Tag: oppression

Why “Haha Heteros” and “Haha Cis People” and so on are actually important political praxis

Okay so basically privileged people are fragile and in order to be able to actually discuss oppression we need to mitigate that fragility.  Working class people have a grand tradition of affectionately teasing each other.  We do this WAY more than bougie people do but we do this not to tear eachother down but to strengthen one another so that we can take it when the world comes to tear us to shreds.

When we tease cis people/het people/white people/men/etc we’re doing it to help them build a callous so that they can actually have a meaningful discussion when it comes time to discuss actual oppression, rather than them feeling injured and huffy.

Y’ Know I’m Not An Ally or An Accomplice Or Whatever You Wanna Call It

To marginalized groups that I don’t belong to because I’m good or empathetic or moral or whatever.   Like I fight for other people’s liberation because I know that my liberation isn’t coming without theirs.   I don’t believe you can “abolish all hierarchies… except this one” and like honestly?  I know that if we have hierarchy some other motherfucker is going to be over me.  It’s so incredibly unlikely that in a struggle for social power I, me, one in like seven billion or whatever, am going to end up the big winner, the top of the pecking order that it’s like… y’ know? 

The idea of not being allowed to step on people doesn’t bother me, what bothers me is that people are allowed to step on me and like unless I stop stepping on people we’ll never be able to gang up on the people that are allowed to step on all of us, beat the crap out of them and change the rules.

Fuck condescending altruism.  Incidentally this is why liberal social justice is a crock, and why communist social justice rocks.

Self Flagellation Is Not A Way To End Oppression

I don’t care how bad you feel about patriarchy or homophobia or whatever.

Your hair shirt won’t help me.  Your self effacing jokes won’t help me.  Your asceticism and self punishment are not my liberation.

I don’t need you to hurt as much as I do.  I need you to help me stop getting hurt.

Don’t perform your pain for me as if somehow your suffering lessens mine.  Help me.

Your self loathing will not save me from society’s injustice.  Stop crying and help me up.

I really hate hearing other people who experience various forms of oppression be like “I wanna be a capitalist uWu”

Like:
1. They’re not gonna let you prolly, especially cause you’re from a working class background

2. If they do, it’ll only be after you’ve thrown the rest of us under the bus.

3. The systems of oppression we exist in are a direct result of the hierarchy of labor created by capitalism, so y’ know fuck off?

4. Basically we’re all escaping the misery of proletarian existence under capital or next to none of us are. Statistically, you’re not going to be one of the few.

A Metaphor For Privilege Under Capitalism

Let’s say there are three groups of mice, one has a 7/8ths of a cake, one has 1/8th of a cake, and one has no cake.

The mice with no cake are like “Hey it’s pretty shitty we don’t get any cake”

And the mice with 7/8ths of the cake tell the mice with 1/8th of the cake “Well I mean you could divide it with them, but then you’d only get 1/16th of the cake then”  and the mice with 1/8th are like “HELL NO” and attacks the mice with no cake.

And then sometimes one of the mice with 1/8th of the cake go to the mice without cake and go “you know if we joined together we could get those guys’ whole cake”

And the mice with no cake are like “…you won’t share your cake with us and you attacked us for asking for any cake at all so we don’t really trust you… maybe if you were less shitty to us?”

And then the 1/8th cake mouse accuses them of dividing the working class.

Also sometimes one of the 7/8ths cake mice is like “We should both give them 1/16th of the cake, I know it’s a huge sacrifice, but it’s the right thing to do”  but it’s really just doing that to keep the 1/8th mice focused on making sure the mice with no cake don’t get any of their slice so that they don’t gang up with the mice with no cake and take the whole cake and divide it in half. 

Also Maybe It’s Best To Think About Calling Out Privileged Actions

In terms of who’s denying the oppressed person a basic right.

Like in the case of it being acceptable to non-consensually touch marginalized people, the person doing the touching is denying a woman or black person or whoever the right not to be touched without their consent.

In the case of the straight couple having an easier time living together openly than a gay couple?  The straight couple isn’t the one making it hard for the gay couple to live together openly, it’s people like landlords, bosses, families, and communities that might ostracize them.

Or in the case of dude authors getting published more than lady authors, a dude who wrote a book that wrote a mediocre book that got published instead of a lady’s not as mediocre book isn’t at fault.  The publisher, and book reviewers, and societal norms are, but it’s a lot easier to just vent your frustration on the dude who wrote a mediocre book even though like if he hadn’t written that mediocre book it would have been some other dude with a mediocre book but like actually you shouldn’t because that doesn’t address the problem in a way that’ll help and makes a scapegoat of some rando dude so that people vent their rage without actually changing the system that caused the problem in the first place.

Like the fact that there isn’t always a single person, easily confronted villain is shitty, but like if we want to actually change society we have to be ready to address broad systemic concerns as broad and systemic rather than going after symbolic targets that change nothing.

Also Just FYI

I don’t think doing sex work is inherently radical, just like being a woman isn’t inherently radical.  All I want is to be thought of as a worker like all other workers, my labor analyzed as labor like all other workers’ labor.

There’s nothing inherently radical about being a prole, no identity makes you inherently radical, and there are plenty of oppressed people with shitty politics.

Class is A Material Difference Based On A Social Relation

To abolish the social relation you must abolish the material difference (E.G. You must abolish private property.)  All other axes of oppression are social relations based on some random (often vague) material difference, and the material difference can be left alone (E.G.. You do not need to abolish people having different skintones and hair textures to abolish the social relation of race)