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THE TRIGGERING


Pong Messiah
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This is painfully hilarious and very much worth watching:

 

THE TRIGGERING: Has Political Correctness Gone Too Far?

 

But really, the speakers didn't even need to open their mouths. The SJWs in the crowd who couldn't stop shouting slurs and insults made the speakers's point for them.

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This is what happens when you let an ideology completely define who you are. A challenge to the ideology becomes a personal attack. It is a shame that people that are truly working for social justice are defined by these bozos.

Great comment, and absolutely agree.

 

Christina Hoff Sommers tried to go into this as she was being shouted down as a "racist" or "sexist" or whatever by the crowd.

 

Essentially: political correctness can be a positive thing.

 

  • Making sure you offer the same courtesies to others who are different from yourself or the dominant cultural group? Good.
  • Knowing that the use of certain words can be viewed as disparaging or disrespectful or just plain hurtful to people who aren't you... then no longer using them in casual conversation? Good.
  • Having an understanding that other's experiences aren't necessarily your own, due to their race, gender, culture, sexuality, etc. and respectfully taking that into account? Good.
  • Being able to contextualize certain behaviors or events as a culmination of social and political forces? Good.

Etc...

 

There's nothing wrong with that stuff in and of itself -- in fact, I agree with CHF that PC awareness is a good thing.

 

But when people (and I know a lot of people like this) see everything though the lens of oppression, privilege, and struggle... when ideology defines you to the point where a cigar can no longer be just a cigar, but an affirming symbol of the patriarchy... when you separate people into ally and oppressor camps... when you just can't help yourself and have to problematize even Monty Frickin' Python, despite it being the product of a very different era and culture... and when even the softest challenge to your views is a personal attack and call to arms (because you are your ideology), it's become a sick joke that actually divides people and slows (or reverses) the process of understanding and equality.

 

Bleh.

 

Just yesterday, a friend was raging about how she felt bad for "not being a good ally" because there was this small, Asian girl working customer service who being harangued by a customer (a big, white dude) over some bull**** that was out of the employee's control. She said the "power differential made her sick to her stomach," but all she could muster was some nasty side-eye for the dude bro, and a knowing, sympathetic smile to the employee. Witnessing the horror of the patriarchy literally ruined her day, to the point where she felt compelled to spend 3 hours internalizing and blogging about it (she wanted to finish her studying but just couldn't after feeling this event).

 

Me? I'm thinking to myself "Maybe the customer was racist or sexist. But maybe he was just a flaming, clueless ***hole, taking his frustrations out on the poor employee, not realizing, or perhaps not caring, that she couldn't solve his problem. It's certainly something I've experienced many, many times in customer service, despite not being an 85lb Asian woman. And it's quite possible -- likely even -- that the "Three Ps" (privilege, power differentials, patriarchy) had nothing to do with the customer's thought process. Like many customers, unfortunately, he prolly just had the mentality of a spoiled child, frustrated he couldn't get things done "his way."

 

Can that kind of behavior ruin somebody's day? Of course -- and that customer sounds like a total assmunch, and I feel for the employee. But without any evidence via action or words that his behavior was motivated by the employee's race and/or gender, he's just an ***hole. I'm not reading sexist colonialism into this. Of course if I were to tell my friend this, her response would be that my privilege blinds me to the reality of what had just occurred, or that I just don't understand how to properly contextualize the encounter. So like a good ally, I did not bother responding to her rant with an alternate hypothesis.

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"LET US NOW ABSTRACT the basic elements in the paranoid style. The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy. A gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life. One may object that there are conspiratorial acts in history. and there is nothing paranoid about taking note of them. This is true. All political behavior requires strategy. many strategic acts depend for their effect upon a period of secrecy, and anything that is secret may be described, often with but little exaggeration, as conspiratorial. The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a "vast" or "gigantic" conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy. set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of political give and-take, but an all-out crusade. The paranoid spokesman sees the fare of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms - he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders. whole systems of human values."

 

Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics

 

While leftist critical theories are not quite the same as conspiracy theories, the same underlying principle is at work here. The SJW sees whatever "system of oppression" that concerns them - white supremacy, patriarchy, etc - not as mere factors in history and present day society, but as the sole, determining force in the evolution of western society. Similar to how the conspiracist views the Illuminati (or whomever) or the religious view the devil, the "oppressive structures" that they struggle with are, as Hofstadter puts it, "demonic forces of almost transcendent power" with whom compromise, or even negotiation is impossible. One does not bargain with ultimate evil. Much of the character of the SJW seems to derive from this type of outlook.

 

This little passage that appears a bit later in Hofstadter's article is also noteworthy: "Apocalyptic warnings arouse passion and militancy, and strike at susceptibility to similar themes in Christianity. Properly expressed, such warnings serve somewhat the same function as a description of the horrible consequences of sin in a revivalist sermon: they portray that which impends but which may still be avoided. They are a secular and demonic version of adventism."

 

Actually, the entire article - which is actually a critique of the far right, but seems just as applicable with only a little modification to the SJWs - is worth a read. Especially the last third.

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