Oh, great. This school’s thoroughly half-assed, white-suburban, wannabe-socialist politics were annoying enough when all they did was talk. Now I get to be assaulted by slogans on my way to class in the morning. If you want to know what kind of moronic slogans float around here, read my other thread.
It’s gonna be like that, only I get to hear it instead of stare at it. Maybe it’s because this college is so damn small, but the politically active organizations here are dominated by ignorant, immature people. And that pisses me off becuase I actually would have joined a couple of them.
Example: The feminist organization here are the kind of people who get upset over the spelling of “women” but ignore the bigger, ongoing problems facing women. Their solution for the wage gap between women and men is chalking “On average, womyn earn 72 cents for every 1.00 men do” on the sidewalk in the middle of the night. Unlike feminist groups at other colleges, that is all they do. There’s no “See what you can do about it - come to our building at such and such a time.” They do nothing positive, nothing productive, and nothing for the benefit of the community.
And now I’m going to get someone yelling in my face that “On average, a woman is raped every 8 minutes!!!” Well, what the hell should I do? Walk faster?
Look, I’m paying this school gobs of money so I find something I’m interested in, learn some stuff and hopefully pick up a few marketable skills. I’m not here to get saturated with apathetic rich-kid politics. Stick to your retarded chalking and those repulsive statistics you post everywhere and leave me the hell alone!!
Sure they are. They are learning the basics of civil disobedience. Part of the training involves learning how best to irritate people such as yourself. If their efforts seem amateurish, recall that most of them have never done anything like this before. They’ll get better at it with experience.
[sub]Quietly, I crack my knuckles and click “reply.” Cut’n’paste the sentence that really leapt out at me. Types some fragments. Doublechecks and verifies that my Inner Cynic calibration reads “full” and Rational Evaluation reads “null”.[/sub]
Huh. I always thought that politically active organizations being dominated by ignorant, immature people is pretty much the norm, not the exception.
These people, tho, are over the top. In the three weeks before we signed up for clubs, here’s what I saw them do.
Write the word “cunt” on the sidewalk about 100 times.
Write “fuck the patriarchy” on the sidewalk.
Expect this to change something.
Try to bully the filmmaking club into making a “feminist documentary on chalkings.” MY MOM fucking chalked, okay? How many times has this movie been made? Probably more than it’s been watched.
Tape a sign saying “sexist pig” to a guy’s back because he was telling dirty jokes. In all seriousness.
Chase down girls on club sign-up day and ask them why they hadn’t signed up yet.
And that’s what convinced me the group was dominated by ignorant, immature losers.
Just so I’m not aimlessly complaining, I’ve never put much stock in protests and chalkings. It always seemed that the people who really cared about their favorite cause would do something more productive. They’d help out a legal organization. They’d build houses for charity. Hell, they’d put out an underground newspaper. Something that takes a little more brain work and a lot more dedication than marching around and yelling.
A small question: Did I change from being an upper middle class student leftist to being a working class student leftist when I moved out of my parents’ house in Westmount and ended up in a $217.50/month apartment in St-Henri? If so, what a relief! I would hate to have how much money my parents make threaten my political integrity.
