| Submit your comments on this article |
| Fifth Column |
| Why I've Started to Fear My Fellow Social Justice Activists |
| 2018-12-12 |
| [YES!] Callout culture. The quest for purity. Privilege theory taken to extremes. I’ve observed some of these questionable patterns in my activist communities over the past several years. As an activist, I stand with others against white supremacy, anti-blackness, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism. I am queer, trans, Chinese American, middle class, and able-bodied. This kind of shit is SO important, it has to be stated at the very beginning of the article. Holding these identities scattered across the spectrum of privilege, I have done my best to find my place in the movement, while educating myself on social justice issues to the best of my ability. But after witnessing countless people be ruthlessly torn apart in community for their mistakes and missteps, I started to fear my own comrades. As a cultural studies scholar, I am interested in how that culture‐as expressed through discourse and popular narratives‐does the work of power. Many disciplinary practices of the activist culture succeed in curbing oppressive behaviors. Callouts, for example, are necessary for identifying and addressing problematic behavior. But have they become the default response to fending off harm? Shutting down racist, sexist, and similar conversations protects vulnerable participants. But has it devolved into simply shutting down all dissenting ideas? When these tactics are liberally applied, without limit, inside marginalized groups, I believe they hold back movements by alienating both potential allies and their own members. In response to the unrestrained use of callouts and unchecked self-righteousness by leftist activists, I spend enormous amounts of energy protecting my activist identity from attack. I self-police what I say when among other activists. If I’m not 100 percent sold on the reasons for a political protest, I keep those opinions to myself‐though I might show up anyway. On social media, I’ve stopped commenting with thoughtful push back on popular social justice positions for fear of being called out. For example, even though some women at the 2017 women’s march reproduced the false and transmisogynistic idea that all women have vaginas, I still believe that the event was a critical win for the left and should not be written off so easily as it has been by some in my community. Yeah, those "pussy hats" you heard of? Turns out they were a hate crime all along. That's how fast this stuff changes. Understand, even though I am using callouts as a prime example, I am not against them. Several times, I have been called out for ways I have carelessly exhibited ableism, transmisogyny, fatphobia, and xenophobia. I am able to rebound quickly when responding with openness to those situations. I am against a culture that encourages callouts conducted irresponsibly, ones that abandon the person being called out and ones done out of a desire to experience power by humiliating another community member. Sinner confessing his sins. I am also concerned about who controls the language of social justice, as I see it wielded as a weapon against community members who don’t have access to this rapidly evolving lexicon. Terms like "oppression," "tone policing," "emotional labor," "diversity," and "allyship" are all used in specific ways to draw attention to the plight of minoritized people. Yet their meanings can also be manipulated to attack and exclude. Furthermore, most social justice 101 articles I see online are prescriptive checklists. Although these can be useful resources for someone who has little familiarity with these issues, I worry that this model of education contributes to the false idea that we have only one way to think about, talk about, and ultimately, do activism. I think that movements are able to fully breathe only when there is a plurality of tactics, and to some extent, of ideologies. I am not the first nor the last to point out that these movements for liberation and justice are exhibiting the same oppressive patterns that we are fighting against in larger society. Rather than wallowing in critique or walking away from this work, I choose a third option‐that we as a community slow down, acknowledge this pattern and develop an ethics of activism as a response. If we as activists do not feel safe in our experimental microcosms of justice and liberation, what can we attempt to replicate across larger society? What they wish to replicate across larger society is an oppressive collectivist regime all over again but this time without the humanity. |
| Posted by: Herb McCoy |
| #7 Seems these cultural warriors live in a world of dog whistles and hidden agendas. In previous times these were known as voices in their heads and it was a sign they needed help. Now they are used as footsoldiers by corrupt liberals. Very sad. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2018-12-12 13:42 |
| #6 Here she is. According to her web page, she wrote in a similar vein in 2017. Perhaps she intends it to be an annual exercise. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2018-12-12 11:49 |
| #5 I've always feared these social justice |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2018-12-12 11:44 |
| #4 "able-bodied" sounds good until you find out that the brain is part of the body, too. |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2018-12-12 11:04 |
| #3 I am queer, trans, Chinese American, middle class, and able-bodied. I don't care. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2018-12-12 10:51 |
| #2 As a cultural studies scholar, Now there's an oxymoron .......... or just a moron. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2018-12-12 08:33 |
| #1 As the old saying goes, "Now that cancer, world hunger and crime have been eliminated, we can now move on the really important things... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2018-12-12 06:26 |