Having been both physically and emotionally abused growing up, I disagree that the latter caused no actual harm.
That’s a lovely path to never addressing systemic problems.
Having also endured both, I can discern the difference between being abused and being offended. When you’re a little kid dealing with abuse from an adult, you have no power. When you are an adult and someone on the internet says something offensive, all of the power is in your hands.
If only there was a phrase to describe this… argument.
Alternately, it could simply be perspective. When you’ve either seen or endured serious suffering, watching people act like some rando behind a keyboard is their oppressor because they said something ignorant just makes one shake their head and wonder how that person manages to make it through life at all if that’s what crumples them. I prefer to enable empowerment.
Good, just advice others to not vote Republican 
On that we can completely agree.
You say this like others here haven’t. I’ve endured plenty of suffering. Racist oppression. Beatings. Teargassings. Being shot at. All because of the colour of my skin and the curl of my hair
. So who are you to say whether I should or shouldn’t spout off at online racists?
And the ridiculous strawman that someone who’s reacting negatively to online bigotry is “crumpling” isn’t even worth rebutting, it’s so patently bullshit.
You don’t get to tell me what is and isn’t empowering to me and mine.
You do you. Just pay attention to whether or not you’re actually being effective at solving any problems while you’re at it. Or, not. Whatever.
Checks voting stamps in his ID document, starting in 1994
Oh, I’ve been paying attention, alright. Plenty effective, thank you very much.
Good work. Voting is doing something.
No, it was the loud toyi-toyi-ing, the vocal disinvestment campaigning and the absolute refusal to play nice with racists, wherever they hid, that was the “doing something”.
The getting to vote was the payoff, not the effective problem-solving. That came before. And continues to this day.
And you want me to stop doing that work? Because of what, White fragility? Hell, no.
I am not equating words with physical attacks.
I am pointing out a) that words encourage, and by encouraging increase the chances of, physical attacks, even when the words don’t specifically mention physical attacks and b) that words sure as hell do damage on their own. It’s a different sort of damage, and especially if taken as only for each act separately a lesser damage, but it’s damage.
Little kids are also hearing those words. Even if the kids aren’t on the internet – and a lot of them are – those people saying things on the internet are also very likely to be aiming them at the children they deal with IRL.
And, for that matter, at the store clerks etc. who they deal with in real life. Is it massively easier to deal with expecting to be verbally hassled any or every day you go to work than to deal with being physically assaulted? Of course. But that doesn’t mean it’s harmless. And there is always the potential threat that this particular asshole may be the one who crosses that line.
They’re not crumpled. They’re fighting back. The person who’s actually crumpled isn’t going to say anything – and that’s going to look, to the tormentor, exactly like the person who won’t say anything because they don’t think the tormentor’s worth the trouble. And also look a whole lot like the person who won’t say anything because they agree with the tormentor.
You think being offensive isn’t harmful to marginalized people? Seriously?
And securing offense against marginalized people is the first step towards abusing them.
People don’t pass laws requiring schools to check the genitalia of their athletes, they started out with simply “offending” them.
And if those offense gets no pushback, then it goes further and further, until no one cares about the genocide against those people that no one likes anyway. I mean, no one spoke up for them when such vile hatred was being used against them, who is going to speak up when we silence them forever?
Nah, siding with the bully is almost always easier than siding with the victim. But, even though it’s easy, it’s almost always the wrong thing to do.
It is true that minorities can miss things. I agree with that. But absolute statements about groups of people have the tendency to be reductive. When disadvantaged minorities are subjected to this reductive treatment by progressives, it leaves progressives open to charges of hypocrisy, blindness, and yes, racism.
Which makes the OP rather interesting to me.
Yes there are sexist racists that advance their prejudices under the banner of “anti-wokeness”. Nothing new about this since we saw the same thing in this 90’s with the PC bogeyman.
But the more enlightening question is does “wokeness” encourage ego-driven behaviors that actually facilitate sexism and racism? I think it does. For instance, Chase Strangio bringing race and sex into it when she insulted JKR. When progressives defend this tweet instead of calling it out for the same goddamn “dog whistles” they hear whenever a conservative does it, it cements the impression that “wokeness” really only benefits bullies who have racial and misogynistic hang ups.
(See also “Karen”, another word co-opted from black people but now has been way overused by misogynists who have found a way to vent their misogyny without losing their progressive card.)
Forgive the multiquote. Your post contains several apparent summaries of your goals, and they’re different enough I want to address them individually.
That’s pretty clear. It’s not that I don’t understand that; it’s that I disagree with it. “Raging at bigoted trolls” can move the Overton window, to make their behavior seem out of the mainstream. Letting them go without response can make the window move in the other direction, seem like it’s a legitimate point of view. And once in awhile, it can shame someone into changing their behavior. If you don’t take people seriously when they’re “raging,” that seems like a you problem, and you should change that.
Okay, that doesn’t at all seem like what your main argument has been up until now, but it’s also a bad idea. Consider each situation and respond appropriately, of course–but do so in the context of the broader situation. You can’t look at things individually, when things are part of a pattern.
But why would you bother getting at that? We don’t always respond effectively when we’re not worked up, either. That’s one of those statements that seems meaningful but really has no meaning at all.
If what you’re really trying to say is, “We should be effective,” then I agree. But that’s not exactly an interesting point, because nobody is arguing otherwise. Nobody is saying, “EVERYONE LET’S BE INEFFECTIVE!!!” The disagreement isn’t over whether we should be effective or not. The disagreement is over what methods are effective.
Again: your personal animus toward strong emotion, your unwillingness to take people seriously if they’re raging, is a pretty bad approach. It’s also an approach that’s been used by men to dismiss “emotional” women, and by White people to dismiss “dangerous” Black people. It’s part of a pattern to ignore the righteous anger of folks who face oppression. You shouldn’t do that.
I’m pretty sure there’s a one legged Cambodian out there somewhere who’ll rip you a new asshole for referring to him as “Oriental.” I don’t think “people who have suffered ‘real’ oppression” are as fungible as you imply. Here’s the problem with that logic.
I used to know this guy, a gay trans dude. He was my boyfriend’s oldest and best friend, until they had a falling out because my boyfriend (who was also a gay trans dude) worked at Apple, which made him some sort of a class traitor. Which was a fucking stupid reason to end a ten year old friendship, but I never liked the guy, so fuck him.
Thing is, the guy came from parents who were absolutely rigid fundamentalist Christians. Both his parents and his sister disowned him when he came out as trans. A few years after I first met him, his sister was murdered, by her husband, in front of their children. During the trial, her parents were character witnesses for the defense. They got up in a courtroom and testified that the shithead who murdered their daughter was a good guy, and he’d never have done it if his wife (their daughter) had known when to keep her mouth shut.
Now, I don’t know any details about his home life before he moved out, but I’m guessing its gotta be worth at least a bronze in your Oppression Olympics. Certainly, he got a way shittier deal than my ultra-privileged ass did growing up. So, given his personal experience with “real” oppression, am I obligated to assume that he’s right that my boyfriend was doing something unpardonable by taking a paycheck from Steve Jobs?
The other big problem with this is, if you really mean it, you’re throwing a lot of oppressed people under the bus by discounting the specific methods by which they experience oppression. Trans youth are one of the highest at-risk groups for self-harm. The number one factor in reducing that,way above hormones or surgery, is acceptance. Just, being around people who use the right name and the right pronouns. People who aren’t offensive to them. That’s it. That alone is a massive life saver.
Well, perhaps my approach is wrong here. Let me flip it around to let you know why I don’t engage with them. Long story short, my early life was rife with abuse and incessant and severe bullying at school and at home. No escape. Once I got out on my own and got past the distracting myself with endless drugs and sex, I started working on my shit. I’ve got the diagnoses you’d expect: depression, anxiety, CPTSD, etc. But now I’ve done decades of intense processing and work on my damage and finally developed some self-worth.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some idiot online who uses slurs against me get the satisfaction of getting to me. If I react and start yelling at them, they win. They hold the power. They controlled my emotions. If I laugh that shit off, they don’t know what to do with that. If I come up with better insults for myself than they can think of, now they just look even stupider.
I flip their tactics on them. I don’t rage, I disempower their attacks. They’re left without their sustenance and they failed. They wanted a butthurt victim. Instead they got someone who knows their value isn’t tied to the opinions of some online rando. They failed to take my power and I retained it. That’s empowerment. That’s the opposite of capitulating and weakness. When someone’s trying to hurt you and you deprive them of that, you win.
That’s where my stance comes from. I refuse to let ignorant bigots decide how I feel. They’re not worthy of my emotion or my energy. When I see people so eagerly giving these trolls exactly what they seek, it’s frustrating.
I suspect @ywtf is referencing this tweet: https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/1288229707364937728
but I’m not sure, and I’m not sure the parameters around the discussion, honestly.