Some Of The Things That I Think Have Gotten Kind Of Toxic In SJ Circles

are like

1. I’ve seen abusers given a pass for their behavior because they were oppressed. Even in cases where I share that axis of oppression I often feel scared to speak up because then they’ll make me the target of the witch hunt. It’s often like “Well okay, I guess it’s okay for you to utterly humiliate a 15 year old for using a misogynist slur once because they didn’t know better”

2. I’ve seen people use supposed privilege against people who have experience they don’t talk about and don’t want to (like people forcing sex workers or survivors or trans folks to out themselves in order to get credibility)

3. People playing oppression olympics and also people using the concept of oppression olympics to claim that they have it equally as bad. Like one of the reasons discourse around ace stuff is so bad, is because on the one hand it’s shitty to deny that even cis het ace people get shit, but on the other hand it’s shitty to say that they have it just as bad as LGBTQ people, or like denying that visibly gnc men are at risk of being on the receiving end of violence even if they are cis het (obviously not as much risk as gnc gay or bi men, or anywhere near as much as trans women) is shitty and like saying “well it doesn’t count because it’s not aimed at them” is also kind of shitty, because the people who beat up gnc men don’t stop beating them up if the gnc cis het dude is like “no I have a wife and three kids at home and I can prove to you that I am a cis man” like that beating is not just a case of mistaken identities, but then also not acknowledging that they still qualify as cis and het is shitty because like his relationships aren’t stigmatized and you don’t get arrested for going to the bathroom you belong in and a bunch of other stuff, and like on the one hand “straight women have it worse than gay men” is terrible discourse and pointless, it’s also shitty to have this ethos of “if the systemic of oppression of your group has not resulted in X level of horrible shit or you are not X level of visible as part of oppressed group your group isn’t systemically oppressed at all or you aren’t a member of said group” but like also is a result of the whole like “if we acknowledge that a group is systemically disadvantaged they have to be as systemically disadvantaged as every other systemically disadvantaged group” but then there’s like “I’m trans racial” which is obviously bullshit or like “I’m a cis het dude who likes it when my cis girlfriend uses a strap on, so I’m definitely queer” which is obviously also bullshit

4. Denying that categories are complicated and have fuzzy edges. Like because my relationship is het passing, I have an easier time than someone whose relationship isn’t, but a harder time than someone who is actually just cis het, and like are cis heteroromantic asexuals part of the LGBTQ community? Are they allowed to reclaim the Q slur? I don’t know my dash has been arguing about this for years, they’re an edge case, like pluto and whether or not it’s a planet. Or like whether or not cam performers and PSOs qualify as sex workers to the same extent as people who do in person work? Or like am I a prole, lumpen prole or petite bourgeois? I sell my labor, and niteflirt takes a big cut when I do phone work, but I also own my own tools, but also what do I produce if anything? Do websites that advertise sex worker services count as a portion of the means of production? Everything is complicated.

Things That Anarchists Say to Me in Private But Never Repeat Publicly

I’m not sure if this article’s point is that “anarchists say shitty stuff in private” or “These grievances are ones people feel scared to bring up” it’s interesting either way.

1) “Call-out culture was developed to allow activist groups to confront leaders who abused their privilege, but now it is being used to settle petty scores on the level of interpersonal politics. I now have a hard time believing some people when they make call-outs because I have seen too many that were based on nothing. Call-outs have become a way to acceptably inflict social violence and rarely are followed up in any way resembling transformative justice because people are not interested in doing the hard work of working with those who are called out.”

I’ve seen this one happen, often to deflect criticism from the accuser by misdirection. It’s a mess.

2) “As a white person, if I don’t automatically agree with whichever person of color is directly in front of me, I run the risk of being labelled a racist. This is a result of good intentions where we want to center people of color and their experiences, but it makes no sense because people of color are not a monolithic block who all agree or share the same experiences. I am basically forced to perform a kind of double-think where I am expected to be able to agree with multiple conflicting viewpoints at the same time – or at least pretend to.”

I feel like this one is often a thing that sort of signals “hey this isn’t really my issue” or at least is more about not talking over people

5) “Calling people out for using the wrong language, for example saying ‘biological female’ instead of ‘person assigned female at birth’, is harmful and makes no sense because not everyone has access to the same information, they’ll never learn if they’re excluded, and the ‘correct’ languages changes every couple of years anyway. People don’t want to be associated with us because they see how punishing we are to each other and it turns them off.”

and like making people feel safe and respected is a balancing act, like saying something misogynistic to a woman because you’re uneducated and don’t have the privilege of being educated on that subject means that like on the one hand the woman feels unsafe because misogyny, and the person without education on that issue feels unsafe because they’re being jumped on for a lack of education they didn’t have access to, and like ultimately there isn’t an easy answer to this stuff, it’s a balancing act.

8) “Who cares about who you personally fuck when we’re talking about a broad political movement? Get off the ego trip. What we want is health care, affordable housing, jobs, prison abolition, immigration rights, sex workers rights, and the end of capitalism. ‘Queer’ has become so fashionable that it’s being confused with ‘radical’.”

This one just feels uncomfortable to me, it seems like there’s a failure to acknowledge violence done against LGBTQETC people

10) “We’ve completely failed to build frameworks for accountability and transformative justice, and instead rely on callouts and social exclusion that replicate the prison system without the benefit of having trials.”

Like this overstate the case a wee bit, like I see your point, but like the prison system is really really horrible, but like the witch hunt atmosphere of a lot of spaces is really gross.

Things That Anarchists Say to Me in Private But Never Repeat Publicly

TFW callout culture seems to bear a striking resemblance to Maoist self criticism sessions, and is probably a descendant of Maoist tendencies within the 60s new left

Which like IDK, it’s a weird context thing we don’t acknowledge, I’m not like saying the practice isn’t ever useful, or is evil because of where it descends from and like I’m not even saying that like Maoists are terrible, because like… I feel like what people say their tendency is matters a lot less than their actual praxis and personal interpretation of that tendency.

But I feel like not acknowledging the leftist context of a lot of tumblr’s social justice rhetoric leads to a lot of bad discourse. Cause like ideas come from places and we need to understand original context in order to apply them properly.