America: The Broken, 2020 Edition

Who could have predicted, except for hundreds and thousands of commentators, many of them women and/or POC.

Here's me, writing 3 years ago, at Shakesville, for instance:

"Donald Trump is the inevitable Republican politician for a rotten-to-the-core Republican Party that has condoned the use of any means necessary to win. To enact their regressive, cruel agenda, they have enabled a man to become President who is not only temperamentally-unsuited and unqualified for the office he holds, but whose very presence there is a daily, stark reminder of their contempt for both democracy and the people of this nation.

America: we are broken."

The George B. Bush years were bad. Very bad. The Trump years are exponentially worse.

If you'd have asked me the day after the 2016 election if in a few years it would feel like we would be living through some of the worst moments of the 1930s, 40s, and 60s, but also with Twitter, Facebook, a pandemic, and a fascist president who was brought to us by the reality TV-ification of US politics, I'd say, "Yep, Sure. Sounds about right."

Every time I think we've hit rock bottom, things somehow get worse.

And, if anything, the COVID pandemic should be telling everyone in the US, even the most privileged, how drastically our lives can change, pretty much overnight, and not in a good way. I think many white people mean well when they post the memes about their #whiteprivilege and how "safe" they are relative to Black people, and that is true to an extent, but white people also would do well to stop acting like they/we are entirely objective observers of history, rather than people who can also be killed, uprooted, and oppressed by the Trump regime. Especially now.

I wish I could find it now, but when I was perusing the Twitter recently, someone noted that one of the condescending errors of the post-2016-election "safety pin" thing, where white people would wear safety pins to surreptitiously signal to people of color that they/we are "allies," was the simple-minded assumption that we would be entirely untouched, ourselves, by the horrors of the Trump regime. 

I also understand that people need hope, and I refuse to give up hope. Still.

But, a lot of people seem to think that the current protests around the country mean we're on the cusp of the leftist, socialist, utopian revolution, rather than on the cusp of a violent, authoritarian dictatorship fully backed by one of our two major political parties, roughly half of US voters, about 2/3rds branches of the US government, and a federal military force commanded by the political right.

The 2016 election was, perhaps even more than 2000, the most pivotal election of most of our lifetimes, and what's done is done.

The US government has never acted with the consent of the majority of those within its borders. The majority of voters, by millions, can and did reject a man like Trump and that still, still was not enough to keep him from power. 

The protests we are seeing from city to city in response to the police killing of George Floyd are, first and foremost the result of police violence inflicted upon Black people, and more generally seem to be a release valve for the unrest that results from the reality that the United States was designed to be an unjust, oppressive state that privileges the rights, safety, and well-being of a subset of citizens, and that this fact has been self-evident to millions of oppressed people throughout the history of this nation despite mass efforts to gaslight us into thinking otherwise.

Many people now seem to be making catastrophic miscalculations about the current state of affairs, miscalculations akin to the wishful thinking that Comey or Mueller or Fauci or whoever-the-fuck-white-male-savior would somehow swoop in and save us from the madman.

Please stay safe friends and longtime readers, however you can. I know that's not super useful advice, but the only advice I can muster now is that the time for thinking about politics in soundbite is over so try not to let the memes be your guide.

Oh, and happy fuckin' pride month.

ICE Conducts Largest Single-State Raid in US History

Via CBS, yesterday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted what one US Attorney called, "the largest single state immigration enforcement operation in our nation's history." From the article:

"By targeting workplaces across six different cities in southern Mississippi, Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents, with the help of the local district attorney's office, apprehended approximately 680 undocumented immigrants.

...

Asked about what would happen to workers who have children in the U.S., Albence reiterated the administration's standard guidance that arrests in the criminal justice system lead to family separations. He said affected children would be placed with other family members and in some instances, some parents could be released with ankle bracelets."

The children of the workers were left home alone due to the raid, and reports have stated that volunteers have been donating food and shelter to the children.

What the US is doing to these families and individuals is profoundly immoral and unjust.

Whatever differences people who oppose Trump have with one another, we have to come together to stop what our government is doing in our name. We must vote Republicans out of office, not just Trump/Pence but so many more.

I feel it in my bones that as heinous as this is, worse things are to come.

It is on us to figure out additional ways, large and small, in whatever ways we can to oppose this cruelty: donating, protesting, advocating, speaking out, voting, calling/writing legislators, and more. You may feel hopeless and small and insignificant, but never discount the ripples your actions may have in the future.

A Woman Will Win, Eventually, But Will the US Let Her?

I'm currently reading Rebecca Solnit's Call Them By Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) and came across a statement about the 2016 election (emphasis added):

"The other story [besides that of white working class support for Donald Trump] was about white women, who voted 43 percent for Clinton to 53 percent for Trump. We were excoriated for voting for Trump, on the grounds that all women, but only women, should be feminists. That there are a  lot of women in the United States who are not feminists does not surprise me. To be a feminist, you have to believe in your equality and rights, which can make your life unpleasant and dangerous if you live in a family, a community, a church, a state that does not agree with you about this.

... So women were hated for not having gender loyalty. But here's the fun thing about being a woman: we were also hated for having gender loyalty. Women were accused of voting with their reproductive parts of they favored the main female candidate, though most men throughout American history have favored male candidates without being accused of voting with their penises."

The highlighted statement is both profound and obvious (that is, obvious now that Solnit has articulated it). When women supported Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, women were (infamously) relentlessly mocked, harassed, and abused for supporting her - with much of the subtextual narrative being that Bernie was the better candidate with superior humanity, ethics, and policy positions compared to her, and accordingly, Hillary was only winning because she was establishment, had rigged it, and because frumpy, daft wine moms were supporting her "only" because they wanted a female president.

Newsflash: Left misogyny is real.

And then, of course, that roughly half of white women who voted voted for Trump has led to a post-2016 moral panic about white women as a class, a panic that obfuscates relevant distinctions of class, religion, sexuality, age, marital status, education level, and other aspects of one's identity including - oh, I don't know - political party that might help us more accurately describe why so many white women are conservative other than the general consensus that all white women are garbage human beings.

On Twitter in particular, it's been notable how swiftly "white feminist" has come to be used with a certain lack of precision. Or, rather, more precisely how it has come to refer to any woman who is white who expresses an opinion about something, whereas the more specific original meaning was a critique of the centering of class-privileged, cishet white women within feminism. The former is not how the term is always used, to be clear, but it's used often enough and by those with relatively large platforms such that people have largely just accepted it even though if all white women are purported practitioners of white feminism without regard to what they are espousing, then people have actually failed to describe a meaningful category of feminism that exists in reality.

Men, interestingly enough, are never called "white feminists," even if they are white men who purport to be feminists. More on that tidbit, in a moment. Cool Girls, too, seem exempt, although I suspect deep down they know that can change at any moment.

From this imprecise usage, progressive, moderate, and leftist men are taking their cues accordingly and weaponizing this new definition of "white feminism," despite the fact that it's extremely doubtful that most men using the term are aware enough of their own misogynistic thinking to be able to use it in a constructive way.

Even many moderate-to-left men are MRA-adjacent and misogynistic. So, they perpetuate slightly-modified talking points and "jokes" about "white women," "wine moms," and feminists that MRAs have been blathering about for decades, including first and foremost the pop idea that it's okay to leverage misogynistic narratives against "white women" or "rich women" or "privileged women" or "famous women" because such women are incapable of experiencing gender-based oppression since "other women have things worse."

Some people talk about how the white women who voted for Trump (or sometimes, just simply, "all white women") are "patriarchy's most eager foot soldiers," and sure that's certainly true for many. Less discussed are the progressive, moderate, liberal, and leftist women who are, as well, as they carry water for their dirtbag male peers by targeting progressive feminists who don't support a particular white male politician who shall remain nameless (just kidding, it's Bernie Sanders, but don't worry there's also the women who defend dudes like Joe Biden, Bill Maher, and Al Franken from the hysterical, vapid, no-sense-of-humor feminists) so that most feminists with even moderate followings are left fending off harassment from abusers left, right, and center for not staying in line.

It's telling, too, to watch how highly men reward women with likes, retweets, and positive reinforcement for engaging in this discourse. As a general rule, women are always rewarded for complicity under white supremacist patriarchy, a factoid that might also be relevant to the Trump-voting women.

When progressive feminists aren't being abused, they are often being ignored, which is an indignity in and of itself to not be treated like an intellectual peer of even mediocre male commentators. Quite often, they are often being gaslit, having their ideas co-opted by the mainstream without attribution, having their ideas co-opted by men who get ticker tape parades for being such good allies, being harassed/abused/doxxed/slandered/mocked, accused of hating men, and/or accused of ruining More Important Things like atheism, particular religions, socialism, capitalism, democracy, labor movements, political movements, podcasts, media companies, TV shows, men's careers, comedy, sports, workplaces, the Internet, and everything, basically.

In light of everything, it's not a wonder that women would vote for Trump. It's a wonder that there are any feminists at all.

Women are perpetually pitted against each other while it seems to me that we (the royal we, I guess) have largely given up on expecting men to be better. White men, in particular, are to be empathized with, in this political moment. A white man who is a feminist will not be called a white feminist, because hey, at least he's trying, and there's also the reality that behind the collective demand for white male himpathy is the ever-present threat: Don't ask too much of white men or else it's four more years of Trump and terror!

Ultimately, who is seen as deserving of the nation's, the media's, the political class' collective empathy is about power. And those who have power often try to narrate reality in ways that gaslight those with less relative power. "Identity politics are a distraction." "Only class matters." "Misogyny and rape culture don't exist." "Hillary was a uniquely bad candidate who didn't experience misogyny and her loss was entirely her fault, and the fact that the US has never had a female president is just a weird, flukey coincidence with no relevance to the 2016 post-mortem."

The reality back on Earth, however, is that the United States was simply not designed by its founders to account for a scenario in which a woman and/or non-white person might run against and beat a white man in a presidential (or any other) election, so when you think about it, we're largely winging this.

It's no coincidence that bigoted white Americans began escalating the collapse of American democracy after the election of the first Black president. It seems that the collective white male "Real Patriot" ego could not withstand the (to them) trauma, and neither could their wives, many of whom live in a state of hate-fear toward their husbands such that they constantly have to prove their loyalty in demeaning, self-flagellating ways ("Trump can grab my pussy! I don't mind!") while taking solace in their presumed superiority over non-white, non-Christian, non-cishet, non-conservative people.

It's a miracle the Washington Monument itself didn't explode in a fury of racist, eroticized rage. And after 8 years of President Obama, add losing to a woman? Hoo-boy. We never had a chance in 2016, did we?

I think a lot about the rage-entitlement SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh emoted during his hearings when confronted with a possible barrier, a woman - a mere woman - to the status he felt entitled to as his birthright. I'll never forget the day I watched his spittle-flecked defense of himself. Multiply that toxic attitude by millions and channel that fury into the avatar of Donald Trump, and boom, it turns out that a lot of the people who support Trump actually are racist, misogynistic, bigoted deplorables, and the sooner we collectively admit that the better.

So, unfortunately, while I believe a woman can and will eventually beat a man in a presidential election (in both the popular vote and the rigged-for-the-white-patriarchal-status-quo electoral college), I am not quite as certain that the establishment powers in this nation - the media, the Executive branch, SCOTUS, Republican-controlled Congress, and/or popular opinion - would acknowledge her win as legitimate anytime soon.

I could easily imagine a variety of scenarios that would conspire to prevent her from taking office, including faithless electors, demands for a "do-over," cheating, political assassination, and/or Trump (or any other man in office at the time) just simply refusing to concede the loss after crying that the election was "rigged" against him, and then Congress, the Courts, the media, and the public just giving a collective shrug and backing him up.

Via "she rigged it" narratives perpetuated by both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the 2016 election, both of whom seemed to seethe with rage at the prospect of losing to a woman, the political left and right now have a framework for denying a woman a legitimate win, as we saw that vast percentages of the US populace and media commentators would simply adopt, or not counter, these men's narrative that the woman was both insurmountably powerful to have rigged two entire national elections and yet also so monumentally stupid as to have lost in the end.

None of this means that we give up or only vote for white men from here on out. Like I said, we're winging this, as a nation, which doesn't get mentioned near enough as it should. And, a key step here is an accurate reckoning of the predicament in which we find ourselves. We've heard a lot of about the feminist backlash we're in, but to be fair, the default state of the US since its founding has been a feminist backlash and nevertheless, we've persisted.

Further Thoughts On the Sisterhood

As we gear up for the 2020 election, I was re-reading some of the stuff I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, particularly my Election 2016 Fallout series.

Here's me, on white women's complicity, two years ago:

---

This loss is largely on white people, who disproportionately supported Trump while minority groups rejected him. We also saw white women voting against their own interests for a racist misogynist candidate.

Despite that, I also refuse to demonize white women more than white men.

I mean, really, the pieces that instantly came out about white women "selling out the sisterhood"? Yeah, they did. And people are surprised by this why, again? Oh, right, because nobody fucking listens to feminists, that's why. EVEN THOUGH it's the sad lesson from The Handmaid's Tale (1985): The very worst, most patriarchal, racist dystopia would not exist without the complicity of privileged classes of women.

Men alone cannot make racism and sexism "work." It is always a tangled knot. Forgive the circularity here, but many women hate women because women are hated. White women have a long history of benefiting via their kinship and marriages to racist, misogynist white men. It pays to be a cool non-feminist girl, for a time anyway. ("Trump can grab my pussy," boasted one Trump supporter, who both completely misunderstands the consent element of things and perhaps thinks her offering will insulate her from even worse misogyny than what she sees around her, inflicted on "other" women).

And this sweet, fresh hell in The Nation? In it, the author argues that white working class women in particular rejected Clinton because Clinton spent too much time cozying up to Lena Dunham and Big Feminism, whatever the fuck that is, when she should have been promoting:

"...[A] robust economic agenda focused on women’s needs: a $15 minimum wage, universal child care and pre-K, paid family leave, free college, and tough laws that crack down on wage theft and guarantee fair scheduling and equal pay for women."

You know, the very policies Clinton supported, to varying degrees, had anyone in the media stopped talking about her emails for 10,000 straight days and actually fucking covered them.

Sure, everyone has their theories about whose fault this is.

What seems clear is that white men are almost completely being given up on as people who can contribute to the electorate as anything other than angry beings who must be coddled and centered lest they elect nightmare authoritarians to make life hell for everyone else.

Example: An actual think piece in The New York Times, which I won't link to but is titled "The End of Identity Liberalism," sneers at the "failure" of liberalism's "narcissistic" "identity politics." Here's my summary of this piece and the dozens like them I've seen: As Trump fills his cabinet with KKK-supported white guys, white guys everywhere think liberalism has failed them because liberals talk too much about race and gender.

And so, the twin narratives about white people are that we ought to empathize with white male feelings of aggrievement while being disgusted at white female complicity. That, my friends, is just another fucked-up misogynistic fallout from this shit-show of an election that I refuse to indulge.

---

My addition to this piece, now two years later is about The Women's March, which I was initially very excited about as a movement to channel women's anger and feminist resurgence.

Many of the women who marched, in my experience, were angry and somewhat-traumatized by the election of Trump and the misogyny we watched Hillary Clinton endure during the race. Relatedly, Trump's election is a symbol of white male supremacy, and very specifically female subordination, in the United States.

I had long known that prominent national leaders of The Women's March had supported Bernie Sanders and seemed to, I'll just say, not be fans of Hillary Clinton. They excluded specific reference to Hillary Clinton's historic run in communications about the March, which always seemed like a major disconnect from the rage and pain many women were feeling very specifically about how the mainstream media and Hillary's competitors treated her.

I have always wondered why seemingly anti-Hillary folks were chosen as leaders of a movement that was largely catalyzed by Hillary Clinton, and had been uneasy about it, but staying united against the Trump regime has always struck me as more important than letting that bother me too much 

A little over a year ago, I wrote of some of the intra-feminist conflicts within The Women's March, and specifically the decision some on the national team then made to invite Bernie Sanders to speak at the Women's Convention in Detroit in 2017, with some of their initial communications suggesting a sort of center-stage role for Bernie at this women's event. To me, it seemed like a decision that simply didn't think very highly of a not insignificant number of Women's March supporters - and the resulting criticism bore that out. For the leaders to virtually ignore, and thereby diminish, the historic nature of Clinton's run while continually lauding one of her white male opponents was bound to alienate many women.

Now, I think the best I can say is that I'm not even sure how relevant the national leaders are to the numerous local Women's March groups or the many women doing progressive, feminist work across the country, in their communities, and on social media.

From reports I've been reading, I think some factions of the left at best have very strange, gaslighting definitions of intersectionality that posit that only certain forms of identity-based oppression are valid for progressives to focus on at the moment and that if a person isn't that identity then they are a political neophyte, and an all-around shit person, who has nothing to contribute to the movement.

Somewhere around half of the white women who voted in 2016 voted for Trump and the left has been in a moral panic about it ever since. That statistic is also now used to treat white women as a monolithically-privileged class of conservative monsters, regardless of whether we're progressive and/or also poor, queer, trans, old, fat, disabled, or non-Christian. White privilege is real, even for women. And, many people have simply given up on trying to adeptly talk about people who have white privilege while also being oppressed along other axes of identity.

White Feminist used to mean a non-intersectional feminist, but it has quickly come to mean "any women who is white and has an opinion about something," such that now progressive white women are in the same category of "feminist" as Ann Coulter, which you'd think would render the whole fucking concept null and void among any person with a rational thought in their brain but here we are. And, even many progressive feminists have internalized this thinking.

It must be an MRA's dream come true.

In many ways, I have felt very disconnected from politics on the left, right, and center for the past couple of years, with a few exceptions. All of this is part of the backlash. Women have so many pressures to "forever cancel" other, flawed women, when men rarely do the same to each other.

Every generation of women will have to endure this, I believe, as the reasons women are given to hate themselves and each other, including and especially the "progressive social justice" reasons, continue to adapt to every gain feminists make.

The Iowa Polls: "I guess he'll do" 2020

It's 2019.  Grab your barf bags because we're off to the 2020 races and three white men are leading in the polls of likely Democratic voters.

Here's from a recent CNN poll of likely Democratic caucusgoers in Iowa (cite: PDF):

That's right, Joe Biden (32%), Bernie Sanders (19%), and Beto O'Rourke (11%). These are three men who have each lost the biggest political races in which they've competed. I'll just say for that reason alone, although there are many others, I am very concerned about 2020 and our chances of defeating Trump and the Republicans.

What could it possibly mean that Democrats and major media voices are not widely shouting at these men to retire into the woods and knit for the rest of their days?

Here are some theories, any combination of which might be playing out.

(1) It's Iowa, which is about 91% white.

Yet, in national polls, Biden has tended to lead, with Bernie Sanders coming in second, and someone else coming in third - often Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.

(2) Biden, Bernie, and Beto all have a lot of name recognition right now. Biden, who lost his previous bid badly, can ride on President Obama's coattails. Bernie has essentially never stopped running for president, even when he lost badly to Hillary Clinton. And, Beto just lost a high-profile race with the extremely unlikeable Ted Cruz.

(3) Hillary Clinton's electoral college loss to Donald Trump was deeply humiliating for American women and many women have lose their appetite to endure both the misogyny she (and her supporters) faced and another loss.

(4) The center to left has been in a moral panic about "white women" since approximately 47% of the white women who voted voted for Donald Trump.  It's as if some people have discovered, and just started thinking about, for the first time the very existence of conservative white women. Yet, rather than this 47% statistic being an indictment of conservatism, Christianity, misogyny, racism, or bigotry, in the framework of Clinton's loss, the 47% statistic is widely perceived as an indictment of "white feminism," a category that no longer means "non-intersectional feminism" but has come to mean, on the Internet, "words said by any feminist who is white."

I'm still teasing out the 2020 implications of this, but I've seen many men take advantage of this collapsing of many progressive feminists into the category of "irredeemably bad feminist who needs to shut up forever" in ways that are profoundly misogynistic. I see a lot of cynical mocking of the hashtag resistance because it's perceived as being comprised of dorky, white suburban moms who wear pussy hats. I see a lot of progressive white women internalizing this misogyny. Ironically, I see a lot of progressives who have just given up on intersectionality beyond the prism of one or maybe two intersections of identity, when there are so many more.

I think all of this contributes to the perception that it will take a white man to beat Trump.

(5) Relatedly, some people might want to vote for someone who isn't a white man, but they don't think enough other people will, so they perceive it as safer to support a white man.

(6) Many people are more tolerant of flawed white men, where women/people of color have their flaws amplified and used as dealbreakers. Every woman who runs will have her own version of "the emailz" to contend with, while her male competitors could be literal traitors to the nation and receive no comparable coverage.

(7) The beltway media portrays, and many people perceive, politics as akin to a boxing match, rather than a popularity contest that is largely framed by the media. And in a boxing match, people think it takes a man to beat a man. Hence the various male politicians and their fans with their "Bernie wouldas" and "Biden wouldas" after the 2016 election.

(8)  Decades of rightwing anti-Clinton propaganda and attacks amplified Hillary Clinton's flaws and contributed to many people on the center-left thinking she was a uniquely bad candidate, thus masking the misogyny that lingers among the voting population, even among Democrats and Independents. See, for instance, how Elizabeth Warren is already being treated, now that it's almost certain she's running.

(9) The mainstream media is still dominated by misogynistic, white supremacist people, especially white men.

(10) Our society still widely hates ambitious women.

(11) Trump is so bad that many people have completely romanticized the Obama years. They want the perceived safety of Joe Biden, the daddy/husband figure, even though Russia interfered with the 2016 election on the watch of Obama/Biden.

(12) It's very early. Other candidates may rise in the polls over time, with more exposure.

Note, none of these reasons are grounded in any of the leading men being uniquely good politicians.

They're not.

Yet, the thing about many white male candidates is that they rarely acknowledge the invisible assists they get from white male privilege, instead taking it for granted that their polling numbers and/or popularity are an authentic reflection of their qualifications for the job. 

What else?

The Bigot-Coddling Populism of Bernie

I would love to never write about Bernie Sanders again, but Bernie Sanders appears to be gearing up for a 2020 run or doing whatever it is he's doing at the rallies he continues to hold.

To me, one of his biggest flaws is that he doesn't appear to listen.

To me, it appears as though he has, for at least the past two years, been traveling the country speaking at people, over and over again, about what he thinks ails the nation.

It is now December 2017, and Bernie Sanders, the most progressive of progressives to ever progress, is still repeating the falsehood that "the vast majority of Trump supporters" are motivated more by economic anxiety than by bigotry, with an added dose of: "Trump said things that made sense."

.@BernieSanders: "I think that the vast majority of Trump supporters are people who are in pain, who are struggling economically… and they turned to Trump because Trump said things that made sense.” https://t.co/eoevCTIuf6

— VICE (@VICE) December 6, 2017

To me, Bernie Sanders is engaging in some craven, pandering bullshit.

To me, living in 2017 has meant being in an important cultural moment in which those who previously have not been listened to are now being heard. I'm referring to, of course, those who speak out against rape culture and, more broadly, the abuse of power.

Bernie Sanders is a populist who is hoping to leverage the power of the people for his movement.

And yet, while I think he thinks he's speaking for the downtrodden, forgotten man who is oppressed by The Establishment, Bernie Sanders demonstrates to me primarily that populism in a nation that has been rigged for racists and misogynists from the get-go means that the coddling of racists and misogynists is usually required in order for a populist politician to be popular.

Bernie Sanders' populism is not premised upon listening to the diverse, lived experiences of the the many people of this nation. It is premised upon talking to the aggrieved white people who get upset when people point out their various bigotries. If Bernie's populism were more than a crusty socialist version of Trump's, he would heed the call of his critics to do a better job balancing the perspectives of those who enabled the rise of Trump with those who are now disproportionately harmed by the Trump regime. He would also stop gaslighting the people of this nation about the prevalence of bigotry in our nation.

Bernie Sanders wants to lead the revolution. But what, exactly, is he tapping into, here?

Per Bernie, in the Vice profile on him:

"[Trump] said he was going to take on the establishment, and he was going to provide healthcare to everybody. You know what, it's pretty much what I said."

There's your 2020 slogan.

I guess I'll leave it at that.


Related: 
Throwback Thursday To When We Were Gaslit About Bigotry

The Nationalist's Delusion - by Adam Serwer

Quote of the Day: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in "Donald Trump is the First White President," is worth reading in full, but here's a snippet. After noting that Donald Trump won every class-based group of whites, he writes:

"The focus on one subsector of Trump voters—the white working class—is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of theater at work in which Trump’s presidency is pawned off as a product of the white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authors doing the pawning. The motive is clear: escapism. To accept that the bloody heirloom remains potent even now, some five decades after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on a Memphis balcony—even after a black president; indeed, strengthened by the fact of that black president—is to accept that racism remains, as it has since 1776, at the heart of this country’s political life. The idea of acceptance frustrates the left. The left would much rather have a discussion about class struggles, which might entice the white working masses, instead of about the racist struggles that those same masses have historically been the agents and beneficiaries of."

Of course, the focus on the white working class - particularly men - is not puzzling at all.

White men dominate the media narratives across the political spectrum. The white male media elite were largely enamored, entertained, and/or fascinated by the rise of the two angry white male populists who ran in the 2016 election. Many of these men, in the wake of their complicity, now demand that we ditch identity politics, stop listening to Hillary Clinton, and/or stop saying accurate things about Bernie Sanders because Trump is the "true" enemy.

We were close, in 2016.

We know how scared so many men were because of how they are acting now, desperate to stay at the center of all things.

Let's Not Downplay "Identity Politics"

As white supremacists continue to unabashedly rally in Trump's America, I remember the spate of liberal/left-authored articles scolding those of us with identities to ditch "identity politics."

Seven months into this current Republican administration, Democrat leadership under Chuck Schumer has been strategizing to downplay identity politics. 

Oddly (or not), the Politico article I link to says that "identity politics" are being downplayed to appeal to more center-right Democrats, yet in my experience, many so-called Bernie Democrats simultaneously see themselves as the far left and also want to downplay identity politics in favor of "universal' economic messaging. If the far left, the center, and the right want us to ditch "identity politics," I guess that leaves those of us with identities outside of the political spectrum altogether.

The current absurdity of today's political labels aside, I'd like to link to a previous piece I wrote about this demand to downplay identity politics, back in December 2016.  It's still relevant, and I still believe that it's a mistake to ditch identity politics, particularly when neo-nazis are emboldened enough to rally on our public streets, without hoods, because they know they have the support of the Republican Administration behind them.

Thus, my plea to our white male allies:

"....[P]lease do not ask marginalized people to endure the hostility of the Trump regime on your terms or on anyone's terms but their/our own. The white walkers are here and we are doing our best to hold the door. My question to you is, which side of it are you on?"

Reporting Live From the "Nothing Is Racist: A White Memoir" Files

It seems to me that one of the lowest possible bars that white people have for not being racist toward Black people is to not say the n-word.

But, take Bill Maher saying it recently, for instance, and my oh my all the passes white people - even those on the left - give him for it. One of the general arguments I saw many a white person make  is that Maher was "just joking." Some of them then jumped to the conclusion that comedy would cease to exist if white people couldn't say the n-word anymore, which mostly is a statement to how pathetic some white people's sense of humors are.

Another argument I saw was that Maher opposes Trump, so if Maher says the n-word, it's "divisive" or "damaging" to "the resistance" to call him racist. More divisive, we are to suppose, than being racist.

This whitesplaining fits into the larger leftbro narrative that nothing really is racist if you just understand where white people are coming from, "identity politics" are unimportant side issues, and it's wrong in general to call people racist or, gods forbid, deplorables.

"Rabid liberal." Yeah. https://t.co/LgQgRWhrts

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) June 4, 2017

Oh. Also, I have a new Personal Twitter Rule: Pre-emptively block anyone who follows me who has anything resembling "No sense of humor? Easily offended? F*ck you!" in their Twitter bio, even if they hate Donald Trump.

Bernie's Bad Day

One of the most important tasks Democrats can accomplish between now and 2020 is rebutting the myth that Bernie Sanders is the one true progressive, indeed the ultimate arbiter as to what constitutes progressivism, in US politics.

This is a man who talked a big game after Trump's electoral college victory about being Trump's "worst nightmare" should Donald go after minorities. And yet, here we are, a mere few months later, and Bernie is criss-crossing the country holding rallies gaslighting minorities about the existence of bigotry among Trump's supporters.

This is also a man who gives the millions of people who voted for a bigoted sexual predator all the benefits of the doubt about their un-bigotedness, but who couldn't be bothered to learn about, or publicly support, a Democratic candidate in an important Georgia election this week.

This is a man who, however, can find it himself to support a male politician who would force women to view mandatory ultrasounds before having an abortion.

This is a man who sees a "silver lining" to the horrors that Trump is inflicting on the world, in that, hey, at least "millions of people are getting involved in politics to fight back." This view was also uttered before the election by Susan Sarandon, who is a big Bernie supporter and a big Hollywood star. When non-"Berniecrat" politicians are supported by Hollywood stars, however, it is explained to us that this is proof that they are elite and out of touch with Ordinary (White) (Male) People, as one commentator at The Guardian recently suggesed.

To put it quite bluntly, this is a man, as one Twitter user put it, whose "greatest accomplishment in life will be sabotaging a woman's chance to be president."

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around, but Bernie Sanders' role in Trump's electoral college win cannot and should not be understated. Misogynistic double standards and white male privilege did a lot of fucking work for this guy in the Democratic Primary and we cannot and should not cede the label "progressive" to him, nor to those Internet Warriors who aggressively harass anyone who doesn't "feel the Bern."

The lesson, as always, is this: Never mistake a self-styled, white-man-centred leftist revolution for a feminist, anti-racist one.

Quote of the Day

The Feminist Wire's Statement on the Election is worth reading in its entirety. A snippet:

"The 2016 presidential election has deepened and revealed immense fissures in our social fabric along lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, citizenship status, and ability. Though the people voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton by a wide margin, the slave-state holdover Electoral College is poised to elect Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. Trump is an avowed and unapologetic racist, xenophobe, misogynist, and sexual predator whose campaign drew heavily upon vocal support from white nationalists while the Republican Party stood idly by. Indeed, their actions of recent years paved the way for a Trump presidency.

We recognize that our democracy has long been compromised by capitalism, neoliberalism, militarization, and special interests, and has been, since the founding of our nation, interwoven with white supremacy and imperialism. The U.S. is a nation of brutal-made-to-be-normalized violence. On this front, Trump’s election is nothing new. Nor are the fissures revealed by the election. What is new is Trump’s blatant disregard for democratic process, his unabashed white supremacy, his vocal misogyny, and his contempt for any semblance of human rights and social justice. He thus provides unrestrained authority and resources to violence of white supremacy and genocide."

This point is so important, I think: the election has deepened and revealed fissures in our social fabric (on the left and the right). It has not created them.

Election 2016 Fallout Parts 5 and 6: On Misogny and White Women

(5) On misogyny.

It is true that more people voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump, which gives me hope. But hoo-boy the poetic (in)justice of the system not protecting us from a predatory man governing us without the consent of the governed.

The misogyny of Trump and many of his supporters could fill volumes. I will grieve for what Hillary Clinton (and we, vicariously) had to endure, probably for the rest of my life.  And to lose, in the electoral college anyway, to this man?

Donald Trump is a privileged, predatory, incompetent man who fell up. His vastly-more-qualified female opponent was pushed down while doing everything in high heels, backwards, and over towers of double-standards.

When you see enlightened dudebros in your lives doing their hot takes about how Clinton was the wrong choice because she was "the establishment candidate" you can tell them that when Rape Culture and Patriarchy are two of this county's most enduring establishments, electing Hillary Clinton was never "the status quo" option.

(6) On white women.

Jeeeeesus, the intersections on this one.

This loss is largely on white people, who disproportionately supported Trump while minority groups rejected him. We also saw white women voting against their own interests for a racist misogynist candidate.

Despite that, I also refuse to demonize white women more than white men.

I mean, really, the pieces that instantly came out about white women "selling out the sisterhood"? Yeah, they did. And people are surprised by this why, again? Oh, right, because nobody fucking listens to feminists, that's why. EVEN THOUGH it's the sad lesson from The Handmaid's Tale (1985): The very worst, most patriarchal, racist dystopia would not exist without the complicity of privileged classes of women.

Men alone cannot make racism and sexism "work." It is always a tangled knot. Forgive the circularity here, but many women hate women because women are hated. White women have a long history of benefiting via their kinship and marriages to racist, misogynist white men. It pays to be a cool non-feminist girl, for a time anyway. ("Trump can grab my pussy," boasted one Trump supporter, who both completely misunderstands the consent element of things and perhaps thinks her offering will insulate her from even worse misogyny than what she sees around her, inflicted on "other" women).

And this sweet, fresh hell in The Nation? In it, the author argues that white working class women in particular rejected Clinton because Clinton spent too much time cozying up to Lena Dunham and Big Feminism, whatever the fuck that is, when she should have been promoting:

"...[A] robust economic agenda focused on women’s needs: a $15 minimum wage, universal child care and pre-K, paid family leave, free college, and tough laws that crack down on wage theft and guarantee fair scheduling and equal pay for women."

You know, the very policies Clinton supported, to varying degrees, had anyone in the media stopped talking about her emails for 10,000 straight days and actually fucking covered them.

Sure, everyone has their theories about whose fault this is.

What seems clear is that white men are almost completely being given up on as people who can contribute to the electorate as anything other than angry beings who must be coddled and centered lest they elect nightmare authoritarians to make life hell for everyone else.

Example: An actual think piece in The New York Times, which I won't link to but is titled "The End of Identity Liberalism," sneers at the "failure" of liberalism's "narcissistic" "identity politics." Here's my summary of this piece and the dozens like them I've seen: As Trump fills his cabinet with KKK-supported white guys, white guys everywhere think liberalism has failed them because liberals talk too much about race and gender.

And so, the twin narratives about white people are that we ought to empathize with white male feelings of aggrievement while being disgusted at white female complicity. That, my friends, is just another fucked-up misogynistic fallout from this shit-show of an election that I refuse to indulge.

Election Fallout Part 3: On the White Working Class

3) On the white working class.

I recognize two related truths: (A) Money is power, and (B) Improvement of economic conditions, by itself, does not make bigoted people stop being bigots.

Example: one of the most wealthy people I know, someone with a literal vault of gold bars, is still sending chain emails about Obama being a secret Muslim terrorist who isn't even a US citizen.  Why? Because she's been surrounded by white Republicans for decades who don't want to hurt her feelings by calling her or her views racist. We, probably all of us to varying degrees, value relationships with people more than the risk of alienating them, offending them, pissing them off, or "causing a scene," by calling them on their shit. (See also, The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck)

Disclaimer, because I think it's important: I like much of what Bernie Sanders stands for. Economic inequality is one of the great injustices of our day.

One, of the.

That said, let's take Bernie Sanders' recent New York Times op-ed. As if written fresh off the Democratic Primary campaign trail, he offered us essentially the same oft-repeated, re-purposed stump speech he gave at rally after rally:

"I am saddened, but not surprised, by the outcome. It is no shock to me that millions of people who voted for Mr. Trump did so because they are sick and tired of the economic, political and media status quo."

Okay, but guess what, Bernie? I'm sick of the status quo too, but I didn't vote for a nightmare candidate. So why do I feel like you don't have empathy for me or the millions of other people who rejected your message?  Why did many black voters, who consistently backed Clinton over you, reject your message?

Speaking for myself, I didn't see myself reflected in his message. I never know quite what he means by working people, regular people, or ordinary Americans, but I always come away thinking he's talking about white blue collar workers, probably male.

Take a recent Tweet:

I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 14, 2016

I come from the white working class too and (a) Hillary Clinton spoke to me just fine, and (b) it would at this juncture be helpful for Bernie to consider that many of us fled the white working class because of abuse inflicted upon us for, in some way, being different.

It is a tricky, nuanced take. Of course not all white working class people are bigots, but it is irresponsible for a popular politician to try to capture the argument on Twitter. It came off to me as, intentional or not, stoking the embers of white populist rage.

The Democratic Establishment is to blame for all your problems, white people, but Bernie alone understands and can fix it!  Which, sounds familiar doesn't it?

His goal seems to be to reach out to people who didn't vote, who voted for a 3rd party, or voted for Trump. Or, to people who are politically apathetic. Or, to people who rejected or feel alienated by "elite" Democrats. Or, to people who, if they are politically engaged, are pissed off for vague reasons they don't, can't, or won't fully articulate.

Consider Bernie's anti-Democratic Party message in light of recent advice on the best ways we, the populace, can reach out to our Congresspeople. We must be respectful, professional, brief, and prepared. We should email or call under some very specific guidelines. The bottom line: we as citizens must make our voices heard by reaching out to the people who ostensibly serve us.

Nowhere in this guide do I see the advice: "Elect an authoritarian nightmare who will wreak destruction upon women, immigrants, and people of color." But goddamn what a white thing to do and what a goddamn white rage-privilege thing to excuse it.

And so, I offer two final propositions:

A) Many people view the Democratic Party, especially now, as a firewall between ourselves and horrific misogynistic, white nationalist nightmare politicians.

B) That firewall should therefore not now be destroyed for the sake of making the Democratic Party more compelling to white people.

People are hurting across the nation. This hurt includes, but is not limited to, working class white people. But, because white nationalism is one of the most enduring US Establishments, Bernie Sanders seems to want to tear down the Democratic Party and build it up as a white-working-class-centric institution and if that's not his aim he has a lot of work to do to make that more explicit.

The subtext to all of the white working class fetishism, and not just limited to Sanders, is that we should put implicit good faith trust in white working class people that they are not bigots or that, if they are, better jobs will make them not be.

But, and here's what I think scares people like me: You know what's more dangerous than a poor bigot, probably? A bigot with more money and a better job.

Yes, let's lift all boats economically. But, I reject the notion that we should put kid gloves on and coddle the white working class because it hurts their feelings when they're called bigots. It is not "elite" to call out bigotry. It's self-defense. White working class Trump supporters alone did not put Trump in the White House, but many of them specifically voted for a man who boasted about getting rid of "political correctness," a man who said telling the truth was more important than people's feelings, as he enabled neo-nazis throughout the country.

If white liberals and progressives want to abandon marginalized people and our complicated "identity politics" in favor of walking on eggshells around the delicate sensibilities of fragile-yet-abusive white people, we will most certainly lose in 2020, as well, because you can deal me (and likely millions of others) out.

Election 2016 Fallout Part 2: On Gaslighting

(2)  On gaslighting.

Goddamn the gaslighting going on right now. It has come from all corners but here's where it hurts. If you're looking for insight into many minorities' and feminists' lack of enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders and socialist movements in general, look no further than his comment three days before the general election:

I do not believe that most of the people who are thinking about voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 5, 2016

Alright, because I know it's coming and is related to the gaslighting, let's get one notion out of the way: I know some Berners believe he would have beaten Trump handily in a general election. I have serious doubts.

So you can cite the early polls showing that Sanders would have beaten Trump (as they showed Clinton beating Trump). And then let's all remember how inaccurate the polls proved to be once real life happened.  Professional pollsters are currently stumped as to explanations. I really doubt a Bernie Bro who can't let go of the fact that his guy other than attributing it entirely to rigging has it All Figured Out (oh right, Bernie Math).

Two, Bernie was barely vetted by the media during the primaries, certainly as compared to Clinton, who has been vetted on the national stage for decades. Clinton herself barely went after him in the primaries so as to not alienate his fans. To think that Trump would have kept the kid gloves on when he was already throwing out a "Crazy Bernie" moniker is not reality-based.

Then there's that pesky fact that the literal KKK, neo-nazis, and even less explicitly-racist and anti-semitic whites support Trump. I suppose when a candidate doesn't believe bigotry is a big problem among the white working class, it's easy for him to discount the impact that bigotry might have on his chances.

Yet, Trump voters support him in part because they loathe the notion of "their" tax dollars going to, what they deem, "lazy minorities." So, if you tell me that significant numbers of the white working class would have voted for a Jewish socialist to make America great through the redistribution of (their) wealth ("to minorities") I would tell you that you probably haven't spent significant amounts of time among the white working class.

And I would say the same if you tried to tell me that white working class Trump voters would be on board with Black Lives Matter, pro-choice activism, equal pay for women, military opposition, anti-prison, pro-immigration, and tolerance of non-Christian religions if we just make these white people feel heard.

So, which issues get prioritized?

With the advice coming from the left and right that we all just need to empathize more with (white, male, aggrieved) working class folks, I think we know the answer to that.

And so I contend, if Sanders can't or won't acknowledge the racism and sexism among Trump supporters, he was never the right person for the job. People didn't vote for Trump in spite of his racism and sexism. Many voted for him because of it.

Why do I think this? Because we all have bigotries and biases and it takes continual work to examine that. I think that is especially true when people live in mostly-white enclaves who have little contact with people different from themselves. The solution is not to pretend that these bigotries don't exist. It's to acknowledge and confront these bigotries.

To quote Flavia: "The revolution will be intersectional or it will be bullshit." And in under no circumstances will it be had via socialist "class is the real struggle" gaslighting.

Election 2016 Fallout Part 1: On Bullying

Part 1 in a series of 9.

(1) On bullying.

I've seen a lot of white Trump voters on social media who are shocked, angered, and saddened that "intolerant liberals" are "bullying" them by calling them, or suggesting they are, bigots.

But, it's not limited to the right. Over the course of the election season, we saw various levels of even liberal hand-wringing about how Clinton supporters need to have more "empathy" for Trump supporters, largely coded as the (white, male, aggrieved) working class. The white working class, we are told, has "economic anxiety" and we mustn't judge them with our "elite liberal" sensibilities by calling them bigots.

Well, I'll talk more about that economic anxiety claim later this week. But, on the empathy/bullying front, I still contend, as I've contended for years, that the empathy must work both ways. For, we also have to remember that Trump is a bully-in-chief who ran a campaign premised upon name-calling, taunting, and aggression, which he has neither atoned nor apologized for. Indeed, he's already back on Twitter sounding off his grievances about the anti-Trump protests and media. People are so mean to him. So unfair.

So, while it is nice, I guess, that Trump supporters are taking a stand against bullying now that they feel they are being bullied, where were they for the past 18 months when their top guy was impulsively pecking out insults on his Twitter? Oh, right. They were celebrating his "tell it like it is" persona because they purportedly believe telling the "truth" is more important than coddling people's feelings.

Truth.

What a concept. Imagine if more people understood that a critical distinction exists between saying what one thinks the truth is versus what the truth actually is. Trump, for instance, might be "honest" in the sense that he says whatever is on his mind at the moment; but what's on his mind is not necessarily truth in any objective sense of the word.

Which leads to the hypocrisy of it all, via garbage fire Joe Walsh:

The "joke" within the first post is that liberals have overly-delicate feelings and can't handle the truth.

The argument within the second post is the threat: you damn well better not call us names, or we'll never vote for you again! That this also might be construed as a request to coddle the delicate feelings of bigots, who literally argue for safe spaces within the public discourse, does not seem to cross the bigot mind.

All of this is to say I'm suspicious of any demands to re-center the feelings of white people who have unexamined, defensive bigotry, whether these demands come from the left, right, center, media, or purportedly neutral parties. The Tolerance Trap of "you must tolerate my intolerance of you" is a real, fucked-up thing.  But, listen, we actually don't have to be tolerant of all things all the time, particularly of opinions and people that degrade our dignity, just because people call us "intolerant" or mock our safe spaces or think we're mean when we express fear, hurt, or anger at injustice against us.

Drawing boundaries is, actually, a key point to being a feminist progressive.

I humbly offer this post as a resource, particularly for those who navigate conversations in which people request that you not call out bigotry when you see it.  You might have noticed the Gaslight Extravaganza that's going on everywhere lately.

Name what is happening, if only to yourself, and know when you need to walk away for your own well-being. Note the hypocrisy. Note the double-standard. If Trump supporters and their liberal enablers are imploring to you that bigotry wasn't a factor in Trump's election, know that this claim can only be made with a straight face in communities with toxic, fucked-up power dynamics.

Researcher: "Empathy" Needed for Conservative White Feelings

What sweet fresh navel-gazing hell did I just read at The Washington Post?

Title: "What is this election missing? Empathy for Trump voters."

In it a liberal Berkeley professor assumes the role of explaining to us(?) the white working class conservative in its natural habitat. She strove to understand, to really understand, this population, ultimately arguing that our (liberal? elite?) lack of empathy is driving us apart.  And further, if we liberals want to re-capture this population as political allies, the onus is more on us to understand them, then vice versa. Even if they are extremely hateful to us.

A few things.

One, yes, understanding is good. I've written a similar argument about the importance of understanding those with whom we disagree politically. The context of this piece was my, I guess I'd call it, attempted civil "mixed-company" conversations about marriage equality with people opposed to my full legal equality, some of whom devoted their professional lives to my inequality.

Which brings me to two. For civility to occur, I think that the empathy has to be multi-directional.

This piece isn't the first I've seen seeking to humanize, empathize with, and understand Trump supporters. Perhaps I've missed them, but have there been many conservative-written or mainstream-published think-pieces urging Trump supporters to extend their empathy to Clinton supporters or, say, to Black Lives Matters activists?

If the onus is "more" on liberal to to be the empathetic understanders, as this particular researcher suggests, my life lesson with such things is that many conservatives will take and take and take from us, just like the emotional-vampire MRA who comes to a feminist blog to talk about nothing but men, without reciprocating the empathy. That hardly seems fair, sustainable, or healthy.

Three, and also related, nearly all of these let's-empathize-with-Trump supporters pieces have elided the very real bigotries displayed by many Trump supporters. They litter rallies and social media sites with "Trump that bitch" messaging. They call for the imprisonment and/or execution of Hillary Clinton. They think Black Lives Matters activists are violent radicals. They hate-fear Muslims. They're set on electing a sexual predator, a misogynist, a racist, a xenophobe, and someone who said he'd elect anti-choice Supreme Court justices who would limit reproductive rights for generations.

It is explained to us, non-academics who actually have interactions with the white working class (who might even be part of or have come from the white working class), that these white working folks "just" feel left behind. They have economic anxiety. How these anxieties explain, let alone justify, say calling for Hillary Clinton's execution isn't explained quite as much.

And, because the empathy only works in one direction, because we are implored to center white working class fee-fees, their bigotries remain unchallenged. How we're supposed to co-exist with people who we fear and who deny our full humanity, dignity, and equality, while maintaining our own preservation and well-being, goes unaddressed.

In a bizarro way, these humanizing narratives of Trump supporters offer their own soft bigotry of low expectations for conservative whites: the belief that they can never be better than what they are and that it's up to we enlightened liberal elites to tolerate them.

On the upside, Election 2016 is really helping define my own personal boundaries of progressivism. We really aren't a monolith! Take that.

Important Ghostbusters Update

[Content note: Spoilers-allowed thread; discussion of abuse, racism, sexism]

Okay, consider this post an open Ghostbusters thread!

I saw it over the weekend and loved it!  Where I saw it, the people in the packed theater laughed pretty much non-stop and, broke out into applause twice, once after Holtzman's fight scene (if you've seen it, you know which one probs) and at the end of the movie.

Highlights for me include:

• In general, I enjoy portrayals of female friendship. Such portrayals in TV and film are relatively rare. Ghostbusters does more than a bare-bones passing of The Bechdel Test, it portrays women as part of team, working together instead of fighting one another for status or male attention;
• I liked each of the female leads and what they brought to their characters (especially Kate McKinnon, obvs); and
• It's just a fun movie - gadgets, ghosts, jokes, action - yes please;

I mean, I really don't have anything deep to say, because like the original, it's not a super deep movie. So, imagine all of the people outraged by it, such as the raging nerd man-boys who have all the sads and mads that the movie didn't bomb its opening weekend (it came in at about $46 million, number two, right behind The Secret Life of Pets).

Apparently, but not surprisingly if you follow Internet culture at all, men are tanking the Internet ratings of Ghosbusters, because that's how they're gonna spend their free time apparently.  Via Walt Hickey at 538:

Here are a few stats I collected early Thursday for the new “Ghostbusters” movie: 

IMDb average user rating: 4.1 out of 10, of 12,921 reviewers
IMDb average user rating among men: 3.6 out of 10, of 7,547 reviewers
IMDb average user rating among women: 7.7 out of 10, of 1,564 reviewers 

The movie isn’t even out in theaters as I’m writing this, but over 12,000 people have made their judgment. Male reviewers outnumber female reviewers nearly 5 to 1 and rate “Ghostbusters” 4 points lower, on average.

And, one popular misogynistic garbage fire wrote a bitter, scathing review of the movie, contending (as other MRA-types have) that the movie unfairly portrays men as morons and villains.  To prove how non-villainous men are, a bunch of (primarily) men began sending racially-abusive Tweets to Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones:

Ok I have been called Apes, sent pics of their asses,even got a pic with semen on my face. I'm tryin to figure out what human means. I'm out

— Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) July 18, 2016

If you're up for it, a hashtag in support of Jones was started: #LoveForLeslieJ

No one should have to endure this shit.  But, such is the outrage that women and people of color so often face when white men aren't the center of pop culture.

It's like they can't just let the people who like this movie like it, they have to try to spoil it for everyone.  It's reminiscent to me of the MRAs who do no actual advocacy for men, but who instead just sit back and rail at feminists for not doing enough to solve all of the problems facing men.  Free labor on gender issues is apparently feminist work, while they just constantly throw obstacles and harassment in our path to increase the difficulty setting in our lives.

Got entitlement?

Fun with "Devil's Advocates"

Okay friendly readers, I have a debating experiment for you today:

Step 1: Witness a debate about gender and feminism.

Step 2: Witness a man jumping in with a statement like, “Look, I’m all for equality, but [insert anti-equality/anti-feminist statement]” or “I consider myself a feminist, but let me just play Devil’s Advocate here, [insert anti-equality/anti-feminist statement].”

Step 3: Respond by asking him what, specifically, tenets of feminism and equality for women he supports and what injustices primarily exist today for women. Like, ask him to actually delineate them for all to see.

Because, well, what I often find is that those men who feel compelled to both assert that they support equality/feminism while simultaneously articulating an anti-equality/anti-feminist statement often don’t actually have, when pressed, all that many pro-equality/pro-feminist opinions.  They’re like the “definitely not racist or anything, but” white people who will admit that slavery and saying the n-word are wrong, but when pressed those are pretty much the only two things that count as genuinely racist by their authority.

In fact, oftentimes, the majority of Devil’s-Advocate-Male contributions to conversations about gender and feminism are against equality and feminism.  The blubbering “I’m all for equality” intros are a diversion, whether intentional or not, meant to instill in feminist participants a glimmer of hope that he might, this time, be able to make reasonable contributions to the discourse that go beyond being there to “teach” and dismiss the female perspectives.

Recognize it for what it is. Put him on the spot to delineate his actual points of agreement and disagreement. From there, you can better ascertain the worth of engaging.

Stonewall Movie and the Gay White Male Hero

Via Richard Lawson, in Vanity Fair:

"Stonewall is ultimately yet another cartoonish fantasy about white saviors and square-jawed heroes; it should be called Independence Gay. 

Maybe it’s asking too much to get a smart, accurate Stonewall movie. After all, a heck of a lot of straight history has been schmaltzified by Hollywood, neatly edited and tidied up, so why shouldn’t gay history get the same shitty treatment? But that this film was directed by a gay man, written by a gay man, with an obvious intent to educate, uplift, and inspire, in this particular political climate, and is still so maddeningly, stultifyingly bungled serves only to show us how ridiculous the concept of a monolithic “gay community” really is. Stonewall at least does that bit of good: it illustrates how systems of privilege and prejudice within a minority can be just as pervasive and ugly as anything imposed from the outside. And that’s an outrage. So how long until someone throws a brick through the screen?"

Isn't this movie, though, a mainstream narrative of the "LGBT community"?

Gay white men disproportionately put themselves in the highest-level, highest-paid positions in LGBT nonprofits, creating White Men's Clubs that alienate those who don't share their privileged identities.

To hear some of them talk, Andrew Sullivan practically invented same-sex marriage.

As I have written before, the most prominent national conversations about same-sex marriage have been, with the exception of Maggie Gallagher, largely also same-sex conversations among (white) men often talking to other (white) men, but sometimes also to the American public, about the topic. Jonathan Rauch. David Blankenhorn. Brian Brown. Evan Wolfson. Dale Carpenter. John Corvino. Robert George. Andrew Sullivan. Dan Savage. Peter LaBarbera.

All of this is true even though other people have also been doing important advocacy and writing work in less prominent ways that don't get them the same level of attention, recognition, and credit.

With the gay white male focus on "we're just like you" assimilation while presuming that they - and they alone - are the key protagonists in the LGBT struggle, I continue to suspect that the real goal for many is not a revolution, but merely "a change in management."

Quote of the Century

[Content note: racism]

“I’ve never had a reason to go to [a Ku Klux Klan rally]. But they take [the Confederate flag] away and holler that we’re the racists, so, yeah, I’m here.” -attendee at recent KKK protest in South Carolina, via The New York Times

The man's suggestion here is that he has been unfairly "hollered at" that he's racist.

That, folks, is what racism in the US looks like:

1) Being thought of as racist is, to some white people, even more offensive than being so racist that one attends a rally in support of the KKK; and

2) Even attending a rally in support of the KKK isn't enough for some people to identify themselves as holding beliefs that might in some way be racist.

If you read the entire article, you might also notice that it contains a fair amount of both sides are just as bad framing of the Black Panthers and the KKK, both of which were in attendance:

"The [crowd] chanted — or at least heard — volleys of incendiary speech and shouts of “white power!” and “black power!” 

Bystanders watched people wave flags celebrating Pan-Africanism, the Confederacy and the Nazi Party. And they watched as black demonstrators raised clenched fists, and white demonstrators performed Nazi salutes."

Setting the stage for this comment:

“We’re not allowed to have this as a heritage,” Jerry Anderson, a 49-year-old white man who drove here from northwest Georgia, said as he gestured toward another man’s Confederate battle flag. “But they can fly theirs, and they can say what they want to, and it’s O.K.”

By ignoring historical context and structural power inequalities, a white man implies that a private group of citizens flying a flag is equal to a state flying one at its state buildings and that therefore, by not allowing the state to fly "his" flag, he is the real victim of injustice and inequality.

This line of thinking is why so many white people and others with privilege end up thinking others groups have "special privileges" and "advantages."


Related:
On Bigotry, Again
On Hatred and Bigotry, Again