[Politics] What matters more? My Sex or my Race? (Interesting MCU conversation explored)

[Agema]

I've noticed more and more of my fellow aspies acting... snobbish in regards to talking about NT's on forums which I feel is another sign of us having more power in the public sphere that they feel they can act that way.

That and the usual self-important narcissism so many forms of activism tend to develop.

 

[Saelune]

Hhm... Well Dreiko, thankfully, already made my point on your questions so instead I'll bring up something I think this might be an indication of the problem with coalitions, if one party, party 1, of that coalition gets the chance to get what they want but another party, party 2, doesn't, chances are that party 1 is going to take that instead of continuing to stand with party 2 in solidarity.

For instance, LGBT, why is the T there? The LGB indicates sexual and romantic preferences while the T indicates an identity of self that goes against what is more common. It's a bit like how Visual Novels are placed in the same stores as games despite them being more like interactive graphic novels for the most part. They aren't what you'd technically consider a game (Except for the VN's that do have gameplay) but because their audience and niche attract similar groups of people and placing them with games increases the number of people that will see and purchase them, they get placed with games.

I'm percolating in my head the idea that one might be able to tell if a minority group truly has strength to stand on its own if it is willing to distance itself from another minority group or "eat" it for its own benefit. I've noticed more and more of my fellow aspies acting... snobbish in regards to talking about NT's on forums which I feel is another sign of us having more power in the public sphere that they feel they can act that way.

The real pissing contest is done by bitter straight white men who cant handle the notion of giving a fuck about people who dont look like them.

It always stuns me when you say these things with a completely straight face and no sense of the irony of how you yourself act like the people you describe.

It stuns me that people who support Trump complain I am uncivil. Oh wait, its because they don't actually care about civility, they just care about keeping people like me oppressed.

You agree with Dreiko. Thats the problem. Because you should not agree with Dreiko on this topic.

 

[Saelune]

The real pissing contest is done by bitter straight white men who cant handle the notion of giving a fuck about people who dont look like them.

Yes and no. There's certainly a lot of that, but any rights movement you care to name has people who are (passionately, rightfully) fighting for their rights, who totally ignore (or contribute to) the problems of other groups. There are really racist white feminists, and really sexist black men fighting for black rights. Both types often demand black women stand with them (in subservient roles), and get surprised and outraged when they aren't fully onboard with that. Some of the black women (quite rightfully) condemning that sort of behaviour would hate black women who are Muslim.

Which gives straight white christian males panicking about minorities banding together and taking over another way to be annoying.

Terrible people are universal and will use anything they can to help them be terrible. The difference is which of those terrible people are running the government. And that is terrible straight white (mostly old) men who want to oppress women, LGBT people and people of color. But hey, Cardi B did some bad shit, so I guess that justifies all the women who get raped, right? (No, no it does not)

 

[Thaluikhain]

For instance, LGBT, why is the T there? The LGB indicates sexual and romantic preferences while the T indicates an identity of self that goes against what is more common.

I suspect that that's because the most vocal and violent enemies of LGBT people don't distinguish between the letters, they got lumped together by society, rather than by their own choice. Though that's a generalisation, and an easy answer.

 

[Saelune]

For instance, LGBT, why is the T there? The LGB indicates sexual and romantic preferences while the T indicates an identity of self that goes against what is more common.

I suspect that that's because the most vocal and violent enemies of LGBT people don't distinguish between the letters, they got lumped together by society, rather than by their own choice. Though that's a generalisation, and an easy answer.

The LGBT community exists because we were kicked out of 'normal' society. If we were never treated as aberrations, we would not even need to make our own niche community.

You're less likely to look for a surrogate family when your biological one loves you and doesn't kick you out of the house despite still being just a kid.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

So what are your thoughts? Does what I say suck, but still being a man for the most part makes up for whatever I have to endure? Should people be more open minded than what it appears from the outside? Or should we all stop talking to each other and just ask about the weather like we're British or Canadian?

I'll have you know that the weather is an eternally important topic in Sweden too.

Though I think Saelune already sort of covered what I wanted to say. I'll be a little less academic about it though. I think that we should all be humble to the fact that everyone can suffer from circumstances beyond their control, whether that is sex, ethnicity, gender, class or nationality (or something else). Being a black man means facing issues and dangers that a white woman won't, but she'll be facing issues and dangers a man won't. A wealthy, well-educated black woman will probably have it better than a poor, uneducated white man. For some it is, on average, institutionally easier to get help or a larger chance of not facing the really bad struggles. But it is poor comfort to an uneducated, drug addicted white man who gets HIV from injecting heroine that native american women on average has it worse then white men. Just as it is poor comfort for a native american woman or a black man that people have it worse in places like Burma or Congo-Kinshasa.

It is about respecting the fact that everyone faces their own struggles and problems in life. When you express your fear of getting killed by the Police because of racial profiling, that's a real danger you face and a real emotional burden to you. Whether that's worse than me being raped and hearing that it is bad for my kids that they've got two mothers and whether a white man not finding a woman to share his life with is suffering as much as either of us is kind of beside the point.

To me, that also means respecting that when we're talking Black Lives Matter, GLBTQ proponents should not hijack the discussion to talk about Gay Lives Matter or Incels turning it into a discussion about White Sexuality Matters. Occasionally we all need a reality check (maybe someone's fear of not being able to afford two luxury yatches if the stock market dips is not as bad as another person's fear of being evicted because they can't get a job due to their mental illness), but it should never be an excuse to hijack or overrule someone else's concerns or problems.

As we say in Sweden: Talking is silver, listening is gold.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Cause come on, being blind or deaf is way more disarming and a bigger hardship to live with by orders of magnitude as opposed to being black or gay or what have you but we barely even hear from those people. It's kinda obscene.

This literally goes into the topic of Intersectionality and sub-facets you were speaking about before. Everyday things will be harder for people with physical ailments. But they are 'treated better' by society at large. However, this better treatment offend makes those challenged individuals feel like more of a subject of Pity than an actual person.

Meanwhile, being apart of a stigmatized minority can and has lead majority populations to go out of their way to mistreat those minorities because they know they simply can't fight back and no one will care. Look at the treatment of the Native American and how the majority basically used them as human punching bags Forever. But then people in the majority who do not see this treatment or do not care about anything that doesn't happen outside of their sphere of influence will decide that this is made up BS that isn't worth their time, or made up lies to get sympathy.

A meeting between that Blind and/or deaf person and that Native American person can go one of two ways. They can look at the other's strife and empathize. See some of their struggle and connect through that. Or they can lose themselves in their own issues and instead of find an ally, they found a competitor for attention.

The former is what I tried to do with.. I'm just going to call her S because I'm tired of just referring to her as my friend. This is what I tried to do with S. I tried to present my plight as well to say I get it. I know what it's like not to be counted. I could dismiss her plight by saying "You're a White Woman, S. You are the most coveted person on this planet. What do you know about struggle?". That's easy. That's shifting the focus on me and whoo, boy, won't that be fun?

But instead, wouldn't it be better in the long run if S and I could stand together? Instead of just these base differences and counting that only, can't we sit and find out how we're alike and build from there? Because thinking about how we're different and building Walls has not helped us in one single moment of humanity's history.

Also, I don't know what you've been listening to but you hear about people with Disabilities having to champion for their own agency or share of resources all the time. All the time. Do you have a family member in Education? If so, then you hear about how funding has been Dwindling under Federal Government Spending [https://vinson-consulting.com/blog/with-federal-funding-dwindling-special-services-programs-struggle-to-support-students/]. We hear how Mental Health and disabilities account for at least 25 percent of Police Killings [https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police-practices/police-command-and-control-culture-often-lethal]. But these are swept under the rug. Tragic Accidents due to Police Following Procedure.

We live in a society where one side can have "Tragic Accidents" and the other side has "No Excuses". This is a daunting prospect. Especially if you're not in the Majority, and put that to the Nth Magnitude when you're on the Ostracized Fringe in the Majority's perception. There can be no fair play, therefore no peace for those who deal with it and yet still has to hear sentiments of "It's not a fair world, so stop whining".

Which leads me to ask people who always spout this mindset one question that always comes to mind... So what are you doing?

We all struggle with the frailty of life, the limited scope of power or influence of our individual positions, and the utter meaningless of it all compared to the unfazed Universe that won't even notice when the Earth itself gets stuffed out. But somehow we feel the need to tell people that they shouldn't voice their opinions to make their lives better. What always struck me as odd is... isn't the very act of trying to tell people to suffer in silence the act of trying to change the conditions of another individual's life? That they are tired of having to think about something and they rather not, so they will speak out to tell others to stop speaking out so they don't have to deal with it any more?

How is that any different than people speaking out to have agency over their own bodies, to say their skin color doesn't matter, to say sexuality and gender can be fluid even if you don't think it to be? How are they always complaining when they bring up those ideals and it's so very annoying, but those who tell them to shut up are only speaking their mind and must be heeded as for some reason their opinion is faultless compared to people speaking to try to have a better life?

To sum up, there's often this weird dichotomy that baffles me. There's always a segment of people who tell others to stop talking, stop bringing up things, and stop trying to change the world. And very often, these are the same people who will at some point say they never heard of a problem before so there must not really be one. I often am fascinated on how that works.

 

[stroopwafel]

So what are your thoughts? Does what I say suck, but still being a man for the most part makes up for whatever I have to endure? Should people be more open minded than what it appears from the outside? Or should we all stop talking to each other and just ask about the weather like we're British or Canadian?

I'll have you know that the weather is an eternally important topic in Sweden too.

Though I think Saelune already sort of covered what I wanted to say. I'll be a little less academic about it though. I think that we should all be humble to the fact that everyone can suffer from circumstances beyond their control, whether that is sex, ethnicity, gender, class or nationality (or something else). Being a black man means facing issues and dangers that a white woman won't, but she'll be facing issues and dangers a man won't. A wealthy, well-educated black woman will probably have it better than a poor, uneducated white man. For some it is, on average, institutionally easier to get help or a larger chance of not facing the really bad struggles. But it is poor comfort to an uneducated, drug addicted white man who gets HIV from injecting heroine that native american women on average has it worse then white men. Just as it is poor comfort for a native american woman or a black man that people have it worse in places like Burma or Congo-Kinshasa.

It is about respecting the fact that everyone faces their own struggles and problems in life. When you express your fear of getting killed by the Police because of racial profiling, that's a real danger you face and a real emotional burden to you. Whether that's worse than me being raped and hearing that it is bad for my kids that they've got two mothers and whether a white man not finding a woman to share his life with is suffering as much as either of us is kind of beside the point.

To me, that also means respecting that when we're talking Black Lives Matter, GLBTQ proponents should not hijack the discussion to talk about Gay Lives Matter or Incels turning it into a discussion about White Sexuality Matters. Occasionally we all need a reality check (maybe someone's fear of not being able to afford two luxury yatches if the stock market dips is not as bad as another person's fear of being evicted because they can't get a job due to their mental illness), but it should never be an excuse to hijack or overrule someone else's concerns or problems.

As we say in Sweden: Talking is silver, listening is gold.

Wow, that was really well said. I guess people want to be acknowledged in their struggles but generalizations make people feel personally offended as they feel it diminishes the acknowledgement of their own struggles.

 

[RobertEHouse]

Life is hard and to say a person is a man or white had privilege is ignorant to who they are as an individual. We all have our own individual struggles and pains regardless of our sex or race. Yet, to clump someone by sex/race and say it is easier for them is not accounting for every person known as one. It devalues the individual as a whole and is the same tactic the KKK or Nazism did to dehumanize Jews. It ignores that it is baseline racism at its core, with a society which tides itself to justice. It is in essence borderline Joseph Goebbles thinking and approach. Every person is a individual, and as a individual they are not held to these stereotypes.

It's not that easy, though, is it?

We can say that "men are taller than women" is an insult to individual short men and tall women, but at a level it's basically true. Likewise if we sum up all the people in demographic groups X and Y, all those individuals, we can see that perhaps their lives and outcomes on average are not equivalent in ways that might be concerning. When we suddenly say everyone is an individual and refuse to budge from that level, we voluntarily decide to look only at the trees and stop seeing the wood and we start missing something important. And ironically, if we refuse to see such bigger pictures of society, we will fail many of the individuals within it.

The problem is not to note things like "male" or "white" privilege exist. The problem is with how they are applied to people and used to justify action: they can be handled sensitively and sensibly... or not. And given that humans aren't perfect, inevitably quite a lot of that time it's not going to be sensitive and/or sensible. But that's not sufficient reason to throw any babies out with the bathwater.

So is it the assumption that group X is just sooo pathetic that they need others to prop them up?. Would that also not be a discredit for all the Women, LGBTQ's Disabled etc who actually have businesses?.Those that work for the Federal government, or members of the US Senate and Congress?. Racism is also the notion of believing others are incapable of helping themselves because of themselves.

The posters friend used a stereotype because she started off in a confrontational mode. That should never be used to make a point from the start. At the point those words left her mouth she didn't see her friend. She didn't care about the "sensitivity" of her friend in fact he was a thing by that point. All while at the same time telling Mary T Barra(CEO GM),Michele Buck(CEO Hershey) Marilyn Hewson (CEO Lockeed M)They are held down by the man that is a complete utter insult to them. As well as the hundreds of thousands around the world, in governments or in the private sector.Does anyone realize how patronizing it can come across doing what she did?.


https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-ceos-of-the-sp-500/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/06/07/the-number-of-women-ceos-in-the-fortune-500-is-at-an-all-time-high-of-32/

 

[Thaluikhain]

So is it the assumption that group X is just sooo pathetic that they need others to prop them up?.

No. Obviously.

All while at the same time telling Mary T Barra(CEO GM),Michele Buck(CEO Hershey)etc. They are held down by the man that is a complete utter insult to them. As well as the hundreds of thousands around the world, in governments or in the private sector.


https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-ceos-of-the-sp-500/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/06/07/the-number-of-women-ceos-in-the-fortune-500-is-at-an-all-time-high-of-32/

A record 5-6% of those companies having female CEOs proving gender inequality doesn't exist in the same way Obama being PotUS proved racism is over in the US?

 

[Agema]

So is it the assumption that group X is just sooo pathetic that they need others to prop them up?. Would that also not be a discredit for all the Women, LGBTQ's Disabled etc who actually have businesses?.

No, it's an assumption that systematic societal disadvantages exist such as low socioeconomic status, class, and conscious or unconscious discrimination.

Racism is also the notion of believing others are incapable of helping themselves because of themselves.

Racism is things like repeated studies that show things like black people of identical qualifications being less likely to be invited to inerview or offered a job. I'm sure they'd be much more able to help themselves if they weren't three times more likely to have their CV binned because their name doesn't look suitably majority typical.

Take this doozy from a report: "Most German workers (52%) say that their manager's gender doesn't make a difference to them, but of those who have a preference, many more would prefer a male (34%) to a female (14%) boss." Yeah. You're not telling me that attitude isn't slipping into people's hiring preferences at least sometimes.

Maybe you don't have the "right" accent or different cultural reference points, that make it harder to fit in at your workplace. Or you didn't go to the right school and lack the same networking to pull strings and grease the wheels for you. Maybe you're unfortunate enough to be of child-bearing age and your prospective boss doesn't want to pay maternity leave. Maybe it's just you're in a demographic group than earns on average 30% less than others, which makes you disproportionately likely to be worse educated, less healthy and brought up in a less supportive social milieu. Or just that the police like to pull people like you over and slap punishments on you more, so you're more likely to be inconvenienced, fined, even criminalised.

We all know this stuff exists. Why pretend otherwise?

 

[stroopwafel]

A record 5-6% of those companies having female CEOs proving gender inequality doesn't exist in the same way Obama being PotUS proved racism is over in the US?

I don't think that can be entirely attributed to inequality. Many(if not most) women also favor a work/life balance more, and aren't willing to sacrifice everything for their job like so many male CEO's do. More women also graduate from universities than men and often have more part-time and comfortable jobs that earn more than men who work full-time at the bottom. The comparison also don't involve the fact most dirty, physically demanding and dangerous work is done by men. The problem with your kind of reasoning is that you only focus on the top of the pyramid, where differences are the biggest. A comparison that only involves maybe 0,001% of males isn't really a representative comparison.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I don't think that can be entirely attributed to inequality. Many(if not most) women also favor a work/life balance more, and aren't willing to sacrifice everything for their job like so many male CEO's do.

Entirely due to inequality? Perhaps not, but it'd be a big factor.

As to work/life balance, I'd say that's in large part due to social expectations. Women are supposed to but their careers on hold to raise a family, men are supposed to not do this. Which is itself an inequality. If the husband wants to stay home and look after the kids, and the wife to run the company, both will face derision.

The comparison also don't involve the fact most dirty, physically demanding and dangerous work is done by men. The problem with your kind of reasoning is that you only focus on the top of the pyramid, where differences are the biggest. A comparison that only involves maybe 0,001% of males isn't really a representative comparison.

Eh, I didn't bring that up, that was RobertEHouse.

Though I largely agree. But, by comparison, while Obama being PotUS doesn't mean racism is over, it would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. Likewise, the same proportions of women as CEOs in those specific companies isn't going to be the same as in society of general, but it still does point to a broader issue.

I think the appeal of looking at the PotUS or 500 CEOs is due to a nice small and obvious sample size, more than anything else. Doesn't take much research to find out who the current PotUS is, and their race, sexuality and gender, for example.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

Which is roughly analogous to Communism. Nice in theory, but when it comes to practicum it fails catastrophically under the weight of its own (lack of) logic. And, unless adherents recognize its own failings and attempt to overcome them, will go nowhere and yield no effective direct action nor policy.

Kyriarchy is a much smarter, agile, and practical, theory, because it actually provides means for prioritizing direct action and policy-craft, while shifting priorities after direct action yields policy outcome. And, this bears out in that regardless how heavily "intersectionalists" decry kyriarchy, nine times out of ten they default to it without an iota of self-awareness. "Privilege checking" isn't a logical outcome of intersectionality, because the tactic is designed to silence, by enforcing some people are more privileged than others in accordance to a largely subjective calculus, all while marginalizing the struggles of those whose privilege is "checked" and denying them the space to speak on the basis of those struggles, even if the subject of discussion is a shared struggle. "Privilege checking" is, however, a logical outcome of kyriarchy which has built into its foundation means of ordering structures of oppression.

In other words, intersectionality is supposed to be the answer to oppression olympics. But scratch the surface, and nine times out of ten the default, and generally only, recourse of an intersectionalist is oppression olympics.

Case in point, the progressive stack. Only one party can nominally speak at a time; time, attention, and platforms are finite resources; ergo, speaking order is attributed value, with higher priority having higher value. Someone has to be first, second, third, all the way to last, in order of whose voices are valued highest. Just as a single example, who speaks first -- a black man, or a white woman? Selecting speaking order alone represents a value judgment, even as a necessary evil, which means even in this simple and dichotomous example the agenda-setter is valuing either blackness or womanhood higher than the other.

Even if the black man and white woman wish to speak to a shared struggle, like for example institutional poverty.

Intersectionality has no applicable answers to this issue, and should be discarded in favor of a theory that does. That progressive activists (of which, again, I am part) cleave to intersectionality and continue paying it lip service, while having long abandoned it in principle and practice, speaks only to the ignorance, hubris, and incompetence of contemporary social activism.

This ain't news. Intersectionality came into this world philosophically dead-on-arrival; this shit started in Seneca Falls, which has been thoroughly whitewashed, thanks to the revisionist nuclear takes of the same women who walked into the conference (at which poor and black women were excluded) race baiting and shilling white supremacy.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

In other words, intersectionality is supposed to be the answer to oppression olympics. But scratch the surface, and nine times out of ten the default, and generally only, recourse of an intersectionalist is oppression olympics.

Only if you use the pop version of intersectionality popular on Tumblr or Instagram. Actual, honest to God, intersectionality is an academic theory created to describe and explain the scientific findings that power, privilege and influence doesn't just have a single vector or a single outcome. Intersectionality is the theory that many concurrent, competing factors influence the social hierarchy at all times and in all situations and that these factors can have different values depending upon the context of the social situation. As such an intersectional reading might point out that on average being male is a positive factor in terms of social hierarchy, but that being male in the context of being a radical feminist might actually be negative for the influence of the individual.

Intersectionalism is not the answer to the question how to improve society. Intersectionalism is a tool to understand that there's more that goes into social stratification then just gender. This might seem obvious today, but when it hit in the early-90's it was a concept that revolutionized feminism and it is one of the key theories that paved the way for third wave feminism. Using it as anything other then a tool to understanding that there might be multiple system of oppression going on is futile, because intersectionality theory doesn't provide the means to rank or stratify different vectors of oppression or power.

 

[Saelune]

So what are your thoughts? Does what I say suck, but still being a man for the most part makes up for whatever I have to endure? Should people be more open minded than what it appears from the outside? Or should we all stop talking to each other and just ask about the weather like we're British or Canadian?

I'll have you know that the weather is an eternally important topic in Sweden too.

Though I think Saelune already sort of covered what I wanted to say. I'll be a little less academic about it though. I think that we should all be humble to the fact that everyone can suffer from circumstances beyond their control, whether that is sex, ethnicity, gender, class or nationality (or something else). Being a black man means facing issues and dangers that a white woman won't, but she'll be facing issues and dangers a man won't. A wealthy, well-educated black woman will probably have it better than a poor, uneducated white man. For some it is, on average, institutionally easier to get help or a larger chance of not facing the really bad struggles. But it is poor comfort to an uneducated, drug addicted white man who gets HIV from injecting heroine that native american women on average has it worse then white men. Just as it is poor comfort for a native american woman or a black man that people have it worse in places like Burma or Congo-Kinshasa.

It is about respecting the fact that everyone faces their own struggles and problems in life. When you express your fear of getting killed by the Police because of racial profiling, that's a real danger you face and a real emotional burden to you. Whether that's worse than me being raped and hearing that it is bad for my kids that they've got two mothers and whether a white man not finding a woman to share his life with is suffering as much as either of us is kind of beside the point.

To me, that also means respecting that when we're talking Black Lives Matter, GLBTQ proponents should not hijack the discussion to talk about Gay Lives Matter or Incels turning it into a discussion about White Sexuality Matters. Occasionally we all need a reality check (maybe someone's fear of not being able to afford two luxury yatches if the stock market dips is not as bad as another person's fear of being evicted because they can't get a job due to their mental illness), but it should never be an excuse to hijack or overrule someone else's concerns or problems.

As we say in Sweden: Talking is silver, listening is gold.

A big problem is all the people who seem to think 'equality' means something else entirely. Making women equal to men means putting men and women on fair equal footing, where ability not genitals dictates things. Too many men think equality with women means that women get to get away with not paying for dinner while getting as much money as men. (They also often try to blame women for 'not having to pay for dinner' as if that wasn't because it used to be that men earned the money and thus paid for all their wives/girlfriend's expenses)

 

[Saelune]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

Which is roughly analogous to Communism. Nice in theory, but when it comes to practicum it fails catastrophically under the weight of its own (lack of) logic. And, unless adherents recognize its own failings and attempt to overcome them, will go nowhere and yield no effective direct action nor policy.

Kyriarchy is a much smarter, agile, and practical, theory, because it actually provides means for prioritizing direct action and policy-craft, while shifting priorities after direct action yields policy outcome. And, this bears out in that regardless how heavily "intersectionalists" decry kyriarchy, nine times out of ten they default to it without an iota of self-awareness. "Privilege checking" isn't a logical outcome of intersectionality, because the tactic is designed to silence, by enforcing some people are more privileged than others in accordance to a largely subjective calculus, all while marginalizing the struggles of those whose privilege is "checked" and denying them the space to speak on the basis of those struggles, even if the subject of discussion is a shared struggle. "Privilege checking" is, however, a logical outcome of kyriarchy which has built into its foundation means of ordering structures of oppression.

In other words, intersectionality is supposed to be the answer to oppression Olympics. But scratch the surface, and nine times out of ten the default, and generally only, recourse of an intersectionalist is oppression olympics.

Case in point, the progressive stack. Only one party can nominally speak at a time; time, attention, and platforms are finite resources; ergo, speaking order is attributed value, with higher priority having higher value. Someone has to be first, second, third, all the way to last, in order of whose voices are valued highest. Just as a single example, who speaks first -- a black man, or a white woman? Selecting speaking order alone represents a value judgment, even as a necessary evil, which means even in this simple and dichotomous example the agenda-setter is valuing either blackness or womanhood higher than the other.

Even if the black man and white woman wish to speak to a shared struggle, like for example institutional poverty.

Intersectionality has no applicable answers to this issue, and should be discarded in favor of a theory that does. That progressive activists (of which, again, I am part) cleave to intersectionality and continue paying it lip service, while having long abandoned it in principle and practice, speaks only to the ignorance, hubris, and incompetence of contemporary social activism.

This ain't news. Intersectionality came into this world philosophically dead-on-arrival; this shit started in Seneca Falls, which has been thoroughly whitewashed, thanks to the revisionist nuclear takes of the same women who walked into the conference (at which poor and black women were excluded) race baiting and shilling white supremacy.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

From the sounds of the conversation, it sounds like she's saying she as a woman is exposed to or vulnerable to a lot more danger while you as a black guy are exposed to more specific and more lethal danger?

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

So what are your thoughts? Does what I say suck, but still being a man for the most part makes up for whatever I have to endure? Should people be more open minded than what it appears from the outside? Or should we all stop talking to each other and just ask about the weather like we're British or Canadian?

I'll have you know that the weather is an eternally important topic in Sweden too.

Though I think Saelune already sort of covered what I wanted to say. I'll be a little less academic about it though. I think that we should all be humble to the fact that everyone can suffer from circumstances beyond their control, whether that is sex, ethnicity, gender, class or nationality (or something else). Being a black man means facing issues and dangers that a white woman won't, but she'll be facing issues and dangers a man won't. A wealthy, well-educated black woman will probably have it better than a poor, uneducated white man. For some it is, on average, institutionally easier to get help or a larger chance of not facing the really bad struggles. But it is poor comfort to an uneducated, drug addicted white man who gets HIV from injecting heroine that native american women on average has it worse then white men. Just as it is poor comfort for a native american woman or a black man that people have it worse in places like Burma or Congo-Kinshasa.

It is about respecting the fact that everyone faces their own struggles and problems in life. When you express your fear of getting killed by the Police because of racial profiling, that's a real danger you face and a real emotional burden to you. Whether that's worse than me being raped and hearing that it is bad for my kids that they've got two mothers and whether a white man not finding a woman to share his life with is suffering as much as either of us is kind of beside the point.

To me, that also means respecting that when we're talking Black Lives Matter, GLBTQ proponents should not hijack the discussion to talk about Gay Lives Matter or Incels turning it into a discussion about White Sexuality Matters. Occasionally we all need a reality check (maybe someone's fear of not being able to afford two luxury yatches if the stock market dips is not as bad as another person's fear of being evicted because they can't get a job due to their mental illness), but it should never be an excuse to hijack or overrule someone else's concerns or problems.

As we say in Sweden: Talking is silver, listening is gold.

Excuse me, I'll have you know that the Internets told me that Sweden is nothing but a snow float. I'd advise you to get your facts right [/PleaseknowI'mkidding]

You've hit on a lot of good points, and I'm excited to discuss them with you.

We very much agree that we all should be humble and open with each other's plights and issues. Conversations shouldn't be competitions of whose 'Pain gets to Reign', but further opening up understanding to walks of life we can never truly experience. It's one of the thing that got me when I was talking to my friend S. In an instant, just saying I'm a dude minimized every time I felt like I had to put my hands and products at chest level in a store so no one thought I was joking, why I'm constantly afraid that the police are going to knock on my door over another wellness check (long story) after seeing how badly wellness checks can go down,

What bothered me about the exchange that who I am was in question because I didn't do this arbitrary thing. The events we went to together, when we both spoke up about issues dealing with women, when I voted on her taking the lead because she was the most capable person in the events we were doing due to her intelligence and character. All that was called into question because I didn't want to see a movie in a series of movies I never wanted to see.

I know women deserve more representation. Hell, 'deserve' even feels like an insulting word. It just should be equal. More than Half of the population of the planet always stuck at the side role is ludicrous to me. I bought a ticket online, just like I did for Wonder Woman, but I didn't see it. I bought the Wonder Woman Blu Ray as well. But I will not subject myself to something I know I'm probably not going to be fair to.

But when Black Panther came about, when Spiderman Into the SpiderVerse released... I never told S she has to go see it because this is what we've all have been waiting for and this is the representation Black Men deserve. I just went to see them. Again, which was fine because I know nothing about the characters so I won't have any prejudgment. Representation to me is as important as to anyone else that values this sort of thing. But I've learned a while ago that you can lead a Horse to water, but you can't force him to Drink.

I didn't get that same level of respect in this situation. And then it was compounded by handwaving my issues because I was associated with the Other. It was as insulting to me as I would assume it would be for her if I said "What does it matter if women aren't normally the lead roles. You're white. White people dominate in Hollywood!"

Sidebar: I completely understand that while I'm in danger, the large majority of women are in vastly different but salient, everpresent dangers. I'm physically less able to be molested as when I was younger, but I still carry those scars. Therefore the same fear. But I fully am aware that fear will never go away for most women. I don't know if I ever want to have the conversation on whether it's worse to be alive and sexually assaulted, or just dead and never coming back. I've done one. I don't want to do the other for comparison...

The real problem with today is that there are just so many problems to contend with that we literally do not have enough time in the day to express all of them. The LBGTQ community needs a great deal of help. I grew up reading the Village Voice [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_Voice] (RIP print circulation) and getting an idea of how frightening it must be just being yourself in a world that hates you for really nothing. You just love differently. You don't harm in doing so, other than people's sensibilities. It never made sense to me. I remember having this conversation with my family in Brooklyn... which started to make everyone think I was gay. I remember making the point why would it matter if I was gay. What's the difference between them wanting to just live as who they are and us as Blacks struggling to live for who we are? We are all just people trying to live in peace.

This is all to say that the situation has been laid out that there are a lot of injustices in the world with a really slim finite amount of empathy. And it seems like we all as Minorities, LGBTQ, and Women.... and any iteration that comes from those groups, we're all fighting for that spotlight to make things a little more livable. It feels like a lot more would be done for the world if we stop trying to get the spotlight to focus on one of our iterations, and just widen the beam to humanity in order to figure out how we can just be together.

By the way, I know you know this, but it's wonderful that your kids have two loving parents. Regardless on Gender or Sexual Orientation. This whole thing, from relationships to family rearing... it was all just supposed to be about love. And it saddens me that in a shortage of good homes, we have to throw stones at ones that don't "look like what we think is correct". Even though it shouldn't have to be said, today makes it more important to express that.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Generalisations are as true as the facts supporting them. The problem is their misapplication.

The context here is them being applied to individuals. Sure, generalizations can be based on factual information but the moment you move away from academic pursuits and apply them to specific individuals you're bound to misrepresent any individual because nobody will fit in with that general concept that's derived by averaging every individual. Even if they put a lot of effort into being very very average. In my eyes, saying to someone "you're a man so you have to take a step back and let women's opinions rule the discourse" is no different than saying to someone "95% of people are not gay so you by definition can't be gay cause you're a person". Both things use generalizations to erase the individual. If you're bothered by the latter, you MUST be bothered by the former to not be a hypocrite.

These kinda questions are why oppression olympics are a failed cause. Even if you satisfy this quandary, next time someone will add sexuality or disability into the equation. Someone will add immigration status.

Then let them. This isn't the last MCU or even super hero movie. If someone wants a gay hero after Captain Marvel, let them. If someone wants a muslim hero after that gay one. Let them. Trans one? Hell yeah bud.

You shouldn't be this upset because people ask for things on the internet.

Dunno where I'm being any amount of upset here lol. I'm just pointing out the irrationality here. People's opinions ought not be granted special consideration based on these factors, this actively worsens our society by pursuing goals outside of merit. Someone being female doesn't make them by default more suitable to opine about MCU protagonists or films or what have you. Any decision reached with this as a basis will be fundamentally weaker than it otherwise would have been. At some point we have to say to someone "no, you having three moles in your nose and not two does not mean you deserve special consideration" and since nobody can really draw a line about which arbitrary characteristic is fair game to be granted sagacity over but which is patently absurd, I will simply say that none of them should have that function in society and that way everyone's gonna be treated fairly. Cause come on, being blind or deaf is way more disarming and a bigger hardship to live with by orders of magnitude as opposed to being black or gay or what have you but we barely even hear from those people. It's kinda obscene.

I'm not even that much into comic books and their films to begin with, it's the principle of the matter that's the issue here.

Your choice in words and topics, coupled with your "its not like I even *like* comics b-baka" finisher reveal your true feelings here bud.

I mean hell, first we were talking about what the next Marvel hero would be, and now we're debating on whether someone's life experiences qualifies them to have more nuanced opinions on media???? I know people on the internet are pretty homogeneous. Hell, I couldn't tell one gamergater from the other. But sometimes people's experiences can give them better insight into topics.

And sometimes it's experiences that straight white men don't have.

I don't know why this is a hot take

There's no experience that a straight white man (or any person in general) can't comprehend, even if they never experience it themselves. It's called empathy. You study a subject, read about it and come to learn. To out of hand wave off somebody because of arbitrary characteristics that are not their choice is the exact evil perpetrated against women that you're railing against here.


And I am very much a deredere type of person, not much in the tsun department, if I like something I gush over it almost compulsively. I've only seen the first thor movie, the Xmen origins movie, black panther and I think parts of ironman 1? Not seen any avengers at all. Like I said, not really a fan. I'm way more into manga.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

It is not a one beats all. We all have privileges and disadvantages.

I have privilege for being an American, and white and living close to New York in a good neighborhood.

I am disadvantaged by being LGBT, particularly trans.

And yes, there are sexist women, racist black people, even homophobic gay people of all things.

Though another important point is who is bigoted, the power they have, and how they use it. The President of the US being bigoted is worse than an average citizen being bigoted.

The point is you can infinitely go into these sub-facets of people's being and keep dividing and dividing forever. Maybe someone was short and has a complex with that. I had bracers growing up which I consider to be isolating and make you stand out negatively. Stuff like that. You can always find stuff like that to make yourself seem harmed by something that's not your fault. That's just life and chance. Some people are born with no lungs and die and some people are born perfect the heirs of kings. You're not gonna fix this by making everyone aware of all the multitudes of ways that life was being life at you. Just take it for granted that life works like that and move past it onto things that are about your actions and not your circumstances.


In the context of this topic; your opinion on movies is not more valuable purely because you're this or that sex. Someone who is just another man can still be way more worthwhile to listen to based on his expertise on lore and so on. It's why when experts testify at court their expert opinion is given more weight than a layman's, and there is no such category of expertise that is attained by merely being born as something. You have to actually accomplish things to get your opinion to count more than that of just another random insignificant person. Your oppression doesn't make you significant, even if you're marginally more oppressed than most everyone else. It just makes you pitiable.

Remember when people with braces weren't legally allowed to marry? Remember when movements of naturally straight teeth supremacists marched chanting to kill you? Remember when you had your liberty over your body made illegal in the state of Georgia? No? Hm. Weird.

Yeah the thing is that those are not the only aspects of individuals that intersectionality busies itself with. If they were you'd have a point. No, they claim being merely a fatass is also oppression, when in fact back in the times of slavery the fat people were the privileged since being fat was a sign of being wealthy and it is also indicated by paintings of women at the time depicting them more on the chubby side. And there's no such laws in place oppressing fat people either (outside of the law of gravity I guess).

So yeah, you actually agree with me that at least some arbitrary characteristics that intersectionality deems important are in fact comparatively unimportant. The issue now becomes how do we go on to decide where the line is, and I don't think there's any good way of doing that. Hence my initial response.

Cause come on, being blind or deaf is way more disarming and a bigger hardship to live with by orders of magnitude as opposed to being black or gay or what have you but we barely even hear from those people. It's kinda obscene.

This literally goes into the topic of Intersectionality and sub-facets you were speaking about before. Everyday things will be harder for people with physical ailments. But they are 'treated better' by society at large. However, this better treatment offend makes those challenged individuals feel like more of a subject of Pity than an actual person.

Meanwhile, being apart of a stigmatized minority can and has lead majority populations to go out of their way to mistreat those minorities because they know they simply can't fight back and no one will care. Look at the treatment of the Native American and how the majority basically used them as human punching bags Forever. But then people in the majority who do not see this treatment or do not care about anything that doesn't happen outside of their sphere of influence will decide that this is made up BS that isn't worth their time, or made up lies to get sympathy.

A meeting between that Blind and/or deaf person and that Native American person can go one of two ways. They can look at the other's strife and empathize. See some of their struggle and connect through that. Or they can lose themselves in their own issues and instead of find an ally, they found a competitor for attention.

The former is what I tried to do with.. I'm just going to call her S because I'm tired of just referring to her as my friend. This is what I tried to do with S. I tried to present my plight as well to say I get it. I know what it's like not to be counted. I could dismiss her plight by saying "You're a White Woman, S. You are the most coveted person on this planet. What do you know about struggle?". That's easy. That's shifting the focus on me and whoo, boy, won't that be fun?

But instead, wouldn't it be better in the long run if S and I could stand together? Instead of just these base differences and counting that only, can't we sit and find out how we're alike and build from there? Because thinking about how we're different and building Walls has not helped us in one single moment of humanity's history.

Also, I don't know what you've been listening to but you hear about people with Disabilities having to champion for their own agency or share of resources all the time. All the time. Do you have a family member in Education? If so, then you hear about how funding has been Dwindling under Federal Government Spending [https://vinson-consulting.com/blog/with-federal-funding-dwindling-special-services-programs-struggle-to-support-students/]. We hear how Mental Health and disabilities account for at least 25 percent of Police Killings [https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police-practices/police-command-and-control-culture-often-lethal]. But these are swept under the rug. Tragic Accidents due to Police Following Procedure.

We live in a society where one side can have "Tragic Accidents" and the other side has "No Excuses". This is a daunting prospect. Especially if you're not in the Majority, and put that to the Nth Magnitude when you're on the Ostracized Fringe in the Majority's perception. There can be no fair play, therefore no peace for those who deal with it and yet still has to hear sentiments of "It's not a fair world, so stop whining".

Which leads me to ask people who always spout this mindset one question that always comes to mind... So what are you doing?

We all struggle with the frailty of life, the limited scope of power or influence of our individual positions, and the utter meaningless of it all compared to the unfazed Universe that won't even notice when the Earth itself gets stuffed out. But somehow we feel the need to tell people that they shouldn't voice their opinions to make their lives better. What always struck me as odd is... isn't the very act of trying to tell people to suffer in silence the act of trying to change the conditions of another individual's life? That they are tired of having to think about something and they rather not, so they will speak out to tell others to stop speaking out so they don't have to deal with it any more?

How is that any different than people speaking out to have agency over their own bodies, to say their skin color doesn't matter, to say sexuality and gender can be fluid even if you don't think it to be? How are they always complaining when they bring up those ideals and it's so very annoying, but those who tell them to shut up are only speaking their mind and must be heeded as for some reason their opinion is faultless compared to people speaking to try to have a better life?

To sum up, there's often this weird dichotomy that baffles me. There's always a segment of people who tell others to stop talking, stop bringing up things, and stop trying to change the world. And very often, these are the same people who will at some point say they never heard of a problem before so there must not really be one. I often am fascinated on how that works.

I think your error is conflating how society treats you with how your life actually unfolds.


Even is society sees to a disabled person's every need and heaps praises upon them constantly, their LIFE will still be suffering compared to the life of an average pleb with little power and a lot of freedom.

Yes, society may frown upon them, but at least you have the power to (justly) frown back and use your own capacity to seek a measure of happiness. Happiness earned, not given, one that's meaningful. I think such a life will be definitely riskier but I think it's also a lot more meaningful and ultimately worthwhile. Someone may not find happiness that way but I think most people would choose it in a heartbeat over the alternative.


This is the issue with this blind spot you form on yourself, you overfocus on the system and forget to pay attention to the individual and how their life is actually turning out with these influences applied on it. If a blind person still suffers more than a black person, it really doesn't matter one bit how well society treats them. It's extremely callous to think that it does. Such thinking only comes from a place where you're competing for oppression with other people instead of trying to uplift everyone around you and in so doing be uplifted yourself. The measure for how oppressed someone is should not be a list of things that are unjustly foisted on you, it should be how you feel about your life and the factual options you have available to you. Not being able to see your parent's or children's smiles is imo a whole lot more of a detriment than not being hired for a job because your name is too creole-sounding. It's the kind of pain whole books can be written over and you can't merely jot it down on a list and pretend you have captured it.


Anyhow, in the context of this topic, there's not really a minority since women make 50% of the country, though I will say that white women are not the most coveted like you describe, maybe they are in other places so if you average the whole world it adds up but in the USA it's Asian girls that rank the highest in desirability polls from things like dating sites. Either way, you say you're trying to make your life better but how does that excuse making other people's lives worse in the process? Not allowing fans of movies to opine when those movies were built upon their continued patronage over decades is a MUCH larger blow to those people's lives than it is to the women who lack their preferred protagonist. The capacity to affect those movies, to be a contributing part of that community is a bigger part of a lot of those men's life and to rob them of it is a greater evil and robs folks of more happiness by an order of magnitude.

At best it's just really selfish, it's a thinking that says "well, I'm oppressed, so I get to do this to you cause you had it coming" but no, two wrongs never make a right. Good is good no matter who experiences it and the option that generates the most good overall is better for our species, even if it in its steps follows a lack of equity, since everyone will eventually be raised up by that progress higher than they'd have otherwise been, even if there's never full equity. Lots of people had to die for medicine to evolve to the place that it has, lots of people suffered, but now we enjoy the fruits of that labor and the average human lives twice as long as most KINGS did back in the days of antiquity. And they don't even feel like kings either, it's pretty hilarious! Our average pantry has enough spices to raise an army and conquer the neighboring town if it was a thousand years ago, but we just think of spice as commonplace and mundane. I'll just be busy here being awed by those and myriads of other similar facts.