pogfan1996
pogfan1996
Post rating:
~
It's probably a lot better to read this at the link because the article links to a lot of other awesome articles.
http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/activism/gleeful-eulogy-slutwalk
2011 is coming to a close, and this week, editors of People Of Color Organize will be writing about memorable posts of the last year and much more.
My website remembrance of 2011 is a fond one — blessedly forgotten mostly, but I have to offer it.
Its advocates were triumphantly calling Slutwalk, the pop culture/proto-feminist mashup, a “movement.” Women of color actively speaking out on issues of diversity were summarily attacked and silenced. And plenty of guilty — and utterly, shamelessly on the wrong side of the issue — parties among the white left and feminist currents were uncritically singing the praises of Slutwalk in unison. To read some stuff, you’d think Slutwalk was the launch of a revolutionary new wave of feminist activism concerned with the liberation of economically disadvantaged women of color and rape culture. Or even “a brilliant first step towards a better world in which no one has to endure living without full control over their bodies.”
Um, really?
A few months later, how much do you hear about Slutwalk now?
Anyone?
Anything?
From feminist bashing to the face-slapping of inclusion demands and collective liberation waved under the ‘slut shaming’ flag, there are so many misguided, patriarchal, prejudiced things in the world that Slutwalk’s ‘fun feminism’ brought together as the stunning political trainwreck of 2011.
Arab Spring, happening a world away around the same timeframe, this wasn’t in terms of impact or ideals. It wasn’t even Arab Spring Break, unless people walking around in underwear qualifies. And though it’s not deceased, Slutwalk’s sunset in relevance was inevitable, and none too soon.
People Of Color Organize posted several pieces on Slutwalk, critiques by women of color and more, including:
* Dear Feminists, Will You Also Be Marching in N***erwalk?
* Women of Color Respond to SlutWalk: “The Women’s Movement Is Not Monochromatic”
* Slutwalk: To March or Not to March
* Different Histories, Different Strategies: More on Slutwalk
Many women of color complained Slutwalk rallied white middle-class women and didn’t speak to communities of color. Some talked about the centering of white privilege. Nobody liked hearing that. Too rude. Divisive. Too politically correct.
Can’t say we didn’t try to warn you though.
Slutwalk’s Altamont happened at a New York City Slutwalk in early October where a white woman showed up, waving a sign with the n-word on it until she was eventually asked to put it down.
At any other political demonstration, white people carrying signs with racial slurs would draw anger and denunciation. Slutwalk? I won’t dignify the comments by linking to them, though Racialicious had a rundown of some of the more oblivious remarks. Not surprisingly the act had its defenders. The best one? Yoko Ono, an Asian woman with little actual experience with racial politics in the United States, wrote it, and John Lennon, a rich white dude with the quintessential rich white dude experience sang it.
I’m not making that up.
Yet whether the sign quoted a song or Dante’s Inferno, one could reasonably conclude Slutwalk’s proverbial racial chickens had come home to roost.
A movement simultaneously fixated on vigorously refuting the diversity concerns of women of color and defending the absolute right of women to express individuality within the context of the male gaze and perception of loyalty to it (e.g. attractiveness, wardrobe, fidelity to whiteness) had its due. Slutwalk organizers seemed to stake this position, regardless of the impact on other white women and women of color, but instead shattered pretensions of racial benevolence in one fell swoop.
Slutwalk has not seemed to recover from the NYC debacle, with few major events on the pre-New York level. Even if some could claim Occupy drew all the interest, the damage done at NYC Slutwalk was clear.
As the author of People Of Color Organize’s May piece, Four Brief Critiques of Slutwalk’s Whiteness, Privilege and Unexamined Power Dynamics, I have, to put it mildly, a dim view of the all-about-me mission symbolic in the Slutwalk and ‘sex-positive’ fads. America runs on these threads of self-involvement and that needs to be called out every day. However, the reasons Slutwalk faded from public consciousness are definitely complex.
Several pieces have opined, along with similarities (raw emotion, seriously?) that Slutwalk was undone by Occupy Wall Street. Hardly. Slutwalk was undone by a mix of bad politics, an inability to deal with criticism when it came from women of color and others who questioned direction, and a confused libertarian aesthetic that said everyone who joined in was right and therefore no one was wrong.
Originating hub Toronto Slutwalk bears some of the accountability for taking six months to reply in a non-defensive, non-snarky way to concerns about racial and cultural diversity. At the height of criticism by many feminists of color and white feminists speaking out about Slutwalk issues, Toronto organizers now infamously took to Facebook to do battle with and rally forces (of color particularly) against Aura Blogando and others, an act noted on this website and elsewhere. This generated a chorus of women of color supporting Slutwalk to complain other women of color critical of Slutwalk were silencing them — as if choosing to be in a sea of white faces and politics doesn’t silence one already, right? Mea culpas from Toronto Slutwalk just happened Oct. 31, many months later.
People surely are busy, but taking half a year to get back to people?
A lesson to be taken from this is that publicly responding to open letters and critiques is as much about potential supporters and others who read it as it is the writers themselves. Slutwalk organizers’ scheduling conveys the importance one puts to the views of women of color and white feminists. Those messages were heard by others though, and undermined whatever credibility existed.
Slutwalk’s early success came from what most understand as being brandable: the female as liberated and empowered because she looks conventionally sexy to men and is aware of her sexuality, but isn’t like those women — the caricature of the loud, shrill, dowdy, aggressive, man-/porn-/patriarchy-hating radical woman who has no fun. Society engages in the shaming of sluts, the reasoning went, so women (of all the political and cultural messages to embrace) should combat it by making liberation about the right to call oneself a slut.
And you wonder why the media loved Slutwalk events?
The big problem with this philosophy is that it isn’t particularly challenging. Whatever good intent at raising awareness about rape was there was completely lost amid fishnets and messaging that made the movement about the right to dress in any way one wished. Like all fads, a few months into it, people start to wonder why they’re there and major media, being hopelessly racist and sexist, just toddles off to find new salacious images to retain viewers.
And therein lies the most profound contradiction and the one that proved to be Slutwalk’s puzzle.
What are the limits of libertarian ideals?
If everyone wants to declare themselves sluts, serve as patriarchy’s loyal opposition (and a buffer to radical elements) and hoist up signs with racial epithets, regardless of the impact on women of color and all other women — whose protests are undercut by anti-woman bros presenting such language and imagery to marginalize feminism — why are we here?
At what point does it become a matter of political priority for a movement to say it values people of color enough to expel (not ask to take down a sign held by) racists, or respect one another to say it isn’t all about individual wants but the greater feminist/womanist project?
So how do you manage a message? Learning from Slutwalk’s failures, Occupy has been clear and focused in its message. Union folks, Trotskyists, Ron Paul-types and others have varying degrees of crazy agendas, but that movement (with an even broader set of ideals) has managed to direct its vision.
Contrast with Slutwalk, where the message of women and rape got buried not by its critics, but by adherents trashing feminists, focusing on reclaiming/reappropriating the word slut, defending the word as a media-attention bid, validating strip clubs and doing pretty much everything to detract from that conversation about women and rape, all while claiming women of color and white feminists were hurting their ‘movement.’
So, while there is great value in women’s uprisings like Occupy Patriarchy and other initiatives this year, I won’t cry for Slutwalk leaving 2011 as trivia. There’s enough demonizing women of color, white feminists and socially conscious people for being too loud, too direct, too political and too discomforting going on.
But thank you to the many amazing radical people who found their voices around such moments. We look forward to more of you in 2012.
http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/activism/gleeful-eulogy-slutwalk
2011 is coming to a close, and this week, editors of People Of Color Organize will be writing about memorable posts of the last year and much more.
My website remembrance of 2011 is a fond one — blessedly forgotten mostly, but I have to offer it.
Its advocates were triumphantly calling Slutwalk, the pop culture/proto-feminist mashup, a “movement.” Women of color actively speaking out on issues of diversity were summarily attacked and silenced. And plenty of guilty — and utterly, shamelessly on the wrong side of the issue — parties among the white left and feminist currents were uncritically singing the praises of Slutwalk in unison. To read some stuff, you’d think Slutwalk was the launch of a revolutionary new wave of feminist activism concerned with the liberation of economically disadvantaged women of color and rape culture. Or even “a brilliant first step towards a better world in which no one has to endure living without full control over their bodies.”
Um, really?
A few months later, how much do you hear about Slutwalk now?
Anyone?
Anything?
From feminist bashing to the face-slapping of inclusion demands and collective liberation waved under the ‘slut shaming’ flag, there are so many misguided, patriarchal, prejudiced things in the world that Slutwalk’s ‘fun feminism’ brought together as the stunning political trainwreck of 2011.
Arab Spring, happening a world away around the same timeframe, this wasn’t in terms of impact or ideals. It wasn’t even Arab Spring Break, unless people walking around in underwear qualifies. And though it’s not deceased, Slutwalk’s sunset in relevance was inevitable, and none too soon.
People Of Color Organize posted several pieces on Slutwalk, critiques by women of color and more, including:
* Dear Feminists, Will You Also Be Marching in N***erwalk?
* Women of Color Respond to SlutWalk: “The Women’s Movement Is Not Monochromatic”
* Slutwalk: To March or Not to March
* Different Histories, Different Strategies: More on Slutwalk
Many women of color complained Slutwalk rallied white middle-class women and didn’t speak to communities of color. Some talked about the centering of white privilege. Nobody liked hearing that. Too rude. Divisive. Too politically correct.
Can’t say we didn’t try to warn you though.
Slutwalk’s Altamont happened at a New York City Slutwalk in early October where a white woman showed up, waving a sign with the n-word on it until she was eventually asked to put it down.
At any other political demonstration, white people carrying signs with racial slurs would draw anger and denunciation. Slutwalk? I won’t dignify the comments by linking to them, though Racialicious had a rundown of some of the more oblivious remarks. Not surprisingly the act had its defenders. The best one? Yoko Ono, an Asian woman with little actual experience with racial politics in the United States, wrote it, and John Lennon, a rich white dude with the quintessential rich white dude experience sang it.
I’m not making that up.
Yet whether the sign quoted a song or Dante’s Inferno, one could reasonably conclude Slutwalk’s proverbial racial chickens had come home to roost.
A movement simultaneously fixated on vigorously refuting the diversity concerns of women of color and defending the absolute right of women to express individuality within the context of the male gaze and perception of loyalty to it (e.g. attractiveness, wardrobe, fidelity to whiteness) had its due. Slutwalk organizers seemed to stake this position, regardless of the impact on other white women and women of color, but instead shattered pretensions of racial benevolence in one fell swoop.
Slutwalk has not seemed to recover from the NYC debacle, with few major events on the pre-New York level. Even if some could claim Occupy drew all the interest, the damage done at NYC Slutwalk was clear.
As the author of People Of Color Organize’s May piece, Four Brief Critiques of Slutwalk’s Whiteness, Privilege and Unexamined Power Dynamics, I have, to put it mildly, a dim view of the all-about-me mission symbolic in the Slutwalk and ‘sex-positive’ fads. America runs on these threads of self-involvement and that needs to be called out every day. However, the reasons Slutwalk faded from public consciousness are definitely complex.
Several pieces have opined, along with similarities (raw emotion, seriously?) that Slutwalk was undone by Occupy Wall Street. Hardly. Slutwalk was undone by a mix of bad politics, an inability to deal with criticism when it came from women of color and others who questioned direction, and a confused libertarian aesthetic that said everyone who joined in was right and therefore no one was wrong.
Originating hub Toronto Slutwalk bears some of the accountability for taking six months to reply in a non-defensive, non-snarky way to concerns about racial and cultural diversity. At the height of criticism by many feminists of color and white feminists speaking out about Slutwalk issues, Toronto organizers now infamously took to Facebook to do battle with and rally forces (of color particularly) against Aura Blogando and others, an act noted on this website and elsewhere. This generated a chorus of women of color supporting Slutwalk to complain other women of color critical of Slutwalk were silencing them — as if choosing to be in a sea of white faces and politics doesn’t silence one already, right? Mea culpas from Toronto Slutwalk just happened Oct. 31, many months later.
People surely are busy, but taking half a year to get back to people?
A lesson to be taken from this is that publicly responding to open letters and critiques is as much about potential supporters and others who read it as it is the writers themselves. Slutwalk organizers’ scheduling conveys the importance one puts to the views of women of color and white feminists. Those messages were heard by others though, and undermined whatever credibility existed.
Slutwalk’s early success came from what most understand as being brandable: the female as liberated and empowered because she looks conventionally sexy to men and is aware of her sexuality, but isn’t like those women — the caricature of the loud, shrill, dowdy, aggressive, man-/porn-/patriarchy-hating radical woman who has no fun. Society engages in the shaming of sluts, the reasoning went, so women (of all the political and cultural messages to embrace) should combat it by making liberation about the right to call oneself a slut.
And you wonder why the media loved Slutwalk events?
The big problem with this philosophy is that it isn’t particularly challenging. Whatever good intent at raising awareness about rape was there was completely lost amid fishnets and messaging that made the movement about the right to dress in any way one wished. Like all fads, a few months into it, people start to wonder why they’re there and major media, being hopelessly racist and sexist, just toddles off to find new salacious images to retain viewers.
And therein lies the most profound contradiction and the one that proved to be Slutwalk’s puzzle.
What are the limits of libertarian ideals?
If everyone wants to declare themselves sluts, serve as patriarchy’s loyal opposition (and a buffer to radical elements) and hoist up signs with racial epithets, regardless of the impact on women of color and all other women — whose protests are undercut by anti-woman bros presenting such language and imagery to marginalize feminism — why are we here?
At what point does it become a matter of political priority for a movement to say it values people of color enough to expel (not ask to take down a sign held by) racists, or respect one another to say it isn’t all about individual wants but the greater feminist/womanist project?
So how do you manage a message? Learning from Slutwalk’s failures, Occupy has been clear and focused in its message. Union folks, Trotskyists, Ron Paul-types and others have varying degrees of crazy agendas, but that movement (with an even broader set of ideals) has managed to direct its vision.
Contrast with Slutwalk, where the message of women and rape got buried not by its critics, but by adherents trashing feminists, focusing on reclaiming/reappropriating the word slut, defending the word as a media-attention bid, validating strip clubs and doing pretty much everything to detract from that conversation about women and rape, all while claiming women of color and white feminists were hurting their ‘movement.’
So, while there is great value in women’s uprisings like Occupy Patriarchy and other initiatives this year, I won’t cry for Slutwalk leaving 2011 as trivia. There’s enough demonizing women of color, white feminists and socially conscious people for being too loud, too direct, too political and too discomforting going on.
But thank you to the many amazing radical people who found their voices around such moments. We look forward to more of you in 2012.
christmas_cheer
christmas_cheer
north pole
Post rating:
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[account deactivated]
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
Post rating:
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Lots of "feminist allies" at this slutwalk thing
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
Post rating:
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anyway contrast this with FEMEN which has on-point messaging
DRUXXX
DRUXXX
el area metro
Post rating:
+
Dear Feminists, Will You Also Be Marching in N***erwalk?
anistorian
anistorian
Post rating:
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did the recital come before the dress rehearsal? was big brother too busy occupying an occupation in the financial sector to be dually attentive at this movement also?
do two negs make a poz?
do two negs make a poz?
Impper
Impper
Post rating:
+
identity politickers trash other identity politickers; call unionists "crazy:" the artisle
DRUXXX
DRUXXX
el area metro
Post rating:
+
the 2010's are going to be the decade of retarded meaningless identity politic protests. americans thinking they're doing the same heroic thing as arabs because they both use twitter
Impper
Impper
Post rating:
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also people saying that they're waging the revolution then posting pics of themselves grinning at a bulls game
HenryKrinkle
HenryKrinkle
hi
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Union folks, Trotskyists, Ron Paul-types and others
HenryKrinkle
HenryKrinkle
hi
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I know that first world unions may seem to have a narrow focus, but that's kind of the point of their existence and they're necessary for any broader economic justice movement.
Lumping them in with Trots and Paulies? What gives?
Lumping them in with Trots and Paulies? What gives?
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
Post rating:
+
well i'm a trot unionist slut and i support ron paul
pogfan1996
pogfan1996
Post rating:
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HenryKrinkle posted:
I know that first world unions may seem to have a narrow focus, but that's kind of the point of their existence and they're necessary for any broader economic justice movement.
Lumping them in with Trots and Paulies? What gives?
all 3 are white supremacist
littlegreenpills
littlegreenpills
Poronto
Post rating:
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um as a poc it's hard to deny Reality has a strong white bias so wotevs
anistorian
anistorian
Post rating:
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sign waivorwavers and ad banners tryna sell uncle sam spam. what's a ballot to a bull-ox? most certainly not multiple choice, that's for sure.
i've seen people dance on street corners in the midst of urban summer smog, through exhaust from fumes of gas and too much dance. maybe ipod battery die midway through shift, causing sadness to further inhibit movement routine. would trotsky and galt ever agree to disagree that idle movement is like amusement park for big hardworking red farmer with pitchfork?
i've seen people dance on street corners in the midst of urban summer smog, through exhaust from fumes of gas and too much dance. maybe ipod battery die midway through shift, causing sadness to further inhibit movement routine. would trotsky and galt ever agree to disagree that idle movement is like amusement park for big hardworking red farmer with pitchfork?
vampirarchist
vampirarchist
Post rating:
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DRUXXX posted:
the 2010's are going to be the decade of retarded meaningless identity politic protests. americans thinking they're doing the same heroic thing as arabs because they both use twitter
actually americans invented twitter so that makes them more heroic
swampman
swampman
Dont Mess With Sucess
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Impper posted:
identity politickers trash other identity politickers; call unionists "crazy:" the artisle
First they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then they fight you, then you destroy the concept of race in the mind of the proletariat a necessary first step before the global people's war can claim its victory over the forces of imperialist oppression.
DRUXXX
DRUXXX
el area metro
Post rating:
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ok so, seriously, we know slutwalk was bad but can i get a final verdict on niggerwalk or waht?
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
Post rating:
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HenryKrinkle posted:
I know that first world unions may seem to have a narrow focus, but that's kind of the point of their existence and they're necessary for any broader economic justice movement.
Lumping them in with Trots and Paulies? What gives?
unionized workers are one thing, unions as an institution, given their reactionary, bought-off leadership and Democratic allegiance, deserves a place in the white supremacist pantheon imo
[account deactivated]
franz_katka
franz_katka
Post rating:
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christmas_cheer posted:
http://zombietime.com/deconstructing_slutwalk/
*points out like 4 oppositional pairs*
you see i just deconstructed...
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
Post rating:
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frank sobotka for president
pogfan1996
pogfan1996
Post rating:
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babyfinland posted:HenryKrinkle posted:
I know that first world unions may seem to have a narrow focus, but that's kind of the point of their existence and they're necessary for any broader economic justice movement.
Lumping them in with Trots and Paulies? What gives?unionized workers are one thing, unions as an institution, given their reactionary, bought-off leadership and Democratic allegiance, deserves a place in the white supremacist pantheon imo
yeah, I don't think the author was condemning every single union as white supremacist, but unions as an institution act as loyal footsoldiers for Empire and white supremacy. when a group of unions (dominated by people of color and women) decided to disaffiliate with the SEIU, the SEIU spent over $2m on a union busting firm and successfully sued them for $1.5 million to try and break the union.
http://nlpc.org/stories/2009/05/13/seiu-hires-union-busting-security-firm-aid-california-trusteeship-company-sues-ba
and im sure everyone here knows about the AFL-CIO's work for empire abroad but this article is really fuckin good
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0505scipes.htm
[account deactivated]
swampman
swampman
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating:
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DRUXXX posted:ok so, seriously, we know slutwalk was bad but can i get a final verdict on niggerwalk or waht?
aerdil
aerdil
Post rating:
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gyrofry posted:
well i'm a trot unionist slut and i support ron paul
i remain an old-fashioned dogmatic marxist accelerationist and support newt gingrich, he even has endorsements
"He would have made a marvelous marxist" - george will, because he would! because he IS!
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/george-will-was-wrong-newt-gingrich-marxist/253701
futurewidow
futurewidow
lame
Post rating:
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christmas_cheer posted:
http://zombietime.com/deconstructing_slutwalk/
The First Thing You Need to Know: SlutWalk is a protest against something that doesn't exist. We're all supposed to be ANGRY! that society blames the victim for being raped.
But hang on just a minute. Seriously, does that even happen any more? Not really. It hasn't happened for a long time. In Western culture, we blame the rapist. When challenged on this detail, SlutWalkers will usually point out that in rape trials, the victim is sometimes humiliated, as the rapist's lawyer will try to slander the victim's reputation as a way of exculpating his client.
C'mon, it's the 21st century. The kind of "blame-the-victim" mentality against which SlutWalk rages has not been an acceptable attitude for many decades -- at least in Western culture. (In the Middle East, it's a different story -- we'll get back to this point later.) So, one Canadian policeman made one thoughtless offhand remark. For this, all of society must make reparations?
This video that one of we sluts took of a speaker at SlutWalk reveals exactly this point about ancillary ultimatums: She sprinkles in a few self-evidently true statements at the beginning to lure you in, then starts making increasingly bizarre claims that stray further and further from reality, and then arrives at her actual destination: To politicize rape and turn into a wedge issue for all sorts of progressive/feminist/leftist demands.
disestablishmentarian
disestablishmentarian
Post rating:
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slutwalk was dumb and twitter is dumb. These are facts which are obvious, but when uttered out-loud within certain circles of our society (hint liberals) they are contrarian and oh so brave.
Groulxsmith
Groulxsmith
drivel of drunken hags
Post rating:
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twitter is great, follow me
DRUXXX
DRUXXX
el area metro
Post rating:
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goldsmith were u really a courier? who did u work for?
Groulxsmith
Groulxsmith
drivel of drunken hags
Post rating:
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yeah. i've worked for champion and ups. it's kind of fun to do for a while