Thursday 14 July 2011

A Left-Wing Call To Arms

It's time to start kicking arse and taking names. And this time, I mean all of you. I'm sick of being alienated from scenes I like, and I'm not the only one.

Here's the deal: Challenging one dominant ideal in society (patriarchy, theism, capitalism etc.), whilst displaying sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic or any other discriminatory traits is not on, and I'm calling you all out on it.

It is not enough to simply say "well, our group doesn't discriminate" when patriarchal, white, cis-centric values are the norm.  

If you're not actively fighting oppression, you're propagating it.

I'm not asking for the moon on a stick, all I'm asking for is people to check their damn privilege and make sure their movement is not doing things to make people they should be allied with feel uncomfortable.

Kyriarchy. Smash it. 

Here's some examples of what I'm talking about:

Stavvers on Manarchy
Blaghag on sexist atheists
Feministe on racism in the LGBT community
CN Lester on cissexism at Pride
I Live Sweat on pretty much every problem in the punk scene

Actively fighting one lefty fight doesn't give you a free pass on all other lefty issues if you ignore them and hope they go away. Just remember - we're all in this together.

4 comments:

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  2. I like to think of myself as left-wing, and I agree that we need all need to fight every dominant injustice in society. However, from recent experience I have learnt that I am out-of-my depth when arguing about Feminism as I do not understand all the key issues. I think the problem isn't lefties being lazy and only fighting the issue that affects them most but is that some don't understand the other areas to the same extent as some others. They therefore feel out of their depth and are reluctant to attack that issue.
    I don't think lefties only fight one fight out of laziness, it's out of fear of appearing ignorant/misunderstanding and actually damaging the cause through that.

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  3. That was what made me follow you on Twitter, a comment you made about trans rights and how feminists should realise we are all working to the same goals. I went to my first feminist conference in 20 years last year and was all geared up and ready to go. Then I found out that trans women wer prohibited from attending the Reclaim the Night march and I was dumbfounded. I don't have all the fancy words and the right command of the terminology, I just know that it made me deeply uncomfortable.

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  4. Right the fuck on. We all need to check our own privilege sometimes.

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