I Hate Seeing People Whine About “Political Correctness”

Honestly, I think a lot of people are over sensitive about having to show a modicum of politeness to people they’ve never really considered people before.

Like no one’s saying there should be a law that you can’t say the n-word or whatever, but there’s not a law that you have to replace the toilet paper roll when you finish one either, it’s the decent thing to do and people thinking less of you for not doing it is perfectly reasonable because you were undeniably being inconsiderate.

People crying over social justice people being over sensitive feels really ironic to me. I’ve seen far more “boohoo"ing from the people opposed to using polite terminology than people who’d like it used.

Also like… how is it censorious and limiting to ask to see more diversity?

Here’s a really good article on the subject.

Today’s youth are better behaved and less out of control than ever before, by every measure. They drink less, they do drugs less, they get pregnant less, they get in fewer car accidents, they work more and party less and more kids go to college than ever before, and all this despite being under far greater academic pressure than ever before. If teachers can’t discipline kids properly, than riddle me this? Why are today’s kids so well behaved? They’re unafraid to confront social issues and talk about them head on rather than demanding silence. Honestly, I think it’s older people who’re uncomfortable discussing things "ooh I don’t want to talk about racism” “ooh let’s not talk about sexism”. They’re the ones who are scared of discussing social issues and confronting ugly realities, which makes them seem a whole lot more over sensitive than kids these days.

Not to mention teachers are routinely allowed to get away with horrible mistreatment of children and disgusting misconduct while only being suspended temporarily.

Seriously, I’ve never understood what it is critics of “political correctness” (or as I like to call it “having manners”) want to be allowed to do? Who’s stopping you?

Is it the guys who harass and threaten to murder women over suggesting in the most mild possible way that video games might be a little sexist sometimes?

Is it the teachers who discipline black children far more harshly than white children who did the same thing?

Is it the people who are so terrified of overmedication that they refuse to treat serious mental illnesses in children?

Is it the people who make it terrifying for transgender people to try take a leak in peace?

Seriously how much more accommodating of the (crappy) status quo do you want society to be?

Also People Are Really Upset By The Idea That All Categories Have Fuzzy Edges

Especially with like privilege based discourse, people want categories of people to have very tidy edges, but like privilege isn’t an on/off switch, it’s gradient, fuzzy at the edges, and I mean everything is fuzzy at the edges, like the category of planet, a human derived concept to distinguish some lumps of shit in space from other lumps of shit in space, may or may not include notable lump of shit in space, pluto. What’s a mammal and what isn’t. The line between brunette and blonde. What’s a fruit vs what’s a berry. Who qualifies as straight? How we define all the lines between categories are somewhat arbitrary and gradient. Which is not to say we shouldn’t discuss how different categories of people are treated because of the categories we’ve created, but we have to remember that the boundaries of social constructs are often hazier than we’d like to believe.

Like for example back to the who’s straight thing, in some cultures men who are attracted to both men and women and are the active partner in all their sexual relations are considered straight, and there’s been a big debate about asexuals, and whether bisexuals in het relationships are, or people of non-binary genders in het passing relationships are and believe me I’m not touching those arguments with a 400 foot pole, but I think what’s really important is to note that they’re being had because it goes to show that like where the boundaries of straightness are is fuzzy, and I mean I think it’s kind of important to think about what we mean by straight, straight to who, straight in what context? Because like how society guages your identity obviously affects how you get treated, and also like your own understanding of your identity affects how you react, and respond to social messages and IDK I guess this idea of privilege as a light switch that is either on or off just kind of bugs me because it’s such an over simplification, which isn’t to say that I think privilege isn’t a useful tool for discussing systemic shit, but that it’s important to remember that it’s a simplification, and like simplifications and arbitrary divisions are necessary to be able to talk about anything, but also that it’s important to remember that they are simplifications.

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