Okay, so with the veritable scrummage going on in the "It's Election Time" blog, I figured we open up that whole can of worms and have a structured debate. Because why not, right?
I tried to sum up the comments under the blog into three broad church topics that can be interlinked, so I guess I'll address them one at a time, give my opinions, get the ball rolling and all that. Can we try to be civil with each other? There's a lot of personal bull shit being tossed around over there, I always kinda assume that the moment you switch from theoretical argument to just insulting a person, you've run out of ammo for your points and you're pretty much just running your argument without any evidence. You know, let's kinda just have a brainstorm and see what happens. Also I'll skip the pretext; everyone is familiar with what caused the argument, Trump vs rationality, the nuance of voting for him as a statement vs racists vs pragmatic reasons.
First of all, I wanna put down the argument as to why we need feminism and identity politics currently. I spend a lot of time in my own progressive-leftist bubble so I do often forget there are people who equate feminism to some sort of bizarre man-castrating secret order. I do genuinely understand why some men get this idea; for instance with the "Hugh Mungus" incident, where a woman willfully chooses to be upset by this man's fairly innocuous comment that--according to him--was referencing his weight. It was a stupid over reaction.
Moving on from that, I'd like to put it to the forum that 'feminism' has a definition. There is this argument from MRAs that feminism exists to make men subservient. This is of course bollocks, and to just clarify what feminism is, here's the dictionary definition:
:
feminism
NOUN
[mass noun] The advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.
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I think this lays it down fairly clearly and simply; feminism is simply the want and fight for equality between the sexes. It is not a crusade against men, it is not even a binary argument. All feminists want is for women, men, intersex etc. to be equal in society and economically. It's a fairly specific definition, it leaves little up for debate. There's no ulterior motive, no subtext, just plain and simple, "we want gender/sex equality".
So, I'm
hoping that will allay the go to 'argument', "but but, I've seeeeeen femiNAZIS on the internet," because I think it clearly shows that if a woman on a shaky youtube video is screaming 'death to men', she's not a feminist.
With that in mind, can anyway say feminism is a bad thing?
Now then, 'identity politics' have been turned into a buzzword, with the fascists (and I refuse to call them 'alt-right' just like they refuse to use G/N pronouns) and Breitbart/Fox listeners using the term to discount the trend for politically conscious minority groups to form their own blocs. It's the same way the term, 'triggered' has been hijaked and normalised by the right to refer condescendingly to anyone on the left of the political spectrum who gets upset when social issues are raised and mocked. (This is something that upsets me, as I've had a partner who received years of torment and physical and sexual abuse, including rape, I've seen what 'being triggered' is like, and it's horrific).
Unfortunately, the hardest thing to do when someone gets upset when their pronouns are misused, or when minorities fight their corners so hard, is to be understanding. I'm lucky in the sense that I am a white woman, so therefore I have an inbuilt sense of 'privilege' (groooooan I know, but just hear me out) which sometimes makes me naive to the struggles of other people. For instance, a black Xhosa speaking lesbian woman in England will face more adversity than I do. So will a trans-woman undergoing gender reassignment, who has had to repress who they are for years because of their religious parents. Some people on the left often try to turn people's problems into a hierarchy, but there's such a danger of simplifying and trivialising people's issues by doing this, you're only gonna make people side against you.
Let me pick Nepsotic as an example. I hope you don't mind me doing this, but you've been a critic since I joined this forum, throwing jabs at me often at irrelevant times when it's been uncalled for. Nevertheless, I want to demonstrate that I can empathise with you; I've read some of your blogs, I've seen that you've struggled with mental health and depression and I want to say that sucks. I'm sure you've had to deal with people trivialising your problems, for instance when someone has a bad day at the office and they say, "oh man I'm so depressed, I had so much shit to do today," it takes away from the severity of what you go through. If I was you, my instinct would be to draw inside myself and lash out because of society's stigma of MH issues. In the UK I know it's so shit how it's treated. So I would expect someone such as yourself, not to debate people like me who agree with the 'SJWs' about the importance identity politics, but to understand and maybe actually support the disenfranchised.
Lastly, nationalism. So, I noticed there does seem to be a support for nationalism, not across the board but I do think that it's mad in the 21st century that people are against the mixing of 'races' and the strengthening of borders. For this I'm really more curious to see what people have to say, because I just think that borders should be deconstructed and people should be able to go anywhere and do whatever they want providing they register with the nation they're residing in.
Anyway, that should be enough tinder to get the fire going. As you were, citizens.
Also, apologies if some of that doesn't make sense, I'm perpetually tired at the moment and I can barely keep my eyes open like, all day.
Identity Politics, Feminism and Nationalism
