Will Shetterly's Blog, page 118

The empty gesture of acknowledging privilege

At A Tale of Two Words | The Dream Café, L. Raymond asked,

How does it help you to deny society treats certain segments better than others? To acknowledge is not to endorse.
I answered,

You’re pointing at the problem without seeing it. To acknowledge is not to change. Identitarians and universalists both want a fair world and both recognize that sexism and racism and so many other isms exist.

terms abused online: "straw man" and "goalpost-moving"

Straw manandMoving the goalpostsboth have useful meanings, but online, the more common definitions are:

Straw man: "I don't have an answer to that, so I'm declaring it irrelevant."

Goalpost moving: "I'm declaring I won, and you changed the terms."

The terms are used wrongly but sincerely by people whose belief systems prevent them from seeing what lies behind a facade and what the actual

The best $200 I ever spent? or Fat tire bikes are honey badgers

The Men's 26 Inch Mongoose Dozer Bike is $199.99 at Toys R Us right now. I called them up yesterday, said I wanted it, told them to assemble one, took the bus out there (an hour trip), and they had assembled the wrong one. And because it's the holiday season, they couldn't spare anyone to make up another right away. So I took the bus back.

But I wasn't particularly upset, because I like reading

If you prefer Malcolm X to Martin Luther King...

I love Malcolm, but the FBI knew he was irrelevant. Martin Luther King was "the most dangerous Negro." But I try not to rank my heroes. I love them both.

"ally" is only another word for "other"

In the '60s and '70s, people didn't talk about allies. We talked about comrades, friends, and brothers and sisters. Since then, the identitarian left has subdivided humanity to the point that some identitarian feminists insist men can't be feminists, but only "feminist allies". I'm pleased to see some reconsideration of "ally" occurring.From kadkadua | From the Beloved Country:

In recent work,

A universalist socialist's response to "Ten Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Leftist"

A couple of posts ago, I sharedTen Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Leftist by Danusha V. Goska "partly for what's objectively true, partly for what people on the right believe is true". But I didn't go into what I thought was true and what I thought wasn't, and I didn't offer any context. So:

Goska abandoned the left in the 1980s when identitarianism was first being promoted by theorists at Ivy

Eugene V. Debs: "If we were actual traitors...."

Why the identitarian left is losing, in national elections and online

That identitarians are doing worse nationally is a simple fact:Six Points on the Midterm Electionsnotes, "Democrats did a bit worse with its “of color” coalition: 89% with African Americans (vs 93% in 2012), 63% with Latinos (vs 71%), and, most surprisingly, only a split with the small, but fast-growing Asian American cohort (49% vs a whopping 73%)."

A number of articles in 2012 noted that

A little more about St. Peter's and Malcolm X's "Respect everyone"

St Peter and Malcolm X each said "Respect everyone" as part of broader statements. The King James Version of 1 Peter 2:17 is very clear, so long as you remember that "men" is italicized to indicate it was added by the translators: "Honour allmen. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king."In case there are Christians who think there's wiggle room in St. Peter's "Respect everyone", here's

And now, this blog has a code of conduct

Respect everyone.

(Okay, it's a sneaky way of doing a rerun, but it's also serious. My space, my rules: treat everyone with respect, no matter how much you disagree with them. Neither Malcolm X nor St. Peter said, "Respect everyone except the people who bug you.")

ETA: Really, everyone. Daryl Davis's attitude toward Klansmen has it right:



You don't make a better world be demonizing anyone.