It's a term I've only just heard of. What do Libcommers think of Micro-aggressions? What are they? How should they be defined? Are they being miss-used?
The term “microaggression” was used by Columbia professor Derald Sue to refer to “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.”
For some reason it's a term that really gets people's backs up - I suspect maybe based on an instinctive defensive reaction to the term aggression.
However, I think the concept is really useful - it's useful to be able to categorise and understand the ways that people reinforce racism on a day to day basis, in ways short of obvious out and out "hard" racism.
It's also good for recognising many of the shitty day to day (often unintentional) incidents that black and poc people deal with in liberal, left and radical contexts.
My mum is disabled and has a disabled parking badge. People would make comments about where she was parking and she would show them the badge and they would say 'You're not disabled!'
People would go around telling her she wasn't disabled or say behind her back (but in front of her kids) that she was not really disabled, implying she was mad. My mum had to have two major operations and was in constant pain. Now she can hardly walk at all, so people have stopped accusing her of not being disabled but it was an ongoing thing throughout my childhood.
My mum is disabled and has a disabled parking badge. People would make comments about where she was parking and she would show them the badge and they would say 'You're not disabled!'
People would go around telling her she wasn't disabled or say behind her back (but in front of her kids) that she was not really disabled, implying she was mad. My mum had to have two major operations and was in constant pain. Now she can hardly walk at all, so people have stopped accusing her of not being disabled but it was an ongoing thing throughout my childhood.
Bloody hell- I see, thats awful. I'm sorry to hear you all had to go through that.
A common example is asking a BME person where they are "really" from / originally from / some similar formultation.
eg "so where are you from?"
"London"
"But where are you really from?"
Which even if it's not the intent of the person asking, can still give a sense of "you don't really belong here, you are different".
I see, thankyou for that. I guess then another example would be someone saying that women are not as good at Maths as men ,for example, or that they are bad drivers.
I was just about to say that one about where are you really from :)
If you are in a place where you are supposed to be, you work there or live there or you study there, and if you are black you get made to produce your ID all the time and if you are white you don't.
A mrico-aggression is often in itself a pretty meaningless incident but when it happens to you constantly it has a big effect.
For example when I was a kid I used to end up crossing the road all the time because old ladies kept getting scared because I was tall, young and walk fast. The fact that an old lady keeps looking back at you as you walk along the street isn't in itself a big deal. But it's frustrating when it happens all the time. It's hard to imagine the cumulative effect of these micro-aggressions if you've never dealt with them and I've not had to deal with too much of it myself. Now those old ladies weren't trying to make me feel like a criminal but they did.
Because they're so small and not always intentional their effects are constantly ignored, mocked and minimised. In the same way as a sexual harasser says "I wouldn't mind if someone walked up to me and asked for a shag" people often completely dismiss the effects and I imagine it feels like being gaslighted.
It's just something worth bearing in mind. At work I often have to read names, I can't avoid mispronouncing new ones but I can make an effort to let the person correct me and then not make the mistake again. Someone mispronouncing your name every time would drive you insane, but if you're a white giy named John and someone mispronounces your name you could easily laugh it off because you have the security that "everyone knows how to say my name" and none of the cumulative emotional, a bit like people saying "I wouldn't mind if someone calls me a honky so why do they get so upset..."
Yeah I suppose part of the issue is things that if someone gets upset people are all 'what's wrong with you' because they only see one tiny thing, and the problem is these things are cumulative.
I was at two union meetings in a week, and in one, when a woman was talking two men started to talk amongst themselves and rustle their papers around, and when she stopped and a man started talking they paid attention, as if the woman talking was the signal for a little tea break and the man talking was the resumption of the meeting. Then in the second meeting something sexist happened, I don't remember what, and later that week there was a union thing happening (we were going on strike, that's why there was a lot going on) and a shop steward was a bit sexist and I went ballistic and it was all 'what's wrong with you' and it was because it was the third one in a week.
Thankyou for your responses. It's just not a term I've known of until very recently. Looks like myself and my girlfriend may have been on the receiving end of some. My girlfriend is older than me and it has been remarked upon negatively in public a couple of times, which ofcourse pissed off both myself and my girlfriend. Even 'positive' remarks about our age difference are annoying, since we don't think of it as relevant to mention age at all. Personally, I also find it really annoying when people miss-use the word psychotic as I've suffered from psychotic episodes a few times.
I see, thankyou for that. I guess then another example would be someone saying that women are not as good at Maths as men ,for example, or that they are bad drivers.
So imagine a woman bus driver, and the amount of comments she might get in a week (where I live there are loads of women bus drivers now, but a few years ago maybe not) and then all those comments add up. Also there was massive opposition by men to women being allowed to become bus drivers so not just an issue of 'jokes' but also women being deliberately kept out of the better paid jobs.
This story has been doing the rounds this week and I think it's relevant because quite often people who are doing the micro-aggressions don't even realise that they are doing it.
Often people who genuinely think they are free of racism, sexism, homophobia etc make these comments or actions without understanding the effect that they have on other people. As other posters have said, it's the cumulative effect of micro-aggressions which stack up. People can be quite defensive when it's pointed out to them, especially if they mean well but are generally being a bit clueless.
Then there's the problem of pointing out micro-aggressions as they happen. Is it worth the aggro of explaining every damned time, especially if it might lead to some conflict? If you do call them out, are you likely to be perceived as overly sensitive or a bit of a victim? Some people react very well to having the effects of their behaviour pointed out to them, others not so much.
Sometimes I think when people complain about call-out culture (which I don't want to get into) it's because someone has had a micro-aggression pointed out to them and they feel like they've been put on the back foot because they feel they've had their self identification as being not racist/sexist/whatever challenged, whereas I think we should recognize that every single one of us is capable of this sort of thing, whether we mean to or not.
I don't know that the distinct category is all that useful, but perhaps for being able to call someone something other than racist. But you can point out 'hey that's a stereotypical/racist view because it assumes my behavior based on some feature etc.' without recourse to the phrase micro-aggression or calling the individual a racist.
In fact, aggression implies intent. In terms of the policies of organized political groups, it makes sense to not assume aggression, allowing, of course, that harassment can occur unintentionally.
Of course the experiences are undeniable, I'm just throwing some thoughts out about how we conceptualize it. 'micro-aggression' seems to lend itseof to a 'politics of personal choice' where racism, etc. Are reduced to individual behavior/attitudes and the social roots are ignored (if mentioned in passing).
While pointing out the above examples of everyday prejudice (unconscious or otherwise) above is right enough and people should be pulled up on it, I have to say, the term "micro-aggression" sounds like more shit straight from the bowels of psycho-therapy or liberal academia. Are those members of the radical intelligentsia who coin such alienating terminology paid for every new example of wordwankery they happen to discharge? For fuck sake, we're talking about unconscious or "petty" racism, sexism or disablism here. Do we really need more bullshit jargon to dress up such prejudice into something that sounds a bit like bad behaviour in your therapy group? I fucking despair sometimes.
I love the term microagression, it is exactly what happens and it makes you think you're losing it. It's the social equivalent of repeatedly putting someone's keys in the fridge until they're convinced there's something wrong with them.
The word has been around since the early 1970s and is something which was coined specifically to describe the affects of everyday, low grade racism on the mental health of POC. It's hardly a new idea, although has subsequently been expanded to describe the same thing with other groups. I always find that having precise words to describe the precise thing is a benefit to discussion, not a hindrance.
Also, lay off the ableist bulshit will you.
sounds like more shit straight from the bowels of psycho-therapy
like bad behaviour in your therapy group
You often express that you don't like new vocabulary, concepts or anything much which happened after 1979 but I bet my ass that they're not a few people reading this forum who have had mental health problems and maybe been in psychotherapy, so try not to use it as a slur.
For me it is just a good way to think about and to a lesser extent talk about difficult things without having to dig out the big D word (discrimination) every time. It neatly addresses the issue of people thinking you're being oversensitive which is so easily levelled at people who experience these things.
While pointing out the above examples of everyday prejudice (unconscious or otherwise) above is right enough and people should be pulled up on it, I have to say, the term "micro-aggression" sounds like more shit straight from the bowels of psycho-therapy or liberal academia. Are those members of the radical intelligentsia who coin such alienating terminology paid for every new example of wordwankery they happen to discharge? For fuck sake, we're talking about unconscious or "petty" racism, sexism or disablism here. Do we really need more bullshit jargon to dress up such prejudice into something that sounds a bit like bad behaviour in your therapy group? I fucking despair sometimes.
Aye, sounds right from academia, combinating "micro" and "aggression", 2 words you hear nowhere outside of the ivory tower.
We should stick to good old every day words, "anarcho-communism", "alienation" etc.
Look, I've found it difficult when loads of people are suddenly using words around me and I don't know what they mean, but if people are not deliberately being exclusive about it (which would be bad) then it's probably an inevitable part of change and the development of language and a bit of a generation gap thing.
You don't need to use a word or concept if it doesn't feel right for you, but you don't need to feel that other people using it is a direct attack on you either or that because it's not useful for you it's not useful at all.
I still walk round calling bicycles 'pushbikes' and referring to the 'DSS' and everyone just makes allowances.
The word has been around since the early 1970s and is something which was coined specifically to describe the affects of everyday, low grade racism on the mental health of POC. It's hardly a new idea, although has subsequently been expanded to describe the same thing with other groups. I always find that having precise words to describe the precise thing is a benefit to discussion, not a hindrance.
Also, lay off the ableist bulshit will you.
sounds like more shit straight from the bowels of psycho-therapy
like bad behaviour in your therapy group
You often express that you don't like new vocabulary, concepts or anything much which happened after 1979 but I bet my ass that they're not a few people reading this forum who have had mental health problems and maybe been in psychotherapy, so try not to use it as a slur.
Me included, Fleur.
I didn't know the term had been around that long either. In fact, I must lead a sheltered life because first I'd heard of it was this thread. You live and learn eh. Point I'm trying to make is, why not say someone is making a prejudiced comment or being discriminatory? What's the point of softening it with phrases like "micro aggression"?
I still walk round calling bicycles 'pushbikes' and referring to the 'DSS' and everyone just makes allowances.
D[i]H[/i]SS, surely?
It was the DSS (department for social security) before it got merged with health, can't believe I am the resident 80s expert here or have I got it wrong?
Edit - phew turns out I am incorrect in my historical facts. DHSS preceded DSS.
Point I'm trying to make is, why not say someone is making a prejudiced comment or being discriminatory? What's the point of softening it with phrases like "micro aggression"?
Point I'm trying to make is, why not say someone is making a prejudiced comment or being discriminatory? What's the point of softening it with phrases like "micro aggression"?
I feel thats a good point Serge.
A micro-aggression isn't necessarily on purpose. If someone uses a racial slur it's pretty easy to call them out, the reason they are micro aggressions is because in and of itself one instance doesn't amount to anything. It's a way to explain that it isn't just oversensitivity.
In terms of language I can understand the frustration, but I feel that that complaint can lead down the path towards the idea that "they are changing words just to find ways to make us feel bad". Which allows people's complaints do be dismissed out of hand.
It's just something worth bearing in mind. At work I often have to read names, I can't avoid mispronouncing new ones but I can make an effort to let the person correct me and then not make the mistake again. Someone mispronouncing your name every time would drive you insane,
My fuckwit boss always mispronounces my admittedly difficult Serbian last name but he must have heard me introduce myself dozens of times to other people. He does similar to a colleague who is of Greek descent. We can't decide if it's because he's a racist or just a moron.
So the next time someone throws a thoughtless, probably unintentional but potentially homophobic comment in my direction, I should just advise them they've committed a micro aggression? I have to say, I'm far more inclined to just call them a fucking prat.
So the next time someone throws a thoughtless, probably unintentional but potentially homophobic comment in my direction, I should just advise them they've committed a micro aggression? I have to say, I'm far more inclined to just call them a fucking prat.
Prat? Now that is a classic 70s insult. Ripe for resurrection methinks. We had a teacher at school who's name, Mr Pratt, caused endless hilarity. It was nothing though compared with the time when our new physics teacher introduced herself as Mrs Cumming! Back row mayhem ensued!
So the next time someone throws a thoughtless, probably unintentional but potentially homophobic comment in my direction, I should just advise them they've committed a micro aggression? I have to say, I'm far more inclined to just call them a fucking prat.
It depends on what they've said and it depends on what your goal is. If you call them a fucking prat they'll do the same and they'll be able to say 'these queer types are so sensitive'. I'm not telling you what to do, you've been dealing with a lot more stupid comments for a lot longer than I have.
But speaking as someone who has spouted a fair amount of stupid stuff in his life being called a fucking prat hasn't done much, especially with stuff that's not intentional. In the same way I can remember telling friends that deliberately winding up the police, security guards, teachers etc was a bad move, but I could argue that because I didn't have the same anger and frustration with them because I didn't have to put up with the same stuff from them.
I'm not saying put up with things, I'm saying this way might be a better way to characterise it and deal with it.
Damn you Jef! Stop being so bleeding sensible all the time. Mebbe you're right and mebbe I do need to be a bit more caring and sensitive towards the ignorant shithouses who piss me off on a daily basis... but it's so hard to do, pal... and fuck it, I just can't!!!
Noah, how about resurrecting "prannet" while we're on a 70s theme?
Damn you Jef! Stop being so bleeding sensible all the time.
I'm not half as reasonable in real life unfortunately, I don't feel I get my point across as well to actual prats rather than decent people who I have minor differences from!
Not to get in the way of anyone hating their boss but pronouncing names in foreign languages is pretty difficult for some people regardless of their will and intention.
I lived in the UK for *many* years no one ever pronounced my name right. I found it really annoying when someone tried to hard and spent five minutes trying to get it right. As long as I can figure out they're trying to get my attention I'm good. I've never understood why you'd expect someone from another culture to be able to say your name correctly. Some sort of respect thing I don't get.
I've read the thread by the way as to why I might not care but still
I feel the main thing about ‘microaggression’ is whether it is intentional or unintentional.
If offence is caused unintentionally then in some cases the ‘slur’ may be more perceptual than real.
I try not to use the phrases ‘blackboard’ or ‘black ice’, as I’ve been told it betrays a negative attitude to black people. I confess to not understanding this reasoning, though I defer to people’s sensitivities. When someone talks of ‘black ice’ on the weather forecast, I do not think - you offensive racist.
I try not to use the phrases ‘blackboard’ or ‘black ice’, as I’ve been told it betrays a negative attitude to black people. I confess to not understanding this reasoning, though I defer to people’s sensitivities.
you what?! I seriously have never heard anything like this. I've only seen "PC gone mad" Sun-type articles claiming that you can't say "blackboard" or order "black coffee" any more. Who told you this?
I've never understood why you'd expect someone from another culture to be able to say your name correctly. Some sort of respect thing I don't get.
I have some sympathy with this, as I have a very simple name but yes people in some foreign countries just cannot pronounce it at all. And I cannot pronounce some names. In some cases this is understandable, however I think where it creates problems is when the name is actually quite simple, but people still don't bother to pronounce it properly, even when it is quite possible to do in English
Yes ‘PC gone mad’ was my reaction. It was in 1980s Nottingham. I remember the discussion very well, between three Trotskyist (IMG) teachers and me, as a minority of one. One of the trots was black and fairly well known at the time. I was told to buck up my ideas and say ‘chalkboard’, ‘clear ice’, etc.
The point is I am aware loose talk alienates people, so I hope to say what I mean - and mean what I say.
EDIT
The IMG though they contained many smart people, seldom did things by half. In the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign it fought successfully to keep it a single issue campaign and insisted on raising as the campaign’s major slogan ‘Victory for the National Liberation Front’. (On demos they’d chant ‘Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh’. The anarchist’s would reply with, ‘How many trots have you done in?’) Similarly when Northern Ireland erupted into violence, the IMG adopted the slogan, ‘Victory for the IRA’. Strangely this message was rather muted in Glasgow.
you what?! I seriously have never heard anything like this. I've only seen "PC gone mad" Sun-type articles claiming that you can't say "blackboard" or order "black coffee" any more. Who told you this?
At my secondary school when I was a kid most teachers avoided saying blackboard. Personally as a teacher I just said board.
haven't they all been replaced by white boards now? the change was almost complete when i was last in school.
i think this and the fact that board is shorter would explain people not saying black board
I think the trots tried to remain aloof from the anarchist non-solidarity with their Stalinist champion. The glaring hate against the ‘uncontrollables’ came from the Communist Party, who wanted to cloak everyone under a blanket of admiration for the peace loving people of Vietnam struggling against American imperialism. I’d say this was an example of the opposite of ‘microaggression’.
(To be honest I have always had a sneaking sympathy for all underdogs in any fight.)
These sort conversations always go to shit on this site and I think it usually boils down to older folks not liking new words, even though it is the function of language to change and evolve, and a dislike of a younger generation re-defining their struggles. Some things never change, I remember older people objecting to the reclaiming of the word "queer." I think of it as Old Man Shouts At Cloud Syndrome and radicals are just as prone to it as non-radicals.
You can search back through this site and see discussions on trigger warnings, safe spaces, cultural appropriation etc and find a distinct age divide over these issues. I imagine a collective eye-roll from younger folks at us Gen Xers, many of whom are just as intransigent as previous generations turned out to be, in exactly the same way as we scoffed at the Boomers.
Concepts and tactics and language change. We changed the language we used, so it stands to reason this generation will too.
I like the evolvement of language. I particularly like the Americanisation of British English. Most of my peers like, hate it though(see what I did there?!!!) That doesn't mean though that new words and terms should be beyond criticism.
I've been frivolous on here and have no real opinion on the word micro-aggressions but I would object to not being able to describe something that is black, as black. Thankfully I haven't come across that daft bollocks since the eighties.
I like the evolvement of language. I particularly like the Americanisation of British English. Most of my peers like, hate it though(see what I did there?!!!) That doesn't mean though that new words and terms should be beyond criticism.
I've been frivolous on here and have no real opinion on the word micro-aggressions but I would object to not being able to describe something that is black, as black. Thankfully I haven't come across that daft bollocks since the eighties.
I despise the americanization of our language, it's stupid. The americans call autumn fall and the pavement the sidewalk- it's lazy and not as intricate as the proper english language. They can't say brexit, instead they say bregzid or something, it's ridiculous.
I like the evolvement of language. I particularly like the Americanisation of British English. Most of my peers like, hate it though(see what I did there?!!!) That doesn't mean though that new words and terms should be beyond criticism.
I've been frivolous on here and have no real opinion on the word micro-aggressions but I would object to not being able to describe something that is black, as black. Thankfully I haven't come across that daft bollocks since the eighties.
I despise the americanization of our language, it's stupid. The americans call autumn fall and the pavement the sidewalk- it's lazy and not as sophisticated or well thought out as the english language. They can't say brexit, instead they say bregzid or something, it's ridiculous.
I like the evolvement of language. I particularly like the Americanisation of British English. Most of my peers like, hate it though(see what I did there?!!!) That doesn't mean though that new words and terms should be beyond criticism.
I've been frivolous on here and have no real opinion on the word micro-aggressions but I would object to not being able to describe something that is black, as black. Thankfully I haven't come across that daft bollocks since the eighties.
I despise the americanization of our language, it's stupid. The americans call autumn fall and the pavement the sidewalk- it's lazy and not as sophisticated or well thought out as the english language. They can't say brexit, instead they say bregzid or something, it's ridiculous.
Really? Since when was lazyness inherently bad or sophistication inherently good. Language can be beautiful, fun, vicious, and many other things. Most times though the most important thing is that it is utilitarian. Do us Brithish write the rule book on how English should be spoken? What's the difference between the various forms of American English and British regional accents and dialects?
Language shouldn't be dictorial. Nor should it be static - some of the phrases my kids have introduced to me are fantastic!
The anti American language thing strikes me as strongly connected to the anti American prejudice of hypocritical lefties that occupied every nook and cranny of the supposedly radical political scene of the eighties. I'm not accusing you of being one of those guys but I would suggest you loosen up a bit.
Really? Since when was lazyness inherently bad or sophistication inherently good. Language can be beautiful, fun, vicious, and many other things. Most times though the most important thing is that it is utilitarian. Do us Brithish write the rule book on how English should be spoken? What's the difference between the various forms of American English and British regional accents and dialects?
Language shouldn't be dictorial. Nor should it be static - some of the phrases my kids have introduced to me are fantastic!
The anti American language thing strikes me as strongly connected to the anti American prejudice of hypocritical lefties that occupied every nook and cranny of the supposedly radical political scene of the eighties. I'm not accusing you of being one of those guys but I would suggest you loosen up a bit.
These sort conversations always go to shit on this site and I think it usually boils down to older folks not liking new words, even though it is the function of language to change and evolve, and a dislike of a younger generation re-defining their struggles. Some things never change, I remember older people objecting to the reclaiming of the word "queer." I think of it as Old Man Shouts At Cloud Syndrome and radicals are just as prone to it as non-radicals.
You can search back through this site and see discussions on trigger warnings, safe spaces, cultural appropriation etc and find a distinct age divide over these issues. I imagine a collective eye-roll from younger folks at us Gen Xers, many of whom are just as intransigent as previous generations turned out to be, in exactly the same way as we scoffed at the Boomers.
Concepts and tactics and language change. We changed the language we used, so it stands to reason this generation will too.
Fleur, I often like what you write but that's a bit unfair and more than a little ageist. Do you not think that dislike of such terminology might have less to do with a person's age and more about their opposition to the academicisation of revolutionary politics and the language we use? And by the way, this academicising tendency is nothing new and has gone on for the last 150 years at least but if we ever want our ideas to spread beyond our university educated mates and like continually attracting highly-educated like, then we really need to tone down the academic register and not add yet more university jargon to how we communicate. For the record, I voiced exactly the same opposition to such alienating patter 30-odd years ago, so age really has nowt to do with it... and also for the record, I'm happily queer.
In terms of language I can understand the frustration, but I feel that that complaint can lead down the path towards the idea that "they are changing words just to find ways to make us feel bad". Which allows people's complaints do be dismissed out of hand.
But there are “theys” – some academics, social policy bureaucrats, dogmatic leftists (as in Auld’s example) etc - who have a role of producing ideology, including language reform/modification/policing. This functions as a code of correctness – that is introduced/imposed as a general measure from an external source - that all language is then judged by. At the most extreme, ruthless careerists can impose and parade their impeccable non-discriminatory language while in practice ruthlessly making their way up the greasy pole (eg, 80s GLC/Labour councils & PC leftists). The sheer aggression and intolerance of some who most forcefully wield this word coding is evidence of the double standard. The more interesting and necessary analysis and challenging of received meaning within language then tends to get frozen and repressed by such policing attitudes.
There’s also a difference between language that evolves out of struggle and that which comes out of bureaucratic/academic invention. That there’s been such low levels of struggle for so long may also affect how different generations see the evolution of language.
These sort conversations always go to shit on this site and I think it usually boils down to older folks not liking new words, even though it is the function of language to change and evolve, and a dislike of a younger generation re-defining their struggles.
It is partly that I concede, but it's also about a left that is insular, in-group based, often exclusively student-based, and unable to relate to the unpoliticized general public (more importantly manifested as a complete inability plan any meaningful actions that relate to people's daily lives and a fixation with the internet, celebrity culture* and cataloguing and naming oppressive social micro-phenomena instead of trying to change material conditions through collective direct action).
Also it's interesting how a lot of the recent new/resurrected language of the tumblr/twitter left has been used by political experts to attack threats to their careers to their left (in a similar vein to what Red Marriot mentions just above), such as the extreme ID politics based guilt tripping of the Clinton campaign against the left democrat ex-Bernie supporters, or the NGO denunciation of rioters as outside agitators.
*You won't believe these 12 microagressions faced by Beyonce (etc.)
Yeah, I probably am being ageist. I don't have an awful amount of patience with people who won't move on and embrace new things and ideas. A great example would be in feminist theory, there was a lot of good work done in the past but much of it is really dated and irrelevant now, yet people of my generation will hang onto it as canon, despite in my opinion the terfy, swerfy, exclusionary nature of a lot of it has no role in radical politics today. For example, the (probably entirely unintentional) racism of Shulamith Firestone. You take what's good from thought, discard what's bad and be open to new ideas and tactics. Clearly language is going to change in this process.
However, if I'm being ageist concerning the intransigence of a lot of my generation, the same can be said for the same people I get annoyed with. There's a constant whining about how awful millennials are, and this is reflected regularly on this site when people pick faults in intersectionality, or safe spaces or whatever the complaint of the day is. You can't expect young people to sit at our feet and learn and replicate the things we did, and to be honest that would be pretty awful given the state of radical politics. I don't think we set the world on fire. I don't think we even found the matchbox. This generation have different struggles to us, they have emerged into adulthood in a very different place to us. They are the experts on what it is like to be young today and I think it would be beneficial to us to listen to them.
Half the time I hear people complaining about how young people talk/act/what their focus is etc, I detect a note of sour grapes, as if people talking or acting in different ways is some kind of slight upon the way we did things. It's not but things have changed, as they always have done.
I think it's patronizing to dismiss this all as tumblr/twitter politics. Social media is the way people communicate these days. From the lack of discussion on this site it's obvious that the discussion has moved elsewhere. What's the problem with that? Used smartly, social media disseminates information far more efficiently than any media we used to have. I talk politics on social media with lots of people, very few are students, hardly any(if any at all) are academics, most are your average working class people. Not only is it dismissive to people who use social media, but it's also dismissive to your average Joe or Josephine to say that language excludes them. In my experience it does not. I for one wish that there had been the internet around when I was young, not only for the ease of accessing information but also for organizational purposes. Remember telephone trees anyone? A really handy way of getting people together, especially when half of us didn't have phones.
Is this an academicising tendency? I don't know but with micro-aggressions most discussion I've heard on the subject has been from African American women talking about their own experiences. If anything academia is playing catch-up a lot of the time. Micro-aggression is simple a refinement of language to mean a very specific thing. I find it useful to have specific definitions, so I know exactly what people are talking about.
Personally though, I find it a little ironic to complain about jargon when people on this site regularly use words and expressions like commodity fetishism, surplus labour, alienation of labour, dialectical materialism and organize reading groups to get through texts that are almost guaranteed to give you a migraine, or cure your insomnia. Micro-aggressions a pretty easy thing to get your head around compared to a lot of the stuff on here. :p
I think one of the most effective ways of building the apparatus to challenge the bourgeoisie’s cultural-linguistic control of society, that normalises their phantom-world status quo, is by creating new modes of speech, thought and feeling, and thereby shifting people’s expectations of what’s ‘normal’.
But if anyone wanted to go further than just culticles critcising cultural commissars using academic jargon, they wouldn’t need to stick with the vocabulary of the past or of the mass media that’s pumped into society like electricity or gas, or speak the mythical lingo of the prolier-than-thou ‘man in the street’ or to commune with that equally legendary connoisseur of untruths, the supposedly conformist, uncritical, ‘unpoliticised’ public. And anyway, a lot of very useful stuff has come out of academia, shouldn’t everyone have access to it?
Some of the most earnest, heavily didactic propaganda that I’ve come across by well-meaning groups over the years, written in the most preposterous, cringe-worthy patronising mockney, only demonstrates that those responsible haven’t learned the first rule of propaganda, ‘be authentic’, just say it like it’s true ..especially when it is.
Agree with Fleur, most of this is just bad temper brought on by OMS (old man shouting).
Fleur, I wouldn't disagree with your point about the marxoid jargon that gets bandied about. Yes, it's alienating while also long established political baggage. I don't see why we should be adding yet more jargon to our already overloaded politico-speak but think it needs a good pruning... and yes, I accept the term 'micro aggression' in itself may not be so hard to grasp.
Factvalue, who on here is advocating the sort of 'patronising mockney' stylee propaganda you're talking about? Thanks for the straw man cliché though.
Is this an academicising tendency? I don't know but with micro-aggressions most discussion I've heard on the subject has been from African American women talking about their own experiences. …
Personally though, I find it a little ironic to complain about jargon when people on this site regularly use words and expressions like commodity fetishism, surplus labour, alienation of labour, dialectical materialism and organize reading groups to get through texts that are almost guaranteed to give you a migraine, or cure your insomnia. Micro-aggressions a pretty easy thing to get your head around compared to a lot of the stuff on here. :p
Completely agree with this. I don't even think you can try to paint it as "academic" or "jargon" as it is actually very simple English. Micro and aggression are simple everyday words. Much more so than "anarcho-syndicalism" or other things which people on here talk about a lot. The fact that this is terminology used predominantly by people of colour and women also makes people griping about it suspect in my view.
However we add jargon to the language all the time. A lot of things we say originally came from tech and have been adopted into mainstream language - googling, spamming, eye candy, down time, photoshopping, unplugged. We get wi-fi from hi-fi, which originally referred to a specific type of record player. I found computer terminology alienating when I first heard it but with time it's just part of my vocabulary now. Language is fluid and has an ever expanding vocabulary - as well as dropping now redundant words. If words have no value or people don't have a use for them, they will fall out of use. I don't really understand blanket objections to adding new words. If they don't stick then they'll be consigned to the dustbin of history and if they do stick it'll be because people find them useful.
Fleur raises some good points regarding old people rejecting the young ideas as they find new language to describe their lives and strategies to cope with changing times.
However somethings change and remain the same. As each new generation emerges some of what they discover was always there, it’s just new in their experience. Some new words are only the rebranding of old ideas. Commerce is continually recycling old culture into new. I was pissed off when old people told me pop music hysteria had been around forever, youngsters wetting themselves at Frank Sinatra’s concerts, etc. But hey the Stones and the Beatles are totally new! Then years later a young friend plays me some Brit pop and…
A wee while ago I attended a lecture and the speaker savaged ‘post-modernism’ dissecting its ‘new insights’ and pointing out a number of ancient Greeks had said it all before. The thing is we like to embrace the new as it gives us the feeling of moving in a positive direction, of expanding our understanding. In doing so we swallow a fair amount of crap. Only a few years ago I had an argument with an old friend, who was waxing lyrical about her child’s intuitive good sense, which reminded me of the 60s youth cults (beautiful flower children, etc.). I obviously lost that argument.
I’ll let Betty Hutton have the last say – Murder, He Says
Yeah, I probably am being ageist. I don't have an awful amount of patience with people who won't move on and embrace new things and ideas.
This is more of an aside, but it does strike me as odd that this happens with anarchists. Very few people are raised in anarchist households or grow up amongst anarchists. This means that they must have embraced at least one set of new ideas in their lives, otherwise they wouldn't be anarchists.
I imagine something must happen along the lines of, "Phew, well that's my set of new ideas embraced, I'm knackered now tbh. I suppose I better defend the new ideas I just embraced for the rest of my life in the exact form and language I embraced them in."
Fleur wrote: 'Yeah, I probably am being ageist. I don't have an awful amount of patience with people who won't move on and embrace new things and ideas.'
On the other hand just because something is new does not mean it's good. I watch people playing with their electronic toys and not watching where they're walking, and just think no thanks.
Factvalue, who on here is advocating the sort of 'patronising mockney' stylee propaganda you're talking about? Thanks for the straw man cliché though.
This is it's own straw man which was written in the context of a discussion about..erm..the use of language. But since it has been posted by a user who has quite recently laid a moth-eaten jacket of anti-semitism on my shoulders, I feel no obligation to engage. Accusations of that nature bring to mind an IWW piece from 2015: 'We ask that all organizations and groups working for a better world in which we have killed White Supremacy, Capitalism, and all other forms of oppression, consider that (1) none of us represent the mandate of all the people, (2) that we may have instead genuine and important strategic and tactical differences between ourselves about the best ways to accomplish that world, (3) that we will not win by pretending these differences do not exist, or dictating against difference, but instead by engaging on these differences in the most democratic and least hierarchical ways possible.'
While discussing the State's tactics for crushing us, the authors of the piece write: 'They can do this by misportraying us in the media, and they do.They do this by sowing distrust and division within or between movements, and they do.'
I've nothing to say to you Serge, apart from the obvious, and I won't be replying to any response you make as I've no wish to derail, so meanwhile, back at the thread...
man who claimed all anti-Semitism is either made up by Jews or a response to bad things Jews have done, is appalled that anyone would call them anti-Semitic
Yeah, I probably am being ageist. I don't have an awful amount of patience with people who won't move on and embrace new things and ideas.
Having some criticisms of what is new doesn’t necessarily equate to the above summary and can’t be dismissed as just that. Many new ideas “pumped into society” or evolving from diverse sources are bound to be crap, designed to be misleading or will express the self-interests of a social grouping though presented as impartial ‘fact’. The need for new ideas implies the limits of old ones - and that will surely be seen to be true of today's new ones; and those limits can often be seen quite quickly.
Social media is the way people communicate these days. From the lack of discussion on this site it's obvious that the discussion has moved elsewhere. What's the problem with that? Used smartly, social media disseminates information far more efficiently than any media we used to have.
One problem with social media I see is the relation between form and content; I see people of all generations often use it in a quite thoughtless way. Aside from the limits of twitter’s 140 character exchanges I see FB posts that are simply a process of someone spotting a post that reinforces their preconceived belief and/or their self image and/or the role they perform on FB and/or the stuff that encourages mutual back-slapping about how right-on yourself and your FB pals are – and clicking to repost it without assessing the factual/political validity of the (often dubious) content. So what passes for ‘knowledge’ is increasingly divorced from evaluation of content. Everyone now laughs as much at ‘I read it on the Net so it must be true’ as they long have at ‘I read in the papers so it must be true’ but both media still retain enormous power over minds. The greater democracy of social media info-sharing is often just click-voting on stuff that reinforces pre-conceived beliefs – much as received meaning within language is often perpetuated.
And that’s to leave aside the often extreme divorce between many people’s offline and online personalities and behaviour – the gap often not being a positive thing...
Steven
I don't even think you can try to paint it as "academic" or "jargon" as it is actually very simple English. Micro and aggression are simple everyday words. Much more so than "anarcho-syndicalism" or other things which people on here talk about a lot. The fact that this is terminology used predominantly by people of colour and women also makes people griping about it suspect in my view.
One social group’s everyday language is another’s alien jargon – it’s misleading to judge just by one’s own social experience. Eg, I never hear anyone (inc. POC & women) use “micro-aggression”, not even among politicos I know, so to me it’s more jargonist than "anarcho-syndicalism". And I’m not convinced that terms like “anarchism” & “communism” (whatever their understanding of them) aren’t far more familiar to most people than “micro-aggression”, whatever that suggests (perhaps it indicates that this term is only common among some politico circles?). “Micro” and “aggression” “are simple everyday words” but the meaning and concept of its use certainly aren’t to most.
Similarly what “people talk about on here” is particular to this kind of grouping; it would be pretty boring and clunky if we had - just so as to not alienate those unfamiliar - to always explain the history and meaning of all ‘jargony’ terms on these forums - rather than just use them as commonly understood shorthand. And it’s not how language is really used. Most informed dialogue among groups with shared interests – whether on football, knitting or Marxism – would start to collapse or become uselessly shallow under the weight of such populism. To defend the appropriate use of technical terms is obv. not a defence of unnecessarily jargony usage.
While a bit a reduction, words are used to communicate meaning to someone else. Depending on the context, you'd use specific words to convey what you mean. While I am no fan of the term "white/male/etc. privilege" and prefer to talk about positive discrimination, what I mean by that is basically the same as what some would refer to as privilege. Hence, if I know that the person(s) in question would understand what I am trying to say by using the words "white" and "privilege", I'll do that. In the same way, I don't fucking harp on about surplus-value and exploitation when I am on a picket line, but talk about how hard it is to feed yourself and your family, how bosses shit on us etc.
In general, the younger folks will understand precisely what I mean if I adopt such lingo as safe space, micro-agression and so on; older folks I'll talk about discrimination, informal power, even fucking Maoist lingo like "unconditional self-critique".
The need for new ideas implies the limits of old ones - and that will surely be seen to be true of today's new ones; and those limits can often be seen quite quickly.
And often they can't.
Your next paragraph ignores Fleur's phrase 'used smartly', and could easily be a description of a multitude of 'discussions' on here. But your general observation that new mass media are used to anaesthetize using cultural effluvia just as much as old ones is certainly true, if mundane. It's possible to abuse any technology. In my experience evaluation of content in posts has not disappeared on e.g. FB, and critical stances are often well received and encouraged.
Regarding different behaviours in different contexts, is that not true at all levels, such as the way in which some people inhibit us and some bring out the best, or perhaps behaviour indoors versus outdoors, or at home or on holiday, or at a restaurant, at work, on the toilet, etc..
In paragraph four you wrote 'it's misleading to judge just by one's own social experience' and then you seemed to proceed to do just that. What have I missed?
I'm not sure what your last paragraph is about. Are you saying that there's good jargon and bad jargon, or that groupings should not attempt to dilute their jargon by making it more popular, or that people should keep their jargon to themselves, rather than have the entire population be in on technical terms like anarcho-syndicalism?
man who claimed all anti-Semitism is either made up by Jews or a response to bad things Jews have done, is appalled that anyone would call them anti-Semitic
Red Marriot wrote:
The need for new ideas implies the limits of old ones - and that will surely be seen to be true of today's new ones; and those limits can often be seen quite quickly.
And often they can't.
Yes, obviously.
Your next paragraph ignores Fleur's phrase 'used smartly', and could easily be a description of a multitude of 'discussions' on here. But your general observation that new mass media are used to anaesthetize using cultural effluvia just as much as old ones is certainly true, if mundane. It's possible to abuse any technology. In my experience evaluation of content in posts has not disappeared on e.g. FB, and critical stances are often well received and encouraged.
Yes, obviously.
Regarding different behaviours in different contexts, is that not true at all levels, such as the way in which some people inhibit us and some bring out the best, or perhaps behaviour indoors versus outdoors, or at home or on holiday, or at a restaurant, at work, on the toilet, etc..
Yes, obviously.
In paragraph four you wrote 'it's misleading to judge just by one's own social experience' and then you seemed to proceed to do just that. What have I missed?
You’ve missed that by describing my own social experience as being in contrast to others described here I was illustrating that 'it's misleading to judge just by one's own social experience'; ie, misleading to draw generalisations from particular experience. But that’s not contradicted by describing my particular experience or interpretation - as I’m not presenting it as an absolute conclusion applied to all.
I'm not sure what your last paragraph is about. Are you saying that there's good jargon and bad jargon, or that groupings should not attempt to dilute their jargon by making it more popular, or that people should keep their jargon to themselves...
I’m basically saying specialist terms can be misused but they have their usefulness and their place.
man who claimed all anti-Semitism is either made up by Jews or a response to bad things Jews have done, is appalled that anyone would call them anti-Semitic
i'm not sure what you trying to say here? i could literally quote you saying that on the anti-Semitism thread.
you appearer to have linked to a post of yours where you misrepresent me and say vary little with a great amount of text, its clear that you have no intention of actuality engaging with anyone else's points.
it took 100 posts for you to catch on that we have irreconcilable differences in our approach to ethics and then you "comrade" at me and pretend that i meant i was doing science when i talk about how i was using the word.
man who claimed all anti-Semitism is either made up by Jews or a response to bad things Jews have done, is appalled that anyone would call them anti-Semitic
i'm not sure what you trying to say here? i could literally quote you saying that on the anti-Semitism thread.
you appearer to have linked to a post of yours where you misrepresent me and say vary little with a great amount of text, its clear that you have no intention of actuality engaging with anyone else's points.
it took 100 posts for you to catch on that we have irreconcilable differences in our approach to ethics and then you "comrade" at me and pretend that i meant i was doing science when i talk about how i was using the word.
You’ve missed that by describing my own social experience as being in contrast to others described here I was illustrating that 'it's misleading to judge just by one's own social experience'; ie, misleading to draw generalisations from particular experience. But that’s not contradicted by describing my particular experience or interpretation - as I’m not presenting it as an absolute conclusion applied to all.
I'll add to the earlier debate that the substantial critiques of privilege theory, intersectionality etc seem (happy to be corrected on this) to have come, rather than from the 'old moaners' criticised here, from those younger, more engaged with and closer to the exercise of those theories.
I've always said that this approach to politics end up creating fractures between people horizontally, while leaving the big vertical fault lines intact.
Tell that to PoC, women, and others who have been ignored by 1950s style class politics. The point is that we are already fractured and blaming it on privilege theory is pretty shallow and ahistorical.
Nope, not at all. That's a straw man. If you had read my earlier posts, you'd see that I have my issues with it as well. And certainly, there is definitely a huge chunk of liberal politics that is precisely that. But what you said is that it is these theories that cause fractures; that is basically the same as saying you see no colour or gender. That's ignoring the problems of racism and misogyny that are actually blocking working class action.
One social group’s everyday language is another’s alien jargon – it’s misleading to judge just by one’s own social experience. Eg, I never hear anyone (inc. POC & women) use “micro-aggression”, not even among politicos I know, so to me it’s more jargonist than "anarcho-syndicalism". And I’m not convinced that terms like “anarchism” & “communism” (whatever their understanding of them) aren’t far more familiar to most people than “micro-aggression”, whatever that suggests (perhaps it indicates that this term is only common among some politico circles?). “Micro” and “aggression” “are simple everyday words” but the meaning and concept of its use certainly aren’t to most.
I think it's important to separate words and their meanings from concepts. Languages are not conceptual systems (many thousands of which can be simultaneously expressed in the same language) and it’s an open question whether or not different languages can express the same concepts. That linguistic change lags conceptual change does not of itself imply a simple causal connection and imo the two should be addressed separately. Although it’s natural and easier to discuss the public phenomenon that is language rather than mental concepts, I think the issue of jargon has sidelined the issue of conceptual development a little in this discussion. Khawaga’s ease of movement between vocabs is no doubt the right practical approach but are there significant conceptual differences that are being overlooked? How do we find out if new words represent an evolution of concepts? And how do people conceive of concepts? They’re variously viewed as physiological, psychological or abstract entities. Some people believe they’re entirely social and that in principle it isn’t possible for isolated individuals to possess concepts, whatever ‘possess’ actually means in that context.
RM, in the above quotation, are you simply contrasting a local with a globally applicable pov? Or when you write that “it’s misleading to judge just by one’s own social experience” or indeed, in this later reply
Red Marriot
You’ve missed that by describing my own social experience as being in contrast to others described here I was illustrating that 'it's misleading to judge just by one's own social experience'; ie, misleading to draw generalisations from particular experience. But that’s not contradicted by describing my particular experience or interpretation - as I’m not presenting it as an absolute conclusion applied to all.
are you making the much stronger claim that there is no general, ‘universal’ pov but only a set of local perspectives/paradigms of multiple disparate groups with their accompanying specialised conceptual repertoires and terminologies, which are not rationally comparable, since they each carry their own criteria for what counts as legitimate knowledge, so that any cross comparison would be a question-begging comparison of chalk and cheese?
This stronger claim is a non-sequitor, which could only follow by the addition of the premise that the local and the universal are contraries. There may be no God’s eye ‘view from nowhere’, and all viewpoints are indeed local. But this additional premise asserting a contradiction is a false dichotomy, since the local can be, and often is, universal. It's a commonplace for one's social experience to be completely universally valid, and one of the reasons I find communist anarchism so attractive is that it accurately reflects this. The cultural location/identity of the various human groups is perfectly compatible with the universality of some of their claims. (And of course, rational comparisons between the claims or analyses or jargonese of different groups in terms of the usual kinds of evaluative criteria such as testability, precision, depth, fruitfulness, ease of understanding, explanatory power, harmony with existing knowledge/praxis, etc., are readily available.)
If you’re going to accurately represent concepts like inequality or injustice, concepts which contain a certain basic ambiguity, you need descriptive terms which preserve that ambiguity. Using this standard of representation, does ‘micro-aggression’ reflect the fact that it is concerned with an explication of injustice and inequality? Is it an advance from a less to a more exact expression of the same concept? Is it just ‘crap’ or does it express something new?
ergo if you don't buy into it you are some form of backward racist and misogynist. Well done. You just proved my point.
Khawaga
Nope, not at all. That's a straw man. If you had read my earlier posts, you'd see that I have my issues with it as well. And certainly, there is definitely a huge chunk of liberal politics that is precisely that. But what you said is that it is these theories that cause fractures; that is basically the same as saying you see no colour or gender. That's ignoring the problems of racism and misogyny that are actually blocking working class action.
Unfortunately, while you may not do this, people with varying degrees of disagreement with the whole "intersectionality, privilage theory, identity politics all that jazz" discourse do in fact get labelled backward, racist and misogynist ("ableist" in my case earlier in this thread, even though my comments were not aimed at those who attend therapy groups but at the industry that gives rise to such neologisms - ironically, the term "micro-aggression" was in fact coined by a psychiatrist). Also ironically, I think there are a few useful ideas within intersectional theory, and after reading this thread, I can also see how "micro-aggression" might be useful as a term. However, the tendency of certain intersectional cheerleaders to shoot down any disagreement and being all too quick to label people "backward, racist, misogynist" does no one any favours, least of all those who do the labelling. Maybe the problem with intersectionality is not so much the theories, but the foolish behaviour of some of those who promote it.
Of course, none of this is new. The history of New Left politics is littered with such sillinesses since the 1950s.
I think it's important to separate words and their meanings from concepts.
In a conceptual way, yes, one can see a distinction – but one needs words to express the disctinction...
are you making the much stronger claim that there is no general, ‘universal’ pov but only a set of local perspectives/paradigms of multiple disparate groups with their accompanying specialised conceptual repertoires and terminologies, which are not rationally comparable, since they each carry their own criteria for what counts as legitimate knowledge, so that any cross comparison would be a question-begging comparison of chalk and cheese?
I think by drawing that ‘conclusion’ from what I’ve said you’re just using my statement as a peg to hang one of your pet topics onto so as to expound a concept. There are particularities of experience that have varying relationship to more generalised and universal experience – I wasn’t making any greater absolute universal claims or philosophical laws than that (which are maybe what you’re searching for), as I think I clearly expressed.
It's a commonplace for one's social experience to be completely universally valid, and one of the reasons I find communist anarchism so attractive is that it accurately reflects this.
My understanding is that part of the appeal of privilege theory, intersectionality etc is to assert the particularity of particular social group experience and demand that they’re not subsumed and diluted within universal abstractions such as ‘working class’.
Using this standard of representation, does ‘micro-aggression’ reflect the fact that it is concerned with an explication of injustice and inequality? Is it an advance from a less to a more exact expression of the same concept? Is it just ‘crap’ or does it express something new?
I don’t think you’ve really defined the “standard of representation” you want to introduce as a measure so won’t comment. But the way you’re pursuing and presenting this debate – presumably, your use of language is to try to express meaningful concepts – doesn’t, to me, express the clarity you seek in others and so doesn’t incline me to carry on with it. Thank you and goodnight.
Unfortunately, while you may not do this, people with varying degrees of disagreement with the whole "intersectionality, privilage theory, identity politics all that jazz" discourse do in fact get labelled backward, racist and misogynist
Yes, as I mentioned certain liberals will do this, but blaming the theory for it is just one massive logical fallacy. And blaming the theory for divisions that have existed for centuries is just silly as well.
True that. I've heard it happen in the local activist community where I live. It all happened on Facebook and everyone I know who has an account on FB started tippytoing around those liberals, being scared of doing anything for some time. Those of us without FB accounts had no problems doing anything at all and were never "called out". A lot of the worst examples of what we're discussing do, at least in my direct experience (though I've read otherwise), happen on social media.
Many of these "new" words can be used in the way Fleur used ableist against Serge. They are so concise and absolute that when they are used they simplify something complex that has to be subjectively interpreted into a fixed label.
Without the label you'd have to spell the problem out and communicate a subjective interpretation of what had happened. You'd have to tell them off and explain what caused offence. This opens up for arguments which the label neatly short circuits. Thats probably part of the appeal of these terms as I can imagine it gets quite tedious having arguments all the time.
'Concern trolling' and 'tone policing' are other examples of such new words (at least to me), which can have such a general application.
'Concern trolling' seems to be when you give advice to someone (eg on how to best get their ideas across) like you have the same goal (/political stand) as them, but in fact you don't and even are hostile to their goal.
I say, this Factvalue chap certainly seems to rub people up the wrong way.
RM does seem a wee bit annoyed, and in retrospect it looks like the vagueness of their post demanded something equally vague to complement it, like Stan and Ollie, how was I supposed to know? It's not my fault!
Red Marriott
I think by drawing that ‘conclusion’ from what I’ve said you’re just using my statement as a peg to hang one of your pet topics onto so as to expound a concept.There are particularities of experience that have varying relationship to more generalised and universal experience – I wasn’t making any greater absolute universal claims or philosophical laws than that (which are maybe what you’re searching for), as I think I clearly expressed.
In general I do tend to adopt the standard practice you mentioned of using linguistic information as one source of evidence about underlying concepts, which was why I asked a question, rather than draw the false conclusion you have strawed together for me. I did this because I didn't think you were that clear, and I still don't for that matter, since you haven’t actually answered the question. And here again you seem to be opposed to universals, which is what I was asking about. I think the question of relativism is a fair one to raise during discussions about particulars versus universals. But anyway, seriously, if being questioned about what you write as part of an ongoing discussion really does put you in such a bad temper, what are you doing on a discussion forum?
Red Marriot
My understanding is that part of the appeal of privilege theory, intersectionality etc is to assert the particularity of particular social group experience and demand that they’re not subsumed and diluted within universal abstractions such as ‘working class’.
Yes. And if you clear your mind enough to read my post rationally (using that same word-concept correspondence you seem fond of advertising) you’ll see that I consider this sort of thing a false dichotomy.
You’re in the reprehensible habit of eliding what doesn’t suit your purposes. The full paragraph from the end of my previous post that you quoted part of above your comment
Rec Marriott
I don’t think you’ve really defined the “standard of representation” you want to introduce as a measure so won’t comment.
is
If you’re going to accurately represent concepts like inequality or injustice, concepts which contain a certain basic ambiguity, you need descriptive terms which preserve that ambiguity. Using this standard of representation, does ‘micro-aggression’ reflect the fact that it is concerned with an explication of injustice and inequality? Is it an advance from a less to a more exact expression of the same concept? Is it just ‘crap’ or does it express something new?
The idea is that if we came to recognize that the concepts we were currently using for thinking about a subject like inequality or injustice may no longer be adequate, then taking the view that we should aim to describe concepts as we find them, and that measures we adopt should not be more precise than the concepts they represent, if one of the things we already know implicitly about the concept of inequality is that it is inherently imprecise and resists simple rank ordering, then the measure we should provide for it should not impose some strict ranking, but if it is to describe inequality accurately in an assessment of inequality, it should preserve its inherent ambiguity i.e. accuracy of description in assessments of inequality is to be distinguished from unambiguous, fully ranked claims and assertions. I was asking if ‘micro-aggression’ lives up to such a measure if adopted.
Cooked #110 ‘They are so concise and absolute that when they are used they simplify something complex that has to be subjectively interpreted into a fixed label.
Without the label you'd have to spell the problem out and communicate a subjective interpretation of what had happened.’
I read a fundamental contradiction in these two sentences. To stick a label on someone in no sense transcends the subjective nature of the labelling. It only says - I think this and think this label is applicable. It explains nothing about why the label should apply. In using language context is all important – nothing ‘speaks for itself’.
True that. I've heard it happen in the local activist community where I live. It all happened on Facebook and everyone I know who has an account on FB started tippytoing around those liberals, being scared of doing anything for some time. Those of us without FB accounts had no problems doing anything at all and were never "called out". A lot of the worst examples of what we're discussing do, at least in my direct experience (though I've read otherwise), happen on social media.
Thank fuck I'm not on social media then. I'm sure I'd have an aneurysm in no time.
How does solidarity emerge from this line of reasoning? It seems that 99.9% of people are sinners in light of these theories as praxis. That an inner journey of self discipline is the way to salvation, where every utterance, posture, signifier one emits is open to question to a critical re reading and ultimately must be reflected on and changed. It doesn't attempt scramble through the contradictions and problems of social interaction, rather it never gets off the sofa it sits there in a state of sublime messianic misanthropy, sneering at the world.
I don’t know, Mr Jolly, there does seem to be some strictures against disagreement, debate and thinking that goes along with the new manners, but there’s a hell of a lot of activity too. Students and many young people are very active, doing things like rent strikes, anti-raids/deportation stuff, solidarity with low paid workers, Black Lives Matter etc. So sitting on the sofa isn’t quite the right analogy.
But anyway, here’s what I was about to post:
I agree with Fleur back in post 72 that there is a massive gulf between generations, especially around language. But it’s not clear that oldies need to just adapt and adopt every new thing.
Language is powerful and it’s good that so much overt racist language, for example, is now not common. Language changes reality. But why think that radical movements automatically make things better as time goes on? They can be part of making things objectively worse.
One really depressing but not surprising thing I read is that (in the UK) a higher percentage of under 25s than those older support the introduction of laws against causing offence on religious ground. The young people who support this most strongly are urban, educated, happy with multiculturalism. I’m guessing they are people who are very comfortable the new attention to speech that are under discussion here.
Probably the young people who support these sort of changes to the law don’t realise that this is a form of blasphemy law. People may think that people protecting people from offence is anti-racist, but restrictions on speech and blasphemy laws are actually likely to hurt religious minorities, and especially minorities within religious groups.
Blasphemy is no joke. Asad Shah was murdered in Scotland earlier this year for blasphemy, maybe the first in the UK for hundreds of year. Blasphemy violence around the world show that it’s not only states that have the power to limit what can be expressed - social movements can also do it.
Who decides what’s offensive? Which women? Which people of colour? Unfortunately in some cases there are no clear answers. One person’s micro aggression can be another person’s right to dissent. A cliche maybe, but very true. So I don’t want to sneer at or ridicule the young speech activists but I do sometimes fear them.
Most Poc and women, couldnt give a fuck for this politics.
Most people don't give a fuck about politics, by that logic everyone on this site should just call it a day.
Women POC and anyone else who is discriminated against tend to feel more disconnected from politics and less likely to feel it will be any use in my experience. Jargon etc puts off people who are discriminated against as least much as those who aren't. The idea of micro-aggressions is a way of describing discrimination so it should be useful for combatting it. One reason for ignoring academics is they often don't have the same experience of discrimination as most people and they use it as currency. I've come across a fair few POC and women who are privileged, privately educated etc. and will be using discrimination as a nice way into professional politics or something similar. It's also used in an exclusive way that concentrates power in their hands, I think we can agree on here that we're acting in good faith (for the most part)
As micro-aggression is a potentially useful term then we use it and explain it wherever needed. It isn't a stick to beat anyone over the head with, it's a term that can benefit our analysis and practise. Also people who complain about terms being used against them are often talking shite. Noone likes to feel stupid or uninformed and it's much easier to write off something rather than ask about it. Especially if you've been in radical politics since before whoever uses the new word was born. But it's not a challenge or a call out or anything, it's a way of better describing (and hopefully addressing) the same shit you've been dealing with. In the same way as my Nan thought it was weird that coloured had become racist even though she remembered it as the polite way to describe someone's race. I don't personally like POC as a term (seems a bit too close to one-drop racism to me) but it's less unwieldy than a lot of other terms and I think I understand why it was adopted. So I use it when I think it's appropriate.
if being questioned about what you write as part of an ongoing discussion really does put you in such a bad temper, what are you doing on a discussion forum?
I’m not annoyed or in bad temper, just choosing to not debate any further with someone who, having observed them on here for some time interacting with myself and others, I find tedious, egotistical and insincere and who is imo spouting a lot of imprecise waffle at great length that is not inspiring to reply to. We all make such choices on here; for instance, factvalue on the previous page of this thread said;
I've nothing to say to you Serge, apart from the obvious, and I won't be replying to any response you make as I've no wish to derail, so meanwhile, back at the thread...
To which he might ask himself his own question;
if being questioned about what you write as part of an ongoing discussion really does put you in such a bad temper, what are you doing on a discussion forum?
How does solidarity emerge from this line of reasoning? It seems that 99.9% of people are sinners in light of these theories as praxis. That an inner journey of self discipline is the way to salvation, where every utterance, posture, signifier one emits is open to question to a critical re reading and ultimately must be reflected on and changed. It doesn't attempt scramble through the contradictions and problems of social interaction, rather it never gets off the sofa it sits there in a state of sublime messianic misanthropy, sneering at the world.
This is actually a much more substantive take on this whole thing, Mr. Jolly. But again, you are blaming the theory for this and not people engaging in that behaviour. It is not the theory that says 99% of people are sinners; it is people that are mired in so-called call-out culture that often do this. And yes, if you're a sinner, you're always be one and can never change. But that's not the theory. Theory does not have agency unless it takes hold of people, but the people that you're referring to have, I would argue, misunderstood a crucial point about such theory and that is that people have the capacity (or rather should be given the opportunity) to change their behaviour.
Given your animosity towards all of this, where have you experienced what you describe?
Mr Jolly, I'm normally a fan of your posts, but I don't really understand what you are getting at here.
Mr. Jolly
How does solidarity emerge from this line of reasoning? It seems that 99.9% of people are sinners in light of these theories as praxis. That an inner journey of self discipline is the way to salvation, where every utterance, posture, signifier one emits is open to question to a critical re reading and ultimately must be reflected on and changed. It doesn't attempt scramble through the contradictions and problems of social interaction, rather it never gets off the sofa it sits there in a state of sublime messianic misanthropy, sneering at the world.
I must admit my experience of people talking about "micro aggressions" is pretty limited. Basically a few POC, women and gender nonconforming people I know have used it to refer to small incidents which aren't overly racist or discriminatory in themselves but add up to making their lives difficult, because of characteristics they have which white cis males do not. For example being questioned going into women's bathrooms, or a black female doctor I know is frequently quizzed about it by people saying she "doesn't look like a doctor".
I don't really see how acknowledging this (while still acknowledging all of the working class has a shared interest in the abolition of capitalism example) has anything to do with your politics of "sinning" and "inner journeys of self-discipline".
Of course there are problems with social media call out culture, and the idea that people perhaps unwittingly saying the wrong thing is worse than things like systemic, institutional racism and discrimination. But that's a totally different issue.
I think one problem when we talk about these kind of issues is that we're lumping all forms of them together. Take privilege. As a descriptive tool explaining how people's day to day experiences differ I think it's useful. My interactions with other people are different to those of trans men, cis women etc. I could disagree with some of the language choices - I'm not a fan of the word privilege so much, and micro-aggressions seems a little clunky to me (but I can't think of a reasonable alternative) - but the concepts themselves are helpful.
Where there's more of a problem is where it becomes privilege 'theory'. I don't think it has the power to explain systemic oppression. It's the same when some people's usage of intersectionality reduces class to an identity, with class only entering their politics where someone is a victim of 'classism'. But the fact that some activists use worthwhile concepts in a poor or liberal way doesn't mean we should drop them. We don't stop calling ourselves communists because of the CPGB, or anarchists because of ancaps.
I've nothing to say to you Serge, apart from the obvious, and I won't be replying to any response you make as I've no wish to derail, so meanwhile, back at the thread...
Red Marriott
To which he might ask himself his own question;
if being questioned about what you write as part of an ongoing discussion really does put you in such a bad temper, what are you doing on a discussion forum?
Don’t worry now RM. That your vacuous, meandering and florid efforts lack logical tension is enough for me to just ignore them in future. But it has to be said, it's pretty obvious that you take yourself a wee bit too seriously if you're really suggesting that when I point out the emptiness and relativism of the position from which you are, with total lack of irony, criticising intersectionality, then this is somehow equivalent to knee-jerk bad-jacketing with racism by the same folks now whinging about those big bad ‘intersectional cheerleaders shooting down any disagreement and labelling people "backward, racist, misogynist" boo-hoo waaa.
Why not just get off the internet for a wee while, have a cup of tea or a bowl of gruel or whatever and review your life? Hey, maybe it’s time?
Factvalue, desist from the personal slagging. This is a warning
edited to add I have now had to go through and unpublish a load of off topic comments.
Fact value, this is a further warning for you, if you post one additional comment with your tedious ramblings you're banned.
And as usual if anyone else wants to complain about an admin decision, start a new thread, don't derail an existing thread, and don't derail existing threads with personal chitchat.
So if people want to continue these off topic discussions, I made a thread for it. http://libcom.org/forums/general/topic-discussions-began-micro-aggression-thread-20092016
Off-topic comments unpublished. Noah and factvalue have been temporarily banned while admins discuss what to do as they had already been warned about derailing the thread with off-topic comments and personal chit-chat. Auld-Bod, please desist from further derailing (you've not been banned as it was a first offence but consider it a warning).
I think a warning is justified as I was wandering off the thread.
It put me to wondering why I am wary of this linguistic pigeon holing of political offensiveness. I searched the web and found an example of someone being peeved when asked, “Have you been to Europe?” Her reply was, “No, because I’m poor”. My take on this is, why assume someone is rich or poor – you simply asked a question?
Back to the thread. My post #43 expressed my feeling that intentionality was important to determine aggression/offence than what someone actually said. I gave as an example being pulled up for using the word ‘black’ as it supposedly implied some negative attitudes to non-white people (score sheet - no up votes, two down votes).
Steven posted next #44 and expresses his ignorance of this kind of ‘politically correct’ behaviour (no down votes, two up votes). I answered his query on post #46 and got no response. My reaction to this was no offence intended, as what the f**k do they know? You see, you cannot know, what you know nothing of.
It came to me something similar happened back in April 2013 on a libcom thread about reasons one could claim to be middle class. I wrote a reason I was now middle class was because I’d stopped using the public baths. A response was: ‘isn’t that more a symptom of “not living in Roman times”?’ (thirteen up votes) Now I was, and am not, offended by that response because I know most young people have had living quarters where washing facilities including a bath and or shower is taken for granted. It was a joke. It was also based on not knowing millions of working class people used the public baths out of necessity. It was still meant as a joke and taken as such.
I thought that one of the key things about racism is that whether a remark is racist is not really decided by the intentions of the speaker but by whether the person takes it to be racist. Obviously intentions matter a lot but it's the impact that is primary.
Cactus9 #129 ‘I thought that one of the key things about racism is that whether a remark is racist is not really decided by the intentions of the speaker but by whether the person takes it to be racist. Obviously intentions matter a lot but it's the impact that is primary.’
I don’t think things are as simple as that, it subtracts any political intent or manipulation on the part of the aggrieved. It presupposes the micro-aggressor to be all knowing. Now to me that really is political correctness gone mad.
Example: some Palestinians call the Israeli state racist, some Israelis call criticisms of their state racist: the result a moral stale mate.
In politics, in all its aspects, the question of who has the power is central. If you invest one group with the right to decide who or what is racist, sexist, etc. then you abdicate the obligation to look critically at these questions.
Quote: The term
For some reason it's a term
For some reason it's a term that really gets people's backs up - I suspect maybe based on an instinctive defensive reaction to the term aggression.
However, I think the concept is really useful - it's useful to be able to categorise and understand the ways that people reinforce racism on a day to day basis, in ways short of obvious out and out "hard" racism.
It's also good for recognising many of the shitty day to day (often unintentional) incidents that black and poc people deal with in liberal, left and radical contexts.
Could someone please give me
Could someone please give me an example of a micro-aggression?
potrokin wrote: Could someone
potrokin
Typical.
^ That's one.
I'm no expert but this is
I'm no expert but this is probably one
My mum is disabled and has a disabled parking badge. People would make comments about where she was parking and she would show them the badge and they would say 'You're not disabled!'
People would go around telling her she wasn't disabled or say behind her back (but in front of her kids) that she was not really disabled, implying she was mad. My mum had to have two major operations and was in constant pain. Now she can hardly walk at all, so people have stopped accusing her of not being disabled but it was an ongoing thing throughout my childhood.
A common example is asking a
A common example is asking a BME person where they are "really" from / originally from / some similar formultation.
eg "so where are you from?"
"London"
"But where are you really from?"
Which even if it's not the intent of the person asking, can still give a sense of "you don't really belong here, you are different".
fingers malone wrote: I'm no
fingers malone
Bloody hell- I see, thats awful. I'm sorry to hear you all had to go through that.
Fall Back wrote: A common
Fall Back
I see, thankyou for that. I guess then another example would be someone saying that women are not as good at Maths as men ,for example, or that they are bad drivers.
I was just about to say that
I was just about to say that one about where are you really from :)
If you are in a place where you are supposed to be, you work there or live there or you study there, and if you are black you get made to produce your ID all the time and if you are white you don't.
A mrico-aggression is often
A mrico-aggression is often in itself a pretty meaningless incident but when it happens to you constantly it has a big effect.
For example when I was a kid I used to end up crossing the road all the time because old ladies kept getting scared because I was tall, young and walk fast. The fact that an old lady keeps looking back at you as you walk along the street isn't in itself a big deal. But it's frustrating when it happens all the time. It's hard to imagine the cumulative effect of these micro-aggressions if you've never dealt with them and I've not had to deal with too much of it myself. Now those old ladies weren't trying to make me feel like a criminal but they did.
Because they're so small and not always intentional their effects are constantly ignored, mocked and minimised. In the same way as a sexual harasser says "I wouldn't mind if someone walked up to me and asked for a shag" people often completely dismiss the effects and I imagine it feels like being gaslighted.
It's just something worth bearing in mind. At work I often have to read names, I can't avoid mispronouncing new ones but I can make an effort to let the person correct me and then not make the mistake again. Someone mispronouncing your name every time would drive you insane, but if you're a white giy named John and someone mispronounces your name you could easily laugh it off because you have the security that "everyone knows how to say my name" and none of the cumulative emotional, a bit like people saying "I wouldn't mind if someone calls me a honky so why do they get so upset..."
Yeah I suppose part of the
Yeah I suppose part of the issue is things that if someone gets upset people are all 'what's wrong with you' because they only see one tiny thing, and the problem is these things are cumulative.
I was at two union meetings in a week, and in one, when a woman was talking two men started to talk amongst themselves and rustle their papers around, and when she stopped and a man started talking they paid attention, as if the woman talking was the signal for a little tea break and the man talking was the resumption of the meeting. Then in the second meeting something sexist happened, I don't remember what, and later that week there was a union thing happening (we were going on strike, that's why there was a lot going on) and a shop steward was a bit sexist and I went ballistic and it was all 'what's wrong with you' and it was because it was the third one in a week.
Thankyou for your responses.
Thankyou for your responses. It's just not a term I've known of until very recently. Looks like myself and my girlfriend may have been on the receiving end of some. My girlfriend is older than me and it has been remarked upon negatively in public a couple of times, which ofcourse pissed off both myself and my girlfriend. Even 'positive' remarks about our age difference are annoying, since we don't think of it as relevant to mention age at all. Personally, I also find it really annoying when people miss-use the word psychotic as I've suffered from psychotic episodes a few times.
potrokin wrote: I see,
potrokin
So imagine a woman bus driver, and the amount of comments she might get in a week (where I live there are loads of women bus drivers now, but a few years ago maybe not) and then all those comments add up. Also there was massive opposition by men to women being allowed to become bus drivers so not just an issue of 'jokes' but also women being deliberately kept out of the better paid jobs.
This story has been doing the
This story has been doing the rounds this week and I think it's relevant because quite often people who are doing the micro-aggressions don't even realise that they are doing it.
Dad Confronts His Own Racial Bias
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dad-confronts-his-own-racial-bias-in-viral-post_us_57c6fdc6e4b078581f107d22
Often people who genuinely think they are free of racism, sexism, homophobia etc make these comments or actions without understanding the effect that they have on other people. As other posters have said, it's the cumulative effect of micro-aggressions which stack up. People can be quite defensive when it's pointed out to them, especially if they mean well but are generally being a bit clueless.
Then there's the problem of pointing out micro-aggressions as they happen. Is it worth the aggro of explaining every damned time, especially if it might lead to some conflict? If you do call them out, are you likely to be perceived as overly sensitive or a bit of a victim? Some people react very well to having the effects of their behaviour pointed out to them, others not so much.
Sometimes I think when people complain about call-out culture (which I don't want to get into) it's because someone has had a micro-aggression pointed out to them and they feel like they've been put on the back foot because they feel they've had their self identification as being not racist/sexist/whatever challenged, whereas I think we should recognize that every single one of us is capable of this sort of thing, whether we mean to or not.
I don't know that the
I don't know that the distinct category is all that useful, but perhaps for being able to call someone something other than racist. But you can point out 'hey that's a stereotypical/racist view because it assumes my behavior based on some feature etc.' without recourse to the phrase micro-aggression or calling the individual a racist.
In fact, aggression implies intent. In terms of the policies of organized political groups, it makes sense to not assume aggression, allowing, of course, that harassment can occur unintentionally.
Of course the experiences are undeniable, I'm just throwing some thoughts out about how we conceptualize it. 'micro-aggression' seems to lend itseof to a 'politics of personal choice' where racism, etc. Are reduced to individual behavior/attitudes and the social roots are ignored (if mentioned in passing).
While pointing out the above
While pointing out the above examples of everyday prejudice (unconscious or otherwise) above is right enough and people should be pulled up on it, I have to say, the term "micro-aggression" sounds like more shit straight from the bowels of psycho-therapy or liberal academia. Are those members of the radical intelligentsia who coin such alienating terminology paid for every new example of wordwankery they happen to discharge? For fuck sake, we're talking about unconscious or "petty" racism, sexism or disablism here. Do we really need more bullshit jargon to dress up such prejudice into something that sounds a bit like bad behaviour in your therapy group? I fucking despair sometimes.
I love the term
I love the term microagression, it is exactly what happens and it makes you think you're losing it. It's the social equivalent of repeatedly putting someone's keys in the fridge until they're convinced there's something wrong with them.
Serge: The word has been
Serge:
The word has been around since the early 1970s and is something which was coined specifically to describe the affects of everyday, low grade racism on the mental health of POC. It's hardly a new idea, although has subsequently been expanded to describe the same thing with other groups. I always find that having precise words to describe the precise thing is a benefit to discussion, not a hindrance.
Also, lay off the ableist bulshit will you.
You often express that you don't like new vocabulary, concepts or anything much which happened after 1979 but I bet my ass that they're not a few people reading this forum who have had mental health problems and maybe been in psychotherapy, so try not to use it as a slur.
For me it is just a good way
For me it is just a good way to think about and to a lesser extent talk about difficult things without having to dig out the big D word (discrimination) every time. It neatly addresses the issue of people thinking you're being oversensitive which is so easily levelled at people who experience these things.
.
.
Whether or not you like the
Whether or not you like the term microaggression is not as important as looking at how to deal with the impact of the real life problem.
Serge Forward wrote: While
Serge Forward
Aye, sounds right from academia, combinating "micro" and "aggression", 2 words you hear nowhere outside of the ivory tower.
We should stick to good old every day words, "anarcho-communism", "alienation" etc.
Look, I've found it difficult
Look, I've found it difficult when loads of people are suddenly using words around me and I don't know what they mean, but if people are not deliberately being exclusive about it (which would be bad) then it's probably an inevitable part of change and the development of language and a bit of a generation gap thing.
You don't need to use a word or concept if it doesn't feel right for you, but you don't need to feel that other people using it is a direct attack on you either or that because it's not useful for you it's not useful at all.
I still walk round calling bicycles 'pushbikes' and referring to the 'DSS' and everyone just makes allowances.
Fleur wrote: Serge: The word
Fleur
Me included, Fleur.
I didn't know the term had been around that long either. In fact, I must lead a sheltered life because first I'd heard of it was this thread. You live and learn eh. Point I'm trying to make is, why not say someone is making a prejudiced comment or being discriminatory? What's the point of softening it with phrases like "micro aggression"?
fingers malone wrote: I still
fingers malone
D[i]H[/i]SS, surely?
You got me there comrade
You got me there comrade
‘Micro-aggression’ may be a
‘Micro-aggression’ may be a more accurate term, though ‘irritating little shit’ is more satisfying to say.
DHSS used to be ‘going down the broo’ (alteration of bureau).
Serge Forward wrote: fingers
Serge Forward
It was the DSS (department for social security) before it got merged with health, can't believe I am the resident 80s expert here or have I got it wrong?
Edit - phew turns out I am incorrect in my historical facts. DHSS preceded DSS.
Plus ca change plus la meme
Plus ca change plus la meme chose.
waiting for quantum
waiting for quantum aggression to make an appearance.
Nano aggressions.
Nano aggressions.
Serge Forward wrote: Point
Serge Forward
I feel thats a good point Serge.
potrokin wrote: Serge
potrokin
A micro-aggression isn't necessarily on purpose. If someone uses a racial slur it's pretty easy to call them out, the reason they are micro aggressions is because in and of itself one instance doesn't amount to anything. It's a way to explain that it isn't just oversensitivity.
In terms of language I can understand the frustration, but I feel that that complaint can lead down the path towards the idea that "they are changing words just to find ways to make us feel bad". Which allows people's complaints do be dismissed out of hand.
jef costello wrote: It's
jef costello
My fuckwit boss always mispronounces my admittedly difficult Serbian last name but he must have heard me introduce myself dozens of times to other people. He does similar to a colleague who is of Greek descent. We can't decide if it's because he's a racist or just a moron.
So the next time someone
So the next time someone throws a thoughtless, probably unintentional but potentially homophobic comment in my direction, I should just advise them they've committed a micro aggression? I have to say, I'm far more inclined to just call them a fucking prat.
Serge Forward wrote: So the
Serge Forward
Prat? Now that is a classic 70s insult. Ripe for resurrection methinks. We had a teacher at school who's name, Mr Pratt, caused endless hilarity. It was nothing though compared with the time when our new physics teacher introduced herself as Mrs Cumming! Back row mayhem ensued!
The dentist in my town
The dentist in my town growing up - no joke - his name was Dr. Payne.
Serge Forward wrote: So the
Serge Forward
It depends on what they've said and it depends on what your goal is. If you call them a fucking prat they'll do the same and they'll be able to say 'these queer types are so sensitive'. I'm not telling you what to do, you've been dealing with a lot more stupid comments for a lot longer than I have.
But speaking as someone who has spouted a fair amount of stupid stuff in his life being called a fucking prat hasn't done much, especially with stuff that's not intentional. In the same way I can remember telling friends that deliberately winding up the police, security guards, teachers etc was a bad move, but I could argue that because I didn't have the same anger and frustration with them because I didn't have to put up with the same stuff from them.
I'm not saying put up with things, I'm saying this way might be a better way to characterise it and deal with it.
Damn you Jef! Stop being so
Damn you Jef! Stop being so bleeding sensible all the time. Mebbe you're right and mebbe I do need to be a bit more caring and sensitive towards the ignorant shithouses who piss me off on a daily basis... but it's so hard to do, pal... and fuck it, I just can't!!!
Noah, how about resurrecting "prannet" while we're on a 70s theme?
Serge Forward wrote: Damn you
Serge Forward
I'm not half as reasonable in real life unfortunately, I don't feel I get my point across as well to actual prats rather than decent people who I have minor differences from!
Not to get in the way of
Not to get in the way of anyone hating their boss but pronouncing names in foreign languages is pretty difficult for some people regardless of their will and intention.
I lived in the UK for *many* years no one ever pronounced my name right. I found it really annoying when someone tried to hard and spent five minutes trying to get it right. As long as I can figure out they're trying to get my attention I'm good. I've never understood why you'd expect someone from another culture to be able to say your name correctly. Some sort of respect thing I don't get.
I've read the thread by the way as to why I might not care but still
I feel the main thing about
I feel the main thing about ‘microaggression’ is whether it is intentional or unintentional.
If offence is caused unintentionally then in some cases the ‘slur’ may be more perceptual than real.
I try not to use the phrases ‘blackboard’ or ‘black ice’, as I’ve been told it betrays a negative attitude to black people. I confess to not understanding this reasoning, though I defer to people’s sensitivities. When someone talks of ‘black ice’ on the weather forecast, I do not think - you offensive racist.
Auld-bod wrote: I try not to
Auld-bod
you what?! I seriously have never heard anything like this. I've only seen "PC gone mad" Sun-type articles claiming that you can't say "blackboard" or order "black coffee" any more. Who told you this?
Cooked wrote: I've never
Cooked
I have some sympathy with this, as I have a very simple name but yes people in some foreign countries just cannot pronounce it at all. And I cannot pronounce some names. In some cases this is understandable, however I think where it creates problems is when the name is actually quite simple, but people still don't bother to pronounce it properly, even when it is quite possible to do in English
Steven #44 Yes ‘PC gone mad’
Steven #44
Yes ‘PC gone mad’ was my reaction. It was in 1980s Nottingham. I remember the discussion very well, between three Trotskyist (IMG) teachers and me, as a minority of one. One of the trots was black and fairly well known at the time. I was told to buck up my ideas and say ‘chalkboard’, ‘clear ice’, etc.
The point is I am aware loose talk alienates people, so I hope to say what I mean - and mean what I say.
EDIT
The IMG though they contained many smart people, seldom did things by half. In the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign it fought successfully to keep it a single issue campaign and insisted on raising as the campaign’s major slogan ‘Victory for the National Liberation Front’. (On demos they’d chant ‘Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh’. The anarchist’s would reply with, ‘How many trots have you done in?’) Similarly when Northern Ireland erupted into violence, the IMG adopted the slogan, ‘Victory for the IRA’. Strangely this message was rather muted in Glasgow.
Steven. wrote: you what?! I
Steven.
At my secondary school when I was a kid most teachers avoided saying blackboard. Personally as a teacher I just said board.
haven't they all been
haven't they all been replaced by white boards now? the change was almost complete when i was last in school.
i think this and the fact that board is shorter would explain people not saying black board
Quote: (On demos they’d
That's top-notch Trot trolling there
jesuithitsquad
jesuithitsquad
Given the opportunist nature of Trotskyism as Stalinism's loyal opposition sadly I doubt they'd have cared much.
jesuithitsquad #49 & bastarx
jesuithitsquad #49 & bastarx #50
I think the trots tried to remain aloof from the anarchist non-solidarity with their Stalinist champion. The glaring hate against the ‘uncontrollables’ came from the Communist Party, who wanted to cloak everyone under a blanket of admiration for the peace loving people of Vietnam struggling against American imperialism. I’d say this was an example of the opposite of ‘microaggression’.
(To be honest I have always had a sneaking sympathy for all underdogs in any fight.)
Quote: the opposite of
Macro-non-aggression?
the word still sounds stupid
the word still sounds stupid and cultish to the uninitiated
So what do we call a
So what do we call a blackleg? Is scab our only option?
888, "cultish..." nail on the
888, "cultish..." nail on the head there pal.
Noah, how about micro-scab?
Using the word ‘scab’ may be
Using the word ‘scab’ may be communicating a hostile attitude to people with a skin condition.
Auld-bod wrote: Using the
Auld-bod
Testing my weak bladder there comrade!
These sort conversations
These sort conversations always go to shit on this site and I think it usually boils down to older folks not liking new words, even though it is the function of language to change and evolve, and a dislike of a younger generation re-defining their struggles. Some things never change, I remember older people objecting to the reclaiming of the word "queer." I think of it as Old Man Shouts At Cloud Syndrome and radicals are just as prone to it as non-radicals.
You can search back through this site and see discussions on trigger warnings, safe spaces, cultural appropriation etc and find a distinct age divide over these issues. I imagine a collective eye-roll from younger folks at us Gen Xers, many of whom are just as intransigent as previous generations turned out to be, in exactly the same way as we scoffed at the Boomers.
Concepts and tactics and language change. We changed the language we used, so it stands to reason this generation will too.
I like the evolvement of
I like the evolvement of language. I particularly like the Americanisation of British English. Most of my peers like, hate it though(see what I did there?!!!) That doesn't mean though that new words and terms should be beyond criticism.
I've been frivolous on here and have no real opinion on the word micro-aggressions but I would object to not being able to describe something that is black, as black. Thankfully I haven't come across that daft bollocks since the eighties.
Noah Fence wrote: I like the
Noah Fence
I despise the americanization of our language, it's stupid. The americans call autumn fall and the pavement the sidewalk- it's lazy and not as intricate as the proper english language. They can't say brexit, instead they say bregzid or something, it's ridiculous.
potrokin wrote: Noah Fence
potrokin
Presumably you're taking the piss, right?
Noah Fence wrote: potrokin
Noah Fence
Nope
Really? Since when was
Really? Since when was lazyness inherently bad or sophistication inherently good. Language can be beautiful, fun, vicious, and many other things. Most times though the most important thing is that it is utilitarian. Do us Brithish write the rule book on how English should be spoken? What's the difference between the various forms of American English and British regional accents and dialects?
Language shouldn't be dictorial. Nor should it be static - some of the phrases my kids have introduced to me are fantastic!
The anti American language thing strikes me as strongly connected to the anti American prejudice of hypocritical lefties that occupied every nook and cranny of the supposedly radical political scene of the eighties. I'm not accusing you of being one of those guys but I would suggest you loosen up a bit.
Your initial instincts were
Your initial instincts were correct Noah, I was just kidding.
You bastard! You got me
You bastard! You got me droning on like a right sanctimonious old git! Still, I'm pleased - I hate that snobby shit!
Noah Fence wrote: You
Noah Fence
Sorry dude
Noah Fence wrote: You
Noah Fence
Sorry dude
Noah Fence wrote: Really?
Noah Fence
A great response to what I said though comrade.
Fleur wrote: These sort
Fleur
Fleur, I often like what you write but that's a bit unfair and more than a little ageist. Do you not think that dislike of such terminology might have less to do with a person's age and more about their opposition to the academicisation of revolutionary politics and the language we use? And by the way, this academicising tendency is nothing new and has gone on for the last 150 years at least but if we ever want our ideas to spread beyond our university educated mates and like continually attracting highly-educated like, then we really need to tone down the academic register and not add yet more university jargon to how we communicate. For the record, I voiced exactly the same opposition to such alienating patter 30-odd years ago, so age really has nowt to do with it... and also for the record, I'm happily queer.
jeff wrote: In terms of
jeff
But there are “theys” – some academics, social policy bureaucrats, dogmatic leftists (as in Auld’s example) etc - who have a role of producing ideology, including language reform/modification/policing. This functions as a code of correctness – that is introduced/imposed as a general measure from an external source - that all language is then judged by. At the most extreme, ruthless careerists can impose and parade their impeccable non-discriminatory language while in practice ruthlessly making their way up the greasy pole (eg, 80s GLC/Labour councils & PC leftists). The sheer aggression and intolerance of some who most forcefully wield this word coding is evidence of the double standard. The more interesting and necessary analysis and challenging of received meaning within language then tends to get frozen and repressed by such policing attitudes.
There’s also a difference between language that evolves out of struggle and that which comes out of bureaucratic/academic invention. That there’s been such low levels of struggle for so long may also affect how different generations see the evolution of language.
Fleur wrote: These sort
Fleur
It is partly that I concede, but it's also about a left that is insular, in-group based, often exclusively student-based, and unable to relate to the unpoliticized general public (more importantly manifested as a complete inability plan any meaningful actions that relate to people's daily lives and a fixation with the internet, celebrity culture* and cataloguing and naming oppressive social micro-phenomena instead of trying to change material conditions through collective direct action).
Also it's interesting how a lot of the recent new/resurrected language of the tumblr/twitter left has been used by political experts to attack threats to their careers to their left (in a similar vein to what Red Marriot mentions just above), such as the extreme ID politics based guilt tripping of the Clinton campaign against the left democrat ex-Bernie supporters, or the NGO denunciation of rioters as outside agitators.
*You won't believe these 12 microagressions faced by Beyonce (etc.)
Yeah, I probably am being
Yeah, I probably am being ageist. I don't have an awful amount of patience with people who won't move on and embrace new things and ideas. A great example would be in feminist theory, there was a lot of good work done in the past but much of it is really dated and irrelevant now, yet people of my generation will hang onto it as canon, despite in my opinion the terfy, swerfy, exclusionary nature of a lot of it has no role in radical politics today. For example, the (probably entirely unintentional) racism of Shulamith Firestone. You take what's good from thought, discard what's bad and be open to new ideas and tactics. Clearly language is going to change in this process.
However, if I'm being ageist concerning the intransigence of a lot of my generation, the same can be said for the same people I get annoyed with. There's a constant whining about how awful millennials are, and this is reflected regularly on this site when people pick faults in intersectionality, or safe spaces or whatever the complaint of the day is. You can't expect young people to sit at our feet and learn and replicate the things we did, and to be honest that would be pretty awful given the state of radical politics. I don't think we set the world on fire. I don't think we even found the matchbox. This generation have different struggles to us, they have emerged into adulthood in a very different place to us. They are the experts on what it is like to be young today and I think it would be beneficial to us to listen to them.
Half the time I hear people complaining about how young people talk/act/what their focus is etc, I detect a note of sour grapes, as if people talking or acting in different ways is some kind of slight upon the way we did things. It's not but things have changed, as they always have done.
I think it's patronizing to dismiss this all as tumblr/twitter politics. Social media is the way people communicate these days. From the lack of discussion on this site it's obvious that the discussion has moved elsewhere. What's the problem with that? Used smartly, social media disseminates information far more efficiently than any media we used to have. I talk politics on social media with lots of people, very few are students, hardly any(if any at all) are academics, most are your average working class people. Not only is it dismissive to people who use social media, but it's also dismissive to your average Joe or Josephine to say that language excludes them. In my experience it does not. I for one wish that there had been the internet around when I was young, not only for the ease of accessing information but also for organizational purposes. Remember telephone trees anyone? A really handy way of getting people together, especially when half of us didn't have phones.
Is this an academicising tendency? I don't know but with micro-aggressions most discussion I've heard on the subject has been from African American women talking about their own experiences. If anything academia is playing catch-up a lot of the time. Micro-aggression is simple a refinement of language to mean a very specific thing. I find it useful to have specific definitions, so I know exactly what people are talking about.
Personally though, I find it a little ironic to complain about jargon when people on this site regularly use words and expressions like commodity fetishism, surplus labour, alienation of labour, dialectical materialism and organize reading groups to get through texts that are almost guaranteed to give you a migraine, or cure your insomnia. Micro-aggressions a pretty easy thing to get your head around compared to a lot of the stuff on here. :p
I think one of the most
I think one of the most effective ways of building the apparatus to challenge the bourgeoisie’s cultural-linguistic control of society, that normalises their phantom-world status quo, is by creating new modes of speech, thought and feeling, and thereby shifting people’s expectations of what’s ‘normal’.
But if anyone wanted to go further than just culticles critcising cultural commissars using academic jargon, they wouldn’t need to stick with the vocabulary of the past or of the mass media that’s pumped into society like electricity or gas, or speak the mythical lingo of the prolier-than-thou ‘man in the street’ or to commune with that equally legendary connoisseur of untruths, the supposedly conformist, uncritical, ‘unpoliticised’ public. And anyway, a lot of very useful stuff has come out of academia, shouldn’t everyone have access to it?
Some of the most earnest, heavily didactic propaganda that I’ve come across by well-meaning groups over the years, written in the most preposterous, cringe-worthy patronising mockney, only demonstrates that those responsible haven’t learned the first rule of propaganda, ‘be authentic’, just say it like it’s true ..especially when it is.
Agree with Fleur, most of this is just bad temper brought on by OMS (old man shouting).
Fleur, I wouldn't disagree
Fleur, I wouldn't disagree with your point about the marxoid jargon that gets bandied about. Yes, it's alienating while also long established political baggage. I don't see why we should be adding yet more jargon to our already overloaded politico-speak but think it needs a good pruning... and yes, I accept the term 'micro aggression' in itself may not be so hard to grasp.
Factvalue, who on here is advocating the sort of 'patronising mockney' stylee propaganda you're talking about? Thanks for the straw man cliché though.
Fleur wrote: Is this an
Fleur
Completely agree with this. I don't even think you can try to paint it as "academic" or "jargon" as it is actually very simple English. Micro and aggression are simple everyday words. Much more so than "anarcho-syndicalism" or other things which people on here talk about a lot. The fact that this is terminology used predominantly by people of colour and women also makes people griping about it suspect in my view.
However we add jargon to the
However we add jargon to the language all the time. A lot of things we say originally came from tech and have been adopted into mainstream language - googling, spamming, eye candy, down time, photoshopping, unplugged. We get wi-fi from hi-fi, which originally referred to a specific type of record player. I found computer terminology alienating when I first heard it but with time it's just part of my vocabulary now. Language is fluid and has an ever expanding vocabulary - as well as dropping now redundant words. If words have no value or people don't have a use for them, they will fall out of use. I don't really understand blanket objections to adding new words. If they don't stick then they'll be consigned to the dustbin of history and if they do stick it'll be because people find them useful.
Fleur raises some good points
Fleur raises some good points regarding old people rejecting the young ideas as they find new language to describe their lives and strategies to cope with changing times.
However somethings change and remain the same. As each new generation emerges some of what they discover was always there, it’s just new in their experience. Some new words are only the rebranding of old ideas. Commerce is continually recycling old culture into new. I was pissed off when old people told me pop music hysteria had been around forever, youngsters wetting themselves at Frank Sinatra’s concerts, etc. But hey the Stones and the Beatles are totally new! Then years later a young friend plays me some Brit pop and…
A wee while ago I attended a lecture and the speaker savaged ‘post-modernism’ dissecting its ‘new insights’ and pointing out a number of ancient Greeks had said it all before. The thing is we like to embrace the new as it gives us the feeling of moving in a positive direction, of expanding our understanding. In doing so we swallow a fair amount of crap. Only a few years ago I had an argument with an old friend, who was waxing lyrical about her child’s intuitive good sense, which reminded me of the 60s youth cults (beautiful flower children, etc.). I obviously lost that argument.
I’ll let Betty Hutton have the last say – Murder, He Says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGNm89GZBE
Edit
'amount of' for 'about of'
Good post Comrade Bod
Good post Comrade Bod
Fleur wrote: Yeah, I probably
Fleur
This is more of an aside, but it does strike me as odd that this happens with anarchists. Very few people are raised in anarchist households or grow up amongst anarchists. This means that they must have embraced at least one set of new ideas in their lives, otherwise they wouldn't be anarchists.
I imagine something must happen along the lines of, "Phew, well that's my set of new ideas embraced, I'm knackered now tbh. I suppose I better defend the new ideas I just embraced for the rest of my life in the exact form and language I embraced them in."
Fleur wrote: 'Yeah, I
Fleur wrote:
'Yeah, I probably am being ageist. I don't have an awful amount of patience with people who won't move on and embrace new things and ideas.'
On the other hand just because something is new does not mean it's good. I watch people playing with their electronic toys and not watching where they're walking, and just think no thanks.
Serge Forward
Serge Forward
This is it's own straw man which was written in the context of a discussion about..erm..the use of language. But since it has been posted by a user who has quite recently laid a moth-eaten jacket of anti-semitism on my shoulders, I feel no obligation to engage. Accusations of that nature bring to mind an IWW piece from 2015: 'We ask that all organizations and groups working for a better world in which we have killed White Supremacy, Capitalism, and all other forms of oppression, consider that (1) none of us represent the mandate of all the people, (2) that we may have instead genuine and important strategic and tactical differences between ourselves about the best ways to accomplish that world, (3) that we will not win by pretending these differences do not exist, or dictating against difference, but instead by engaging on these differences in the most democratic and least hierarchical ways possible.'
While discussing the State's tactics for crushing us, the authors of the piece write: 'They can do this by misportraying us in the media, and they do.They do this by sowing distrust and division within or between movements, and they do.'
I've nothing to say to you Serge, apart from the obvious, and I won't be replying to any response you make as I've no wish to derail, so meanwhile, back at the thread...
A moth-eaten jacket that fits
A moth-eaten jacket that fits though.
man who claimed all
man who claimed all anti-Semitism is either made up by Jews or a response to bad things Jews have done, is appalled that anyone would call them anti-Semitic
Fleur wrote: Yeah, I probably
Fleur
Having some criticisms of what is new doesn’t necessarily equate to the above summary and can’t be dismissed as just that. Many new ideas “pumped into society” or evolving from diverse sources are bound to be crap, designed to be misleading or will express the self-interests of a social grouping though presented as impartial ‘fact’. The need for new ideas implies the limits of old ones - and that will surely be seen to be true of today's new ones; and those limits can often be seen quite quickly.
One problem with social media I see is the relation between form and content; I see people of all generations often use it in a quite thoughtless way. Aside from the limits of twitter’s 140 character exchanges I see FB posts that are simply a process of someone spotting a post that reinforces their preconceived belief and/or their self image and/or the role they perform on FB and/or the stuff that encourages mutual back-slapping about how right-on yourself and your FB pals are – and clicking to repost it without assessing the factual/political validity of the (often dubious) content. So what passes for ‘knowledge’ is increasingly divorced from evaluation of content. Everyone now laughs as much at ‘I read it on the Net so it must be true’ as they long have at ‘I read in the papers so it must be true’ but both media still retain enormous power over minds. The greater democracy of social media info-sharing is often just click-voting on stuff that reinforces pre-conceived beliefs – much as received meaning within language is often perpetuated.
And that’s to leave aside the often extreme divorce between many people’s offline and online personalities and behaviour – the gap often not being a positive thing...
Steven
One social group’s everyday language is another’s alien jargon – it’s misleading to judge just by one’s own social experience. Eg, I never hear anyone (inc. POC & women) use “micro-aggression”, not even among politicos I know, so to me it’s more jargonist than "anarcho-syndicalism". And I’m not convinced that terms like “anarchism” & “communism” (whatever their understanding of them) aren’t far more familiar to most people than “micro-aggression”, whatever that suggests (perhaps it indicates that this term is only common among some politico circles?). “Micro” and “aggression” “are simple everyday words” but the meaning and concept of its use certainly aren’t to most.
Similarly what “people talk about on here” is particular to this kind of grouping; it would be pretty boring and clunky if we had - just so as to not alienate those unfamiliar - to always explain the history and meaning of all ‘jargony’ terms on these forums - rather than just use them as commonly understood shorthand. And it’s not how language is really used. Most informed dialogue among groups with shared interests – whether on football, knitting or Marxism – would start to collapse or become uselessly shallow under the weight of such populism. To defend the appropriate use of technical terms is obv. not a defence of unnecessarily jargony usage.
While a bit a reduction,
While a bit a reduction, words are used to communicate meaning to someone else. Depending on the context, you'd use specific words to convey what you mean. While I am no fan of the term "white/male/etc. privilege" and prefer to talk about positive discrimination, what I mean by that is basically the same as what some would refer to as privilege. Hence, if I know that the person(s) in question would understand what I am trying to say by using the words "white" and "privilege", I'll do that. In the same way, I don't fucking harp on about surplus-value and exploitation when I am on a picket line, but talk about how hard it is to feed yourself and your family, how bosses shit on us etc.
In general, the younger folks will understand precisely what I mean if I adopt such lingo as safe space, micro-agression and so on; older folks I'll talk about discrimination, informal power, even fucking Maoist lingo like "unconditional self-critique".
Red Marriot wrote: The need
Red Marriot
And often they can't.
Your next paragraph ignores Fleur's phrase 'used smartly', and could easily be a description of a multitude of 'discussions' on here. But your general observation that new mass media are used to anaesthetize using cultural effluvia just as much as old ones is certainly true, if mundane. It's possible to abuse any technology. In my experience evaluation of content in posts has not disappeared on e.g. FB, and critical stances are often well received and encouraged.
Regarding different behaviours in different contexts, is that not true at all levels, such as the way in which some people inhibit us and some bring out the best, or perhaps behaviour indoors versus outdoors, or at home or on holiday, or at a restaurant, at work, on the toilet, etc..
In paragraph four you wrote 'it's misleading to judge just by one's own social experience' and then you seemed to proceed to do just that. What have I missed?
I'm not sure what your last paragraph is about. Are you saying that there's good jargon and bad jargon, or that groupings should not attempt to dilute their jargon by making it more popular, or that people should keep their jargon to themselves, rather than have the entire population be in on technical terms like anarcho-syndicalism?
radicalgraffiti wrote: man
radicalgraffiti
News Flash - Straw Man Eats Hard Cheese Whilst Spitting Dummy?
fv wrote: Quote: Red Marriot
fv
Yes, obviously.
Yes, obviously.
Yes, obviously.
You’ve missed that by describing my own social experience as being in contrast to others described here I was illustrating that 'it's misleading to judge just by one's own social experience'; ie, misleading to draw generalisations from particular experience. But that’s not contradicted by describing my particular experience or interpretation - as I’m not presenting it as an absolute conclusion applied to all.
I’m basically saying specialist terms can be misused but they have their usefulness and their place.
factvalue
factvalue
i'm not sure what you trying to say here? i could literally quote you saying that on the anti-Semitism thread.
you appearer to have linked to a post of yours where you misrepresent me and say vary little with a great amount of text, its clear that you have no intention of actuality engaging with anyone else's points.
it took 100 posts for you to catch on that we have irreconcilable differences in our approach to ethics and then you "comrade" at me and pretend that i meant i was doing science when i talk about how i was using the word.
radicalgraffiti
radicalgraffiti
A.....you win. Back to the thread.
Red Marriott wrote: You’ve
Red Marriott
Who does it apply to then?
Some.
Some.
Red Marriott
Red Marriott
How?
I'll add to the earlier
I'll add to the earlier debate that the substantial critiques of privilege theory, intersectionality etc seem (happy to be corrected on this) to have come, rather than from the 'old moaners' criticised here, from those younger, more engaged with and closer to the exercise of those theories.
I've always said that this
I've always said that this approach to politics end up creating fractures between people horizontally, while leaving the big vertical fault lines intact.
What approach?
What approach?
Intersectionality, privilage
Intersectionality, privilage theory, identity politics all that jazz.
Tell that to PoC, women, and
Tell that to PoC, women, and others who have been ignored by 1950s style class politics. The point is that we are already fractured and blaming it on privilege theory is pretty shallow and ahistorical.
Most Poc and women, couldnt
Most Poc and women, couldnt give a fuck for this politics.
I know plenty who do. And
I know plenty who do. And it's rather backwards to reduce it to identity politics when what is addressed by such theories is racism and misogyny.
ergo if you don't buy into it
ergo if you don't buy into it you are some form of backward racist and misogynist. Well done. You just proved my point.
Nope, not at all. That's a
Nope, not at all. That's a straw man. If you had read my earlier posts, you'd see that I have my issues with it as well. And certainly, there is definitely a huge chunk of liberal politics that is precisely that. But what you said is that it is these theories that cause fractures; that is basically the same as saying you see no colour or gender. That's ignoring the problems of racism and misogyny that are actually blocking working class action.
Red Marriot wrote: One social
Red Marriot
I think it's important to separate words and their meanings from concepts. Languages are not conceptual systems (many thousands of which can be simultaneously expressed in the same language) and it’s an open question whether or not different languages can express the same concepts. That linguistic change lags conceptual change does not of itself imply a simple causal connection and imo the two should be addressed separately. Although it’s natural and easier to discuss the public phenomenon that is language rather than mental concepts, I think the issue of jargon has sidelined the issue of conceptual development a little in this discussion. Khawaga’s ease of movement between vocabs is no doubt the right practical approach but are there significant conceptual differences that are being overlooked? How do we find out if new words represent an evolution of concepts? And how do people conceive of concepts? They’re variously viewed as physiological, psychological or abstract entities. Some people believe they’re entirely social and that in principle it isn’t possible for isolated individuals to possess concepts, whatever ‘possess’ actually means in that context.
RM, in the above quotation, are you simply contrasting a local with a globally applicable pov? Or when you write that “it’s misleading to judge just by one’s own social experience” or indeed, in this later reply
Red Marriot
are you making the much stronger claim that there is no general, ‘universal’ pov but only a set of local perspectives/paradigms of multiple disparate groups with their accompanying specialised conceptual repertoires and terminologies, which are not rationally comparable, since they each carry their own criteria for what counts as legitimate knowledge, so that any cross comparison would be a question-begging comparison of chalk and cheese?
This stronger claim is a non-sequitor, which could only follow by the addition of the premise that the local and the universal are contraries. There may be no God’s eye ‘view from nowhere’, and all viewpoints are indeed local. But this additional premise asserting a contradiction is a false dichotomy, since the local can be, and often is, universal. It's a commonplace for one's social experience to be completely universally valid, and one of the reasons I find communist anarchism so attractive is that it accurately reflects this. The cultural location/identity of the various human groups is perfectly compatible with the universality of some of their claims. (And of course, rational comparisons between the claims or analyses or jargonese of different groups in terms of the usual kinds of evaluative criteria such as testability, precision, depth, fruitfulness, ease of understanding, explanatory power, harmony with existing knowledge/praxis, etc., are readily available.)
If you’re going to accurately represent concepts like inequality or injustice, concepts which contain a certain basic ambiguity, you need descriptive terms which preserve that ambiguity. Using this standard of representation, does ‘micro-aggression’ reflect the fact that it is concerned with an explication of injustice and inequality? Is it an advance from a less to a more exact expression of the same concept? Is it just ‘crap’ or does it express something new?
Mr. Jolly wrote: ergo if you
Mr. Jolly
Khawaga
Unfortunately, while you may not do this, people with varying degrees of disagreement with the whole "intersectionality, privilage theory, identity politics all that jazz" discourse do in fact get labelled backward, racist and misogynist ("ableist" in my case earlier in this thread, even though my comments were not aimed at those who attend therapy groups but at the industry that gives rise to such neologisms - ironically, the term "micro-aggression" was in fact coined by a psychiatrist). Also ironically, I think there are a few useful ideas within intersectional theory, and after reading this thread, I can also see how "micro-aggression" might be useful as a term. However, the tendency of certain intersectional cheerleaders to shoot down any disagreement and being all too quick to label people "backward, racist, misogynist" does no one any favours, least of all those who do the labelling. Maybe the problem with intersectionality is not so much the theories, but the foolish behaviour of some of those who promote it.
Of course, none of this is new. The history of New Left politics is littered with such sillinesses since the 1950s.
factvalue wrote: I think it's
factvalue
In a conceptual way, yes, one can see a distinction – but one needs words to express the disctinction...
I think by drawing that ‘conclusion’ from what I’ve said you’re just using my statement as a peg to hang one of your pet topics onto so as to expound a concept. There are particularities of experience that have varying relationship to more generalised and universal experience – I wasn’t making any greater absolute universal claims or philosophical laws than that (which are maybe what you’re searching for), as I think I clearly expressed.
My understanding is that part of the appeal of privilege theory, intersectionality etc is to assert the particularity of particular social group experience and demand that they’re not subsumed and diluted within universal abstractions such as ‘working class’.
I don’t think you’ve really defined the “standard of representation” you want to introduce as a measure so won’t comment. But the way you’re pursuing and presenting this debate – presumably, your use of language is to try to express meaningful concepts – doesn’t, to me, express the clarity you seek in others and so doesn’t incline me to carry on with it. Thank you and goodnight.
I say, this Factvalue chap
I say, this Factvalue chap certainly seems to rub people up the wrong way.
Quote: Unfortunately, while
Yes, as I mentioned certain liberals will do this, but blaming the theory for it is just one massive logical fallacy. And blaming the theory for divisions that have existed for centuries is just silly as well.
Aye, but those who you and I
Aye, but those who you and I describe as liberals may define themselves as (revolutionary) anarchists. That's where it all gets a bit messy.
True that. I've heard it
True that. I've heard it happen in the local activist community where I live. It all happened on Facebook and everyone I know who has an account on FB started tippytoing around those liberals, being scared of doing anything for some time. Those of us without FB accounts had no problems doing anything at all and were never "called out". A lot of the worst examples of what we're discussing do, at least in my direct experience (though I've read otherwise), happen on social media.
Many of these "new" words can
Many of these "new" words can be used in the way Fleur used ableist against Serge. They are so concise and absolute that when they are used they simplify something complex that has to be subjectively interpreted into a fixed label.
Without the label you'd have to spell the problem out and communicate a subjective interpretation of what had happened. You'd have to tell them off and explain what caused offence. This opens up for arguments which the label neatly short circuits. Thats probably part of the appeal of these terms as I can imagine it gets quite tedious having arguments all the time.
(post aborted kids have to be put to sleep)
'Concern trolling' and 'tone
'Concern trolling' and 'tone policing' are other examples of such new words (at least to me), which can have such a general application.
'Concern trolling' seems to be when you give advice to someone (eg on how to best get their ideas across) like you have the same goal (/political stand) as them, but in fact you don't and even are hostile to their goal.
'Tone policing' is probably obvious.
Noah Fence wrote: I say, this
Noah Fence
RM does seem a wee bit annoyed, and in retrospect it looks like the vagueness of their post demanded something equally vague to complement it, like Stan and Ollie, how was I supposed to know? It's not my fault!
Red Marriott
In general I do tend to adopt the standard practice you mentioned of using linguistic information as one source of evidence about underlying concepts, which was why I asked a question, rather than draw the false conclusion you have strawed together for me. I did this because I didn't think you were that clear, and I still don't for that matter, since you haven’t actually answered the question. And here again you seem to be opposed to universals, which is what I was asking about. I think the question of relativism is a fair one to raise during discussions about particulars versus universals. But anyway, seriously, if being questioned about what you write as part of an ongoing discussion really does put you in such a bad temper, what are you doing on a discussion forum?
Red Marriot
Yes. And if you clear your mind enough to read my post rationally (using that same word-concept correspondence you seem fond of advertising) you’ll see that I consider this sort of thing a false dichotomy.
You’re in the reprehensible habit of eliding what doesn’t suit your purposes. The full paragraph from the end of my previous post that you quoted part of above your comment
Rec Marriott
is
The idea is that if we came to recognize that the concepts we were currently using for thinking about a subject like inequality or injustice may no longer be adequate, then taking the view that we should aim to describe concepts as we find them, and that measures we adopt should not be more precise than the concepts they represent, if one of the things we already know implicitly about the concept of inequality is that it is inherently imprecise and resists simple rank ordering, then the measure we should provide for it should not impose some strict ranking, but if it is to describe inequality accurately in an assessment of inequality, it should preserve its inherent ambiguity i.e. accuracy of description in assessments of inequality is to be distinguished from unambiguous, fully ranked claims and assertions. I was asking if ‘micro-aggression’ lives up to such a measure if adopted.
Love you RM! Bye-bye!! Bye!!
Cooked #110 ‘They are so
Cooked #110
‘They are so concise and absolute that when they are used they simplify something complex that has to be subjectively interpreted into a fixed label.
Without the label you'd have to spell the problem out and communicate a subjective interpretation of what had happened.’
I read a fundamental contradiction in these two sentences. To stick a label on someone in no sense transcends the subjective nature of the labelling. It only says - I think this and think this label is applicable. It explains nothing about why the label should apply. In using language context is all important – nothing ‘speaks for itself’.
Khawaga wrote: True that.
Khawaga
Thank fuck I'm not on social media then. I'm sure I'd have an aneurysm in no time.
How does solidarity emerge
How does solidarity emerge from this line of reasoning? It seems that 99.9% of people are sinners in light of these theories as praxis. That an inner journey of self discipline is the way to salvation, where every utterance, posture, signifier one emits is open to question to a critical re reading and ultimately must be reflected on and changed. It doesn't attempt scramble through the contradictions and problems of social interaction, rather it never gets off the sofa it sits there in a state of sublime messianic misanthropy, sneering at the world.
I don’t know, Mr Jolly, there
I don’t know, Mr Jolly, there does seem to be some strictures against disagreement, debate and thinking that goes along with the new manners, but there’s a hell of a lot of activity too. Students and many young people are very active, doing things like rent strikes, anti-raids/deportation stuff, solidarity with low paid workers, Black Lives Matter etc. So sitting on the sofa isn’t quite the right analogy.
But anyway, here’s what I was about to post:
I agree with Fleur back in post 72 that there is a massive gulf between generations, especially around language. But it’s not clear that oldies need to just adapt and adopt every new thing.
Language is powerful and it’s good that so much overt racist language, for example, is now not common. Language changes reality. But why think that radical movements automatically make things better as time goes on? They can be part of making things objectively worse.
One really depressing but not surprising thing I read is that (in the UK) a higher percentage of under 25s than those older support the introduction of laws against causing offence on religious ground. The young people who support this most strongly are urban, educated, happy with multiculturalism. I’m guessing they are people who are very comfortable the new attention to speech that are under discussion here.
Probably the young people who support these sort of changes to the law don’t realise that this is a form of blasphemy law. People may think that people protecting people from offence is anti-racist, but restrictions on speech and blasphemy laws are actually likely to hurt religious minorities, and especially minorities within religious groups.
Blasphemy is no joke. Asad Shah was murdered in Scotland earlier this year for blasphemy, maybe the first in the UK for hundreds of year. Blasphemy violence around the world show that it’s not only states that have the power to limit what can be expressed - social movements can also do it.
Who decides what’s offensive? Which women? Which people of colour? Unfortunately in some cases there are no clear answers. One person’s micro aggression can be another person’s right to dissent. A cliche maybe, but very true. So I don’t want to sneer at or ridicule the young speech activists but I do sometimes fear them.
Quote: Most Poc and women,
Most people don't give a fuck about politics, by that logic everyone on this site should just call it a day.
Women POC and anyone else who is discriminated against tend to feel more disconnected from politics and less likely to feel it will be any use in my experience. Jargon etc puts off people who are discriminated against as least much as those who aren't. The idea of micro-aggressions is a way of describing discrimination so it should be useful for combatting it. One reason for ignoring academics is they often don't have the same experience of discrimination as most people and they use it as currency. I've come across a fair few POC and women who are privileged, privately educated etc. and will be using discrimination as a nice way into professional politics or something similar. It's also used in an exclusive way that concentrates power in their hands, I think we can agree on here that we're acting in good faith (for the most part)
As micro-aggression is a potentially useful term then we use it and explain it wherever needed. It isn't a stick to beat anyone over the head with, it's a term that can benefit our analysis and practise. Also people who complain about terms being used against them are often talking shite. Noone likes to feel stupid or uninformed and it's much easier to write off something rather than ask about it. Especially if you've been in radical politics since before whoever uses the new word was born. But it's not a challenge or a call out or anything, it's a way of better describing (and hopefully addressing) the same shit you've been dealing with. In the same way as my Nan thought it was weird that coloured had become racist even though she remembered it as the polite way to describe someone's race. I don't personally like POC as a term (seems a bit too close to one-drop racism to me) but it's less unwieldy than a lot of other terms and I think I understand why it was adopted. So I use it when I think it's appropriate.
factvalue wrote: RM does seem
factvalue
I’m not annoyed or in bad temper, just choosing to not debate any further with someone who, having observed them on here for some time interacting with myself and others, I find tedious, egotistical and insincere and who is imo spouting a lot of imprecise waffle at great length that is not inspiring to reply to. We all make such choices on here; for instance, factvalue on the previous page of this thread said;
To which he might ask himself his own question;
Quote: How does solidarity
This is actually a much more substantive take on this whole thing, Mr. Jolly. But again, you are blaming the theory for this and not people engaging in that behaviour. It is not the theory that says 99% of people are sinners; it is people that are mired in so-called call-out culture that often do this. And yes, if you're a sinner, you're always be one and can never change. But that's not the theory. Theory does not have agency unless it takes hold of people, but the people that you're referring to have, I would argue, misunderstood a crucial point about such theory and that is that people have the capacity (or rather should be given the opportunity) to change their behaviour.
Given your animosity towards all of this, where have you experienced what you describe?
Mr Jolly, I'm normally a fan
Mr Jolly, I'm normally a fan of your posts, but I don't really understand what you are getting at here.
Mr. Jolly
I must admit my experience of people talking about "micro aggressions" is pretty limited. Basically a few POC, women and gender nonconforming people I know have used it to refer to small incidents which aren't overly racist or discriminatory in themselves but add up to making their lives difficult, because of characteristics they have which white cis males do not. For example being questioned going into women's bathrooms, or a black female doctor I know is frequently quizzed about it by people saying she "doesn't look like a doctor".
I don't really see how acknowledging this (while still acknowledging all of the working class has a shared interest in the abolition of capitalism example) has anything to do with your politics of "sinning" and "inner journeys of self-discipline".
Of course there are problems with social media call out culture, and the idea that people perhaps unwittingly saying the wrong thing is worse than things like systemic, institutional racism and discrimination. But that's a totally different issue.
I think one problem when we
I think one problem when we talk about these kind of issues is that we're lumping all forms of them together. Take privilege. As a descriptive tool explaining how people's day to day experiences differ I think it's useful. My interactions with other people are different to those of trans men, cis women etc. I could disagree with some of the language choices - I'm not a fan of the word privilege so much, and micro-aggressions seems a little clunky to me (but I can't think of a reasonable alternative) - but the concepts themselves are helpful.
Where there's more of a problem is where it becomes privilege 'theory'. I don't think it has the power to explain systemic oppression. It's the same when some people's usage of intersectionality reduces class to an identity, with class only entering their politics where someone is a victim of 'classism'. But the fact that some activists use worthwhile concepts in a poor or liberal way doesn't mean we should drop them. We don't stop calling ourselves communists because of the CPGB, or anarchists because of ancaps.
Red Marriott wrote: I’m not
Red Marriott
Yes, obviously.
Red Marriott
Don’t worry now RM. That your vacuous, meandering and florid efforts lack logical tension is enough for me to just ignore them in future. But it has to be said, it's pretty obvious that you take yourself a wee bit too seriously if you're really suggesting that when I point out the emptiness and relativism of the position from which you are, with total lack of irony, criticising intersectionality, then this is somehow equivalent to knee-jerk bad-jacketing with racism by the same folks now whinging about those big bad ‘intersectional cheerleaders shooting down any disagreement and labelling people "backward, racist, misogynist" boo-hoo waaa.
Why not just get off the internet for a wee while, have a cup of tea or a bowl of gruel or whatever and review your life? Hey, maybe it’s time?
factvalue awards himself
factvalue awards himself another prize;
Factvalue, desist from the
Factvalue, desist from the personal slagging. This is a warning
edited to add I have now had to go through and unpublish a load of off topic comments.
Fact value, this is a further warning for you, if you post one additional comment with your tedious ramblings you're banned.
And as usual if anyone else wants to complain about an admin decision, start a new thread, don't derail an existing thread, and don't derail existing threads with personal chitchat.
So if people want to continue
So if people want to continue these off topic discussions, I made a thread for it. http://libcom.org/forums/general/topic-discussions-began-micro-aggression-thread-20092016
This comic has been used as
This comic has been used as an example of little things adding up to being a source of frustration.
Off-topic comments
Off-topic comments unpublished. Noah and factvalue have been temporarily banned while admins discuss what to do as they had already been warned about derailing the thread with off-topic comments and personal chit-chat. Auld-Bod, please desist from further derailing (you've not been banned as it was a first offence but consider it a warning).
If you want to discuss admin decisions, please go to the comment and feedback forum. There is already a thread to discuss off-topic comments on this thread.
I think a warning is
I think a warning is justified as I was wandering off the thread.
It put me to wondering why I am wary of this linguistic pigeon holing of political offensiveness. I searched the web and found an example of someone being peeved when asked, “Have you been to Europe?” Her reply was, “No, because I’m poor”. My take on this is, why assume someone is rich or poor – you simply asked a question?
Back to the thread. My post #43 expressed my feeling that intentionality was important to determine aggression/offence than what someone actually said. I gave as an example being pulled up for using the word ‘black’ as it supposedly implied some negative attitudes to non-white people (score sheet - no up votes, two down votes).
Steven posted next #44 and expresses his ignorance of this kind of ‘politically correct’ behaviour (no down votes, two up votes). I answered his query on post #46 and got no response. My reaction to this was no offence intended, as what the f**k do they know? You see, you cannot know, what you know nothing of.
It came to me something similar happened back in April 2013 on a libcom thread about reasons one could claim to be middle class. I wrote a reason I was now middle class was because I’d stopped using the public baths. A response was: ‘isn’t that more a symptom of “not living in Roman times”?’ (thirteen up votes) Now I was, and am not, offended by that response because I know most young people have had living quarters where washing facilities including a bath and or shower is taken for granted. It was a joke. It was also based on not knowing millions of working class people used the public baths out of necessity. It was still meant as a joke and taken as such.
I thought that one of the key
I thought that one of the key things about racism is that whether a remark is racist is not really decided by the intentions of the speaker but by whether the person takes it to be racist. Obviously intentions matter a lot but it's the impact that is primary.
Cactus9 #129 ‘I thought that
Cactus9 #129
‘I thought that one of the key things about racism is that whether a remark is racist is not really decided by the intentions of the speaker but by whether the person takes it to be racist. Obviously intentions matter a lot but it's the impact that is primary.’
I don’t think things are as simple as that, it subtracts any political intent or manipulation on the part of the aggrieved. It presupposes the micro-aggressor to be all knowing. Now to me that really is political correctness gone mad.
Example: some Palestinians call the Israeli state racist, some Israelis call criticisms of their state racist: the result a moral stale mate.
In politics, in all its aspects, the question of who has the power is central. If you invest one group with the right to decide who or what is racist, sexist, etc. then you abdicate the obligation to look critically at these questions.