Tag: social justice

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. 

I Feel Like We Shouldn’t Have To Go After An Artist’s Talent

To go after their politics.

Like the idea that you have to be like “so and so is so overrated” in order to call them a misogynist or whatever is fucked up because it perpetuates the idea that talent or artistic merit means a person or piece of art is somehow absolved of ethical concerns.

Also it perpetuates the just world fallacy where we believe moral people must be granted talent, and that talented people must therefore be moral which is blatantly not the case.

Also I think the fact that we go after women/POC/LGBTQ/disabled people/etc for saying/doing problematic shit so much harder than we go after straight cis white abled men is kinda fucked up.

If You Want Working Class Solidarity

It is up to those of us with privilege to stop drinking from the poisoned chalice that gives us some small advantage over the rest of our class, at the expense of dividing us from our comrades, at the expense of the real power which we can only build when we come together.  We cannot come together as a class while working class women are told by their comrades to accept violence and inferior status for the sake of revolution, to show solidarity with those who ill treat us for the sake of revolution.  We cannot come together as a class standing on the backs of our black and brown comrades.  We cannot come together as a class if we treat our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and so on comrades as deviants or tokens.  We cannot come together as a class if our transgender comrades are denied the right to take a fucking piss safely.  We cannot come together as a class if our spaces are inaccessible to our disabled comrades.  

You want working class solidarity?  You want the revolution?  Show that solidarity to your women comrades, your comrades of color, your LGBTQ comrades, your disabled comrades, show us that you will fight for us and not just yourself and we will fight at your side.  Show it through your actions and not through empty words.  

We can only have real solidarity when we stand beside our comrades and not above them.

So Like I Think Women Who Are In The Position Of Being Denied “True Womanhood”

So women who aren’t cis, white, respectable bougie straight  and so on, are ironically placed in the position of being oppressed by the patriarchal authority of women who are allowed the “true woman” label (also like each axis privilege allows you some patriarchal authority, like a white working class woman can use a measure of patriarchal force against a black working class woman cause yeah).

So like women who don’t have the benefit of “proper womanhood” are placed in the position of women under women who do, and so like bougie white cis abled straight “respectable” women enact a kind of double patriarchy on all other women I think.

Also I think oppression is exponential rather than simply additional (like being a disabled woman is more shitty than merely the sum of oppressed identities)

Comrades not Allies or Benefactors.

I don’t trust anyone whose interest in my liberation isn’t to some extent self interest. Charity is always from above. I trust men who want the liberation of women because patriarchy fucks everyone over, but women more, and they know they can’t achieve their own liberation in any meaningful sense without us. I trust those who do not seek to alleviate their sense of guilt for their superior social position but instead seek to demolish the structures that create it because they harm them too. I am opposed to racism within the white working class not simply because it is morally repugnant, but also because I know that the liberation of the working class cannot come when we fall prey to their divide and rule tactics, and that the group the ruling class have placed on top has to be the one to extend the olive branch, the ones who have to say “No, I will stand beside you, not above you” before we can have true solidarity. Demanding solidarity with your boot on someone’s throat is no way to be their comrade.

It is those who have power within the working class who keep it divided, not some recalcitrance on the part of the most oppressed

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.

Privilege Problems

There’s a weird thing with privilege where like a lot of demonstrations of privilege are not things privileged people should stop doing. Like white men feel safer walking alone at night than women and POC do. Should white dudes stop walking alone at night? No. Do straight couples have an easier time living together openly than gay couples? Yes. Does that mean they should stop? No. 

But then like sometimes “a demonstration of privilege” is used to mean some behavior that the does need to stop, like men relying on women for domestic and emotional labor or white people touching black people without their consent and I think the lack of a line between “something oppressed people need to be free to do” and “something privileged people need to knock off doing” leads to weird confusion where dudes are like “Are you telling me not to walk at night?” and I’m like “No, but women have to be vigilant in a way you don’t, so like try to give them space and not make them feel threatened”.

Cause like what would dudes who are trying not to make women feel threatened not going out at night get me?  A night full of actively hostile dudes and dudes who don’t care which is an even more threatening prospect cause there are even fewer potential helpers out there.

I feel like oppressed groups are denied basic rights, which are things everyone should be allowed, like being able to walk alone safely at night and oppressor groups are given privileges to treat oppressed groups in ways no one should be treated, like the freedom to touch people without their consent and not receive any repercussions.

You see what I mean?