Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

Sometimes it's good to blow off a little steam on this thread when you run into particularly annoying examples elsewhere. I do it myself, even though I'm never really sure it's helpful in moving the discussion forward.

I see stuff like Jeff Robinson posted all the time on fb groups or twitter nowadays. Arguing at source can be exhausting as it's like arguing with a cult.

 

Nobody is obliged to use social media. I think doing so gives a very skewed view of things.

 

Not obliged to but everyone does nowadays. I don't seek out political stuff but even in non-political spaces many of the assumptions of idpol are dominant.

E.g. a music group I was on recently where they had a big witch hunt 'calling out' someone for not understanding disability issues, with loads of replies saying if you're not disabled you're not allowed to comment. Trigger warnings on completely random topics (is a trigger warning really necessary because your post mentions alcohol?).

It's not annoying enough to delete social media but annoying enough to occasionally complain on here!

I do agree it can skew things and wonder how much of it transfers to real life. But a lot of people form their opinions through online communities so it's not completely irrelevant.

 

Um, this is social media.

 

Don’t ruin it!

 

So clever.

It's understood that people mean by social media facebook and twitter and whatever the youth are using.

 

I think there's much more exposure to misogyny online than there is in daily life. I don't encounter what I would call misogyny on a daily basis, whereas I do face oppression daily in the attacks on health care, health care workers, teachers, child care, workers whose work is about relationships, emotional work, work done by women etc. I think my state of mind would be quite different if I was exposed to misogyny daily.

 

I don’t.

 

Ok not literally everyone. For those of us who do, I feel this stuff is becoming a lot more widespread.

 

There is no such thing as a non-political space.

 

Don't be daft.

 

That new year optimism will soon wear off

 

It's true, there are no non political spaces, and no non political stances.

 

Why on earth would you think that? It is a fundamental ethical question, arguably it has been the question since Socrates.

If you want to start engaging with this question I suggest you start with Plato's 'Alcibiades'.

 

Do you not think you’re being overly literal Beats & Pieces ?

Non-political may mean without any political dynamic and/or outside political influence. Which yes, would be daft.

But it may mean merely not-explicitly political, not an activist group. Do you think no such spaces exist?

 

Of course the irony is that a lot of the concepts in IDPol activism - safe spaces,mindfulness of triggers etc - *are* appropriate outside of activism - eg in mental health/therapy settings.

But one of the goals of ‘recovery’ is the (re)development of resilience, of the capacity to cope with a world that cares very little for your feelings.

 

In short - no. I would change the word political to 'power'.

 

Every (human) space that exists everywhere is explicitly about political change/activism?

 

It is about power. Politics is just one manifestation of power relations.

 

You’re reading into others statements what you believe they ‘ought’ to mean. If you had a different approach to language you’d get a lot more from conversations.

 

If that is what you want to think, fine.

 

In the post I used 'non-political' just to mean a space where politics wasn't the subject of interest. It's not a non-political space in the broader sense.

 

Alas, my optimism was also misplaced

 

That reads as being akin to walking in to a room with a self-imposed blindfold.

 

I was being polite.

 

Perhaps I should've phrased it better but thought it was clear what I meant, since I described it was a music group. I wasn't making an argument that politics don't exist in that group, but that people don't join it specifically to discuss politics.

 

Well, we’ve all seen how you behave when you’re not thinking of your manners. It’s a positive.

 

Sure, in a cosmic sense. In a mundane sense most spaces aren't political.

 

Depends on how your political consciousness maps on to the world and your daily experience, doesn't it? I'm sure that you have met people who say they don't know about, or aren't into politics, but who offer a variety of opinions on various subjects in a way that you would be wrong if you said was anything other than political.

 

Not in a cosmic sense. In a mundane, everyday way, all our interactions with other people are political. The idea that politics is somehow separate from everyday life is a deeply damaging one.