Monday, May 9, 2011

Hear, Hear

From Jay! on the 4/6/11 Best of the Left podcast (emphasis mine):
Finally though, here's the real point I want to make. You only have a finite amount of energy you can dedicate to your interest and passion for politics. Even if you dedicated your whole life and every waking moment, you still only have a very limited amount of time to spend trying to make the world a better place.
I want to encourage you to think deeply about the best way for you to spend the time you choose to dedicate to politics and then prioritize the actions you choose to take so you can have the greatest positive impact. I would sincerely hope that if you did this and followed through on your set of priorities, that you wouldn't have any time to spare to stress about whether people you agree with are being exactly as politically correct as you wish they were.
We're all in a fight for our lives here, and a lot of the people fighting along side of you aren't going to meet your moral and ethical standards, but any time you spend attacking them for their shortcomings is time not spent tearing down the wealthy, corrupt rulers of the world who are constantly sending poor people to war, preventing full access to affordable healthcare, funneling money to their rich friends and benefactors, actively working to crush the middle class, restricting women's rights and preventing them from reaching full equality, and preventing us from addressing climate change which is likely to devastate us as a species, among many other things.
Look, you're not wrong for being concerned about trying to keep people in line who agree with you, it just can't be something that rises to the level of importance and urgency that you've displayed in this conversation.
Tl;dr: Don't spend all your time for activism criticizing others in the movement; channelling your energy into activities that will challenge those who attempt to oppress us is time better spent.

Although Jay! was addressing folks who wrote into him about clips on the podcast, I think this point is particularly salient among feminists. Feminists, particularly feminists on the internet, spend so much time tearing each other apart that I wonder how they're able to get anything done. Feminists should be presenting a united front instead of nitpicking each other over nomenclature and what issues "belong" to who.

Jay! goes on to say that keeping each other in line is beneficial because it's the sort of criticism that's likely to result in change. However, the bulk of one's time should not be spent policing your own movement. In my opinion, that type of action results only in fracturing and alienation, which really only benefits those we're battling for our rights.

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