The ostrich impression is getting rather old. A nice case study of how SJWs operate and why any liberal with stuff between their ears should despise it. Which took a grueling three seconds to find via search engine.
Umm...
First of all, I’m tired of watching people turn into pretentious assholes who think their activism makes them better than everyone else, even the oppressed and marginalised groups with whom they claim “allyship”.
- I don't do that.
- I disagree with those who do that.
- I have called out those who do that.
But since I'm on the left and refuse to call myself a "moderate" in protest of this SJW leftist strain, I'm
soooo evil. Yeaaaah no.
If you’ve ever worked with oppressed groups, such as people who are homeless, abused, addicted or suffering from mental health problems, there's one thing you learn straight away. They usually don't frame their worldviews in terms of academic theories students learn in gender studies classes in university. For the most part, they tend to not analyse their experiences in terms of systemic power and privilege, concepts such as “the patriarchy”, “white privilege”, or “heteronormativity”.
Do you mean...
gasp! The oppressed aren't well-educated! Thus, those Ivory Tower Intellectuals are merely
pretending to help them when they seek to understand oppression with Big Confusing Words and Concepts.
While many of these folks know that they're directly impacted by class inequality, they don't sit around pondering capitalism, reading Marx, or tackling the effects of “problematic behaviours”. They are not concerned with checking their privilege. No. They are busy trying to survive. Getting through the next day. Meeting their basic needs. They don't bother with policing their language and worrying about how their words might unintentionally perpetuate certain stereotypes. They are more concerned with their voices being heard.
"If you
really cared about the poor, you'd be
acting like the poor."
And "checking one's privilege" is directed toward the
privileged, not the oppressed.
Yet I witness so many “activists” who ignore the realities of oppression despite saying that they care about those at the bottom of society. They think that being offended by something is equal to experiencing prison time or living on the streets. They talk about listening, being humble and not having preconceptions. Yet they ignore the lived experiences of those who don’t speak or think properly in the view of university-educated social justice warriors, regardless of how much worse off they really are.
Starving-children-in-Africa fallacy. Perhaps we should focus more on the concrete and mundane effects of oppression, yes, but this doesn't mean that trying to change society's opinion is futile or useless or a waste of time. It's a longer-term and more subtle enterprise.
This isn't to say that we should accept bigotry in any form — far from it. But I would go as far as saying that the politically correct mafia on the left perpetuates a form of bigotry on its own because it alienates and “otherises” those who do not share their ways of thinking and speaking about the world.
"Being anti-bigoted is bigotry itself!" Yeah... although I will admit that the left has its own tribalism, you know, I agree with
most of this,
Ghandi was wrong. That is, we should
not stand and watch as people are oppressed. If I see someone shooting innocent people, I can ethically kill him (unless I have a better alternative). If I see a group of people being oppressed, I can ethically target the oppressors, speaking out against them, calling them unethical, shunning them.
Edit: Wait a sec, okay, critical thinking just kicked in. Reconsidering this section. Hmm. This is a pretty big dilemma - to act in a certain way is unacceptable, to not act is unacceptable. I suppose...
A-
ha! I've got it! We fix oppression without being assholes to anyone!
(why was that so hard???)
(The problem is that this
could be done to the wrong people - when "sexism" means "criticism of a female's theories", feminism has been perverted and corrupted. But that's like saying that we should never eat food because it might be rotten. We need to do
everything we can to
use this weapon correctly. We need to stop oppression, and we need to do this the
right way.)
I've witnessed incidents where people have lost their jobs because of mistakes they've made in the eyes of left-wing activists.
I wonder which "mistakes" these were? Funny how vague this is. Like PTTG??, I'm asking for
specific and concrete incidents.I've seen relationships and friendships destroyed.
And most of them were started by the bigots, I'm guessing. Sometimes the oppressed stand up for themselves. Sometimes a trans young adult cuts themselves off from their hateful family. Sometimes a black person is sick of a friend's incessant racist remarks. I am sorry for the lost relationships and I am happy for those who are free of them.
I've known people who have been banned from participating in certain places, and become so alienated from “the community” that they are afraid to go out in public at all.
Who were these people, why were they banned, where were they banned from, which communities were these? Tons of vague "the left is DOING BAD STUFF," no
sources!!This has caused serious mental distress to people I've worked alongside, and has even resulted in suicide. Social "justice" indeed.
Humans are social creatures. If someone is shunned from society, then it will damage them psychologically. This is bad, sure, and I'd prefer not to do this. But I'd also prefer that oppression was ended. Guess who I care about more, bigots or the oppressed?
Edit: Again, thinking critically about this. On the one hand, "using their weapons against them" isn't
inherently lowering ourselves to their level. On the other hand, we probably don't
need to, and it's best if we don't. So I'd use shunning as a last resort, preferring less-arseholy ways of reducing bigotry. And these ways are probably more effective anyway!
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Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4475630 times)