Just a quickie for now: Mad Thinker Scott has already pointed out Mickle's reflexive bit of self-contradiction, so there's no need for me to belabor the point, but after wondering why some of it felt so familiar, it hit me:
Oh yeah, I tried saying pretty much the same thing several months ago, only without calling anyone an "asshat".
And what I got in response were a number of folks trying to tell me that:
- Being nice doesn't work;
- Telling someone to be nice is like telling them to sit down and shut up;
- You need to yell at/be abusive to people to get them to pay attention to you;
- and so forth.
2 comments:
Actually, Anon, you didn't say EXACTLY the same thing as Mickle.
In your posts, you were trying to suggest that those with a cause would be better served not to make more enemies for themselves, with angry bluster and rage, and use the persuasive power of "being nice."
Mickle, on the other hand, is simply telling those who would question or scrutinize the radical feminist line of dogma, that their opinions don't matter and aren't welcome. That their feelings and complaints are beyond reproach and anyone who thinks otherwise is an "asshat troll."
Your's was to suggest another tact or strategy to getting people to listen to their views. Her's is merely setting up a wall between their line of dogma and those who would dare to question it.
So, you see, it's not really even close to the same.
My main discomfort at certain "feminist" discourse is that it presupposes Aristotelian Essentialism, and that way of looking at the world was conclusively proven wrong at least a century ago. Light "is" a wave or a particle, not as an essential property, but dependent on the observer. Yet people still go around saying stuff like "X *is* offensive" as if it was an essential property of X rather than a viewpoint of a specific observer. I guess it sounds more compelling than "I find X offensive and I feel you ought to care about my opinion more than I care about yours."
...maybe I should make a "bingo card" website so I could go "BZZZT! Aristotelian Essentialism! Rephrase your statement using E-prime!"
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