#the term purity culture is a silencing tactic

[massharp1971]

Bloody hell this like so much written under the "purity culture" heading is such ill-thought-through alt-right originated nonsense. It's dressed up to sound true in a kneejerk kind of way, you don't have to think too deeply about it. It comforts us from having to engage with challenging ideas that don't have easy answers.

Art is not separate from the real world, it's part of it. Art is used to shape the way people think (see CIA secretly funding the modern art movement). Our discourse around art has the power to marginalise and silence critical thinking. The term "purity culture" is just a clever silencing tactic that dismisses the possibility of engaging in a conversation about how all media shapes our lives on micro and macro levels.

Hitler said: "words build bridges into unexplored regions". There isn't a marginalised group alive who doesn't know that how we're treated in fiction will translate to how we're treated in the "real" world.

As for wanting the spaces we relax in to be less toxic than the spaces we get attacked in? Well of course we bloody do. People want to feel safer in their homes than on the street, that's human nature. Each community has to decide who gets to feel "at home" and who has to stay constantly "on guard". That's your choice, whether to help create little corners of the world that are comfortable for some folks to relax in... or not. I want the spaces I have control over to not replicate the systemic violences that marginalised folk experience in wider society, and I happen to think if you don't want that, you're unwittingly being a bit of an arsehole.

I know for example that ranting about "purity culture" is going to make entitled middle aged white people feel right at home and make more marginalised folks feel less at home in a space I'm in, so you won't see me doing that. While saying "I hate TERFs" and "Black Lives Matter" will make some folks feel very uncomfortable and not want to be in the same space with me, and I'm glad to see the back of them. Meanwhile it'll make others feel more comfy, and they're the folks I wanna centre precisely *because* the rest of society decentres them. Hell yes I want to act as a counterbalance to all that's wrong with the world and I hope to find spaces that'll do the same for me.

Everything in this "new" discourse on "purity culture" has been addressed countless times in the various iterations of this boring, eons-old silencing tactic (freeze speech is my right, safe spaces and trigger warnings are for losers, political correctness has run amok, yadi yada yawn) but here's my take on how you can be against censorship but still exercise critical thinking when discussing harm in fandom in relation to underage fic, which seems to be the focal point of this latest mindless "discourse".

And seriously, I am five minutes away from blocking everyone who uses the purity culture hashtag. Folks should know better than to borrow ideas from the far right and fool themselves that this time it's justified. There are other ways to have *intelligent* discourse about balancing freedom against harm. We anarchists have been doing this for years without ever sounding like we have a MAGA hat tucked under our bed.

What separates the people who spend their lives crusading against depictions of homosexuality in art and public life from those who spend theirs railing at independent creators for not perfectly protecting them from anything that might give them a negative emotion? For all that users posit that it’s an artist’s duty to provide trigger warnings as a matter of public safety and responsibility, allowing their audiences “avoid harm,” the very idea that art itself can cause harm either by victimizing someone engaging with it or by “normalizing” antisocial behavior pushes the conversation into reactionary territory. War and rape and interpersonal brutalization have been fixtures of human interaction since before history’s record began; the engines driving them are power, abuse, poverty, and other broad and tangible social forces. Depictions of morality in art offer only a pale reflection of these real-world horrors, and so function for many frustrated and powerless people as a safe arena in which to battle out ideas unrelated to art’s role in society.

Perhaps a movie reminds a viewer of abuse suffered in their childhood. Perhaps that viewer is then triggered, and must leave the theater in a state of severe agitation. Perhaps their day is ruined, their week thrown off, their compulsive behavior thrown into activation. The harm in this situation, the tangible damage to a human life, was done before the viewer ever bought a ticket. It was done between human beings, and no matter how terrible the effects of being brought back to this experience are, responsibility lies with the trauma’s original cause, not with art which coincidentally recalls it.

/standing ovation

This is why I get so angry. The things we warn for, the content that triggers huge groups of people, these are things we can push back against and fight. We can try to reduce abuse and poverty.

But for the people who get up in arms about Problematique Media, its easier to get mad at a piece of art than it is to work on the actual problems, and thus shifts the focus and blame off the problems and onto art that depicts it.

INCREDIBLE read.

[lastsonlost]

AN SJW ALMOST CAME CLOSE TO SELF AWARENESS.

There is a particularly aggressive strand of social justice activism weaving in and out of my Seattle community that has troubled me, silenced my loved ones, and turned away potential allies. I believe in justice. I believe in liberation. I believe it is our duty to obliterate white supremacy, anti-blackness, cisheteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and imperialism. And I also believe there should be openness around the tactics we use and ways our commitments are manifested over time. Beliefs and actions are too often conflated with each other, yet questioning the latter should not renege the former. As a Cultural Studies scholar, I am interested in the ways that culture does the work of power. What then, is the culture of activism, and in what ways are activists restrained by it? To be clear, I’m only one person who is trying to figure things out, and I’m open to revisions and learning. But as someone who has spent the last decade recovering from a forced conversion to evangelical Christianity, I’m seeing a disturbing parallel between religion and activism in the presence of dogma:

1. Seeking purity

There is an underlying current of fear in my activist communities, and it is separate from the daily fear of police brutality, eviction, discrimination, and street harassment. It is the fear of appearing impure. Social death follows when being labeled a “bad” activist or simply “problematic” enough times. I’ve had countless hushed conversations with friends about this anxiety, and how it has led us to refrain from participation in activist events, conversations, and spaces because we feel inadequately radical. I actually don’t prefer to call myself an activist, because I don’t fit the traditional mold of the public figure marching in the streets and interrupting business as usual. When I was a Christian, all I could think about was being good, showing goodness, and proving to my parents and my spiritual leaders that I was on the right path to God. All the while, I believed I would never be good enough, so I had to strain for the rest of my life towards an impossible destination of perfection.

I feel compelled to do the same things as an activist a decade later. I self-police what I say in activist spaces. I stopped commenting on social media with questions or pushback on leftist opinions for fear of being called out. I am always ready to apologize for anything I do that a community member deems wrong, oppressive, or inappropriate- no questions asked. The amount of energy I spend demonstrating purity in order to stay in the good graces of fast-moving activist community is enormous. Activists are some of the judgiest people I’ve ever met, myself included. There’s so much wrongdoing in the world that we work to expose. And yet, grace and forgiveness are hard to come by in these circles. At times, I have found myself performing activism more than doing activism. I’m exhausted, and I’m not even doing the real work I am committed to do. It is a terrible thing to be afraid of my own community members, and know they’re probably just as afraid of me. Ultimately, the quest for political purity is a treacherous distraction for well-intentioned activists.

2. Reproducing colonialist logics

Postcolonialist black Caribbean philosopher Frantz Fanon in his 1961 book Wretched of the Earth writes about the volatile relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, and the conditions of decolonization. In it, he sharply warns the colonized against reproducing and maintaining the oppressive systems of colonization by replacing those at top by those previously at the bottom after a successful revolution.

As a QTPOC (queer, trans person of color), I have experienced discrimination and rejection due to who I am. I have sought out QTPOC-only spaces to heal, find others like me, and celebrate our differences. Those spaces and relationships have saved me from despair time and time again. And yet, I reject QTPOC supremacy, the idea that QTPOCs or any other marginalized groups deserve to dominate society. The experiences of oppression do not grant supremacy, in the same way that being a powerful colonizer does not. Justice will never look like supremacy. I wish for a new societal order that does not revolve around relations of power and domination.

3. Preaching/Punishments

Telling people what to do and how to live out their lives is endemic to dogmatic religion and activism. It’s not that my comrades are the bosses of me, but that dogmatic activism creates an environment that encourages people to tell other people what to do. This is especially prominent on Facebook. Scrolling through my news feed sometimes feels Iike sliding into a pew to be blasted by a fragmented, frenzied sermon. I know that much of the media posted there means to discipline me to be a better activist and community member. But when dictates aren’t followed, a common procedure of punishment ensues. Punishments for saying/doing/believing the wrong thing include shaming, scolding, calling out, isolating, or eviscerating someone’s social standing. Discipline and punishment has been used for all of history to control and destroy people. Why is it being used in movements meant to liberate all of us? We all have made serious mistakes and hurt other people, intentionally or not. We get a chance to learn from them when those around us respond with kindness and patience. Where is our humility when examining the mistakes of others? Why do we position ourselves as morally superior to the un-woke? Who of us came into the world fully awake?

4. Sacred texts

There are also some online publications of dogmatic activism that could be considered sacred texts. For example, the intersectional site Everyday Feminismreceives millions of views a month. It features more than 40 talented writers who pen essays on a wide range of anti-oppression topics, zeroing in on ones that haven’t yet broached larger activist conversations online. When Everyday Feminism articles are shared among my friends, I feel both grateful that the conversation is sparking and also very belittled. Nearly all of their articles follow a standard structure: an instructive title, list of problematic or suggested behaviors, and a final statement of hard opinion. The titles, the educational tone, and the prescriptive checklists contribute to creating the idea that there is only one way to think about and do activism. And it’s a swiftly moving target that is always just out of reach. In trying to liberate readers from the legitimately oppressive structures, I worry that sites like Everyday Feminism are replacing them with equally restrictive orthodoxy on the other end of the political spectrum.

Have I extricated myself from a church to find myself confined in another?

At this year’s Allied Media Conference, BLM co-founder Alicia Garza gave an explosive speech to a theatre full of brilliant and passionate organizers. She urged us to set aside our distrust and critique of newer activists and accept that they will hurt and disappoint us. Don’t shut them out because their politics are outdated or they don’t wield the same language. If we are interested in building the mass movements needed to destroy mass oppression, our movements must include people not like us, people with whom we will never fully agree, and people with whom we have conflict. That’s a much higher calling than railing at people from a distance and labeling them as wrong. Ultimately, according to Garza, building a movement is about restoring humanity to all of us, even to those of us who have been inhumane. Movements are where people are called to be transformed in service of liberation of themselves and others.

I want to spend less time antagonizing and more time crafting alternative futures where we don’t have to fight each other for resources and care. For an introvert like me, that may look like shifting my activism towards small scale projects and recognizing personal relationships as locations of mutual transformation. It might mean carefully choosing whether I want to be part of public disruptions or protests, and giving myself full permission to refrain at times. It may mean drawing attention to the ways in which other people outside of movements have been living out activism, even if no one has ever called it that. It might mean checking in with myself about how I have let my heart grow hard. It may mean admitting that speaking my truth isn’t justification for being mean. It might mean directly dealing with my religious hangups so that I can come to a place where the resonant aspects of theology or spirituality become part of my toolkit. It means cultivating long-term relationships with those outside my (not that) safe and exclusive community, understanding I will learn so much from them. It means ceasing to “other” people and leave them behind. It means honoring their humanity, in spite of their hurtful political beliefs and violent actions. It means seeing them as individuals, not ideologies or systems. It means acknowledging their agency to act justly. It means inviting them to be with us in love, and pushing through repeated rejection. Otherwise, I’m not sure how I can sustain this work for the rest of my life

[shinelikethunder]

Concepts that are now stigmatized in SJ culture, and are no longer considered valid grounds for argument (or are at least are considered a red flag), because “a lot of real jerks kept trotting them out against us in bad faith to avoid listening”: - freedom of speech - playing devil’s advocate - questioning the supporting evidence - and a whole lot more!

Concepts that are somehow not stigmatized in SJ culture, even though the very first fucking thing that happens when they gain legitimacy is a lot of jerks using them to silence minorities and pesky activists: - speech codes - the heckler’s veto - deferring to the most offended - look, I could go on

Gosh, it’s almost as though the real objection wasn’t to assholes’ derailing and silencing tactics, it was to the entire concept of critical thinking.

Sarcasm aside... the second paragraph is a pretty good indication that, even putting aside the morality or justifiability of illiberal tactics, they kind of suck as tactics. Especially from a relative underdog position. If the entire basis of your activism is trying to fix a system whose power structures are rigged against you, it is unspeakably foolish to pick a fight where you deliberately set the terms of engagement to "issuing demands and using shame and intimidation to deal with noncompliance.” Instead of contesting who’s right, you’re contesting who has the raw power to issue demands and expect to be obeyed, who has the established moral authority to dictate what behavior is treated as shameful, and who has the social clout to intimidate.

It’s behavior that only makes the slightest lick of sense for a movement that’s already in the majority. Like, say, a coalition that’s spent decades tirelessly, painstakingly gaining ground inch by inch, through persuasion and appeals to freedom/justice/tolerance/empathy, until it finally finds itself with 51% of public opinion on its side... at which point it decides the arc of history has well and truly bent towards justice, declares victory, and is baffled and enraged to find that there are still 49% who have yet to get with the program.

Authoritarianism, in other words, is a vice of groups that have already gained enough power to feel entitled to get their way. Thing is, clumsily lashing out against anyone who doesn’t respect your rightful mandate is a great way to lose your slim, hard-won majority. People are rebellious, contrarian little shits, and arbitrary abuse of power kicks their questioning and dissent circuits into overdrive. When that happens, it’s a really bad time to be the one taking a dump on the whole concept of critical thinking and being obvious as fuck about what you’re doing.

In this situation in particular... look, guys, getting into an illiberalism pissing match with the right wing is a fucking terrible idea. It would be a terrible idea even with 75% of the public on your side on social issues. Because when it comes to authoritarianism, the left are a bunch of fucking amateurs making it up as they go along and groping their way in the dark based on their primal toddler-tantrum instincts. Meanwhile, the right has decades of experience, sophisticated social and political infrastructure, assorted major religious sects, and a fuckton of cultural habits to fall back on. Trying to strong-arm them will just give them fuel for a spate of “help, help, I’m being oppressed!” hysterics that will let them mobilize opposition and peel off your supporters. The Religious Right in particular have raised grievance-mongering, shame, moral-purity outrage, soft-power intimidation campaigns, persecution complexes, and weaponized offense to an art form.

If you fight them on those grounds, you will lose. The only way to fight them is to expose, undercut, mock, and generally delegitimize the everliving fuck out of the tactics themselves. We should be devaluing the currency of deference and offense, not scrambling to prop it up.