Empowerful!

[sabotabby]

Why we need a feminist revolution, part 345: Naomi Klein goes over to the Liberals and the Status of Women committee at my union is offering Zumba classes.

Comments

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

NOOOOOOO!!!!

Oh wait, I'm American. I don't care. Still Naomi Klein's essay about the EVIL advertisers who are marketing to college students rubbed me the wrong way. I hate that kind of smug condescending discourse that assumes that everyone but the author and her likeminded academics are stupid sheep who are capable of being brainwashed by a sticker on the wrapping of a text book.

I'm trying to decide if she is more or less noxious than conspiracy theorists who call people sheeples for not believing in 9/11. Probably more, since she is a slightly better writer.

And from the times that I've marketed my books, I only WISH that marketing was that powerful.

[sabotabby]

She has generally been overly earnest but not wrong, which puts her leaps and bounds about conspiracy theorists. No Logo is a good, accessible introductory lefty book, and Shock Doctrine is amazing. She has more than her fair share of detractors on the left but I've always liked her.

Well, until now. Now she's out to lunch. Maybe she's planning on running for something, though I can't imagine what.

Me too; I still want to like her

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Saying that Klein is out to lunch means that I have entirely given up on the possibility of reform.

Which point I guess, despite what my brain tells me, I haven't quite reached. I don't think that enacting proportional representation will will enable the return of Capitalism With a Human Face (let alone usher in a peaceful transition to a truly democratic post-Capitalist order), but the only other alternative I can imagine includes monstrous repression and a long and literally bloody battle to defeat it.

Love,


Young(ish) Geoffrey, who still longs for an incrementalist revolution

[sabotabby]

It's really hard for me to go from "this person is mostly right" to "no, this person is totally wrong wrong wrong." I'm taking this one quite personally.

I don't think Capitalism With a Human Face is really possible. The profit motive will inevitably take over. I don't think the answer is necessarily bloody revolution (especially since that won't happen in North America), though.

Capitalism with a human mask?

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I don't think the answer is necessarily bloody revolution (especially since that won't happen in North America), though.

I hope you're right, because bloody revolutions are usually so, well, bloody; and too often, end with the rise of a Napoleon or Stalin. But I find it difficult to imagine any other way out, in my darker moments.

So maybe we should salute Klein for having the courage to pin her hopes on electoral reform; PR doesn't guarantee a more sane legislature, but properly implemented (including, say, a minimum vote requirement, so that it's harder for religious nuts to hold the balance of power), it ought to make one more likely.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

who or what is a Zumba?

[sabotabby]

It is some new trendy dance fitness thing, the existence of which I had heretofore managed to block out of my consciousness.

[nichtsda.livejournal.com]

I overheard a zumba class in progress. I didn't see it, but I know that you periodically shout out "Zumba."

[sabotabby]

That's ghastly.

[nichtsda.livejournal.com]

"Women's suffrage?" Susan B. Anthony scoffed. "Why would us girls waste time insisting upon equal rights to vote or own property when we are more than sufficiently empowered by this toothsome yoghurt which purifies the bowels?"

[sabotabby]

Oh shit, and now I have an idea for a meme.

"Toothsome yoghurt ..."

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

"... which purifies the bowels"

If Our Sabs doesn't create that meme I just might have to.