The failure of Franchise Activism
Mar. 2nd, 2019 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI don't know if there's a term for the phenomenon where a well-intentioned, even effective, action gets taken up or co-opted by groups or institutions in a way that either waters it down and renders it purely symbolic, or distorts it beyond its original meaning, but for lack of a better term, I'll call it Franchise Activism.
Some examples:
Today's ironic example of Franchise Activism is this incredible tweet by—who else?—the Ontario Tory government. For those of you who aren't Canuckistanians, Pink Shirt Day came about because a child was being bullied by homophobes for wearing a pink shirt, and other kids came to his aid and wore pink shirts in solidarity. This is the kind of relatively non-threatening activism that schools adore, so Pink Shirt Day was born. Now, do I always wear a pink shirt on Pink Shirt Day? I do. But I make it clear that it's about homophobia and transphobia specifically, not bullying in general. In some schools, the climate is still so bigoted that you can't name homophobia and transphobia out loud, but everyone is anti-bullying, so the meaning becomes diluted.
It goes without saying that our provincial government is composed entirely of bullies, all of them homophobic and transphobic. They created massive disruption and cost taxpayers a ridiculous amount of money to change a recently updated Health and Physical Education curriculum out of fear that young children would discover that it's okay to be queer and/or trans. You will note that the tweet does not mention queer or trans people or name homophobia or transphobia. But they perform the ritual anyway, as it's expected.
The Ontario government—which doesn't want anyone to talk about queer sexualities and gender diversity—tweeting about Pink Shirt Day without mentioning homophobia is exactly what I can't stand about Pink Shirt Day.
Some examples:
- Occupy in New York was an effective tactic. It was meant to disrupt business as usual, and it reframed class war in a way that could be easily discussed by people without a grounding in Marxism (which I actually think is useful, even though I'm a Marxist). Other cities took up the slogans. By the time it hit Toronto, it became about camping and using the People's Mic, even though the camp was not in a place that caused any disruption, and the People's Mic was unnecessary, since we don't have the sorts of bylaws here against amplified sound, and to be honest the number of people in the camp was so low by that point that you could just talk normally and everyone could hear you.
- The Yellow Vests is about...something??? in France, but I guess one of the demands involves fuel access, so it was immediately coopted by astroturf-funded far-right groups to be about supporting the oil pipelines, opposing any sort of environmental regulation, and kicking out immigrants.
- Free the Children harnessed the momentum of the anti-sweatshop movement and tamed it to render it completely ineffective. It took activists smuggling hidden cameras into maquiladoras and culture-jamming Nike billboards and created large binders that could be ordered by every school in Ontario, with a list of approved activities (bake sales!) to raise funds to send rich kids to dig wells in developing countries and "be the change." It holds annual slick events at the Air Canada Centre and rakes in a considerable profit, none of which is ever seen by the 14-year-old girl who makes your clothing in Bangladesh.
Today's ironic example of Franchise Activism is this incredible tweet by—who else?—the Ontario Tory government. For those of you who aren't Canuckistanians, Pink Shirt Day came about because a child was being bullied by homophobes for wearing a pink shirt, and other kids came to his aid and wore pink shirts in solidarity. This is the kind of relatively non-threatening activism that schools adore, so Pink Shirt Day was born. Now, do I always wear a pink shirt on Pink Shirt Day? I do. But I make it clear that it's about homophobia and transphobia specifically, not bullying in general. In some schools, the climate is still so bigoted that you can't name homophobia and transphobia out loud, but everyone is anti-bullying, so the meaning becomes diluted.
It goes without saying that our provincial government is composed entirely of bullies, all of them homophobic and transphobic. They created massive disruption and cost taxpayers a ridiculous amount of money to change a recently updated Health and Physical Education curriculum out of fear that young children would discover that it's okay to be queer and/or trans. You will note that the tweet does not mention queer or trans people or name homophobia or transphobia. But they perform the ritual anyway, as it's expected.
The Ontario government—which doesn't want anyone to talk about queer sexualities and gender diversity—tweeting about Pink Shirt Day without mentioning homophobia is exactly what I can't stand about Pink Shirt Day.
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Date: 2019-03-02 04:07 pm (UTC)It's an effort to defang activism, and it works.
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Date: 2019-03-02 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2019-03-02 06:01 pm (UTC)I think my least favourite kind of protest is stuff like "wear X colour shirt on X day". No offense to you! It's just that besides being so easy to co-opt, it also sounds pretty pointless. People who don't know about it (and even people who do) might just assume it's a regular shirt like on any other day... so I'm not sure how it's raising "awareness". And even when it does, what are the goals of that awareness? wearing a pink shirt for breast cancer awareness is a thing here and I wouldn't participate even if I had a pink shirt (which I don't).
And don't get me started on Facebook campaigns...
Sorry for rambling! Anyway, yes, I can see how it'd be very easy to repurpose a thing against homophobic/transphobic bullying. :(
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Date: 2019-03-02 06:14 pm (UTC)I'm also sick of awareness. I think everyone is aware of breast cancer. People need to be more aware of the negative effects of pinkwashing from corporate interests who produce carcinogens as a matter of course, or don't support their workers who have to take medical leave because of cancer.
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Date: 2022-05-07 03:04 pm (UTC)NCOD is somewhat alienating to me, even as a concept and moreso in practice. The reasons are a messy bundle, I suppose.
As a trans man, my transness had been constantly scrutinized and commented on pre- and during transition, which means that now, when I am usually gendered correctly and my documents also show my correct gender, I am finally in a position where I can enjoy not having to discuss my trans status all the time. (Dreamwidth is different because I can use a pseudonym and it's a choice I get to make on how open I want to be and to whom. In meatspace, I still don't feel safe being out.) Similarly, I rarely signify my bi orientation— as you said, the people who know you, do know... and nobody's entitled to knowing, anyway.
I can understand that for some people it can be the push they need, a good opportunity to come out when lots of others do as well, and I do not want to take away from that, but a part of me is still less enthused about the thought that such a day is needed at all, when the ideal would be that any day would be a good day to come out.
I also get the impression that coming-out as a term has been removed from LGBT identity more and more, and I stopped paying attention to NCOD (similar to how I stopped paying attention to Pride Month) because I always had to brace myself for someone's shitty take on it and the event became annoying or upsetting instead of uplifting. Like, I'll never forget an argument I had a few years ago with someone who used NCOD to came out as a reader of romance novels, and when I took issue with that, they claimed that coming-out was simply about being open about something you were ashamed of or felt unsafe disclosing, and admitting to being a lesbian caused them less anxiety than admitting they liked romance novels, therefore...
And, like. It's incredibly easy to put an LGBT flag next to your twitter handle (but not in countries where it's still actively criminalized and may cost you customers and business investors! then it's just the standard company logo) or putting up a rainbow flag for a few weeks and then it all disappears again and it cost you nothing, you didn't have to do anything. As a bi trans person, I can walk into a local supermarket and see some rainbow stickers plastered near their entrance, but it doesn't make me feel any safer because it doesn't tell me anything. Does it mean they support LGBT charities? Does it mean the cashier wouldn't look at me strangely if I came in with a boyfriend who gives me a peck on the cheek during check-out? Does it mean they have an anti-discrimination policy in place if I were to work there? Or is a cigar just a cigar and it just means they put some stickers up?
I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's fucking easy to turn LGBT symbols and support into merchandise. And I agree with you that it's a convenient way to distract from other issues, to use it as a smokescreen to hide the shit they're doing.
Again, sorry for rambling at you under a three-years-old post, but it's been touching on things I've been thinking about on and off for a good while now.
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Date: 2022-05-07 09:01 pm (UTC)*
Date: 2019-03-02 10:30 pm (UTC)Re: *
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Date: 2019-03-02 10:39 pm (UTC)I suppose I had to learn sometime what the world is really like. :/
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Date: 2019-03-03 08:31 am (UTC)So ten years on, Eugene is a regional leader in alternative housing schemes (some of which was already happening) and Occupy Medical has, like, a clinic bus and they go out and do all sorts of useful stuff: http://occupy-medical.org/
Basically, Occupy moved the discussion in some very useful ways. Elements did get taken up by existing nonprofits that were already working on the housing issue, but Occupy made the whole thing more urgent.
IDK, not to be a Pollyanna, and a million things about Eugene still drive me up the wall, but there was one place where, like, good shit went down.
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Date: 2019-03-03 02:15 pm (UTC)To some degree, that's happened here with the safe injection sites, which I think started in Vancouver. It's a good model, people here adapted it for what was needed, and it will hopefully spread to other places. But there's not the tent-in-a-park model in Newfoundland and Labrador, for example; there's a doctor in a plane, because different things work in different locations.
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