It’s not like “we progress” it’s like we have a trend cycle like fashion, and views on gender, and sexuality, and terminology and theory go in cycles.
I’ve been doing this for kind of a long time and been watching the cycle and I’m like “…sex-pos, sex-neg, sex-pos, sex-neg” and that’s how it goes and we never get actual nuance, and like sex workers are either “EMPOWERED!!!!!” or “TRAGIC!!!!!” (and I think that might be because if we admit to the actual nature of the problems in sex work, we actually have to question capitalism and that’s not allowed) and like whether we want gender abolition or additional gender categories goes back and forth on the hip opinion to have, and like femininity is cool, then it’s not, then it’s cool again,
and like I’m just over it.
And over the years I’ve gotten really good at making sure I focus on the “right” issues, and use the “right” terminology to make sure I get heard (sort of) regardless of where we are in the cycle.
But I’m so sick of this euphemism treadmill, endlessly shifting correct terminology (like I’ll use it, but I question the reasons for us continually changing it), and our refusal to see things as anything other than pure good or pure evil. We don’t even pay lip service to nuance a lot of the time.
People, and not just individuals, but whole groups are angels, or demons, and we always seem to be saying the righteous path is clear and uncomplicated and never murky, even when the real world is incredibly complex and like we always have thesis and antithesis and we NEVER achieve synthesis no matter how much we like to say we’re into dialectics.
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 