#politically incorrect social justice

[thekimspoblog]

September, 2029.

*Iris playing video games*

*Jimmy sits down on the couch next to them*

Jimmy: Hey, it's a beautiful Saturday. Let's go do something. I found this place on the Delaware river where you can rent everything, even the fishing poles.

Iris: You want to go fishing?

Jimmy: I dunno. You said sometimes you felt more like a son than a daughter. This is me trying to do the father-son bonding thing. Am I doing it wrong?

Iris: You know what? I'd love to. Sounds fun.

----------

Supply Rental Cashier: Ok Mr. Polastri. You're gonna go down to the banks, between the rowboats and the kayaks. The safety instructor is going to give you a brief orientation about the life jackets and whatnot. Then you and your granddaughter can shove off!

Iris: Hey! That's my dad! (These kinds of misunderstandings were never not embarrassing)

Supply Rental Cashier: Sorry. In any case, enjoy your trip.

_________

Jimmy: Alright now I know you might be a little squeamish using live bait. But you know worms actually have nine hearts. And it's debated whether they even can feel pain in the same way that we-

*Iris stabs the hook clean through the worm perfect on the first try*

Jimmy: Oh look, you got it. Actually, can you do mine? Mine's off-center and it looks like it's already starting to wriggle off the hook. To be honest, I closed my eyes doing it.

___________

Jimmy: So I don't want to be over simplistic about it, but I have to ask. What does this mean in terms of... you know... bringing someone home? I mean girls? Boys? You're almost twelve; I assume you have some idea of who you like by now.

Iris: I dunno. There are some pretty girls I've noticed I guess... What's that look for?

Jimmy: I'm a little relieved, is all. If you had a girlfriend, I'd have advice on how to treat her. If you were my daughter and you had a boyfriend, I'd have advice on how he should be treating you. But two boys? I'm not homophobic or anything; I'd just be out of my depths. I've always gotten along better with women. All the relationships I've had with other men were...

*Jimmy trails off, laughing darkly*

Iris: Dad, I'm still figuring out what gender I am. Let alone whether I'm "gay" whatever that would mean in this context. And besides, I've got too much on my mind right now. Too many things I want to do with my life. Love would just feel like a distraction.

Jimmy: Yeah this is definitely a conversation you should be having with your mom.

Iris: *Loud sigh* You should have seen the look on her face when I came out to her.

Jimmy: You're more alike than you might think.

Iris: I can just tell she doesn't believe me.

Jimmy: Well she has less experience than I do dealing with freaks. And I mean that as a compliment! But seriously, I'd be lying if I said I fully understood it either. But I'm adding a 'yet' to that statement. I'm not a grammar nazi; you want to say 'they/them' is a singular pronoun, who am I to argue? I promise, your mother might not get her head around it, but she'll respect the ground rules you lay down. I think she's just scared. No matter how you look, I think she'd want to tell you not to walk the streets after dark, and to keep your hand over your drink when talking to strangers.

Iris: Her neuroticism is going to crush me.

Jimmy: She's not wrong though.

(Silence)

Jimmy: Come to think of it, I did have one male friend. I've told you about Marco, right?

*Iris nods*

Iris: I've always liked that ring. Can I have it? I mean... when I go off to college or something?

*Jimmy looks off into the sunset pensively, then begins to take the pinky ring off*

Jimmy: Hell, you can have it right now.

______________

*Both admiring the boney minnow they caught*

Iris: Those pole rentals are a rip-off. Next time, we should just buy our own.

Jimmy: You mean it?

Iris: Why did you wait for me to be tomboy before you thought to try this?

Jimmy: If you haven't noticed, I try to avoid the great outdoors whenever possible.

@richeeduvie @2entangledworms @mcwexlerscigarette

[fieldlands]

i feel like it's absolutely crucial in the social justice world to take "he a little confused but he got the spirit" and similar sentiments/situations as a Win. intent is so much more important than saying it right the first time! if someone is approaching with scuffed language and incorrect terms but they're visibly being as polite as they know how, that person is a friend and should be treated better than what their words might invite in someone else's mouth.

[eddiegettingshot]

ok i’ll be done in a second and back to the regular haterism. but i do think it’s incredibly interesting the way these people engage with identity and identity politics not as an actual marker of social location or an important form of context for someone’s relation to power but as some kind of abstract, static permission slip that they wave around and insert into complex moral arithmetic about how social justice is done that only really makes sense to them. and they deploy identity in whatever way is convenient to them. we’re lesbians when we’re hating a fictional man so that they can call us t/erfs but it doesn’t matter at all that we’re lesbians, we’re just homophobes like any other homophobes when we’re friends with a gay man they don’t like, and his association with us is a signifier of his political incorrectness. we’re women who are too blinded by the misogyny we experience when we’re interpreting a scene between two men but we’re women who are able to marginalize and subjugate men and their “voices” when we’re existing in fandom alongside them. we’re dykes when we’re being annoying but dykes have never joked lightheartedly or in good faith about the fags we like apparently. really funny and fascinating stuff happening here

[radfemverity]

It isn't an exaggeration to say that political correctness costs lives. Whether it is the UK police, councils and social services refusing to investigate grooming gangs for decades to avoid accusations of racism, or gender critical women being fired from their jobs and arrested across several countries under ‘hate speech’ laws, which then impacts their ability to earn an income to support their children…

Or it is victims of crimes having to worry that, if they tell the police about what happened to them, they will be arrested for wrongthink themselves.

It is common for police to seize a crime victim's personal devices (or rather, *strongly* coerce them into handing them over), even in instances where the crime was not captured on the devices. The justification given is that, in court, the victim's character can be vouched for by evidencing their clean devices.

Many of us, myself included, have expressed beliefs that fall outside of the establishment's. Maybe you've been open about not believing in gender ideology, or disliking Islam, or not taking a vaccine and that got you labelled as a ‘conspiracy theorist’. These are all things that can be used against you, even when you are the victim, in employment, education and police contexts.

I wonder how many victims of domestic and sexual abuse have had to ask themselves ‘what have I shared with my abuser that his lawyers could use to assassinate my character with in court?’ We know this already happens with women’s intimate experiences, traumas and mental health challenges. Why not their ‘controversial’ opinions too?

I wonder how many women out there have fallen victim to a serious crime, wanted to see the perpetrator face justice, but have first had to ask themselves, ‘if I go to the police, what if they go through my phone and use the things on there against me?’

If you live in the UK, and you've got a gender critical Twitter account, it could happen. Women have been arrested for putting up TERF stickers. Source. If you have any views that get coded ‘right wing’, it could happen. A man was just sentenced to 2 years in prison for anti-immigration and anti-Islam stickers. Source. If you’ve ever posted lyrics to your Instagram story which contained the n word, it could happen (yep. A 19 year old autistic girl from Liverpool was convicted for posting lyrics to her private insta. Source). If you have any edgy memes in your photo album, it could happen. If you’ve ever called your friend the r word as a joke in a group chat, it could happen.

This is part of the reason I never reported my rape. I didn’t want some of my old right wing beliefs to be used against me in court. If I ever do report a crime that I’ve been a victim of, the first thing I’ll do is deactivate all my social media accounts before the cops arrive – and I would recommend others to do the same. Because that is where we are now in this political climate. Trial by mob, the woke mob specifically.

Just thought I’d bring this topic up because I suspect this will become more common in the near future – victims either not reporting to the police for fear of being targeted for wrongthink, or reporting and then being targeted as a result. I hope I’m wrong about this. I just wonder, women are already blamed if we were drunk, promiscuous, or naive. So why not politically incorrect as well?

[jessaerys]

hate to say it but skins is getting better on rewatch; the queer politics are batshit insane 

the second half of s1 built up the tony-maxxie relationship as plot-critical: tony trying to hook up with maxxie to "try something new" is the catalyst of tony’s social and then physical+mental downfall. and it is very interesting to me that it is tony’s latent homosexual curiosity that michelle, (and by extension the narrative, which ultimately wants us to root for a michelletony endgame despite how miserable they make each other) finally considers too immoral to ignore (despite the open secret of tony’s many infidelities and plenty of unethical behaviors, as  well as his subtext infatuation with sid)

like it is textually tony’s  attempt to finally act upon this incorrect masculinity that becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back and brings about plenty of narrative punishment that is a clear tool to make him a “better” person (rn i think skins gen1 is pretty straightforwardly a punitive justice narrative)

anyway, all of this said, we are obviously meant to empathize with maxxie. his s1 conflict is his best friend won’t tell his parents that he is gay; it’s a pretty basic 2007 stuff.  he is the token gay character but he is written as a fully fledged human being (in some cases even more than other members of the cast) though i think this is partially very good acting carrying the character’s depth. he even goes from a secondary cast member in s1 to a primary one in s2, even being the opener of the season. 

what i find interesting is that maxxie is posited as gay from the beginning;  it is the challenging of the main character’s heterosexual status quo that the narrative seems to resent and punish

so we get to s2 and tune in again to see that maxxie’s & tony’s relationship has become one of ongoing intimate/tender/nurturing friendship with undeniable homoeroticism/queer subtext, which seems debatably intentional to me  in a queerbait/fanservice way that is pretty standard for the 00s (with an implied: it’s never going to happen) and this newfound intimacy both heightens the subtext of tony’s queerness while simultaneously neutering it. another reason why i think this development is a response to the audience (and i’ve done zero research so im just extrapolating here) is the plotline that’s just gotten introduced about maxxie’s straight female stalker, which feels like some sort of jab, possibly, to fangirls and fandom

so we’ve got tony, punished for his sexual deviance just when he was beginning to return to the “correct” gender performance (falling in love with michelle rather than just toying with her), and now he is helpless, disabled, and most importantly desexualized, and he is being tended to by the single queer character and all the while michelle waits it out because — well im running out of steam, but something something, michelle cant tend to tony while he is disabled because there’s no eroticism in it, heterosexual intimacy does not involve vulnerability, does not involve caretaking, does not involve emotional and mental support, only the passion of conflict and empty declarations of undying love 

meanwhile, hilariously enough, instead of having sid take care of tony and therefore show a distinct dynamic between michelle and the guy who pretty much says he “belongs to tony,” he is also sulking with michelle and waiting it out like a second love interest because uhhh [checks notes] we also need sid-tony passionate conflict don’t think too hard about it. i love when things are both gay and homophobic 

[mmakaylllaa]

Week 11 11/7

How has Black Twitter shown the intertwinement of social media and activism?

With the countless hashtags created in this online community space to advocate for innocent Black lives lost and challenge the dangerous bias in mainstream media, Black twitter has shown time and time again that incorporating activism and social media makes a difference. “Consequently, the hashtag #APHeadlines also demonstrates the power of Twitter, particularly black twitter, in exposing implicit bias and changing the narrative.” The purpose of this hashtag was to hold Associated Press accountable with damaging and misleading headlines. Shortly after sparking this conversation with a hashtag, the press corrected the headline. It is surely a short step in recognition but unfortunately not close enough to aiding in bringing justice in these situations. I believe these organizations and media outlets do not care about the consequences of misinformation until faced with backlash in fear of ruining their reputation. If these media outlets wanted to properly highlight the community, they would need to start with proper information with no bias and incorporation of the real people affected. This push for accountability and change is possible when we continue to pair activism and social media to spread the word and gain traction.

How have cyber protests proven to enforce and encourage change in the past?

The Black Lives Matter movement is a prominent era in both digital culture and US history that has proven to effectively encourage and enforce change. While the core of BLM’s impact comes from physical protests, policy advocacy, and community organizing- its digital strategies have amplified its message and overall reach. With the creation of #BLM, millions have been able to share stories, organize protests, and call attention to police brutality and systemic racism. With viral campaigns on social media platforms, information on the movement spread quickly as the world was able to witness firsthand accounts of police violence and raise awareness on a global level.

How can we compare and contrast online activism to physical activism?

Although both practices are powerful for encouraging social and political change, they have very distinct characteristics and limitations. In terms of online activism, participants are allowed a broad reach with the use of hashtags, viral posts, and shared content to reach millions at the speed of a share button. With this there are also no entry barriers since the internet allows for petitions, donations, and open engagement. Physical activism has a more local impact as physical protests tend to focus on a specific area. There is also a higher commitment level as participating in a physical demonstration requires time, travel, and risk which limits participation to some. While both have been proven to spread messages it is important to know the risk factor with getting physically involved.

What ethical issues do online activism pose?

Online activism comes with a range of ethical issues and concerns such as misinformation, doxxing, privacy violations, cyber harassment, toxic behavior, cancel culture, anonymity, and amplification of extremist views. Since online activism spreads quickly, this also means misleading information spreads rapidly. This poses a danger as it leaves room for unintentionally or intentionally spreading extremist views, assumptions, or incorrect data and destroying credibility and trust. A huge ethical issue involved in every form of activism is harassment and toxic behavior due to opposing views or those involved not conforming to certain expected standards. This impact creates hostility and ultimately deters the entire meaning of uniformity. By addressing these issues and concerns we must also find a balance for effectively advocating for change while respecting principles of privacy and accountability.

[finelinens1994]

In their book Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk, philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke argue that we often raise issues of justice and equity not to advance meaningful social causes but to generate positive attention for ourselves by denigrating others. Sometimes this involves piling on—joining a Greek chorus of reproachful replies without contributing anything new—or exaggerating one’s moral outrage for dramatic value. In doing so, we dilute the impact of critical ethical issues and foreclose the possibility of productive public discourse. The goal is not to understand but to win. Grandstanding is not just about demonstrating that your position is right but that your opponent’s position—and, by extension, their moral character—is wrong. What was the original point? Who cares: you are ethically bankrupt and here’s why.

[Moral Grandstanding] Motivation was not the only driving factor in political/moral conflict, as other personality traits and relevant constructs also demonstrated clear associations. For example, in Study 6, social vigilantism was also uniquely associated with general experiences of political/moral conflict and greater endorsement of grandstanding like behaviors both at baseline and one week later. Such a pattern of findings suggests that problems in public discourse are likely attributable to a range of traits and circumstances. The desire to correct or criticize others for having “bad” or “incorrect” beliefs (i.e., social vigilantism) clearly also contributes to such problems. Collectively, this indicates that toxic aspects of discourse are not likely to be easily corrected by simply addressing status-seeking motivations, grandstanding motivations, or any other single cause. [...] it has been hypothesized that [Moral Grandstanding] causes political polarization, increases cynicism about the practice of moral discourse, and leads to “outrage exhaustion,” in which one becomes desensitized to public expressions of moral outrage and is unable to muster outrage when it is warranted, due to the overuse of outrage and similar emotions to communicate one’s moral superiority.

[rauthschild]

THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.....CAROL SWAIN

When you think about racial equality and civil rights, which political party comes to mind?

The Republicans? Or, the Democrats? Most people would probably say the Democrats. But this answer is incorrect.

Since its founding in 1829, the Democratic Party has fought against every major civil rights initiative, and has a long history of discrimination.

The Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War, opposed Reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s.

In contrast, the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. Its mission was to stop the spread of slavery into the new western territories with the aim of abolishing it entirely. This effort, however, was dealt a major blow by the Supreme Court. In the 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, the court ruled that slaves aren’t citizens; they’re property.

The seven justices who voted in favor of slavery? All Democrats. The two justices who dissented? Both Republicans.

The slavery question was, of course, ultimately resolved by a bloody civil war. The commanderin-chief during that war was the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln – the man who freed the slaves.

Six days after the Confederate army surrendered, John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat, assassinated President Lincoln. Lincoln’s vice president, a Democrat named Andrew Johnson, assumed the presidency. But Johnson adamantly opposed Lincoln’s plan to integrate the newly freed slaves into the South’s economic and social order.

Johnson and the Democratic Party were unified in their opposition to the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment, which gave blacks citizenship; and the 15th Amendment, which gave blacks the vote.

All three passed only because of universal Republican support.

During the era of Reconstruction, federal troops stationed in the south helped secure rights for the newly freed slaves. Hundreds of black men were elected to southern state legislatures as Republicans, and 22 black Republicans served in the US Congress by 1900. The Democrats did not elect a black man to Congress until 1935.

But after Reconstruction ended, when the federal troops went home, Democrats roared back into power in the South. They quickly reestablished white supremacy across the region with measures like black codes – laws that restricted the ability of blacks to own property and run businesses. And they imposed poll taxes and literacy tests, used to subvert the black citizen’s right to vote.

And how was all of this enforced? By terror -- much of it instigated by the Ku Klux Klan,

founded by a Democrat, Nathan Bedford Forrest.

As historian Eric Foner - himself a Democrat - notes:

“In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.”

President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, shared many views with the Klan. He re-segregated many federal agencies, and even screened the first movie ever played at the White House - the racist film “The Birth of a Nation,” originally entitled “The Clansman.”

A few decades later, the only serious congressional opposition to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 came from Democrats.

Eighty percent of Republicans in Congress supported the bill. Less than 70 percent of

Democrats did. Democratic senators filibustered the bill for 75 days, until Republicans mustered the few extra votes needed to break the logjam.

And when all of their efforts to enslave blacks, keep them enslaved, and then keep them from voting had failed, the Democrats came up with a new strategy: If black people are going to vote, they might as well vote for Democrats. As President Lyndon Johnson was purported to have said about the Civil Rights Act, “I’ll have them n*****s voting Democrat for two hundred years.”

So now, the Democratic Party prospers on the votes of the very people it has spent much of its history oppressing.

Democrats falsely claim that the Republican Party is the villain, when in reality it’s the failed policies of the Democratic Party that have kept blacks down. Massive government welfare has decimated the black family. Opposition to school choice has kept them trapped in failing schools. Politically correct policing has left black neighborhoods defenseless against violent crime.

So, when you think about racial equality and civil rights, which political party should come to mind?

I’m Carol Swain, professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, for Prager University.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Wokal Distance

Published: Feb 16, 2023

Recently there was another dust up about what we mean when we talk about “woke.” This was sparked by a Television interview where Bethany Mandel, who I consider a friend, was interviewed about her new book and was asked by the host Briana Joy Gray to define woke. Unfortunately, Bethany had difficulty giving an on the spot definition of the term, and simply responded by saying the Woke was difficult to define.

Predictably, this lead to something of a pile on as a tweet of the moment went viral on twitter. In short, a large number of left leaning accounts proceeded to say words to the effect that when conservatives call things woke, all they are doing is dog-whistling various bigoted sentiments. In other words, “woke” is just a term that conservatives use as a slur.  Here are just a couple of examples:

This is all part of a strategy that is being employed by Critical Social Justice (AKA “woke”) activists in order to protect their ideology and worldview from criticism. As we will see, what they are doing is attempting to prevent us from giving their ideology a name or a label in order to protect it from criticism.

So I am going to explain how and why they do this, and what we can do about it. Let’s begin.

1.      Sketching the problem

No doubt readers of this substack have heard people who claim to fight for Social Justice say things like: "White privilege is a product of systemically racist social structures which center whiteness and marginalize people of color while reproducing white supremacy. This reinforces dominant power structures and a cultural hegemony that benefits cisgendered heterosexual white males at the expense of BIPOC, Latinx, and LGBTQS2+ folx."

We've all seen that jargon coming from people with similar views, politics, and ideas, all demanding sweeping social change from the left. They might be doing advocacy in different areas of society, and with respect to different topics, but the similarity of the language, the overlap of the concepts, and the fact that the arguments are always concerned with oppression, privilege, systemic power, diversity, equity, inclusion, inequality, ability status, sex, race, and gender indicate that here is clearly a coherent worldview at work here. However, every time we try give that worldview a name they say the name we pick is problematic, wrong, incorrect, bigoted, misleading or otherwise problematic.

Many names have been tried, but every time we try to name this ideology: woke, Critical Race Theory, Socialism, neo-marxism, cultural Marxism, Critical Social Justice, The successor ideology, and we are told none of this is appropriate or correct.

This inability to give the ideology in question a name prevents people from being able to talk about the project of social, cultural, and political change coming from the left. They want to agitate, advocate, and demand social change without acknowledging, much less defending, the worldview at the center of their project.

The result is that there is a large number of ideologically connected but formally unconnected social movements which all proceed from the same worldview while all denying that there is a single distinct worldview, mindset, or ideology at work. We have:

BLM

Defund the Police

Critical Race Theory

Queer theory (aka, gender ideology or radical gender theory)

Drag Queen Story Hour

Diversity Equity, and inclusion

And a host of other social and political movements, all of which use similar language, have similar policies, similar concerns, and which work together in “solidarity” with each other, all while claiming that there is no underlying common worldview which can be given a label.

They will tell you that they want to change society, change the world, and change the culture, but if you ask them to put a name to their ideology it always comes up empty. Sometimes they will say “oh, this is just kindness,” or “we call it fairness.” This is absurd. Most people do not think “society is constructed by systemic power which socializes people to accept the legitimacy of a system which reproduces white privilege at the expense of POC and which needs to be decolonized in order to make space for non-binary folx” when they are trying to talk about fairness.

So what exactly is going on here?

2.     The strategy at work.

So I would like to now explain what I think is going on using Zebras as an analogy. This will make sense I promise you.

Many animals have fur, feathers, or skin that blends in to their environment. This acts as camouflage so they can blend in to their environment and hide. This owl is a fine example:

Zebras, however, are different. They use camouflage, but they way they use it is entirely different. Zebra’s are covered in black and white stripes even though the environment they live in is mostly brown and green. If you see a zebra by itself, it's very easy to see.

It's like they have a neon sign over them saying "lions, please eat me." Look at this picture below, this Zebra does not blend into it’s background at all:

So how does Zebra Camouflage work? Well, its simple: Zebra camouflage works by making zebras blend with the herd so that lions can't focus on any one zebra and target it. In order for Lions to kill a zebra they need to be able to pick one Zebra, focus on it, and then go after it. If the lions are unable to pick a target then the Zebras are safe.

What Zebras Camouflage does is to make the Zebras blend into the heard. It makes them all blend in together with each other so that it becomes near impossible for the lions to select any one zebra to attacks. If lions can't pick a target to go after, then the Zebras are safe. And as you can see in the pictures below, when the Zebras are in a single herd it becomes nearly impossible to pick out any one of them:

Scientists discovered this as they studied Zebras and got confused about which individual zebra was which, and that happened because the zebras camouflage causes them to all blend into the herd.

So, they tried to fix this by tagging a zebra with red paint so they could recognize it from the others and keep track of it.

Guess what happened?

The Lions killed the tagged Zebra. A tagged zebra stands out from the herd so lions can tell it apart and focus the hunt on it. The Lions don't catch weak zebras, they catch the *IDENTIFIABLE* Zebras they can focus on. If a Zebra stand out from the herd, or gets separated from the herd it no longer blends in with the rest of the herd and it loses the benefit of it's camouflage, at which point the lions can focus on it, target it, and kill it.

This is a great analogy for the game the woke are playing.

Once a worldview is named and defined, it can then be pointed out, highlighted, and subjected to criticism. Once you can *IDENTIFY* a worldview or set of ideas you can focus on it. Naming an idea lets us separate it from the herd of other ideas and examine it up close. The woke don't want anyone to be able to give a name or label to their ideology because if that happens we can "tag" examples their ideology with a label when we see it. This allows us to highlight it, point it out, and examine it when we see it.

We label and name things to help us "tag" them, so we can point them out and focus on them, the woke are trying desperately to destroy all of our linguistic "tags." Woke activists do not want us to be able to single out their ideas and subject them to criticism. Woke ideas really can't withstand proper rational and logical analysis. The lions of truth: evidence, logic, rationality, etc, will eat the Zebras of Wokeness, Gender Ideology, Critical Race Theory, and Critical Social Justice for lunch. But only if the lions of reason can focus on and identify the Zebras of woke ideology.

This is what the woke want to avoid. The woke think our criticisms are not legitimate and merely an attempt by us to attack them so we can hold on to "power and privilege." For that reason the woke seek to insulate themselves from our "illegitimate" criticism.

So, to avoid getting eaten by the lions of reason the woke want to camouflage their ideology in a way that makes it impossible to it to be seen, pointed out, highlighted, or (in woke parlance) "made visible." They want hide their worldview by making it impossible to focus on and impossible to tag, label, or name. so they can say they are "just doing history" or "just discussing gender," and "blend in" as though wokeness fits right alongside reason, evidence, logic, and rationality.

We need to use labels to be able to point at, highlight, and otherwise tag woke concepts so that they can be seen and then held up and examined for criticism. Using labels like "woke," "CRT," AND "Critical Social Justice," lets us tag woke ideas so we can hold them up to the light and examine them. Labels help us point out wokeness to other people so they can see it too.

This is what the woke want to avoid.

What the woke want is to act like all the bits of woke activism we see are unconnected phenomena spontaneously springing fourth in the name of justice in an organic and decentralized way.  They want to act as though things like BLM, Defund the Police, “Diversity, equity, and Inclusion,” and Drag Queen Story Hour are diffuse and unconnected movements when in fact they are all connected by their adherence to an underlying worldview and ideology.

The formal name of this ideology is Critical Social Justice,1 or in common parlance, wokeness.

3.     What is the solution

Do not let them do this. Do not let them play games and use linguistic and rhetorical sleight of hand to hide their worldview. You do not need to give an exhaustive definition every time they invent a new term, or every time they present you with some new bit of jargon. All you need is a definition of wokeness that communicates its ideas in a clear way so people can examine it.

I would like to provide what I think is an accurate definition of wokeness that even a person who is “woke” would be willing to accept.

Woke: (sometimes called Critical Social Justice) is a type of social justice politics that claims systemic identity based discrimination such as racism, sexism, homophobia, white privilege, and other sorts of injustice are baked into the fabric of society. In short, society is oppressive. They believe this occurs through “systems of power” which were created for the benefit people who are white, straight, and male, at the expense of everyone else. This power operates through cultural hegemony (cultural dominance) and by socializing people into accepting the legitimacy of this oppressive system, and accepting their place in it. Wokeness claims these systems of power warp every element of western culture in a way that harms people, and for that reason all of society must be radically restructured.  Everything, including science, knowledge, truth, beauty, economics, education, sports, music, film, agriculture, justice and everything else on society are full of bigotries, biases and self-interest which are a product of the systems of power which were created by and for straight white males. On this view even such things as math, biology, physics, and chemistry must be radically rebuilt with a focus toward diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice, anti-racism, and so fourth.

To give you something that is a little easier to memorize and pull out in conversation, Neil Shenvi has offered a definition of wokeness which fits into a single tweet:

Wilfred Reilly offers and even shorter definition that is excellent for use in everyday conversation:

With a proper definition of wokeness now in view we should now proceed to make sure that we carefully, accurately, and carefully label things as Critical Social Justice or “Woke” when they fit that definition. We should have absolutely no hesitation in doing so.

These woke activists have labelled everyone they disagree with as:

racist

bigot

sexist

white supremacist

nazi

fascist

transphobe

homophobe

ableist

misogynist

anti-black

They absolutely do not get to complain when we label them as “woke.”

Label fairly, use labels from their literature, and label accurately, do not hesitate to label those woke ideas and then subject those woke ideas to the bright light of rigorous criticism and analysis.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Wokal_distance

--

1 Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, second edition. Teachers College press. 2017. P.19

==

An alternate approach is to ignore the definitions entirely.

I don't really care what name you want to call it when:

everything is seen through paranoid, invisible power dynamics and emotional abuse and manipulative lies are used to coerce people who have done nothing wrong;

or when the most fragile, most ideologically possessed can, and do, weaponize the worst, most intellectually dishonest reading of a statement or situation and insist you're a bigot if you don't accept it as true;

or when black kids are told that society is structured around "anti-blackness" and white kids are told that they are oppressors;

or when the liberal mainstay of colorblindness (reducing the social signifiance of skin color) is itself regarded as "racist", and the new morality declares the opposite is required;

or when equality and merit are treated as bigotry, and standards must be lowered;

or when racial segregation is rehabilitated as a virtue;

or when objective reality is denied, objectivity itself is bigoted, and truth becomes merely an opinion;

or when gay conversion therapy is being endorsed by supposed LGBT organizations;

or when parents transition their kids because they liked the wrong toys;

or when doctors and hospitals lie about the need for medical experiments on kids, or that they're doing them at all;

or when people keep pretending they don't know how babies are made;

or when organizations are consumed with ideological activism and become incapable of fulfilling their actual mission;

or when our knowledge-producing institutions are tearing themselves apart and dismantling our knowledge-making processes in order to restructure themselves instead for the production of religious piety as ideological convents;

or when words are redefined or eliminated entirely for the purpose of controlling thought and re-engineering society;

or when the most privileged, most entitled people in the world in the freest countries in the world are roleplaying as oppressed victims;

or when people in those countries voluntarily implement defacto blasphemy laws to suppress or punish wrongthink, and even arguing in favor of freedom of speech is recast as a "dogwhistle" for "hate";

or when it's somehow both the case that LiTeRaLLy nO oNe Is DoInG tHiS and you're a bigot for getting in their way.

I don't care what you call this.

It just has to end.

[mariacallous]

Vladimir Putin's disastrous full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by a remarkably competent wave of repression at home, leading to renewed talk of Russians’ supposed “genetic predilection for slavery.” Ostensibly, centuries of oppression, dictatorship, and state terror could not but affect the Russian people's “DNA” — a fact, some argue, that is clearly demonstrated by the absence of any mass protest movement against the war inside Russia itself. Biologist Alexander Markov, however, has an answer for those arguing in favor of the popular theory that genetics — or “cultural heritability” — can explain why Russia today remains so persistently authoritarian.

The very question as to the mythical or “real” foundations of Russians’ supposed “genetic slavery” is unquestionably politically incorrect. Many will call it racist, and for good reason: the idea that socially meaningful differences between peoples — such as their intelligence, levels of aggression, penchant for hard work, or love for democracy — are determined by genetic traits, is baldly racist. The broad modern-day consensus, shared in particular by the educated general public of Western countries (at least in public discourse), is that such differences do not exist and could not exist in principle. Such is the generally acceptable social norm, the product of a cultural revolution rooted in the long and tumultuous history of fighting for social justice and equality for all.

However, as important as this tenet might be at our present stage of societal development, it contains no scientific proof that genetic differences between ethnic groups do not actually exist. Indeed, many societies and individuals continue to indulge in racist heresy, whether publicly or in private.

But even weak arguments are usually based on at least some facts. It is true that the Russian state yet again failed to build a Western-style democracy, and it is also true that the bloody consequences of this spectacular failure have shaken the entire world. As a result, many have come to wonder, eagerly or reluctantly, whether the Russian people really might be a few cards short when it comes to the genetic deck.

Genetics is a science — a natural science. It deals with facts and experiments. At least in theory, it should have nothing to do with ideological bias or political correctness. And since we cannot simply ban racist thoughts, we should at the very least be willing to offer a scientific clarification for those political activists who have only a vague understanding of genetics.

[distilled-prose]

June 14, 2023

You all know I tend to keep away from politics, social divisiveness, and other such unpleasantness here on Tumblr. But the absurdity of our current condition is sometimes too extreme to ignore. The local newspaper yesterday reported that JPMorgan, the bank, will pay $290 million to settle an Epstein related lawsuit. The lawsuit claimed the bank allowed itself to be used as a financial conduit for Epstein to operate his sex trafficking ring. Just to recap: Epstein was arrested and jailed but "committed suicide" by hanging himself under the sink in his jail cell while all the video cameras were turned off and the two guards supposed to be watching him decided they didn't need to watch him. Nobody associated with utilizing Epstein's services has been arrested or charged with any crime. The children (Not "underage women" as you sometimes see reported. By definition, these girls mostly under 18, are legally minors, children under the law.) were recruited and abused by Epstein. His clients were rich, famous people, mostly men, many of whom were/are politicians, Hollywood elite, industry big names. His co-conspirator, Ghislsaine Maxwell, now in jail, spoke on two occasions at the UN. (Posts on Facebook and Instagram claim that Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend and longtime associate of the late accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has spoken before the United Nations (U.N.) nine times. This claim is incorrect. Maxwell has never spoken to a U.N. legislative body, but rather at two events held at the U.N. as the founder of an oceanic conservation group.) Newspapers are completely silent on the matter. Television and radio are likewise notably absent from investigating the matter. Our law enforcement agencies are too busy playing politics to pursue the true criminals in this matter. The girls involved in this terrible crime may receive money, but they will never receive justice until the people, everyone single one of the people, abusing them has been brought to justice.

[hjohn3]

The Forever War

How Binary Positioning on the Israel/Palestine Conflict Ignores Its History

Source: BBC News

By Honest John

POLITICS LOVES binaries. There is nothing that pundits, journalists, activists and the committed like more than a straight good guy/bad guy narrative in which complex issues can be reduced, ultimately, to that of a wholly malign force oppressing a virtuous victim bravely standing up for freedom, democracy, common sense or equality - particularly on the left. And no issue dispenses with subtlety and context more readily and thoughtlessly than the tragic forever war of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Since the Hamas attack on the border settlements of southern Israel on 7th October, the partisans have been out in force. Whether it is the pro-Israel “shoulder to shoulder” rhetoric of the US, EU and U.K. governments, Keir Starmer and most of the conservative media offering almost unconditional support to the Israeli regime in the face of those attacks , or the pro-Palestinian sectarian left, street protestors, Muslim communities worldwide and much of the liberal left press appalled at the extent and depth of the Israeli assault on Gaza in response, the space for nuance seems vanishingly small. Lines are drawn: you are either with Israel and its right to defend itself, or you are a hate-filled terrorist apologist and borderline antisemite; or you are either with the Palestinian population being bulldozed in Gaza or you are supporter of neo-colonialism, racism and violent attacks on a defenceless civilian population. It has always struck me as curious that one of the least straightforward geopolitical issues in the world can be reduced to emotional adherence to one cause or the other, each filled with an enraged righteousness that is unwilling to give any room to the narrative or case of their opponents. No wonder this conflict appears intractable. But this habitual positioning is simply not good enough. If the partisans in a conflict now nearly a century old cannot even begin to discover empathy for the other side then the war, violence and misery that infects this narrow eastern Mediterranean coastline will truly never end.

On the left, nothing triggers moral outrage more than the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of the state of Israel. Since the end of South African apartheid, no other issue of social or political justice arouses such passion, denunciation and disproportionate attention than the spectacle of the Israeli military pulverising Gaza or protecting the settler extremists in their efforts to seize more and more of the West Bank from the enfeebled grasp of the Palestinian Authority. Much of the left’s position on Israel is indeed a moral standpoint that supports an asymmetrical struggle of street resistance against overwhelming military force, particularly since the PLO ceased to be a credible military presence in the 1980s. But the left’s position is not motivated purely by liberal handwringing. Its roots lie in the ahistorical ideology of anti imperialism, a transfer of the moral turpitude of apartheid South Africa seamlessly to the state of Israel, and a far darker antipathy to a Jewish ethnic state that leans into the long and ignoble history of left wing antisemitism.

Where the left analysis, such as it is, is so inadequate is in its bending of inconvenient truths about the foundation and development of Israel into a sub-Trotskyist narrative of neo colonialism versus internationalism. It is simply untrue to characterise Israel as a neo-colonial tool of the US, which is the standard narrative of far left parties and the Stop The War Coalition: in fact American military support for Israel did not become significant until after the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel was attacked by six Arab nations committed to destroying it. Before then Israel had looked to France and Britain for support, with the USA wary of Israel as a disruptive force in the region. It is equally incorrect to describe Israel as a “European settler state”, characterising it as a projection of European land grabbing power into the Muslim world. This account demonstrates a failure to understand what European settler colonialism actually was and ignores the status of Israel as a Jewish homeland, which is its fundamental purpose. Indeed, it is impossible to understand why Israel behaves as it does without also understanding the Jewish historical experience of lethal antisemitism.

The Jewish contact with European Christian civilisation was characterised by, at best, a grudging tolerance, punctuated by occasional bursts of terrifying violence. Whether this was the burning alive of Jews in York in the twelfth century; the expulsion of Spain’s Jewish population in 1492; the vicious antisemitism of the early Reformation; the regular lethal pogroms in Eastern Europe or the culmination of anti-Jewish genocide in the Holocaust which, in a sick irony, took place in Germany, a country viewed by many Jews as an accepting refuge, the message appeared to be the same: European Christians hated Jews and frequently wanted them dead. The Holocaust, with its industrialised slaughter, removed all meaningful opposition to the establishment of a Jewish homeland: the German National Socialists had proved the Zionist case for them in the most graphic and horrendous manner. Getting away from Europe for many Jews in the late 1940s was not a matter of land grabbing or colonialism, it was a matter of survival. When the leadership of the new state of Israel said “never again”, it absolutely meant it.

Taken in an historical context, therefore, the Hamas attacks were simply a continuance of the centuries-old murderous assaults experienced by Jews in Europe. Israeli fear of physical extermination is hardly pacified by the fact that Hamas is probably the most antisemitic organisation the world has seen. Its founding charter calls not only for the eradication of the state of Israel, but seeks the physical liquidation of all Jews in Palestine and the wider Middle East. Netanyahu and his gang of nationalists and racists may have viewed Hamas as useful idiots to keep the West Bank PLO survival, Fatah, weak, but its radical Islamist ideology was always there in plain sight. The 7th October atrocities were simply the gruesome enactment of that nihilistic world view. From the Israeli perspective therefore calls for restraint when faced with an enemy as ideologically committed to the killing of Jews as the Nazis ever were, is a luxury. Does Israel care if its air and ground assault to dismantle Hamas kills thousands of civilians in the process? Not at all: from the Israeli perspective it’s them or us, the same reductive mindset as their enemies.

There is therefore an historical context to the systematic brutality of Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians, especially in Gaza. But just as its critics show little interest in the history of antisemitic persecution and death that directly led to the foundation of the Jewish homeland, so Israeli public discourse allows little or no concern for the Palestinians, a dispossessed people oppressed and murdered in their own land without even the restraint of common humanity when it comes to the inflicting of mass civilian casualties, including those of children. Whatever moral high ground Israel may have been able to claim after the psychotic Hamas attacks last month, this has been utterly undermined by its policy of collective punishment and war on non combatants. The war crimes inflicted by Israel on the people of Gaza in acts of rage and revenge have effectively put the country beyond the pale of moral acceptability. These actions infuriate international public opinion, radicalise another generation of Gazans and give succour to those who would see Israel wiped from the face of Palestine “from the river to the sea”. In this inferno of never ending grievance and hate, it is hard to find any hope. However, there is a fundamental truth that may yet, one day, see an end to this forever war. Both Palestinians and Israelis have one overwhelming urge in common: both wish to live in peace, dignity and security. If one day the two communities can rid themselves of their current calamitous leaderships, understand each other’s history and thereby glimpse the humanity of their enemies, the realisation may dawn that continued attempted mutual destruction provides no security at all.

6th November 2023

With thanks to Chris Alcock, conversations with whom have helped inform this blog

[dykescooby]

the problem with reading social justice based books is they will almost never fully align with your personal political opinions and you need to interrogate whether that's because you have more work to do personally or because the author is incorrect in this instance or even just because you have differing opinions on that stance. which is not actually a problem but it can make reading a book you would mostly agree with lose some of it's appeal when it's the second thing

[eternal-echoes]

“Since every society is ordered to a particular realization of the common good which is primarily attained by the desire of the will, every society depends on intelligence and reason to present the prospective goods to the will. The will is like the feet pursuing the good but the intellect is like the eyes by which the person knows where he is going while he is walking. The intellect presents the good to the will and if the will is open to it, the person pursues the good. Intelligence is therefore the most basic origin of authority although, of course, it is implemented by the will, the central power of morals. Obedience is also more involved with the intellect than the will. The good is carried out by the will but at the direction of the truth presented. The word “obedience” comes from obaudire which means “on account of hearing.” This suggests that obedience is more a matter of the intellect than the will. The interpretation which views authority as a competition of wills in which the intelligence is not really involved is neither Catholic nor good philosophy.

On the question of the origin of authority there are two incorrect schools of thought. The first places the origin of authority in the human will alone. The strongest will creates justice and good. In an age which rejects an objective metaphysics, the aspect of the all-powerful will bearing no restraint but what the person places on himself is a natural idea. The other is that, since authority is primarily a matter of the will and since the man we experience in everyday life has a fallen nature, there would have been no authority needed before the existence of sin. Authority is a result of sin.

Both of these ideas are mistaken precisely because authority is primarily a matter of the intellect. Truth directs good and comes before it. This is why no authority, no matter how powerful its will, can make something wrong right or can be said to govern properly if the subjects are treated as animals, as having no will of their own. No authority can claim that there need be no explanation given of possible commands. The origin of authority would thus be the need for any group of people, no matter how innocent, to need directing in pursuing a common good. The example is clear again in rowing the boat. If there are ten people rowing the boat and they are told they all may exercise their freedom as to how, when and in what direction they shall row. Someone must be designated to at least help them decide on a common destination and row together towards that place.

…

The Church has generally followed the understanding that, since man is naturally a social animal and since the union of wills in pursuit of the common good must be directed by the intellect, authority would be necessary in any society. The necessity of authority does not, therefore, come from Original Sin because of the egotistical tendencies of men. ‘But as no society can hold together unless someone be (sic) over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every body politic must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less that society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its author’ (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei).”

- Fr. Brian Mullady OP, Christian Social Order

[cazort]

I agree with this criticism, but I think he leaves out some important parts of it.

A huge part of why the working class is fleeing the Democratic party in droves is that leftist discourse has resorted to classism as a way of attacking, bullying, and silencing its political opponents.

You started to see this first in fringe internet discourse in the early 2010's and it increased in frequency and become more mainstream in response to the shift to algorithmic feeds on mainstream sites (FB and Twitter, soon after others following) in 2011.

Basically what happens is that someone says the "wrong thing" and they get mobbed...it could be something harmless like using old terminology to refer to trans people ("FtM", "MtF", "became a woman / became a man", etc.) or it could be something harmful in subtle ways but dependent on context and perhaps not even immediately apparent to the person speaking it (i.e. "I want applicants to be judged on merit or qualifications alone." / "That (black) person is so articulate." / "That woman is so bossy." etc)

And people FLIP SHIT on them.

And here's the thing...this sort of bullying behavior directed at people saying "politically incorrect" things, i.e. what people call "social justice culture" or "wokeism" is little more than a form of classism.

Because who knows how to say all the right things? Educated people. People who are more intelligent and who don't have any learning disabilities. People who have more time on their hands. People with an easier life, people who aren't working 2 jobs or struggling to make ends meet or caring for a child on top of working a full-time job or more or doing full-time job on top of school. People who are more well-connected, whose friends already use the right language and can correct them politely in private before it blowing up into an incident.

Picture you're some poor person from some tiny town in West Virginia. Your parents say racist things, all your friends say racist things, and you might actually be the least racist person you know and then you come online or you come into the big city and you say something that would be seen as outright progressive where you're from, and suddenly everyone is berating you and condemning you and jumping down your throat.

Now picture you're some wealthy person who grew up in a wealthy suburb of a big city. Your family is educated. You know how to say the right things without offending people. Your friends correct you. You might be deeply racist, but you know how to express your viewpoints so subtly, so indirectly that it doesn't push the buttons of the leftist SJW's. You might even openly support movements like BLM, but then you turn around and support deeply-racist policies like the status quo of school funding by municipality, and high-tax-base suburbs with low tax rates and high city services while black people live in low-tax-base, high-tax-rate municipalities.

And then you turn around and look down on that West Virginia guy who said the wrong thing on Twitter or the wrong thing in some work meeting.

This is the classism of the Democratic party. This is why Trump won in a landslide.

I want people talking about it yesterday. I want people talking about it 10 years ago. I was talking about it 10 years ago but almost no one was listening to me. I want to scream at all of you who ignored me, and shake you. You were all wrong and I was right.

Listen to me now.

We can defeat the Trump movement but we ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO start by examining ourselves first. There is no other path. We cannot win by brute-forcing our way out. The Trump movement already has a majority of support among voters and has been growing in strength as we fail to address these issues.

We have to examine our own classism and we have to break it down, and then we have to reach out and apologize to the people who have been wronged by it. We need to unify behind leaders who publicly reject cancel culture and publicly reject classism.

And I don't just mean Bernie here. Bernie's statement is good but it's not good enough. It doesn't verbalize everything that I've said here. I just expressed a whole other level of classism that I think is getting closer to the heart of things. Other people may have even more things to add, that I missed.

But please, start talking about this stuff. We need to build a new consensus around these things and we need to start identifying and rejecting the classism in leftist thought. And then apologizing to, listening to, and bringing back in all the people we have shut out and excluded. Yes, that means even the people who say problematic things here and there. I don't mean to include people who are adamantly shouting egregiously bigoted things. I mean that we need to apologize for the way we have overreacted. I mean that we need to exercise restraint, de-escalate. And when we do see bigotry, we need to refrain from using classism as a way to bully the people voicing it. We need to cleanly separate the bigotry and make pointed criticism of the bigotry without putting down the person voicing it.

As Christians say "hate the sin not the sinner". Seriously, it does work.

Source

The scalding reality

[oediex]

some people at the philosophical café were also espousing some serious moral relativism, which I have a lot of thoughts about and I don't know if I'll be able to put them all into words, so please take all of this with a grain of salt. I'm just thinking here.

Basically, the question was about whether everyone has equal dignity, and that word (dignity) in Dutch ("waardigheid") also has the word for "value" in it ("waarde"). This caused a lot of confusion, with some people claiming that there was no such thing as "absolute value" because not everyone has the same principles (one definition of "value" and not an incorrect statement, but not the question at hand); while others had the opinion that not everyone had equal value, because some people in society are treated worse than others (another understanding of value, but again not, I think, what the question is about); and then there were a few people, including me, saying that yes, everyone has equal value in the way the question was phrased, namely that everyone has equal dignity as a human being, that's what human rights are all about. Yes, that equal dignity is obviously not recognised in society in the way that we treat others, but that doesn't mean that we don't have it. It's always there. Like, you're born and you have it. Even when you are mistreated, you have it and that is one of the reasons why that mistreatment is exactly that: mistreatment. It's why someone killing you is murder, and not just destruction. And everyone's value, in that sense of the word, everyone's dignity is equal. No one is more important than anyone else, morally, even if factually and practically quite the opposite is the case, and even when we have to make difficult choices (like who gets treated medically for example, if there are limited resources). It's what makes difficult and impossible choices so difficult and impossible! If some people had more value/dignity than others, then having to choose who dies and who lives wouldn't be so hard!

The concept of human dignity is centuries-old and can be found in many religions and philosophies, and is a central notion in the declaration of human rights. It is a contentious notion, primarily in that it is extremely difficult to define (it is not defined in the declaration of human rights!!!!) and very difficult to ground. Yet it is a vital human right, declared as such, and the one on which all the other ones are built. Equal moral dignity is at the core of so many social and political struggles. It is at the foundation of all fights for social justice and against oppression. It's what makes injustice injustice.

The question whether everyone had equal moral dignity was a weird one to me for a philosophical discussion in this place and time. Like, the answer seemed obviously yes to me. When it was chosen, from other (much more interesting in my view) questions that had been proposed, I figured - oh well, I guess we can discuss the definition of moral dignity, or what it ought to be grounded on, because as I said, these matters are far from decided.

But instead, there was an intense focus on the fact that in other times in history, and in other places in the world right now, people thought differently about certain issues like women's rights. In other cultures, they would say, women don't have as many rights as they do here. And I don't disagree. There are different values across different cultures and over history. But in my understanding of human dignity/value, even if certain people were not, by their group, valued for what they were (human), they still, in my eyes, had that moral dignity and value. I consider every human being, whether they are treated well or not, as an embodiment of moral dignity.

So when they came with some example or other that portrayed the subjugation of women at some point in history or in other places, I would ask, "Yes, but do you think that they have human dignity even if it wasn't recognised at the time/by that group." And the reply would be, "Well, what gives me the right to decide that?"

Because you are a rational and feeling being with the capacity to make moral judgements! Obviously you don't get to "decide" it but you can have an opinion on it? I tried using a tactic that I have seen a philosophy professor teaching ethics use. I proposed actions that seem obviously morally reprehensible, like raping a child, and ask, "don't you think we can call that morally bad no matter who does it or when?" And they would stand by their notion that no, they couldn't.

This is (extreme) moral relativism. The belief that there are no moral judgements we can make, absolutely, which is usually argued from the idea, as was the case in this discussion, that it's all culturally decided. That if there is a culture in which it is accepted to rape children, that we cannot look at that and say, "hey, that's not okay".

Now, I have to be clear here that cultural relativism is, in my eyes, an extremely important concept and tool. I think it is especially an important heuristic device to critically appraise one's own culture which is often experienced as absolute from within. I also want to say that as I am, obviously, not a moral relativist, that doesn't mean I believe to know exactly what are and are not absolute moral values. I do believe that human rights are extremely important and are an expression of the dignity that we all embody, but that doesn't mean that the ones we currently have "declared" are correct and all-encompassing. That is, in my eyes, precisely what philosophy, social justice, and critical theory is for. And we will probably never know, we just need to continue to critically think about it. We need to always accept that we might be wrong about them.

But that acceptance of our own possible critical failure is very different from the kind of moral relativism that people at this meeting were expressing. And I couldn't help but wonder - where is this coming from? They had just been talking about the importance of the feminist movement, and where did that movement come from if not from the believe that women had as much dignity as men?

And I don't know if I can answer that question, but I wonder if it's coming from some kind of extreme central liberalism and/or also a fear that not recognising such moral relativism would out them as thinking of their own cultures as morally superior and more progressive than others.

Let me explain.

I think the first one is the easiest to understand. The person in the centre positions themselves between those at the extreme ends and says, "both of you have a point" and refuses to express their own opinion, saying it all depends. They may move more one way than another depending on what would give them more power or is more beneficial to themselves, but generally they feign neutrality. I think a perfect example of this is centrist political parties. They think they are at the centre and that their hands are clean, but what they are actually doing is validating the extreme party on the end of the political spectrum that is causing great harm to many people in society. Applied to moral relativism - while the moral relativist is saying that it is all relative and they cannot make a moral judgement, a child is being raped, so to speak. Harm is being done, but the moral relativist can pretend they have no part in it, because it is not up to them to judge. They feign a position of neutrality while people are being oppressed, harmed, abused, etc. This kind of centrist position, whether politically or ethically, is, I think, the status quo in the western world. And it is causing great harm.

Now, the other explanation I think also has validity, but I don't know if I'll be able to explain it well. Basically, since this is a discussion that was being held by primarily white people in a western country, in Western Europe, I wonder if some of them were not comfortable claiming there are absolute moral values because they would interpret that as them somehow claiming that the values that are held in the western world are better than those elsewhere in the world. And this is a big no no, obviously. It's not very "in" among "enlightened" people such as would show up to a philosophical discussion. The reason I think this is, because when some people in the group would entertain the idea that there are certain absolute moral values, they would immediately mention notions such as "moral progress" and "us in the western world" being "further along" said progress, etc. Which is extremely problematic and uncritical to the point of dangerous and I don't think I have to explain that any further. Like I said earlier, my stance against moral relativism does not mean that I claim to know what such absolute moral values are or to be correct in the ones that I think are some of them or that I am uncritical, in the conversation surrounding human rights, of the ones that we seem to think they are. And it's why I am confident in my stance against moral relativism, because it doesn't fill me with some kind of confidence that I know what's what. It's what allows me to think critically of the way we go about things, including in our own, western, society. (And importantly, the way we go about things as a western society in relation to the rest of the world.) And so I wonder if the people espousing moral relativism were doing so in a way to protect themselves from that belief that "the western world is further along moral progress" than other places in the world. They say they are moral relativists so they can believe that that is not something that they believe.

Because I think a lot of people in the western world think that, including these people who pronounced themselves to be moral relativists (though they obviously didn't use that term*) but they try to hide that away. Like, I think people are aware that it's not "okay" to say that the way we do things here is "better" than how it is done outside of the western world, but I think they do believe that, but they feel they can't express that so they hide behind moral relativism.

(* I am using these terms because I think they apply generally to the kind of things they were saying. Mostly there was a lot of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Like, I would say that not all ethical opinions were equal, and they would say, "well everyone has a right to their own opinion". Well, yeah, obviously, but that doesn't mean that all opinions are equal, or that some aren't more correct/ethically right than others. I had to ask very specific question to ascertain their stance on morality and ethical values and I explained above how I came to the conclusion that they were defending moral relativism.)

I don't know. Maybe I am wrong about all of this. Maybe I've said some things that are hugely wrong and problematic. I just feel like moral relativism is a kind of mask that people use to hide their belief that their own way is the correct way, but they're somehow aware that that's not okay because cultural relativism. (Obviously there are also many people who have no problem pronouncing western moral superiority.) But I just think that these people have taken the wrong lesson from cultural relativism. Cultural relativism does not necessarily lead to moral relativism. Cultural relativism is crucial in order to turn a sharp eye to one's own culture and its values, as it puts these in question, but it makes no claims in terms of the existence or non-existence of absolute moral values. It does not exclude the possibility that there are, indeed, absolute moral values.

I think moral dignity (which as a vegan I do not limit to only human beings btw! but that was definitely not a popular opinion lol) is one of these absolute moral values (and as I've said, I am open to the idea that I am very wrong about what I believe), and it is infinitely (philosophically) interesting to me because, as I said, it is difficult to define and ground. But that was in no way what the discussion at the philosophical café was about.