Longform Links – 2008-05-08- Melissa Bruen, “Slumpbusting”, Language, Veganism

“I’m sure it wasn’t done to disrespect anyone,” Guillen said Monday. “Everyone in the clubhouse, 100 percent of the people in the clubhouse, they are 18 years old and that’s a private thing. If the players do it in the dugout so everyone in the public could see it, or did it in the hotel lobby . . . we did it in the clubhouse. A lot of worse things happen in the clubhouse. I don’t really know why people are making it a big deal. If people got their feelings hurt because of that . . . they don’t really know much about baseball.”

Exactly! Of course! Really, what’s the harm here, ladies? It’s not like the blow-up dolls were in the lobby! And, as the always-sensitive Deadspin reminds us, there was a time when a true slumpbuster was defined as the ugliest woman a player could sleep with. So, you know, let’s listen to Guillen and count our blessings, shall we?

Coffee and Ink – Nice is Different from Good

Wear courtesy’s velvet gloves as often as you like. They do not disguise the steel fingers beneath, especially when they’re choking some of us to death. The RP community formerly known as Kristallnacht and the daily_deviant mods who decided to use “miscegenation” as a prompt clearly thought that their responses were polite because they were using “polite language.” This is sophistry. There is no polite way to tell someone you do not care about the genocide or oppression of their people. There is no polite way to make rape jokes. There is no polite way to use “gay” or “girl” as a synonym for “bad,” “weak,” or “ugly.” There is no polite way to blame a victim for their own harassment or abuse.

To riff off Stephen Sondheim: polite language is not good, it’s not right, it’s just nice. And when nice is prioritized over right or good, it’s just another form of oppression. It’s just another attempt by those in power to attempt to maintain the status quo.

Arguing that polite language in the face of offense is “more effective” is specious. People initially approached f/k/a Kristallnacht and theferrett with tactfully phrased objections, in some case approaching with an assumption and history of friendship. Politeness got nowhere. Outrage and group protest got somewhere. They didn’t necessarily change the minds of the offenders: defenders f/k/a Kristallnacht clearly don’t understand what’s wrong with calling someone a Nazi for protesting the trivialization of the Holocaust and theferrett is clearly nursing a sense of his grand utopian intentions having been foully misunderstood.

Vegans of Color – The Cult of Veganism; or Sit Down & Shut Up Little Brown Girl

The essence of this comment is that those of us concerned with anything else rather than the suffering of non-human animals are divisive, are weakening the vegan cause, are traitors. And we should just stop complaining & hew to the vegan party line.

It sounds remarkably like white feminists castigating women of color for calling out the racism of mainstream US feminism.

Instead of critiquing white male privilege within vegan circles, let’s go do some “real good,” right? Because heaven knows opposing racism & sexism, especially if we — gasp — critique other vegans, is a time-waster, a distraction from the REAL issues.

We’re being asked to identify as vegans over any other aspect of our identities & our lives. Again, the parallels with the feminist movement are just astounding. Women of color get punished for speaking up about racism in feminism. Vegans of color questioning whitecentric vegans also are penalized for such heretic thoughts. Color me surprised (pun intentional).

[...]

The very idea that one should ignore the impact of markers such as class, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc. is completely repugnant. Clearly this viewpoint is steeped in deep, unthinking privilege. It is no secret that a lot of people of color, for instance, are put off animal rights issues because of racism & colonialism in the movement. Women are put off when they see veganism used to encourage women to hate their bodies.

Page 2 of 2 | Previous page