Make Activism Fun Again
Apr. 4th, 2017 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyToday, in a fit of pique, the following occurred to me (prompted by me posting a leftist pop culture critique, only to be told that the author of said post was being called out at the moment, though for reasons that had nothing to do with his post):
Okay, that's not completely fair, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that the left has become even more of a toxic and humourless wasteland than it was the last time I was regularly going to protests, with less effect. Say what you will about grim Stalinist and Maoist dystopias, at least they were effective. What passes for activism these days is not, largely because call-out culture, about which many pixels have been spilled, targets our friends rather than our enemies.
Also, I am pretty sure that there is not much overlap between "people who are heavily, or even slightly involved in real-life activism" and "people who call out problematic people over the internet." I can't prove it, though.
That's not to say that we should pretend that problematic ideas and people don't exist in our movement. Of course they do. And we shouldn't tolerate sexism or racism and transphobia from our allies any more than we tolerate it from our enemies, but the perfect is the enemy of the good. A rigid adherence to standards nurtured in academia and inaccessible to the vast majority of people who feel that shit is fucked up and wrong is not productive, and it's not like we have so many friends that we can afford to alienate most of them.*
At the root of this, I think, is an overabundance of seriousness. We have focused so much on creating the perfect political terminology, actions that walk the line between confronting capital and creating a safe space**, ensuring that our meetings take place under appropriately sterile circumstances, that we have failed to create a lively, dynamic culture that extends past the protest and meeting and Facebook re-share and into our daily lives. In short, we have forgotten that this struggle should be fun.
"But wait," my straw-activist† exclaims. "You're not taking this seriously! Not everyone has the privilege of being an activist because it's fun."
Of course, no one's an activist because it's fun. It's not fun. Even when you get to fight with a Nazi, it's much more scary than anything else. I would vastly rather marathon Netflix on the couch than wake up at ass o' clock to march in the streets, and I really do it because I'm compelled, because I don't have the privilege of ignoring the world's drunken flailing towards fascism. Because if we lose, I die and my friends die. Fun isn't the end goal here; it's part of the process.
If you look at movements throughout the world and throughout history, you'll see that desperate times and privation and hard, often fatal struggles, did not stop people from having a sense of humour or building community and culture. Witness the dark satire in the plays of Brecht, the poetry of the Zapatistas, the songs of Joe Hill. What I see missing on the left is the hopeful alternative, the shared art and music and theatre, the giant puppets in the street protests, the creative actions, the meetings in pubs†† that bleed into social gatherings. The idea of fighting for and not just fighting against. Even totalitarian state communism had its enjoyable moments; strangely enough these days the only people I see really creating an active, vibrant political culture are tankies. The very people who you'd expect to be the most uptight and humourless are the ones manufacturing memes like they're boots for the revolution. And good on them; it's why I like tankies more than most people whose politics I, on paper, agree with.
It's a matter of pragmatism, not warm fuzzies. Seriousness is unsustainable. Most of the young people currently calling out this that and the other thing††† will not, long-term, be involved in activism. Anger is a good temporary fuel, but it burns out quickly once jobs and kids come into the picture. The way to retain people and to draw more into the movement is by building links that are less easily severed—those of friendship and community.
Among the most effective groups I was ever a part of had as its core members myself (then an anarchist), a Trotskyist, two MLMs, and a Cuban revolution fanboy. We did not have much political common ground with each other, much less with some of our allies. What we did have was a simple shared goal and debriefing sessions at skeezy bars that degenerated into drunken giggling that had nothing, superficially, to do with politics. I don't doubt that these types of connections are happening now, on an individual level, but I don't see it happening at a larger scale. I don't know how to make it happen—most of the new comrades I meet manage to piss me off within 30 seconds of interaction—but I think it needs to. I know it needs to.
It's worked for the far-right. Their schoolyard humour got Cheeto Benito elected. People who like the spadgebasket like him because, for whatever reason, they find him funny. They're in no small part desperate, jobless, broke, and suffering, but they can find the space for a laugh.
In other words, more giant puppets, people. More biting satire and music and graffiti and I don't care what, just lighten the fuck up and stop trying to make everything perfect and safe.
P.S. If you hadn't noticed, I'm under the same name on LJ and DW. I'm not jumping ship on the latter, ridiculous TOS or not, seeing as I have a paid account at least through next year. But if you wanna add me on DW for the same fun content and fewer icons, by all means do so.
Politics, but instead of doing anything about it, we just post “your fave is problematic” over and over again.
Okay, that's not completely fair, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that the left has become even more of a toxic and humourless wasteland than it was the last time I was regularly going to protests, with less effect. Say what you will about grim Stalinist and Maoist dystopias, at least they were effective. What passes for activism these days is not, largely because call-out culture, about which many pixels have been spilled, targets our friends rather than our enemies.
Also, I am pretty sure that there is not much overlap between "people who are heavily, or even slightly involved in real-life activism" and "people who call out problematic people over the internet." I can't prove it, though.
That's not to say that we should pretend that problematic ideas and people don't exist in our movement. Of course they do. And we shouldn't tolerate sexism or racism and transphobia from our allies any more than we tolerate it from our enemies, but the perfect is the enemy of the good. A rigid adherence to standards nurtured in academia and inaccessible to the vast majority of people who feel that shit is fucked up and wrong is not productive, and it's not like we have so many friends that we can afford to alienate most of them.*
At the root of this, I think, is an overabundance of seriousness. We have focused so much on creating the perfect political terminology, actions that walk the line between confronting capital and creating a safe space**, ensuring that our meetings take place under appropriately sterile circumstances, that we have failed to create a lively, dynamic culture that extends past the protest and meeting and Facebook re-share and into our daily lives. In short, we have forgotten that this struggle should be fun.
"But wait," my straw-activist† exclaims. "You're not taking this seriously! Not everyone has the privilege of being an activist because it's fun."
Of course, no one's an activist because it's fun. It's not fun. Even when you get to fight with a Nazi, it's much more scary than anything else. I would vastly rather marathon Netflix on the couch than wake up at ass o' clock to march in the streets, and I really do it because I'm compelled, because I don't have the privilege of ignoring the world's drunken flailing towards fascism. Because if we lose, I die and my friends die. Fun isn't the end goal here; it's part of the process.
If you look at movements throughout the world and throughout history, you'll see that desperate times and privation and hard, often fatal struggles, did not stop people from having a sense of humour or building community and culture. Witness the dark satire in the plays of Brecht, the poetry of the Zapatistas, the songs of Joe Hill. What I see missing on the left is the hopeful alternative, the shared art and music and theatre, the giant puppets in the street protests, the creative actions, the meetings in pubs†† that bleed into social gatherings. The idea of fighting for and not just fighting against. Even totalitarian state communism had its enjoyable moments; strangely enough these days the only people I see really creating an active, vibrant political culture are tankies. The very people who you'd expect to be the most uptight and humourless are the ones manufacturing memes like they're boots for the revolution. And good on them; it's why I like tankies more than most people whose politics I, on paper, agree with.
It's a matter of pragmatism, not warm fuzzies. Seriousness is unsustainable. Most of the young people currently calling out this that and the other thing††† will not, long-term, be involved in activism. Anger is a good temporary fuel, but it burns out quickly once jobs and kids come into the picture. The way to retain people and to draw more into the movement is by building links that are less easily severed—those of friendship and community.
Among the most effective groups I was ever a part of had as its core members myself (then an anarchist), a Trotskyist, two MLMs, and a Cuban revolution fanboy. We did not have much political common ground with each other, much less with some of our allies. What we did have was a simple shared goal and debriefing sessions at skeezy bars that degenerated into drunken giggling that had nothing, superficially, to do with politics. I don't doubt that these types of connections are happening now, on an individual level, but I don't see it happening at a larger scale. I don't know how to make it happen—most of the new comrades I meet manage to piss me off within 30 seconds of interaction—but I think it needs to. I know it needs to.
It's worked for the far-right. Their schoolyard humour got Cheeto Benito elected. People who like the spadgebasket like him because, for whatever reason, they find him funny. They're in no small part desperate, jobless, broke, and suffering, but they can find the space for a laugh.
In other words, more giant puppets, people. More biting satire and music and graffiti and I don't care what, just lighten the fuck up and stop trying to make everything perfect and safe.
P.S. If you hadn't noticed, I'm under the same name on LJ and DW. I'm not jumping ship on the latter, ridiculous TOS or not, seeing as I have a paid account at least through next year. But if you wanna add me on DW for the same fun content and fewer icons, by all means do so.
* I say this as someone who holds a lot of grudges. There are people on the left who, for reasons of offences committed recently and otherwise, I cannot be in the same room with.
** This is impossible BTW.
† Not really. I've met loads of people like this.
†† You can't do that, Sabotabby. That's ableist!
††† Today I learned that Love Life of an Asian Guy is racist and misogynist, and that PissPigGranddad—who as far as I'm concerned is a fucking hero—is a "war tourist."
no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 10:36 pm (UTC)On one hand, yeah, I agree with you that it can get ridiculous and even harmful (e.g. I've noticed TERFs use this a lot, and misguided white people shout "racism!" over something a POC is doing even when it's not as clear cut as it would be in their cases).
On the other hand:
I'm not sure that it's as straightforward as "people call out others online but don't go out on the streets". Other than people who obviously do both, I'm inclined to think that some of the people who don't go out on protests and the like probably wouldn't anyway. And if they wouldn't, then at least participating in that sort of everyday work of telling their friends that that rape joke wasn't funny or that casually racist comment wasn't ok is better than staying quiet about it and making the overall ideas seem like something that belongs to a vocal minority (if this makes sense).
Where do we even draw the line? There are situations where it's obvious to me, but others where it isn't. People NOT being willing to call a spade a spade is precisely why I'm often very anxious regarding actually going out and doing any serious activism (I've posted about those experiences before).
I'm all for a sense of fun and fewer ideological purges, though, especially if it's not in a way that gives certain shitty things a pass.
Also, wtf, how is PissPigGrandad a war tourist? O.o
no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 10:58 pm (UTC)There's nothing but middle ground here, to be honest. I will note the irony of my posts about the left mainly being call-out posts and this one is no exception.
But to me there's a big difference between calling out a friend for a rape joke and publicly shaming comrades that you don't know in an open forum that you have reasonable grounds to believe is being monitored by cops and fascists. I've been seeing a lot of the latter lately. It doesn't divide neatly into newer activists being more self-righteous (although I think that's mainly the case); for sure one of the people I regularly want to smack the most has been around for as long as I have and has done way more work.
The difference is largely whether it's constructive or performative. If your friend made a rape joke, your goal is to teach your friend why that's wrong. If a fellow activist said something problematic, the goal is often to purge that person from the community, or to show how much better you are.
Also, wtf, how is PissPigGrandad a war tourist? O.o
Hah, well, my respect for call-outs tends to fluctuate based on where the caller-out is coming from. If a veteran of the Spanish Civil War or a member of the YPG wants to call him that, then by all means, I'll listen. If a person who has never in his life seen combat complains that a privileged Westerner has decided to risk his life to help left-wing Kurds, I'm going to laugh in his face. Said caller-out also has Assadist sympathies, so there's that.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 05:56 pm (UTC)Regarding: PissPigGrandad, I'm with you on this one, which is why I was asking what the context was. Sadly, my first guess is that it wouldn't be anyone who would come from a place of having that experience but some random person.
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Date: 2017-04-06 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 01:42 am (UTC)pineapple on pizza, yea or nay?
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 01:44 am (UTC)This said, I recognize the right of people to be WRONG and GROSS.
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Date: 2017-04-05 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-06 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 04:30 am (UTC)And I hate the "ableist!" epithet. Everyone who uses it in my general direction assumes I'm able-bodied and neurotypical. I have depression, social anxiety disorder, bipolar symptoms which have not been diagnosed as such but are very much a nuisance, ADHD, and the worst kind of OCD you can have, I am overweight and out of shape and have back problems and respiratory problems, and I protest. My mom has had two knee surgeries and is in her late sixties. She got a wheelchair - not an electric one, but an old fashioned one - and went out to protest Trump. If we can do it, they can do it. They try to talk the talk, and "ableism!" is the blue shell they try and toss at us when we ask them to walk the walk. Berating someone in fandom because a fic made them mad, or because the fandom is problematic in some way, is not going to get Trump impeached or magically secure civil rights and respectful treatment for LGBTQ+ folks and immigrants and Muslims, or make police stop shooting Black people for no reason. We have to get out there and do those things. No one is going to do it for us.
That said, you're right about needing to somehow make it where it isn't all doom and gloom. I do think that a lot of them act that way because they think it is "supposed" to be...and then they get intimidated and hide on tumblr where all they have to do is yell at people in between reblogging pics of Tom Hiddleston.
I have a group of friends I protest with, but we do other stuff. We were friends before Trump was elected, and we'll be friends long after. I think this helps a lot.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 11:50 am (UTC)On a practical level, focus on perfectionism in politics often makes for a battle of conflicting ableisms. The pub where I went post-demo is wheelchair-accessible (one of my friends has serious mobility problems and a cane) but not, I imagine, accessible for sober people. Despite the fact that one of us managed to not drink (not me). The overly excessive politeness of one of the groups I'm in has completely purged "lame" from its vocabulary, but heaven help any autistic person (or ESL person, or poor/non-uni-educated person) who tries to navigate a conversation there.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 08:15 am (UTC)True story: I was browsing around some forum (I honestly don't remember where -- and, hell, it could've even been Tumblr), and somebody posted that they were strongly considering suicide. Part of the problem is that this person was both fairly isolated due to severe anxiety, and she was unable to get professional help because it cost too much, and anyway, the closest appointment was six weeks away or something. Well, whatever the case in all of this -- this was obviously a person in deep pain. She was reaching out for help. She was desperate and wanting to take her own life, and maybe she was just hoping that someone would tell her not to do it.
The only response she got was a pile of people yelling at her for posting it because it could "trigger" somebody dealing with suicidal thoughts. There were no supportive replies. There weren't even any acknowledging her problem, or even the fact that she was a person. In fact, they were calling her "literal garbage" all over the place.
Holy fucking shit. How do you even begin to dissect that? There's just so many levels on which this is horribly, horribly wrong.
Anyway, I see this one event as a big piece of the larger picture. These Tumblr activists, I think, don't actually want to see change, because if there was true change, they could no longer justify their actions. They just want to feel powerful by tearing other people down, but disguising it as "tolerance and acceptance".
I'm not talking about telling people why casual racism is wrong. Or why sexual assault isn't funny. I'm talking about bullying a WoC because her views don't exactly reflect their narrative, despite the fact that the WoC's views are shaped by her own experiences -- ones that the Tumblr activists could never understand because they're mostly middle-class white girls. I'm talking about ganging up on a mentally ill person because he/she is trying to get better in a way that they don't approve of. I'm talking about people who chant "intersectional feminism" over and over like a mantra, but when it comes to actually giving WoC a voice and listening to what they have to say, they just pat themselves on the back for playing white savior (as much as they'll deny it).
At a time when the world is going down an extremely dark and dangerous path, we all need to be united. All these chucklefucks are doing is keeping everyone angry, bitter, divided, afraid to speak, and in stasis. They're practically wrapping fascism up in pretty paper and handing it out to the rest of us while blaming whatever straw men they can find.
...okay, I'm done. Sorry for the long rambling comment. I haven't slept.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 11:46 am (UTC)Yep, this. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.
I've seen it worse in IRL-based Facebook spaces, but probably because that's mainly where I am, not on Tumblr.
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Date: 2017-04-05 05:11 pm (UTC)Which makes literally no sense. Their enemy is the right. But sure, it's a great idea to alienate potential allies and fracture the larger movement before it even has a chance to mobilize.
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Date: 2017-04-05 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 06:04 pm (UTC)But demographically, most of the people on FW were late stage Gen Xers or early stage Millennials like me, and should have grown out of it by then.
Ah, it sounds like we're in the same narrow age gap. I've heard of those of us born between 1980 to 1984/5 being referred to as the "Oregon Trail Generation". I love the name, and I like the idea that such a small window is a hybrid of both Gen-Xers and Millennials, but is still something different enough to warrant its own distinction.
I sound like a bitter middle aged person. I never realized that I had fallen into a generation gap until I got on Tumblr.
Tumblr notwithstanding (I try to avoid that site at all costs), yes, I believe that we're in the same boat.
I also agree completely with your entire post, but I'm too lazy (and tired) to pick out individual pieces. Just know, though, that we're both on the same page.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 11:48 pm (UTC)I can't let things go to shit around me when I go into a depressive state, because my OCD won't let me - and I have realized that keeping my area clean and organized actually helps me to manage the depression, while letting things go to shit around me contributes to it. I don't have the luxury of camping in my room with my pets and stuffed animals and favorite blanket and Lush bath bombs and chocolate candy during a depressive funk, because I am financially dependent upon my employment - and if I don't power through my depression, I'll lose my job. Hell, my last two jobs didn't even have paid sick days.
Exercise and yoga aren't magical cures for depression - but if I feel like I accomplished something by being active, it makes my depression easier to manage (plus, I don't want to die of a heart attack when I'm 45. Oops, that's fatophobia!) All of these things are heresy on Tumblr, if not outright blasphemy. I could go on and on. The prevailing attitude on Tumblr regarding mental disabilities positively reeks of privilege.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-06 09:56 pm (UTC)