing? Denouncing the regime and calling for immediate change?

Hell, no. Hillary Marie Antoinette bloody Clinton, unbelievably, is out campaigning against video game violence with Turncoat Joe bloody Leiberman. Fantastic.


Quick, I know! Let's all denounce her and then...not actually do anything substantially different! Okay! Ready set GO!!

Because, getting back to the main point, BA's point, I'll tell you what: fuck YEAH there's a principle here.

It's this: don't fuck people over.

Don't piss on peoples' heads and try to spin it as, well, no, not even trickle down, that's what THEY do, it's share and share alike, Ernie!

Clearer?

You are a blogger. You post something that a bunch of people find offensive. They tell you, in clear, first reasoned and then impassioned terms, like the sane, intelligent people that they are.

If you respond to them with a bunch of, well let's just take BA's example, as it couldn't be more explicit, even though yes it IS an example of a larger problem, believe it or not, exciting as the Internets Dwama aspect always is:

(quoting Usual Suspect):

Third, "burqua-gate" is basically being conducted by two white women who've appointed themselves the spokesmen on behalf of Women Of Color

So what is happening ladies and gentlemen is taht these " progressive liberals" will spend more time deconstructing and trying to teach a racebaiting,misogynist that engaging "two women".

They would spend more time scouring for ways to instruct and rebuke a user of black face , than IN ANY FUCKING MEASURABLE way dealing with the honest efforts of peopel to communicate with them.

AND AND AND !

To do so they have to basically try and ERASE a documented LITANY of responses that came mostly not form teh two white women. But from the brown folks.

WHILE USING THEIR APOLOGIES AS MORAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.

I am not good enough to talk to ( at least not ina ny meaning ful way, without paassive aggressive stabs) but need a emblem to hold up to prove y ou have moral highground .



Let's slow down and replay this bit:

dealing with the honest efforts of peopel to communicate with them.


And that right there, luddites and germs, would be yer principle, the one you keep losing sight of. You. They. "We." Whichever. Pronouns're a bitch, ain't they?

"We have met the enemy, and they is us."

Because the fact of the matter is, "we," and yes take that any way you damn like, don't have much "real world" power in the senses we like to think of as real world power, most of us. Hillary Clinton is probably not anxiously scouring the blogosphere for what we think of her; and if she is, or rather one of her aides is, well shit, we've seen how cherry-picking works; we saw its results at the last luncheon with her husband.

Here's where we, you, DO have real-world power: by your everyday actions, and yes that includes online, there are actual people at the other end too, believe it or not.

Recognize the honest effort of people to communicate with you. Respond--not react!--in kind.

THAT would be small-d-democratic. THAT would be progressive.

And, and:

It's not in fact about "speaking truth to power." Power--that kind of power-- doesn't want to listen; that's what MAKES it power.

Speak truth for its own sake: that IS power. That is, a different kind of power. It starts with listening, not just speaking; and being willing to lok to your left, right and down rather than just, eternally upward.

Otherwise it's just, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

And we wouldn't want that, now would we?

Punk, edgy, progressive-type rebels that we all are...

108 comments:

Cheryl said...

Okay, I admit I stopped halfway down the manifesto...got to walk the dog. I just wanted to point out that everyone is going to naturally focus on those issues which directly affect them first, over other issues they may know are right but aren't immediately impacted by.

So the farmer in Iowa is focused on subsidies, the hunters are worried about guns, the women are worried about sexism and the people of color are worried about racism.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying it seems to be human nature.

belledame222 said...

Yes, obviously, but that isn't where i'm trying to go with this.

Point being: there is an underlying value system at work here, okay, and it has mutually contradictory messages:

1) If you aren't number one, if you aren't a "winner," you're a "loser," and thus haven't "made it"

2) Everyone can make it if they just try hard enough!

and that yes, it affects the "progressive" sphere as well; all that keeps happening is people reluctantly widen and widen the list of who's a potential winner as members of group x or y become persistent enough squeaky wheels.

but i think there's still a root problem here that's not being addressed.

i'm not saying i have the ideal solution for addressing it at a systemic level; but it starts with -acknowledging- that it's a problem.

At the more basic level: it is possible to put one's own concerns first and still be able to hear it when someone else goes, hey, you forgot us; what about us? To be able to go, oh, gee, you're right, I didn't think of that, okay, I'm rethinking this. As opposed to oh I don't know, MY cause is the Cause of Righteousness, whereas YOU--well, there isn't even a Cause there is there, it's just your problem is all, you're just so SENSITIVE, why's everyone picking on meeeeeeeeee?

...which is i suspect the gist of BA's frustration here, and I don't blame her one tiny bit.

belledame222 said...

edited one bit in OP for the sake of clarity and a less obnoxious tone.

R. Mildred said...

I just wanted to point out that everyone is going to naturally focus on those issues which directly affect them first

Which is bullshit because A) it's all interconnected, so anyone trying to focus on just one issue without any spill over whatsoever (which is what liberals are best at) is explicitly choosing to ignore how it intersects with other things because to deal with one thing is to begin to deal with everything else that intersects with that and B) WHY THE FUCK DO THESE PEOPLE KEEP FUCKING WELL TRYING TO DEAL WITH ISSUES THEN COMPLAINING WHEN SOMEONE FUCKING WELL CALLS THEM ON THEIR BULLSHIT HALF-ASSED ATTEMPTS AT DEALING WITH THOSE SUBJECTS WITHOUT THINKING THEIR SHIT THROUGH!?

You can't have it both ways, either they don't fucking well care and are quite proud about exercising your privelage to be able to continue to not care, or they do care, don't exercise hteir privelage to avoid caring and are therefore open to being criticised for their bullshit when they get it all horribly wrong.

They want ot both seem like happy little anti-racists while at the same time doing their best to ignore racism in their little sub-society, and that's bullshit, I wouldn't mind so much if they were honest about their frank indifference to anyone's oppression but their own, but it's this tissue of freaking lies, I hate being lied to in such a way that it also insults my intelligence.

R. Mildred said...

I just wanted to point out that everyone is going to naturally focus on those issues which directly affect them first

Which is bullshit because A) it's all interconnected, so anyone trying to focus on just one issue without any spill over whatsoever (which is what liberals are best at) is explicitly choosing to ignore how it intersects with other things because to deal with one thing is to begin to deal with everything else that intersects with that and B) WHY THE FUCK DO THESE PEOPLE KEEP FUCKING WELL TRYING TO DEAL WITH ISSUES THEN COMPLAINING WHEN SOMEONE FUCKING WELL CALLS THEM ON THEIR BULLSHIT HALF-ASSED ATTEMPTS AT DEALING WITH THOSE SUBJECTS WITHOUT THINKING THEIR SHIT THROUGH!?

You can't have it both ways, either they don't fucking well care and are quite proud about exercising your privelage to be able to continue to not care, or they do care, don't exercise hteir privelage to avoid caring and are therefore open to being criticised for their bullshit when they get it all horribly wrong.

They want ot both seem like happy little anti-racists while at the same time doing their best to ignore racism in their little sub-society, and that's bullshit, I wouldn't mind so much if they were honest about their frank indifference to anyone's oppression but their own, but it's this tissue of freaking lies, I hate being lied to in such a way that it also insults my intelligence.

R. Mildred said...

I just wanted to point out that everyone is going to naturally focus on those issues which directly affect them first

Which is bullshit because A) it's all interconnected, so anyone trying to focus on just one issue without any spill over whatsoever (which is what liberals are best at) is explicitly choosing to ignore how it intersects with other things because to deal with one thing is to begin to deal with everything else that intersects with that and B) WHY THE FUCK DO THESE PEOPLE KEEP FUCKING WELL TRYING TO DEAL WITH ISSUES THEN COMPLAINING WHEN SOMEONE FUCKING WELL CALLS THEM ON THEIR BULLSHIT HALF-ASSED ATTEMPTS AT DEALING WITH THOSE SUBJECTS WITHOUT THINKING THEIR SHIT THROUGH!?

You can't have it both ways, either they don't fucking well care and are quite proud about exercising your privelage to be able to continue to not care, or they do care, don't exercise hteir privelage to avoid caring and are therefore open to being criticised for their bullshit when they get it all horribly wrong.

They want ot both seem like happy little anti-racists while at the same time doing their best to ignore racism in their little sub-society, and that's bullshit, I wouldn't mind so much if they were honest about their frank indifference to anyone's oppression but their own, but it's this tissue of freaking lies, I hate being lied to in such a way that it also insults my intelligence.

R. Mildred said...

I just wanted to point out that everyone is going to naturally focus on those issues which directly affect them first

Which is bullshit because A) it's all interconnected, so anyone trying to focus on just one issue without any spill over whatsoever (which is what liberals are best at) is explicitly choosing to ignore how it intersects with other things because to deal with one thing is to begin to deal with everything else that intersects with that and B) WHY THE FUCK DO THESE PEOPLE KEEP FUCKING WELL TRYING TO DEAL WITH ISSUES THEN COMPLAINING WHEN SOMEONE FUCKING WELL CALLS THEM ON THEIR BULLSHIT HALF-ASSED ATTEMPTS AT DEALING WITH THOSE SUBJECTS WITHOUT THINKING THEIR SHIT THROUGH!?

You can't have it both ways, either they don't fucking well care and are quite proud about exercising your privelage to be able to continue to not care, or they do care, don't exercise hteir privelage to avoid caring and are therefore open to being criticised for their bullshit when they get it all horribly wrong.

They want ot both seem like happy little anti-racists while at the same time doing their best to ignore racism in their little sub-society, and that's bullshit, I wouldn't mind so much if they were honest about their frank indifference to anyone's oppression but their own, but it's this tissue of freaking lies, I hate being lied to in such a way that it also insults my intelligence.

R. Mildred said...

Yay! Three times the rant for three times the pleasure! I hate blogger.

Blackamazon said...

my feeling is even less deep than that.

these peopel are INVESTED that he who has the most hits and power wins so to get that tehy want a big tent policy but tehy don't actually seem to believe in it. THey don't even seem to believe in their OWN issues without the added thrust of everybody's with me.

So to shore up their Image they do what R. Mildred illustrated and half ass it

and they moan when groups who are focused on their shit becuse its there shit and not some amalgam of power trips get more done


And in terms of what affects me first I'm black and female. I'm not alwyas sure of wht gets me first so I can't go one or the other.

Plus peopel who are honest about teh fact they are dealing with them first DON"t bother me.

AN iowa farer wants to talkabout subsidies cause he's getting screwed . I WIANT TO HEAR THAT. THt's important

but when someon is wrng her hands at how bad it is for a powerful rich woman to not be difeferred to because the brown folks are while we have to march in streets cause we get shot at 50 times


She can kiss my ass

R. Mildred said...

Okay, Blogger is fuckign with me now.

ballgame said...

I commented earlier that I don't agree that the original FDL blow job/corporate whore analogy merited the conclusion that there is Something Terribly Wrong with FDL (though some criticism of what was written doesn't seem unreasonable).

In a response and in your current post, bd, you allude to a Terrible Pattern of Behavior at FDL, so I'm trying to bring myself up to speed on this Pattern. I was unable to locate the notorious 'post on Japan' by TRex that you reference. (I tried to search "TRex Japan" at both FDL and his site, and only came up with Britney Spears, some geopolitics, and a host of sociological stats indicating that the U.S. doesn't measure up to Japan in a number of important areas like infant mortality etc.) If perchance you have a link or time frame for this post I'd be much obliged.

I agree with Black Amazon that Nancy Pelosi will be relatively unaffected by whole FDL controversy, though obviously there is a lack of consensus as to whether this controversy is indicative of Rampant Gender Oppression on lefty blogs.

BA's categorical assertion that "Racist language and institutionalized racism …aren't LESS accepted by anyone" suffers from a great deal of imprecision. I mean, "now" vs. … ever?? There isn't "anyone" who is more racially sensitive than they used to be?

I found the latter half of your post a bit difficult to follow; can't always discern what you're criticizing vs. what you're espousing. It SEEMS like: FDL is throwing white middle class women under the bus in an effort to get liberal hands on the Levers of Power, and We Liberals shouldn't be throwing anyone under the bus because it is unprincipled and un-small-d-democratic to do so and we shouldn't be concerned about Levers of Power if it causes us to Violate Our Principles. OK, that's a bit artless of me, but, kind of in the right ballpark?

If so,

1. I agree we shouldn't Throw People Under Buses, but …

2. … I don't think FDL was doing any such thing, and …

3. … as much as I hate to say it, there ARE Calculations that go into getting Fingers on Levers of Power, and these Calculations are vitally important to the disproportionately POC underclass that are oppressed by …

4. … the Giant Elephant in the Room documented by this superb post.

ballgame said...

(Uh, cross-posted before the other comments showed up, so if my comment is out of context, that's why … I THOUGHT I hit preview mutter grumble …)

Blackamazon said...

Blalgame what I am sying is that the reason racism a nd institutionalized racism have made any improvements isn't the flower of peope l are less accepting of it.

IT was a concerted calculated planned effort by groups from the Civil RIghts movement to the black/Yellow/Gray Panthers to Chicano rights activists.

No one came by it magically

IT's an active Not passive process

So people aren't necessarily rmore racially sensitive asthey are aware that they are consequences to being racially INSENSITIVE in public.

fuckup and peopel will come get you .

plus I have a probably with teh terms racially sensitive its very passive as if what oyou need is to be on teh sidelines. which is dfifferent form antiracist and to be blunt i think there arent taht many more of those around at all.

And to make a one shot claim that racism is less accepted is a nice way to obfuscate the fact that its NOt the result of the enlightenment of white folk but actually the blood sweat and often DEATH of POC and allies . and no peopel aren't about to credit for having sense AFTER the heavy liftings been done ifthey are going to be flip about it which I feel AM and FDL are being.

plus the throwing unde rthe bus includes the japan post which DOnna linked to and I linked to, the mind you r betters, the burqa incident, and other countless misogynies and racisms taht Fdl has done. This is not aone time thing

And repeatedly telling folks that their actyual history,involvement and opinions dont matter, is throwing under the bus

Anonymous said...

With reference to power politics in the mirror world of left-wing and feminist weblogs, just bear this little axiom in mind:

"Inside every outsider there's an insider trying to get out."

Some of the bloggers who inveigh the most fiercely against the indignities inflicted by a political and economic class from which they are excluded, are not only willing to roll over on their backs if a "real world" eminence deigns to notice their existence (now, who was that feminist blogger who dissolved in flattered giggles when she was cited by "Playboy"?...tsk, my memory...) but also see nothing wrong, while waiting for the call, in forming a haughty e-aristocracy of their own.

ballgame said...

Black Amazon: I do not dispute that blacks and other POC did the heavy lifting (and took most of the casualties) in the war for Civil Rights. That POC still bear the brunt of economic oppression in America is also beyond dispute (uh, a fact so obvious and fundamental I really feel kind of stupid for saying it).

I don't agree that 'white enlightenment' was completely irrelevant in the Civil Rights movement. I also don't agree that all whites are operating in bad faith and would really be just as racist as whites were in the past except now they're 'scared to'.

Found TRex/Japan links on your blog; will look into.

Alon Levy said...

now, who was that feminist blogger who dissolved in flattered giggles when she was cited by "Playboy"?

A self-described porn liberal who, I'm going to venture a guess, agrees with Belledame on most sexual issues more than with Twisty but is more concerned with convincing 25,000 daily readers that she's a sensible sex-pos than with not hurting Belledame's feelings.

it's all interconnected

Except when it isn't. This is especially true for activism. The progressive left didn't come up with its atomistic movement structure in a vacuum. It got there empirically, because when you deal with issues of social justice, it's a lot easier to have allied movement each appealing to different classes of people than to have one big movement that has to engage in issue triage.

That's why Kos gets it wrong, and that's why you get it wrong. The progressives' power base is typically a coalition of single-issue voters who disagree with one another on too much to form a cohesive movement. Telling them it's all interconnected just reminds them that your movement contains people they hate.

Blackamazon said...

I did not say that white enlightenment was irrevelant but I do say it is not the main thrust nor should it be used as the barometer for progress which AMand MArcotter and other s seem to believe it hsould be.

WHite folsk should not be the only measure of the race and class problem which to many peopel involved in thsese debates are using ( not you but the peopel i directly responded to)

Nor do i ever say that people are operating in bad faith. I do argue that simple passive not being an active racist is not and should not be the measure of benign progress.

Yes white peopel may be more sensitive and many may be in good faith that way.

But the fact someone is not automatically laughing at blackface isn't something I'm about to celebrate because it's really a human kindness

and when people use the well thats a sign of us doing better especially in comparison to....

Its insulting . It's as if the entire barometer of progress and change must be measured in howpeople inpower deign to validate and accept new folks to power rather than actual fixing of gross neglect

and doesn't become less so because some one gets not to use blackface yet thinks yellow face is alright

especially since many of these " realizations" happen after POc OR more active participants throw a fit.

Ye shsome white people act in good faith but they tend to

A) not be the ones asking for lots of acknowlegdgemnt of how they are

B)not ocnsistenly engaging in envious comparisons

C) do not believe that in consists solely of not hearing bad words

and

D)not believe that their reactions or the reactions of people like them are the measure by whichsuch progress should be measured

something AM ,firedoglake, and pA seemed to miss every single damn ime something like this comes up

Anonymous said...

Ballgame,

The FDL post in question is here. It was first written about on this DailyKos diarist (it is worth wading through the comments, particularly wherein JH unleashes the fdl pooper-scoopers to "contain" the controversy).

But if you really want to understand what all the uproar is about, read this post and this one.

belledame222 said...

>"Inside every outsider there's an insider trying to get out."

say it five times fast!

belledame222 said...

Alon,

Believe it or not, actually, i don't know about you, but MY only concern with any given feminist is NOT "does she or does she not toe my own party line wrt 'sex-positive.'"

As for hurting feelings: bite me, and you can pass that message back to whomever you're passing this one on from.

belledame222 said...

actually, for "feminist" make that "blogger;" no, make that "person."

belledame222 said...

thanks, sunrunner.

belledame222 said...

I think, BA, another way of looking at what you're talking about is what in theatre we used to talk about in terms of: "who's the protagonist."

Whose story is it, iow.

The real answer in life, if not art (and frankly there are those who think it's just as true in movies and plays as it is anywhere else, but then there are reasons why i went off theatre too, i expect) is that we're all our own protagonists.

Yet another way of looking at it: what Buber called the "I-Thou" relationship, as opposed to "I-It." also known as, wossname, "objectification." Which is not, contrary to popular belief all or even primarily about S-E-X-X.

Instead it's about, well, that. Insisting, if not in so many words, that, well?

"It's All About Me"

or "us," I expect; it can be more or less collective as well; although frankly i think that part of the point of this little exercise is determining that in fact "we" often aren't at all.

But. Addressing people on their own terms. Talking -to-, not just talking -at.- That's what's been missing in a lot of these equations.

Some of the more "well-meaning" people do participate more in actual conversations than others; but, testy testy! especially when it comes to loaded shit like racism, where ZOMG they might be saying I'm not as good a progressive and thus as good a person as I thought! ALERT ALERT KILL KILL...well, yeah, that. Barricades go up. At the end of the day, who the fuck knows why, really; it could be one of a hundred reasons; but the fact is, they do, they have done, and people get tired of knocking their heads against a wall. Particularly when it becomes increasingly obvious that that wall is, in fact, a gate set at the entrance to the community, no matter how loud the protests to the contrary.

belledame222 said...

btw, I've said this before, but will say it again just for i dunno posterity or some shit:

I have no problem with ambition. I have no problem with "selfish." I AM selfish. If someone came to me with a book deal, there's an excellent chance I'd be very interested. I like attention. I like hits. I like living in comfort. All that shit. I do. No bones about it.

Not only that; know what, I don't feel guilty about it. I have no aspirations toward sainthood.

What I can't stand is incuriousity.

Because if you're not even interested in the Other Person, then how can you possibly expect to be genuinely empathetic? You can't. Instead, you end up playing "let's pretend."

It can be benign or malevolent. The malevolent version is what we tend to think of as racism and other active bigotries, -hate.- I am dumping all my unwanted shit into this projection and then placing the projection on the other person. I-It.

But there's a less actively evil version as well.

"I am a Good Person. Witness my goodness. Witness my being good towards you, Other Person! --what do you MEAN, you don't feel grateful! Why, you little shit. How dare you talk that way about me? --What is this, 'it's not about you?' I don't understand..."

There is a difference between belly-to-earth selfishness--as in, I like living, I like creature comforts, memeME--and solipsism.

I own the former and loathe the latter.

And -that- is my problem from the blue, blue sky.

And the next person who comes along trying to claim that it's all about my sex-positive ANYTHING, and that includes you Alon, I am going to kick your ass from here to Saturn. You have NO idea. Back the fuck off.

belledame222 said...

>Telling them it's all interconnected just reminds them that your movement contains people they hate.

So let's just smile and pretend it doesn't exist; those of "us" who are smart enough to see the big picture, unlike those silly overexcitable sheep. Something like that?

Christ Jesus forbid one might appeal to something along the lines of actually, there are in fact organizing principles here that transcend fucking Hatfield and McCoy, tastes great less filling.


Yeah, you can source atomism in or around the Enlightenment to some extent; but that's not all of it, never was.

"E pluribus unum."

...or we shall all surely hang separately.

Yeah, it's messy and complicated and full of maddening ambiguities, fer sure.

So is life.

So:

belledame222 said...

and it's not true that it was all a brilliantly calculated move toward realpolitik; it has in large part to do with the fact that the main underlying Theory that undergirded the so-defined Left all these years--socialism, Marxism--is largely considered an ex-parrot here in the U.S., for any number of reasons. You can quibble about whether they're correct or not; it still seems pretty obvious to me, at least, that that's how it is.

The New Deal (as close as we ever came, which is to say not very) is the Old Deal, and no one seems to have any good ideas of what to replace it with. Except--say-hey! Individualism! Uh, except for, uh, we mean real well, so, uh, we're not uh selfish like THEY are. Uh. Um.

i don't know. it may be time to reinvent the fucking wheel there, too, i expect.

yeah, I mean: -way- back to basics, the Enlightenment, the source of all these competing isms that more or less are trying to stand in opposition, if nothing else, to fundamentalism.

That, to me, would be a worthwhile "examination."

Meanwhile: can some people just -try- not to be such -chronic- FLAMING assholes? That would be good, too.

belledame222 said...

>but is more concerned with convincing 25,000 daily readers

And there it is. That makes it all okay, eh Alon? She's got Real Clout! She's Very Busy.

and clearly any objection one might make to such a formulation is just...well, what is it now. Jealous, because I want the red scrunchie; because there is nothing else in this world.

that is democracy.

yeah.

belledame222 said...

by the way, i'll let Tom confirm or deny this for himself, but my suspicion is that in his case, the "Playboy" referral did not involve any particular judgment wrt the (sexual) content of the magazine, but was rather a comment on the whole reaction to Being Noticed, and how that might or might not comport with one's given...principles.

personally i had nothing to say about the Playboy thing per se, as i a) don't particularly see any discrepancy between Amanda's overall comportment and accepting a nod of recognition from Playboy b) think Playboy is pretty innocuous as these things go, despite some peoples' apparent insistence that it's Satan Incarnate and Incorporated and most of all c) was so thoroughly fed up with Amanda by that point that the -last- thing i wanted to do was participate in yet another thrash involving her.

Jennifer said...

I half understand this, because of the American contexts, although I agree with a gist I found in there: the need to "win" and the belief that it is necessary to do so by competing. These assumptions reinforce the dominant paradigm of submission through divide and rule. One's very capacity for communication is broken down when one sees communication as a transaction from which either winners or losers will emerge. This is horrible western fetishisation of power down to the lowest, most atomised level. Horrible because without prescience, without insight, wallowing in a horrible imminence based entirely on faith and NOT on the lessons of experience.

belledame222 said...

And sometimes what happens on the left--not so much in these big "mainstream" blogs, as we see--well, actually...i'll get back to that--but anyway: there's a simple reaction to the overwhelming emphasis on competition, hierarchy, power. So instead it gets turned on its head: hierarchies are bad, let's process everything to death, and (less overtly) the winner is the loser. i think feminism may even get a double dose of this because of the special nature of the old messages for women of a certain class and background in particular--the "be nice" thing--but maybe it is just as endemic in other movements in its own way and i'm just not as cognizant.

so i think that maaaayyybeee a part of what's happened with this the Prog Blogs (and the Real World politics it's stemming from) is this sort of Wheatie-eating reaction to the reaction: goddamit, we ARE NOT LOSERS! WE'RE NOT WE'RE NOT! TEAM!!! HUT, HUT HUT...

which is part (not all) of why the kneejerks (as in, "jerks") are so marked in some of the bigger blogs in particular. "Fuck you! I WON'T apologize! Apologies are for LUSERZ."

couple that with the next-layer-down, the slightly older (and more easily found as you go down the non-existing hierarchy of Influential People on the more or less Left) "oh my god, they're saying I'm a Bad Person! butbutbut i fought SO HARD to get AWAY from that reactionary, bigoted...how DARE you, suh! you CAD! you FIEND!"

put 'em together along with eight zillion other thing and you get, well, the clusterfuck you see before you. purty, ain't it?

belledame222 said...

but personally, as i said, i don't see anything wrong with competitiveness...as long as it's 1) out in the open, as BA says and 2) understood to not be the ONLY principle. because otherwise, that way literally madness lies.

another good old fashioned Founding Fathers concept it might be good to get back to: "checks and balances." Moderation, yeah.

Blackamazon said...

Sorry Belledame I tried I did.

The progressives' power base is typically a coalition of single-issue voters who disagree with one another on too much to form a cohesive movement.


Except you're totally and completely wrong.


A progressive one for progress isn't a single issue voter. A single issue voter is a single issue voter. So if they are so fucking fragile that helping someone else not connected tothem is gonna run them out they weren't there to begin with.

An o amount of fan boy wanking changes that

A self-described porn liberal who, I'm going to venture a guess, agrees with Belledame on most sexual issues more than with Twisty but is more concerned with convincing 25,000 daily readers that she's a sensible sex-pos than with not hurting Belledame's feelings.


Sensible ? SO someone is performing for her myriad of posters . Good for her. Belledame didn't go there and try and assert dominance but you cam here and tried to today for your fucking friend by pulling blog stats because her desire to be someone sspecial pet is more oimportant than being a considerate individual?

She's good little liberal

Bravura for fucking her

Take this back to her with my blessings and make sure you quote me on this :

Some people write for the approval and sensibility and pretty accolades of others . Good we don't fault em but when their assertions are weak, their writing style woefully inflated and overtly pretentious, their research ,social and interpretive skills lacking. We reserve the right to mock them openly as we might mock the fetch and carry people.

ESPECIALLY when their entire ability to do so at any given point is depedent on the patience and kindness of the owner of another site.

Yo u wanna worship and give props to your queen do so.

But pull the smugger holier than thou shit again and You have yet to see the amount of motherfucking fun that can be had at the expense of your cofeehousing half assed pseudo worldview myopic pretension.

Signed,

I ain't teh motherfucking one

Blackamazon

belledame222 said...

>I wouldn't mind so much if they were honest about their frank indifference to anyone's oppression but their own,

isn't that pretty much what kos did?

not that i'm blaming anyone for still being pissed as hell at him, understand; just, if he's indeed not attempting to take on the role of anti-racist, feminist this or that, then well, does he get points for consistence? I ask in sincere ignorance: never read the dude.

it's amazing how people tend to see what they want to see, anyway: if so and so is the Great Savior, then by God that's what they stay.

"I don't give a damn about those right-to-lifers"--Nancy Reagan.

belledame222 said...

>but is more concerned with convincing 25,000 daily readers that she's a sensible sex-pos than with not hurting Belledame's feelings.

Oh that's right: and -how- she did that, the convincing her vasty audience of how she's "sensible" is by using one of my posts, ganked from elsewhere, to position herself against. I am now "pro-porn;" pro-rape-porn, really; hence, Not Sensible.


And of course she -doesn't have time- to respond to me, -engage- me (there is a difference between HURTING FEELINGS and COMMON FUCKING COURTESY) right there in the Punkass thread where that exchange happened; nor to ever directly answer me; but she DOES have time to grab it, run back to her blog with it, and spin an entire fatuous fucking post off of it. Misrepresenting my position in the process, p.s.; but at that point, hey, who cares, right? It's not about me; -that's exactly my point.-

It's the same as BA is saying, except of course in her case she's talking about much more than an individual; nonetheless i think the basic principle still stands. If you're gonna engage me, engage me; if you're gonna ignore me, ignore me; but don't fucking treat me like a trampoline for your own Very Fucking Important Drama. And if you do, expect a response. Not a polite one.

Anonymous said...

I have nothing against pornography as such, but on the few occasions I've looked at a copy of Playboy I've found its mental atmosphere to be quite unpleasant. Something smug and clubby and privileged - in accordance with the name, I suppose. Maybe it's changed since last I looked at it (about 1978).

But even if it were the world's most patriarchal, and not merely its most patrician, purveyor of soft porn, I still shouldn't have singled out Amanda for derision. In fact she only did what I suppose many vociferous denunciators and denunciatrixes would do if patted on the head by somebody important: lick the patriarchal hand.

belledame222 said...

Which was of course the primary complaint about the whole Clinton blogger luncheon in the damn first place; THAT was the point; "burqagate" was, well what was it now? insult to injury? on top of the "no black faces at a Harlem luncheon with the 'first black president'? no one apparently even brought it up till we did, and then only really REALLY grudgingly and defensively? but here, y'all can look at the menu! hey, 'local Harlem cuisine,' how charming and delicious. isn't it SWELL...isn't it GREAT...wait, scree, wo, backup, one of OURS is being attacked, SEND IN THE CAVALRY...okay well THAT's died down again, say, know what would be -really- funny?...oh, you again, with your, your COMPLAINTS and your SENSITIVITY, WAAAHHH WE'RE NOT RACIST HOW DARE YOU SAY SUCH THINGS., CUT HIS MIKE..."

ad frickin' nauseum

belledame222 said...

well and but see if it'd been o i dunno, Vogue? instead of Playboy? would there have been such a kerfuffle?

how 'bout National Review?

you see.

but no; the discussion is, shall always be, can never be ANYTHING but pr0n! yay or nay?? SEx-POSITIVE! RADICAL FEMINIST...

yesyes.

of course you realize there are a number of radical or near-radical feminists i respect far more than Amanda, and a handful that i like far better as well.

there are a handful of people I can't stomach; the rest, i may really really disagree with, but goddamit, if they can see what's wrong with Twisty (NO, it's not just about her stupid-as-shit Pronouncements on BDSM, pr0n, blowjobs) and HELLO what's wrong with singling some random near-anonymous blogger and picking her apart for the entertainment of the masses, your own petty vindictiveness, your own confusion of your own Issues with Someone Else...

most of all, the people who actually took the time to go see what an actual Reel Live Sex Worker was saying, -engage- her on her own turf, instead of simply Pronouncing her "intellectually dishonest" and letting chunks of your 35 gazillion readers say incredibly foul, vile shit to her (and/or the other working women who dared to protest being Spoken For, who actually thought they could speak for their damn selves in a "progressive" space and be treated at least as respectfully as everyone else, what a concept) with nary a peep of protest...

that, i respect.

Amanda...

well, i've said my piece.

she really doesn't merit further dissection of her character, frankly; as you say, she's hardly unique.

which last, funnily enough, i suspect might actually be the unkindest cut of all, to someone like that...

belledame222 said...

>nobody brought it up till we did

that was btw not me included in that "we," rather i was semi-channelling what i perceive as the collective original response to that group photo. yeah my pronouns are all over the place in those last...just read as "rant mode"

belledame222 said...

>these peopel are INVESTED that he who has the most hits and power wins so to get that tehy want a big tent policy but tehy don't actually seem to believe in it. THey don't even seem to believe in their OWN issues without the added thrust of everybody's with me.

So to shore up their Image they do what R. Mildred illustrated and half ass it...>

Well, see, that's what I was trying to say. They preach a big tent because they know that's what people want to hear: oh, yay, finally, someone looking out for me! for Us! Yay Us! Finally, US. and yes, the appeal to small-d-democracy is implicitly there at least, in that Big Tent. and yes, the R's have done that too; but ultimately it's not what's been the main source of their power, and the savvy ones know it; appeals to elitism or at least hierarchy and "I got mine, Jack" work for them because so much of their base, oddly enough, believes in it, too, more wholeheartedly and straightforwardly. The only manipulation necessary is to convince a chunk of the poor bastards that THEY are part of God's Chosen when in fact they are merely the hired help. but the ILLUSION, the -dream- (U R Speshul, just like Us) is much more in sync with that of the people they're appealing to, and thus--if it's a choice between two pipe-dreams--tends to be more successful.


but -these- guys, they're trying to work U R Speshul -and- "no, really! we don't believe in such things! egalitarianism! anti-racist! feminist! rights for everyone! share the wealth! we're different, we swear!" Makes things more complicated.

belledame222 said...

...anyway.

>I found the latter half of your post a bit difficult to follow; can't always discern what you're criticizing vs. what you're espousing. It SEEMS like: FDL is throwing white middle class women under the bus in an effort to get liberal hands on the Levers of Power, and We Liberals shouldn't be throwing anyone under the bus because it is unprincipled and un-small-d-democratic to do so and we shouldn't be concerned about Levers of Power if it causes us to Violate Our Principles. OK, that's a bit artless of me, but, kind of in the right ballpark?>

well, if all my above rantage just muddied it further, lemme see if i can't finally encapsulate:

well, yah, it IS related to what you refer to as the elephant in the room (thanks for the props). what i was trying to get at is, are, am, there's what you could call a philosophical disconnect at the heart of all this. It's not just that; it...yeah, not being any clearer.

at a much more superficial but not entirely unrelated level, it's also about: goddam but these people are behaving like arrogant tools, which is neither principled nor canny realpolitik; it's just being fucking tools, goddamit.

Pretty Lady said...

What I can't stand is incuriousity.

Because if you're not even interested in the Other Person, then how can you possibly expect to be genuinely empathetic? You can't. Instead, you end up playing "let's pretend."


Hi, honey!

Sweetie, you have so inspired me with this small statement, I cannot tell you. It was worth every second of the minute and constant attention I paid to arrive there. I do hope you get a book deal very soon, and an editor who is ruthless in her prunings-down, so that I may enjoy these nuggets of wisdom, imbued with your bravura style, all of an efficient piece.

And when you find this editor, you will give me her number, yes?

Anyhoo, I wanted to give you just the teeniest tip-off. I have made the most amazing discovery. Do you know those right-wing extremists? The evil ones who wish to silence our voices, oppress and enslave us?

Well, some of them pay closer attention to what you say than the loudest of left-wing extremists. By several orders of magnitude. Even if you're not pretty! It means that you may, if you are very patient and kind, engage them in actual conversations, instead of the mutual 'good person' one-upsmanship Olympics that you describe. Such fun! I highly recommend it!

belledame222 said...

...o.k. i think what it boils down to for me is,

i think we ("we"--yes, we) are in rather desperate need of two things, if we want a shot at genuinely transforming the landscape, at creating real and sustainable change, not just a bandaid, real -democracy-:

1) New ideas, or at least new ways of structuring and synthesizing and making -useful- the old ones

2) More empathy; for which a basic curiousity about one's fellow human critters is necessary, if not sufficient.

If that all seems a bit overly profound analysis of yet another petty-ass slapfight on the Internets, i won't -swear- you're totally off; and yet, well, here i still am, plugging away, as are so many of us, so may as well go with it.

belledame222 said...

prettylady: welcome! and thank you. and yes, if and when such a creature comes into my life, i certainly shall.

funny, i just finished posting a comment over on an old post at a right-wing site, basically saying, well, you're right about this one (i.e. T-Rex is an asshat,a nd here's why); nice to see we agree on -something-! kumbaya...

i tend to assess people pretty much on an individual basis these days, as much as possible. horrible awful ideology: knee jerks, might be able to work with it though, if person can connect and communicate like a human being. horrible awful personality: depends on the traits in question. clearly evil and/or batshit crazy: sorry, i don't care if we agree on 99% of everything theoretically; get thee behind me, Energy Creature.

Anonymous said...

Compassion can be good enough, if it only slows down the communicator, causing them to pause and think. What has to be thought? There is more than one way of understanding and enjoying the world. Those of a Western education tend to read all phenomena as if it has a moral message, as if it had to be interpreted and translated into a moral stance of right and wrong. Yet a lot of words potentially contain far more information than the moral data they are generally reduced to. How does someone else feel and think and draw conclusions about their phenomenal world before that world is reduced to a series of moral (and immoral) signs, through the process of its interpretation? By contrast, if you rush to reduce various forms of communication to so much moral signage, what are you hoping to gain from that, apart from another feather in your cap? And, is it worth it?

Anonymous said...

A minor note on the nuances of Marcotte’s struggle against sexist invective. She was actually of two minds in “Dogs That Won’t Hunt (Because They’re Pussies),” at least in one respect: “ … [she] can’t get that worked up over ‘whore’.” Why “cunt” but not “whore”?

There are some obvious reasons. Ostensibly because she “know[s]” something, that people use & understand it “in good faith” to mean “a sell-out.” (How exactly this differs from the use of words she does get worked up over, I leave to others. Wherever the difference may lie, it’s got little to do with anyone’s bona fides. Nobody honestly thinks some people are ambulant genitalia.) On the other hand, she does grant that “the other meaning,” which she (tendentiously) renders as a “sexual woman who you are free to treat like shit,” is more common. But on the third hand, she claims that the usage she defends “mediate[s] it substantially.” Finally, on the fourth hand, she agrees (with Zuzu) that “there’s a point where you’re blurring the two meanings together in a way that’s indisputably misogynist,” & that the FDL post in question was “so far over the top on describing a woman as degraded for sex itself that it’s impossible to claim that the two usages weren’t conflated “so far over the top on describing a woman as degraded for sex itself that it’s impossible to claim that the two usages weren’t conflated.” This about covers all bases. She’ll grant there’s a problem, but with a difference.

(Beyerstein, a loyal friend – noting that “by calling someone ‘a whore’ you're attributing characteristics that our society normally associates with prostitutes” – parses Marcotte as observing that “that elision only works because it piggybacks on our society's contempt for sex workers & sexually active women in general.” This misses the most interesting thing about Marcotte’s spiel, which is her difficulty getting worked up & her defense of “good faith” anti-whore invective.)

There may be another reason for her ease. I wonder if there’s some sort of backfilling operation going on here. It’s not just that Marcotte herself has, without irony, dismissed people (presumably in a good-faith) she disapproves of as (presumably figurative) whores. She seems to have a very good memory for past disputes, & her comments often include or are best interpreted as implicit revisions of earlier arguments, settling of scores, etc. And it wasn’t so long ago that there was a protracted, heated discussion on her blog of precisely the subject of our society’s contempt for sex workers. Her tone then was more asperous. As BD notes, she presided over a truly vile display of public verbal abuse of sex workers (the phrase “bloated parastic whore” comes to mind – sorry, Mildred), & not just with nary a peep of protest – not just passing over it without disapprobation, but adding that the whore in the dock was both “intellectually dishonest” & “stupid.”

So she didn’t get worked up when women were called whores, in mala fides, not because they were sell-outs but because they were actual sex workers. In that case, the literal sense made the slur more tolerable, not less. Maybe, a few months on, she’s forgotten all about all this, but I wonder whether her present inability to care about this one particular slur may trace the rather narrowly circumscribed limits of her feminist concern. She may convince everyone else to unite under the rubric of her style of convergentist feminism, but there are whores out there who suspect that, sadly, all good things don’t necessarily go together, & that if it’s left up to the likes of Marcotte, their most urgent interests will forever be subordinated to the slipshod dogma & will to power of unfriendly others.

Anonymous said...

Someone started ranting about Amanda and Playboy - Alon

Bollocks I did. What I wrote was neither long enough, vehement enough nor irrational enough to be a rant.

Just as a matter of interest, though, had Playboy (or other grumble mags for that matter) ever been mentioned in less than scathing terms by Amanda before it took notice of her? Yes, yes, she's sort of sex positive; but had she ever previously suggested that popular porn of this kind was not part of the problem? Honest question - I genuinely don't know the answer.

belledame222 said...

"someone" was tom nolan; i think we both already covered exactly where he was coming from with that.

as for the Random Bird brouhaha, the problem wasn't that she was "sex-negative," the problem was that she was being a fuck. You don't turn a glaring spotlight on a near-anonymous person who, IF you take five sweet minutes of your -precious- time, actually is a real live human being with interesting things to say and oh yeah, some good reasons for maybe not needing to be picked apart in public, NOT related to rape, and not only project all your own shit (erroneously, which ALSO could've been avoided with one minutes' worth of attention to the actual person) onto her but allow your eight billion readers/subjects/flying monkeys, a number of whom for -whatever- reason seem to have wandered over from Twisty's, maybe something about the endless fapping about "Twisty an' me" might have clued them in that this might be a friendly spot for them, i don't know--

they come in and start picking this poor woman apart, and--this was the best part!--swearing it's -for her own good.- that it's FEMINIST to ignore what an ACTUAL woman ACTUALLY says about her OWN experience.

and, you want to know something funny? a lot of the radical feminists, the sane ones, not the lemmings who were fapping away about how this quasi-Red Guard session was like felt the same damn way. a lot of them can't stand Twisty now either, did you know? there is a reason for this. it has relatively little to do with her crap about blowjobs and heels and so forth. it has to do with her racism or at leasts race-blindness; her classism; but -above all,- ABOVE ALL, her arrogance, her myopia, and her -cruelty.- To -women,- yes. Among others.

And that is -my- MAIN problem with fucking Twisty from the blue blue sky; and that is my problem with her enablers and her imitators. and that went for frigging Amanda at the time as well. And then, when other people whom I -do- respect were all like, well i respect and like Amanda, I was all, okayfine. back off.

and then came the burqa business, which, once again, as with so MANY of these incidents, the real problem became clear not so much in the original incident but the aftermath--as BA noetd, hello NO it's not just "two white women," you disingenuous patronizing--the whole POINT is that POC are speaking for their damn SELVES and ONCE AGAIN you are not only not listening but using your ample platform to distort and project and shore up for yourself. Just like fucking firedoglake, except for people gave a bit more leeway on account of at least Amanda wasn't actually shutting down threads and did make what looked like a couple of attempts at apologies, or more important -engagement.- and then well that didn't last long, so here we were again.

and then came her deciding to use me as her bouncy trampoline, and whether the crappiness of how that one came off was motivated partially by petty revenge toward me for my previous sniping at her or is simply her usual M.O., I just don't care anymore.

and yeah once again at feministe, wherein Blartow, for her own weaselling purposes, drags out my own flame at her done at the relative obscurity (if yes public) of bfp's for the purposes of my own venting and solidarity with people i liked and respect who had their own bones to pick which STILL haven't been addressed. Then it became about my meanie meanertonness, and the word "bougie," which was such a fucking throwaway i honestly didn't know what she was complaining about until i reread the original flame (some weeks old by then). Fine. I owned it; I owned most of it; I apologized, primarily for the purposes of moving the fuck on and getting to the real subject, which was Bartow. Which we did. Amanda never acknowledged the apology, which is her prerogative i expect; it was a fairly nasty flame (although as piny notes, nothing significantly harsher than the shit she dishes out herself on a regular basis); and yes, as i said, it was primarily about moving on, not wanting her own forgiveness.

less forgiva-ble- is that she still did not, does not acknowledge that there is a bigger problem here; BL did not deserve her vitriol, bfp (speaking of whining) deserved more serious engagement. Perhaps she's honestly not capable of such.

I just don't care.

belledame222 said...

slip. I dunno as she did, but for the past year and a half or so--there was some ugly personal incident that precipitated this i think, among other things--she'd been changing her tune rather markedly, if perhaps not entirely consistently (she's like milk in the fridge anyway, seems like: picks up the flavor of whatever she's next to), oft-quoting Twisty with admiration. apparently this gave the signal to a bunch of the less-perspicaceous of TF's fan club that this might mean Pandagon was a safe place for their fappery. which really stood out, as i said, in the Random Bird case; i could be wrong, but i don't think that bunch was part of Pandagon's original audience.

anyway i guess the Playboy thing was seen as a Betrayal of some sort by some of the usual loopier suspects; i didn't realize it at the time, but i take it that may have been a goodly chunk of what seemed like delphyne's kamikaze run at Amanda (in that same thread where i got to be Miz Radical Pro-Rape-Porn, the better to showcase Miz Amanda's -sensibleness-).

as I said at the time, in fact, delphyne was correct (if not "right"): Amanda could have avoided her erroneous speculations about why there was no common ground wrt pr0n with people like delphyne if she'd bothered to do her damn homework on radical feminist theory. but oh sorry, "theory" is for "multi-degreed asswipes," sez Miz Salt of the Earth, so instead...well, that's how it played out.

as I also think delphyne is horrible in her own right (we had that very discussion, did delphyne and i, just a few threads south), there was not much more for me to do at that juncture except sit back and grab the popcorn.

and now i am starting to feel like Vicki Pollard again, goddamit.

belledame222 said...

"theory" and "research," that is, as in "reading books" and "asking people who might know what the fuck they're talking about, and listening to the answers."

but hey. she's got readers to please. who has time for that? anyway clearly one MUST have "multi-degrees" if one uses fifty-dollar words and refers to intimidatingly theoretical books; how could it possibly be otherwise? There is no such thing as self-education, or smart, -intellectual- people who -don't- have formal education, or the goddam library, after all.

belledame222 said...

"who were fapping away about how this quasi-Red Guard session was like 'surgery,' for the patient's 'own good,'" that was meant to say.

belledame222 said...

>but adding that the whore in the dock was both “intellectually dishonest” & “stupid.”

yes, that was what really sent me over the edge, at the time. Projection much?

I mean, one minute it's "intellectually dishonest" and "stupid," the next minute it's "mutli-degreed asswipes." Same as I guess one minute it's antipr0n feminists who "hate her" (i swear i saw that moment of self-pity somewhere, shortly after the delphyne attack), next it's, well, people who go -too far.- And, as you note, -whores-, real ones, go too far; yes it's bad to tar -all- women with "whore" 'cause that's misogynist, but ACTUAL whores...well, they're kind of beyond the pale, innit?

"I'm not that type of sex-positive girl!"

and no, once again, this is not about her being "sex-negative" (i am beginning to seriously loathe these terms, too); this is about her being, wossname, intellectually dishonest, in order to sell herself to her nine googleplex readers how she's just like the littlest bear: -just right.- Thank fuck for that, eh? Thank fuck for being -sensible.-

never mind how many people you have to trample over to get to that well-placed position, and really the trampled shouldn't complain: it's -for their own good.-

belledame222 said...

and by the way, for future reference? THAT is what "bougie" means, in this context. "I'm just like y'all: -just right.-" Extreme care to not -really- frighten the horses, despite all the self-congratulations of not being a "good girl," of "taking a piss" on beloved shibboleths (oo religion, how very daring of you).

Sensible, yesssss. Not too hot, not too cold. Not too shallow; not too deep. -Just right.-

Hey, you gotta have a gimmick, right?

belledame222 said...

and never mind that a few radical feminists who are still very much anti-pr0n, although have in some cases apparently been rethinking a bit (as indeed has RE herself; this is what happens when you take the chance to genuinely engage someone) took the time to go to RE's site, read what she has to say, engage her in a respectful (not walking on eggshells; as in, -engaging- her as a three-deimensional -human being-), whereas Miz Sex-Positive could never be arsed.

wonder if she would've had the time if someone hadn't decided to hand the reins of Pandagon over to her, when she was writing in relative obscurity at Mouse Words.

personally i am thinking: you know what, one makes time for what one considers important. and clearly, pandering to adoring fans, casting one's gaze ever-upward (except for when scanning the horizon for post fodder) is more important to some people than actual -honest- communication.

belledame222 said...

>Wherever the difference may lie, it’s got little to do with anyone’s bona fides. Nobody honestly thinks some people are ambulant genitalia.>

*snort*

Anonymous said...

The progressive left didn't come up with its atomistic movement structure in a vacuum.

Yeah, there was a lot of bigotry and hatred involved in that, sorry, I foolishly forgot to figure the fact that most progressie left movements were up to their ears in either racism, sexism, homophobia or whatever other form of oppression they thought they could get away with at teh time.

And oh look, it was strangely enough the truly inclusive Mofos who got shit done because they didn't fuck around trying to piss on other people in the hopes that the dominant power structures would throw them a cookie when they could ally with them.

The crippling of progressive politics follows a curve that also matchs the rise of divisive, bigotry based politics gaining a foot hold in progressive movements (see radfems and their anti-pron crusades, and the degeneration of the Black Panthers into their current sorry incarnation), and some how I don't think more bigotry is the answer to that.

That's why Kos gets it wrong, and that's why you get it wrong.

Did you ever recant that ignorant ass strawnubian you were waving around at me over at lindsay's?

This is relevent because this;

A self-described porn liberal who

...is also wrong, porn-liberal is a term adopted after dawn eden and other fundies threw it at her and me long before the playboy thing, it's a term that only makes sense when she's talking to conservatives so as to mock the whole use of "porn" as some sort of weird modifier to emphasise her badiness.

By her using it to attack other lefties, she's pretty much just trying to artificially conflate far right conservatives with her critics, which again feeds into her repeated attempts to throw "PC" slurs at her critics, which again feeds into her position on people publishing (you gotta do it to stop the PC Islmofacist THUGS!! Stopping freedom of speech!) the muhammed cartoons back during that particular controversy.

Amanda never acknowledged the apology, which is her prerogative i expect

Considering the whole way her and marc have been wielding their apologies (including all of the 10^45 apologies of marc's for his past apologies for apologising then turning right around and repeating the same thing he just apologised for) in much the same way trex has been wielding his sexuality as a get out of bigotry free card, you're acting a bit "bipartisan" there i.e. letting them get away with too much on the false belief that they're willing to actually think and engage with anyone's arguements on this issue that don't actively stroke their reactionary spastic word fits.

but oh sorry, "theory" is for "multi-degreed asswipes,"

Isn't she some sort of english lit major?

just, if he's indeed not attempting to take on the role of anti-racist, feminist this or that, then well, does he get points for consistence? I ask in sincere ignorance: never read the dude.

Umm, he porntrays himself as some sort of "progressive" "activist" these days, you should have read him flail when it turned out his co-blogger jerome armstrong was a con-man, if his language was to beleived then somehow Bizarro Dkos had crossed over with our dkos, his co-blogger was being attacked for the progressive politics of kossacks large and small (and anyway, armstrong was a 30+ year old grad student who was strapped for cash, so obviously he'd resort to selling bad shares in fake chinese businesses to middle aged middle management types, it's natural right?) Oh the oppression!

I cna only posit that some sort of secret conservative selective breeding program was carried through with that bred out any possible mental dissonance out of certain people.

One last question for the floor: Cna anyone give a good reason why amanda and her etc...etcs cannot actually be progressive and engage progressives who criticise her, and not resort to bigoted language/positions/whatevers, and why, in short, all this crap is so fucking neccesary to TEH CAUSE *plays internationale while a huge american flag unfurls behind her* becuase I'm seeing alot of people saying "well step 1: she needs to do this, step 2: ???, Step 3: Overthrow everything needing overthrowing!" and they keep mumbling over that whole "step 2" part's precise facets.

And if this crap isn't neccesary, then why are these people not just saying "woops! socially Ingrained bigotry slipped out for a second!" and then just changing their language/position as appropriate so that it doesn't screw someone other.

belledame222 said...

>And if this crap isn't neccesary, then why are these people not just saying "woops! socially Ingrained bigotry slipped out for a second!" and then just changing their language/position as appropriate so that it doesn't screw someone other>

because that's too hard.

and/or, it either makes 'em Pussies or means they aren't as edgy/punk/wellmeaning/pwogwessive as they thought, and thus might be subject to 1/100th of the crap they've been dishing out themselves.

also see:

"I'm not like other people! I can't stand pain, it hurts me!"

belledame222 said...

oh yah, and also, they're VERY BUSY FOR FUCK'S SAKE, you know, with the 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 readers, none of whom are terribly interesting of themselves as individuals but all of whom -could- be potential allies or legs-up, and certainly all of whom -are-, well, Numbers.

priorities, you know.

belledame222 said...

>Isn't she some sort of english lit major?

no idea. i thought it was "majoring in Vanity, minoring in Insecurity," myself.

belledame222 said...

>you should have read him flail when it turned out his co-blogger jerome armstrong was a con-man, if his language was to beleived then somehow Bizarro Dkos had crossed over with our dkos, his co-blogger was being attacked for the progressive politics of kossacks large and small (and anyway, armstrong was a 30+ year old grad student who was strapped for cash, so obviously he'd resort to selling bad shares in fake chinese businesses to middle aged middle management types, it's natural right?) Oh the oppression!>

wo! clearly there are Dwamas i hadn't even -conceived- of.

belledame222 said...

> and why, in short, all this crap is so fucking neccesary to TEH CAUSE

it is rather astonishing just how many P.R. experts emerge from the woodwork (be tough! stand firm! get the message out! if x, then y and also ruqt!), isn't it? the fact that many of these folks can't seem to socially negotiate their way out of a grease-proof paper bag even on the micro level doesn't seem to faze them in the slightest.

Amber Rhea said...


Because if you're not even interested in the Other Person, then how can you possibly expect to be genuinely empathetic? You can't. Instead, you end up playing "let's pretend."


Well, to me, half the time it ends up feeling like I'm supposed to "prove" than I'm interested in the Other Person. And that's a no-win battle, because if I don't act exactly the way Whoever thinks I should, then it's obvious I'm not interested in the Other Perosn.

I just don't haev the patience for it, frankly. I'm glad other people do. It's like I told you offblog, BD - takes a certain kind of personality. And I'm not it.

As my grandmother would say... takes all kinds.

belledame222 said...

look, i'm not even talking about, go become up-to-the-minute educated on this or that Issue or Peoples, okay. much as i really dig Textaisle's (whatever happened to him, anyway?) concept of "blogthropology."

i am talking about, someone is talking to you, (general you), and you respond to what they are actually saying, or try to, as opposed to immediately going into "blahblahblah GINGER" mode.

and yes, it is not only the "privileged" who do this, blahblahblah GINGER; and no as far as i am concerned there is no automatic pass for personal assholery when it's being done from someone who (also) may have a genuine structural axe to grind.

thing is, it comes off as more egregious -to me- when the privileged act in such ways, because there clearly it's not -just- a regression to assholery but also...well, it's always a power move, isn't it.

it's just that i personally have even less respect for people who make that kind of move when they have that much more clout behind the wallop, all the while poor-me-ing.

Donna said...

Amber, you're here, you're listening and engaging, and you keep coming back. Believe it or not, that counts for alot. On the other hand there are some who show up just to be contrary and obtuse...*eyeing Alon*

I realize that sometimes it really is hard to wrap your mind around ideas that are being presented because it's outside your own reality, I know because it happens to me all the time. But after talking it through and explaining many different ways certain people still don't get it, you start thinking they don't understand because they don't want to understand. I don't necessarily mean Alon here, it's a general observation and something I think all of us have come across at one time or another.

belledame222 said...

>And that's a no-win battle, because if I don't act exactly the way Whoever thinks I should, then it's obvious I'm not interested in the Other Perosn.>

I mean this, okay: which Whoever are we talking about? And no, I don't mean for you to actually answer that here; just, that -is- a question.

but you know: it's -always- at least -somewhat- of a stretch to meet the Other; the Other is -any other person- besides yourself.

as such, they are alien. to a degree.

so, you find a common frame of reference, one way or another, and you...meet, you talk.

or, you don't.

me, i just mostly try to go on a case by case basis, as far as engaging goes.

belledame222 said...

anyway, i've certainly told certain Whoevers to blow me and worse when i thought they were being fuckheaded, even though i may have agreed with them in the past about (race, class, what have you), and even if/when they're invoking o i don't know "white privilege," this or that or the other.

i also don't feel the need to fap on about how "punk" this makes me, how daring, how against the "political correct" hooha. or resort to tired-ass racist/whatever slings and insults and power moves when there are -so many better ways to flame;- and no, i don't think this earns me a cookie either.

i just think: so and so is bein' a tool: hey, so and so! i think you're being a tool! FUCK YOU!

y punto.

belledame222 said...

anyway, Amber, i've seen enough of your interactions to say that i think you engage as honestly as you can; you don't use people for fun 'n' profits; you don't self-congratulate for being a Friend to (whomever) whilst simultaneously ignoring, slamming, or smearing the whomevers who are saying, um, actually?

which is pretty much mostly what we're talking about, here.

yea, there are always some people who're gonna be knee-jerk You Just Don't Understand all of the time, and probably all of us jerk that way some of the time; but i do think that most of the people are reachable at some level most of the time. If they want to be. Even if they don't "get it," the issue, at least they--well, you are--capable of "getting" how to engage at an I-You level. i think really that's all most people are asking for (in a conversation obviously, not policy, which none of us create here anyway) at the end of the day.

Donna said...

By the way, understanding does not equal agreement. So you don't have to echo the 'other' to respect him or her. Just take the time to know where they are coming from and validate that, and then explain where you are coming from.

When things go haywire it usually isn't because of a reasonable disagreement between two or more people, it's because someone is using logical fallacies or piling on or disappearing the other person, in other words they are not arguing in good faith.

belledame222 said...

but i mean, okay, to give you an example of where some peoples' heads are at: over at Chris Clarke's blog, shortly before he shut down for the Zeke incident, i spotted someone--was it the entity known as FatDougLover? anyway, basically accusing i think it was Bitch Lab's "posse" of not "really" caring about racism because...something or other about the dreary pr0n business, and also--this was the part i liked, i swear i remember this--something about how we, if indeed we were not in fact all sockpuppets of the same being, the white "we" that is i guess, were clearly just sucking up for radical street cred. something like that.

and i was all, o for flying fuckssake. is -everything- a fucking video game to some people? yes; clearly, if one isn't sucking up to the Powers That Be, one must be going for "counterculture" chic, "mau-mauing," as some charmer at fdl or one of those puts it.

because clearly no one ever says, hey, I like and respect so and so, and/or i agree with so and so (even if one doesn't overall like or respect so and so) simply because it's -true.-

i really hate these bargain-basement Machiavellis; mostly because, as there, they -project- all over the fucking place, and unfortunately enough of that shit flung back tends to stick.

belledame222 said...

donna: exactly.

and that's what really kills me about--well, funny, it was delphyne, and now alon seems to be thinking along roughly similar lines: clearly, the problem is that so and so doesn't -agree.-

which: no.

really, no.

i honestly don't know how to make it any clearer. maybe some people simply aren't capable of getting that other things are more important, sometimes, at that, I don't know. I'm tired.

belledame222 said...

doesn't agree, that is, or in this case i suppose, doesn't understand that we -do- agree and therefore ought to be on speaking terms, if not actually joining up to defeat the Judean Peoples' Front.

and if it's not that, it must be this strange foreign concept known as "feelings," which are clearly all about and -only- about wounded ego at the personal level, because what else is there, ever?

Anonymous said...

There are two things.

First, do all good things go together? Marcotte’s lil’ tour d’horizon is framed in convergentist rhetoric: viewed rationally (i.e., from a certain someone’s perspective), there need be no real conflicts between “liberal” interests, what’s good for one (e.g., white professional-class women) is good for all (e.g., poor Afghani men). Disagreement among liberals arises mostly from confusion or irrationality on one side’s part. Sadly, I think there’s good reason to think convergentism is false, that liberals aren’t relieved of the necessity of choice, & that everything good that we win is likely to come at some cost. No law of nature prevents conflicts between worthy goals. I may be wrong about that, but even so, there’s:

Second, even if convergentism were true as a theoretical matter, how does it function as a rhetorical strategy? In practice, when A & B disagree, how often does A say: “Our disagreements are illusory. Our true interests, seen clearly, converge, & they converge on what you’ve being saying all along. I’ve been wrong, & I see now that my future is as your trusty companion.” It doesn’t often work that way. Usually, convergentist rhetoric is a claim to exemption from criticism & bid for hegemony. When Marxist feminists formerly said that women’s interests converged with workers’, they typically omitted to say, Under the Red Banner of Class. They were Marxists first, & sought to annex feminism. Similarly, certain kinds of convergentist feminism have sought to reduce LGBT, postcolonial, class, etc., interests to subchapters of feminist doctrine. These efforts usually end in tears not just because they’re intellectually incoherent, but, more fundamentally, because they too often express a pernicious will to dominate. Does anybody really believe that the interests of upper-class white professional women inherently converge with those of poor black men. Does Nancy Pelosi, no disrespect intended? I interpret Marcotte to be doing the same thing. She’s telling all those touchy people who’ve lately publicly inconvenienced her that they mistake their own interests, that they should be investing in what she thinks is important. If, instead of spending all that time resisting pubic expressions of racism, they’d gotten behind her campaign against calling women whores – okay, let’s be sensible here –, then not only would Pelosi be better served, but by serving Pelosi, they’d be serving themselves. It may or may not be incidental that this analysis would tend to vindicate Marcotte’s own risible earlier performances.

It seems pretty transparent to me.

Alon Levy said...

But after talking it through and explaining many different ways certain people still don't get it, you start thinking they don't understand because they don't want to understand.

Yeah, sometimes it's that. The problem is that you can't know that this is the case, at least not a priori. When you keep explaining something and failing to convince, it's just as likely that you're wrong or at least bad at explaining your position.

but oh sorry, "theory" is for "multi-degreed asswipes," sez Miz Salt of the Earth, so instead...well, that's how it played out.

Well, it is for multi-degreed asswipes. It's not as if it's necessarily bad to be a multi-degreed asswipes. Aeronautic engineers have as many degrees as lit crit professors. The difference is that aeronautic engineers base their work on a theory that is closely coupled to empirical facts, and produce results that can be clearly seen by the lay public. I wouldn't be nearly so averse to critical theory if it displayed a level of intellectual rigor closer to this of modern physics than to this of medieval theology.

Veronica said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Veronica said...

"I wouldn't be nearly so averse to critical theory if it displayed a level of intellectual rigor closer to this of modern physics than to this of medieval theology."

...wouldn't guess that one what with the company you keep...

Or, was that meant to imply that your superior logistical mind is just slumming it on political blogs?

Anonymous said...

Alon, by “you can’t know,” do you mean there’s no criterion by which the disagreement can in principle be rationally settled, or just trivially asserting that fallibilism is true, or is it that Donna in particular can’t, or is likely not to, know what rational people can know?

Radical feminist theory is neither a branch of literary criticism nor a failed science. It includes empirical sentences, some of which are not exactly well confirmed, & conceptual & logical confusions, but fundamentally it’s a moral-political project, & moral precepts aren’t empirical claims to be judged by (any of the diverse) criteria of (any of) the natural sciences. Nor is there any reason to expect that the accumulation of natural-scientific results could form the basis of rational consensus about moral-political interests.

Anonymous said...

When you keep explaining something and failing to convince, it's just as likely that you're wrong or at least bad at explaining your position.

Now that's just silly. and contrary to history. As if women would have had the vote in 1776 if they'd only explained it effectively. As if blacks would have earned their rights by just arguing more intelligently.

Powerful people deliberately misinterpret any criticism they receive, and belledamme has mentioned several instances of that in this thread.

Ravenmn said...

Anonymous is Ravenmn. Don't know why my name didn't register.

belledame222 said...

>When you keep explaining something and failing to convince, it's just as likely that you're wrong or at least bad at explaining your position.

1) what ravenm said

2) but other people -do- get it, is the thing.

3) these aren't necessarily "positions" or anything that can be boiled down to "right or wrong;" the problem is in this case that ahem some people simply. aren't. listening.

belledame222 said...

anyway we're not just talking about radical feminist theory; we are in this case talking about pretty much any political writings that take more in-depth let's say examination than "oo, look, shiny headline! and hey, lint!"

Alon Levy said...

Alon, by “you can’t know,” do you mean there’s no criterion by which the disagreement can in principle be rationally settled, or just trivially asserting that fallibilism is true, or is it that Donna in particular can’t, or is likely not to, know what rational people can know?

None of these, really. In a certain trivial sense, every rational dissident can't know whether he's right and everyone is wrong, or whether he's just insane.

In a less trivial sense, I mostly meant, "You can't know based just on the methodology you're using nowadays." Given enough evidence, you can always tell who's right and who's wrong. But there are two problems: first, the evidence may be impossible to find; and second, more importantly, this particular discussion is about as evidence-oriented as the average comment thread on Little Green Footballs.

Now that's just silly. and contrary to history. As if women would have had the vote in 1776 if they'd only explained it effectively. As if blacks would have earned their rights by just arguing more intelligently.

And as if teachers would have recognized the obvious validity of special creation if William Jennings Bryan had just argued more patiently.

Donna said...

Yeah, sometimes it's that. The problem is that you can't know that this is the case, at least not a priori. When you keep explaining something and failing to convince, it's just as likely that you're wrong or at least bad at explaining your position.

Alon, I'd agree that this is a possibility if I was the only one explaining. But what I am talking about is when 20 different people come along explaining it 20 different ways and the person still doesn't understand what we are talking about. I think you and I can agree that this person is deliberately misunderstanding and twisting our position. I am not talking about bashing someone over the head until they agree with me, all I want is for them to understand what I and others are thinking and why we think that way.

Blackamazon said...

And as if teachers would have recognized the obvious validity of special creation if William Jennings Bryan had just argued more patiently


And tha's where you lose.

Because unless you are wiling to put the rights of African American's and women on the same page as creationism.

Which means you're basically hoping descent into glibness and name calling will be effective since you have yet to demonstrate a scenario,formulate an argument and support said argument with evidence.

You literally have no fricking base.

We are not dealing with computers and calculators.

Also based on factual evidence

YES Amanda was a fuckhead that can be PROVEn unless you thought what she said to Randombird was okay.
BUt what she said incontravertable.

SO You can argue not agreeing with our INTERPRETATIONs which seeing how you seem to lack even basic conception of siting and facts that do not default in faux populist groupthink Ie : BUT BUT she ahs 25000 readers! you have yet to display.

And of course
because your ridiculous use of hits as numbers isn't admissable this is LGF! GOOD to know!the little sideswipe was noticed and is appropriately illogical and assinine.



Except when dealing with a political subject in which tyranny of the majority is as much a possibility as democracy one can't use NUMBERS.

Because you're dealing WITH PEOPLE not atoms so the fact you can't wrap your head around it and someone's popularit y isn't a bolster for their righttness like ordered physics is not a fault of the field ( which i don't understand why you still deign to participate with in if it is so GOSH DARN illogical)

I especially love the fact that your continued assertations of logic and reason smack so much of enlightenment oppressive though " logic rules. As I define logic ergo if I deem it illogical it is therfore inferior and okay to force into submission)


The problem with your entire logic fit sir is that simply put Logic as studied within the confines of intertextuality and Western hegemony, is inherently ILLOGICAL has it has served to frame and condone illogical practices for the sole purposes of soldering up power structures from Socrates on down.

Evidenciary in said system can't be used of which you are correct ot because of teh flaseness of evidence but also because of teh predisposition of certain evidence and evidence gatherers to misconstrue power for rightness.

HEnce the need for such base ILLOGICAL discussion.

In other words

Yes you have to think harder than just 1+1=2

Welcome to jamrock

belledame222 said...

slippage.

>I am not talking about bashing someone over the head until they agree with me

Don't be silly; what else is there?

Donna said...

I am not talking about bashing someone over the head until they agree with me

Don't be silly; what else is there?


You're right. Hold him down for me, he's slippery!

***WHAM***

belledame222 said...

Look, Mr. Gradgrind:

You came in here attributing motivations to me that I do not, did not have. I said--again--and at considerable length--that you are mistaken, that in fact the axe(s) I have grinding here is of a different nature.

You also mischaracterized what Tom said.

You have yet to acknowledge this.

If you are trying to lay out a case that Amanda is the bee's knees, logical, fairminded, gracious, and so forth, then you really need to be more straightforward about it. thus far, in that regard, you haven't presented "evidence," you've presented assertions (i include at your own blog, the last time we had this "conversation") and a sideswiping appeal to authority in the form of her hits. (By the way, i don't know as that number is accurate either; but it doesn't really matter, except for it's one more thing you've flung down without backing it up).

If that is not the argument you're trying to make--and frankly, I would be more than relieved not to have to go through this AGAIN, on MY blog--then please to be spelling out what -is.-

Tell you what. Let's go back to this:

>Except when it isn't. This is especially true for activism. The progressive left didn't come up with its atomistic movement structure in a vacuum. It got there empirically, because when you deal with issues of social justice, it's a lot easier to have allied movement each appealing to different classes of people than to have one big movement that has to engage in issue triage.

That's why Kos gets it wrong, and that's why you get it wrong. The progressives' power base is typically a coalition of single-issue voters who disagree with one another on too much to form a cohesive movement. Telling them it's all interconnected just reminds them that your movement contains people they hate.>

A lot of assertions, ("you get it wrong") and, please note, based on the rather inexact science of human psychology ("just reminds them that your movement contains people they hate"). Why don't we start by you explaining exactly how you arrived at these conclusions, and we'll take it from there.

belledame222 said...

Also, a working definition of "progressive" might be good.

belledame222 said...

better still: really, if we ("we") are going to continue on this thread, we might address someone -else's- points.

BA: It's as if the entire barometer of progress and change must be measured in how people in power deign to validate and accept new folks to power rather than actual fixing of gross neglect.

Unsane: a gist I found in there: the need to "win" and the belief that it is necessary to do so by competing. These assumptions reinforce the dominant paradigm of submission through divide and rule. One's very capacity for communication is broken down when one sees communication as a transaction from which either winners or losers will emerge. This is horrible western fetishisation of power down to the lowest, most atomised level. Horrible because without prescience, without insight, wallowing in a horrible imminence based entirely on faith and NOT on the lessons of experience.

Discuss.

Ravenmn said...

But what I am talking about is when 20 different people come along explaining it 20 different ways and the person still doesn't understand what we are talking about. I think you and I can agree that this person is deliberately misunderstanding and twisting our position. I am not talking about bashing someone over the head until they agree with me, all I want is for them to understand what I and others are thinking and why we think that way.

Not to mention that those 20 people understand each other without all the footnoting and long-winded explanations.

What's interesting about it, also, is that agreeing to disagree is not allowed. I have no problem with Trex wanting to use sexist imagery to make his point. What I don't get is why I'm supposed to either like it or pretend its not sexist just because he uses it.

We aren't even allowed to disagree in that I believe his language is sexist and he believes it is not.

For Trex and Jane not only do I have to be proven wrong in my belief that Trex is using sexist language, but I also have to be slimed for publicly expressing my opinion that the language is sexist. Amanda could not be accused of using a racist image and people who see the image as racist have to be slimed for seeing the image that way.

belledame222 said...

right. "hey, it's just a joke, lighten up;" people say, "I don't find this amusing, i actually find it racist, here's why," and, you know, if a real apology is too freaking much, what about just accepting it and moving on without creating another six kajillion posts about how it is TOO funny, and you're NOT A RACIST, SO AND SO is the racist, and p.c., and overly sensitive, and MEEN, and they don't really exist anyway, THIS person who we are deciding is the appropriate spokesperson of hir People as opposed to the DOZENS of other people who are still calling us out that we had to comb all over the Internetz for, says it's funny, so it IS, it's SETTLED a DONE DEAL, we're right you're wrong, and...

belledame222 said...

and of course, it's only funny/hyperbolic/what have you coming from Certain People; BA makes a typical (generalized) remark on the lines of "fetch me my cutlass" and suddenly she's being Questioned by people who've never set virtual foot in her blog in their life and can't be bothered to read around before spouting off, and then later Lectured by people who want her to know that such language is Very Wrong, and it HURTS people, GOOD DECENT PEOPLE and...

and of course as soon as that brouhaha has finally died down, never return. nor to any of the -dozens- of other bloggers she's linked to, bfp is linked to...

see, that way we can still pretend they don't exist. It's just two or three white women who are speaking on behalf of the women of color; it's not our fault that we can't actually hear the actual women of color just because our fingers are wedged firmly in our ears.

belledame222 said...

and of course, to a certain extent this is all par for the course: so and so says blahblah, so and so2 says, hey, that's racist! (or whatever). so and so responds "I'm not racist, UR, and you're stupid too, nyah nyah nyah;" soandso2 responds, you are such a choad,

and so on.

except for of course BECAUSE soandso has eightythree billion gillion squillion readers which of COURSE soandso has EARNED because soandso is smarter/more talented/a better writer/more sensible/clearly has wider appeal to the Public, certainly nothing to do with the fact that primarily soandso may or may not be a good writer, smart, well-informed, yadda; but what soandso is actually good at is -schmoozing,- and speaking nice to power; or had a lot of money and free time with which to set up shop and a real purty blog and learn ways in which to get Noticed, or simply hit the right note at the right time in front of the right people...

you know, sort of in the same way that the Market is utterly and completely Fair at all times; and that clearly people raking in a billion dollars a year work one hundred thousand times harder than the schmo who's only earning 10K a year.


...anyway, -because- soandso has a bigger audience, soandso is of course -less- responsible for verifying what sie says, and it is much more important to protect soandso's feelings than Joe Schmo who has one tenth or one one hundredth of soandso's audience. And soandso is totally justified in turning the limelight on whomever's pissed hir off, cherry-picking bits and pieces out of whatever whomever says, and then refusing to respond directly to whomever, possibly even locking down threads when it all gets too distressing for hir delicate nerves.

but of course none of this has anything to do with anything; we're just talking, what, sweet sweet reason. And logic. Because that's -exactly- how human beings operate: by Pure Reason.

Amber Rhea said...


I realize that sometimes it really is hard to wrap your mind around ideas that are being presented because it's outside your own reality, I know because it happens to me all the time. But after talking it through and explaining many different ways certain people still don't get it, you start thinking they don't understand because they don't want to understand.


Oh yeah. I've had that experience plenty of times on my own blog and others (here, for example!). It's hella frustrating.

I just don't like when people ASSUME I'm pulling that same shit if I genuinely am confused about a point, or ask a question, or something. And yes that has happened quite a few times to me. (Not here, it should be noted, in case anyone was thinking that. Not at all.)

But I don't want to whine about me here. SOrry.

belledame222 said...

I think we've all been there at one point or another, amber.

Amber Rhea said...

Yeah, I know. I guess I am just still too sensitive in some regards... even if I manage to hide it online. (Which I'm not even sure I accomplish!)

Anonymous said...

I think we've all been there at one point or another, amber.

You can't know that based just on the methodology you're using nowadays.

belledame222 said...

curses! foiled again! i am slain by your superior logic! AIYIEEEEE

belledame222 said...
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belledame222 said...
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Anonymous said...

Piny

OK, I've had a look at the Pandagon Playboy post (which I should have done in the first place, shouldn't I?) and you're basically right. My comment was unfair - I was just looking for an example of "sell out" and remembered the big brouhaha about Playboy and Pandagon and assumed that the denunciations I'd been reading, though no doubt over the top, must have had some basis in fact. But they really don't seem to have had.

Given that BD and Amanda or not on the best of terms, it's unlikely that the latter either read my original comment or will read this retraction, but for what it's worth: sorry.

And BD, sorry to you too, for accidentally sending this thread off topic. That wasn't my intention, I just wanted to keep my hand in by saying something pithy, and it came out sounding pissy.

belledame222 said...

>The problem with the FDL strategy is that they're trying to use establishment tactics to win progressive support and incite progressive passion. You can't do that. You can't make people feel clannish and defensive and small and then hope that they'll band together with people who scare them and start a revolution.>

In the proverbial nutshell.

damn, i could've saved myself about 80,000 paragraphs...

belledame222 said...

like i said, i didn't read the original Playboy post -or- put any particular stock in the denunications. had circumstances been different i'd probably have been in there arguing with some of the usual suspects; as it was, i simply couldn't be arsed in any direction. just more fapping.

Heart...well, Heart.

and yes, coming on the heels of the Amp thing. and Violet S (for example) being SHOCKED and HORRIFIED about Amp but no problemo with Amanda, which may well have been consistent, yes it's a different sitch, but by then I was just so sick of the lot of them i didn't care if they brought in Brother Jed and Disco Cindy screaming "SPERM EATERS!!" on one end and creamed-corn and ferret porn producers on the other.

Anonymous said...

I rarely go to a political event where someone doesn't joke about "the usual suspects," because there's so much overlap between the activists on different issues. From the time I started paying attention to politics, the connections between different issues always seemed obvious, and when I studied history, what struck me as intriguing about socialists is that every time there was a group of people doing something right, there were socialists involved.

Anyway, Alon said something that implied that Marcotte, Kos, etc., were progressive activists. They're not. They have their blogs, and that's it. If you follow their arguments, you find they're actually opposed to political activism of any kind.

After I'd started commenting on Pandagon regularly, I heard from Marcotte, who said she wanted to know more about class and socialism. I kept telling her that one of the leading members of my socialist group lived in Austin, and worked in the very same institution where Marcotte worked, and she could get far more information and get hooked into all sorts of practical activity if she'd just use her lunchbreak one day to go over to my comrade's office and say, "Hello." But, Marcotte was worried about losing her job if she ever actually did anything political.

I've known too many people who've risked their jobs, their careers, and even their lives for their political principles, to be impressed by someone who's afraid to walk across a sidewalk to talk to someone.

One of the telling failures of the liberal blogosphere was how they completely ignored the May 1 demonstrations for immigrant rights, the largest demonstrations in US history. Apparently, the DNC didn't tell them to write about it, so they didn't. There are many other examples along those lines, but that I thought was the most telling.

belledame222 said...

But, Marcotte was worried about losing her job if she ever actually did anything political.

:eyes sliding into skull.:

and here I assumed her main problem with not actually learning more about, well, any particular thing, was just the "could you read it for me?" syndrome.

you know, I'm not like Miz Frontliner here, but i've certainly been known to, you know, move around petitions, write letters, go on marches...

are you saying she and Kos are -opposed- to even -that- much? as in, not even they don't take on that role, but...-opposed-. ho-kay.

um, exactly what the fuck is the point of all this, then?

"It's happening, Reg! Something is actually HAPPENING, REG!"

-crickets crickets crickets-

"AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

and, what kind of job is it where it's okay for her to have a very public blog real-name presence and say all kinds o'shite, but not -do- any...

well anyway.

Kos I suppose has the whole Yearly Kos and so on and so forth; and i thought he/they got behind specific candidates as well? dunno if you'd call that activism; it is action i suppose, of a--

well, i don't actually know what goes on at YK, it's true. if it's just RL chatting and cocktail party weiners, i dunno if it's substantially different from what happens online.

mind you i do think talk is important, too;

it's just, y'know, it kind of helps if every so often you're willing to hear something you don't already know...

belledame222 said...

or do you mean, she didn't want to be associated with -socialism- (communism?) specifically?

belledame222 said...

but um. the dude worked in the same office, so presumably, like -he- wasn't losing his job...

and yeah, not impressed with not even -talking- to someone;

well, you know. maybe she wasn't afraid so much as terribly terribly busy.

she is, you know.

Anonymous said...

Well, to give her some credit, yes, I think it was being associated with radicals that had her worried, and perhaps more importantly, she did have trouble with right wingers contacting her employers and complaining about her blog. Also, she did visit Camp Casey, although before leaving, she wrote a post sternly warning leftists against raising "irrelevant" issues at Camp Casey. Fortunately, Cindy Sheehan can actually think for herself.

belledame222 said...

esh.

and i would count fundraising (i.e. the Biting Beaver business, esp. as tied to the larger issue) as activism.

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