#about them and their potential leftist-ness

[mariacallous]

[side-blog-for-politics]

people doing idea genealogy on movements has to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks of leftist theory. it's not materialist in the slightest and while marginally useful I have never seen that usefulness realized, it's always some deeply superficial analysis intended to guilt-by-associate groups / individuals / movements with one another, the most common example being TERFs and historical radical feminism. like Sheila Jeffreys probably cited Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan as influneces, but Judith Butler would also and so might Julia Serano and McKenzie Wark. Which is obvious when you consider how fundamental radical feminism was to the development of feminism in our society, especially the academic variety which you see used most often in media studies (the apparent past time of feminists on the internet).

the answer is not to be broadly damning or hypervigilant of the "wrong kind" of feminism as if you were dealing with some kind of dangerous idea that might somehow infect your actions and cause you to become Evil, this is reactionary and completely misunderstands the situation of these utterances in power. the few actually existing TERFs with large platforms are not there because of the broader flaws with a political articulation, they are well-connected opportunists taking advantage of the flaws in that articulation, which arise necessarily from the fact that nobody can know everything and explain it perfectly, least of all about the future and especially when they're dead.

reactionaries who wear the mask of movements or people who might not have even liked them when alive are given the ability to do widespread violence against political minorities by the simple nature of political minority - Audre Lorde spoke on this when she stated that oppression was defined by the ability to do violence on the oppressed, that you cannot use the master's tools, and so on.

i would go on to say that mass mobilization is flawed & insufficient (but not entirely dismissible) in the way that anything which touches a large number of people has the ability to direct or incentivize the movement of those people however the reality I think is that more often than not this is only because the node in question is understood to be large, and therefore misarticulations (even if malicious) are accepted as this is seen as an acceptable way they could be realized, however only insomuch as better articulations might be simultaneously suppressed so that e.g. a news publication can maintain its monopoly on a particular kind of conversation - presented as a good to be consumed in the free marketplace.

a crucial skill that is used far less frequently is the tracing of well-connected-ness in question, that is, to seriously examine why particular agendas are promoted, exacted and orchestrated and the mechanisms by which they do so, to be more precise, the literal connections between individuals *with power* is a *potential* part of the web that can be targeted but cannot be the sole or primary form of action against an institution. other potential considerations might be the flow of resources to the institution in question, or the isolation and de-networking carried out centrally within the institution i.e. anti-union activity. also worth consideration is the role that institution plays in a broader context, such as their relationship to the government, and how that role might be transformed or eliminated.

[itstwothirty]

Your girl when she

Sees a photo of me holding a big fish

Is it making fun of nerds

Or is it nerds making dun of themselves

Or is it nerds making fun of everybody

Using the image of an anime girl stripping to tell a story about what women will do for sex

Is it communicating the desires of the woman? Assumed desires? True desires? True according to who?

Or is it assigning meaning to a sexualized body as a vessel of power dynamics

What is want? What about the wantedness of unwanted touch? Consent falls into moments of unwanted ness being claimed as wanted actions

Until a point where the wantedness may become an unwant once again

And so do I ironically think this is funny Bc it makes me think of men on tinder who post pictures of them with a big fish? Bc the literal joke Is just a meme? And the best way to understand the metaphor is to inspect its template

The expectation?

The model?

Your girl when she - alpha position, dominator, assumed property owner, irresistible masculinity

—but can be turned on its head to make fun of something quirky a girl might do and the entitled masculinity becomes a moment of witness and potentially even self reflective moment

—can be used to make fun of yourself by positing your interests as unpopular but subculturallu relevant or even sometimes communicating authentic passion

—easily comes back around to the need for external validation and the need to come after other men and assert dominance through acts of humiliation and honestly perform some made up roles but dance and dress nonetheless

-fish joke-tinder dudes. Unwanted nudes. Or maybe a heart of gold. But really truly an inevitability. They represent the zeitgeist. The disciplined self that seeks no individuality, but pursues life and is inescapable for one confronting the world of desperate men.

-everyone loves using anime girls half naked. Eye catching. Complicated. Why are you still looking? It’s always about forcing u to see something else (italics) something other (Italics) than the message. The something else? Hyper sexualized feminine body. She’s blushing and she’s not human. She’s cyborg. You wanna see a joke about something you see across Facebook, tinder, and Instagram? And it relates to Guys being dudes? Well you have to witness softcore fetish art too. Call her vanilla if u please, but she’s still a 2d girl. What would your mom think? And the woman in lingerie is there and she’s giving herself completely. But the byproduct is youre seeing something made by someone. And the other thought your having is what other things have been done w these girls? What kinds of jokes are being told?

And they feel harmless. Usually a few layers of irony and it’s funny Bc it’s almost intense but then you think about the leftists And the queers and the amount of trauma and advice and perspective on the world is communicated using this hyper sexual used anime girl. I’ve read some serious political theory block text memes with anime girls as the background. It’s like a sigil or in some ways

Claimed aesthetic? Is it just tht these girls are so ubiquitous that no one cares about the implications—we’re a few layers of irony in and so the answer is obfuscated by taste … whatever that is…. And trends.

Memes are visual trends. But they’re also textual. They are a medium. And they matter. Far more complex than the others. Anonymity first, naivety second, curiosity third, and full stop - embodiment. You’re making a claim. A specific claim to the meme when you make it. And that claim is easily lost, but infinitely replicable. And what does ir do when it’s telling the witness so many things at once? It loses its order. It is an agent of chaos. Fractals and more fractals and still a universal language. Language because it shares the same basic units. But ultimately confident in its unstable form. And so it domesticates the users, it teaches us that we are talking in tongues and copper tubes. We all see different things, so we are shown different things, even if it’s the same old anime titties.

[tomlennard-blog]

Two Tribes

Sometimes when you go along to leftist political meetings it feels a little like there are two distinct tribes, talking past each other (perhaps my choice of the word “tribes” here is somewhat contentious - it’s assuming that where there are “tribes” there’s “war” - whereas a lot of the time tribes may peacefully coexist close to each other, however the word factions doesn’t quite cut it).

The two tribes I’m talking about are 1, the “Contradictionalists” (as I will call them) and then 2, the “GetOnWithIts” The former tribe like to contradict everything that anyone else says. I know a lot of left wing theory is rooted in the synthesising of contradictions. But there’s no need to over egg the dialectical pudding. Ok - I am being slightly facetious in this post - but really - when people start to shoot things down like this it clearly presents itself like a bit of fetish. The latter tribe tend not be so nit-picking. The ideas they present are usually less tied up, but more open for someone else to take on board. What they are really trying to do is subtly suggest that it would be best to move from theory into practice. Unfortunately the general thrust of a lot of left wing meetings involves navel gazing theory. There is also the problem of members of the second tribe who promise to do things, and then never do them. . A series of meetings of a new group can, when not well managed, turn from an evenish number of 1 and 2, to a concentration of mostly 1s after a while.  Thus this second tribe rarely have as much long term influence on the flow of meetings

So what to do? Everyone, one guesses, wants things to change and get better. One could:

- Try and modify the flow of traffic so that a host or facilitator allows Tribe 1 to speak and then 2, and then 1 again (and so on) 

- Change the whole dynamic of the meeting in some way, to make everyone mix their Tribe 1-ness with their Tribe 2-ness

- You could limit the number of meetings and/or banish deep theoretical discussion to the internet.

Democratic accountability is something that will always crop up with this suggestion. Of course decision making should be fair, but we do need to ask ourselves at which stage a decision needs to be voted on, as well as the potential we’ll ruin spontaneity if things are too torpid or protracted. Option 2 is also something that sounds viable, but would take a lot of planning and good facilitation skills. In this text I’ve ran with the rather resigned pitch that you are always going to have a group of “Contradictionalists” and “GetOnWithIts” in any given meeting. The left is terrible for looking in its own ranks for traitors because it holds itself, rightly, to high standards. Which is why to progress, we need a strategy for getting ourselves.