Very conceptual
Oh yes, if only we hadn’t internalized pesky “grievance studies” we’d be just fine with a president who calls women “Horseface” and “Pocahontas” and fat and ugly and all the rest of the bully-boy crap he vomits out.
The reason we are obsessing so much over Trump calling a woman "horseface," and all his other similar jibes against women and minorities, is because our culture has internalized an awful lot of grievance studies. It's a straight line from the scholarship.https://t.co/ZzjIIUgdMt
— James Lindsay, full varsity (@ConceptualJames) October 17, 2018
False dichotomy, chum. It’s not a choice between “language is everything” and “language doesn’t matter.” Trump’s venomous name-calling is not all there is to Trump, but it’s not nothing, either.
Also I’m pretty sure it’s not a postmodernist invention that language matters.
Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter to someone who is not the target of the language, the hate, the bullying, or the abuse, and someone who doesn’t much care if other people are. So if it’s no problem to them, why should it be a problem to anyone else?
I kept trying to explain to one of my colleagues why the fact that student evaluations are discriminatory is more important than the fact that they care inaccurate, but as a white male, he assumed the worst thing is that one might get a good evaluation while being a bad teacher. He didn’t understand that, while that is a serious matter, it is not as serious in its consequences as the hatred of students for certain large groups of people showing up in evaluation comments like “fire her immediately” or “go back to China” (a comment received by one of my friends who is actually from Thailand). A teacher who is “fun” but ineffectual will get a good rating and be kept on, perhaps at the expense of student learning, and that is unfortunate but there are other ways to find out if they are a good or not so good teacher. A discriminatory statement, on the other hand, has a life of its own, and we shouldn’t be evaluating people based on their gender, race, or country of origin. And this could actually lead to lawsuits, since the school is now using these in our formal evaluations.
People who are not in the aggrieved group should sit back and ask themselves why someone might consider it important when someone calls them a derogatory or hateful name. What are the consequences? And they should also consider this: those of us who are outraged by Trump’s misogyny and racism do not necessarily ignore all the other problems; we are capable of multitasking and being outraged about multiple things at once. We are also able to recognize that these insults and bullying actions have real consequences, including on those oh, so much more important issues, because they are a symptom of what is wrong with our society, and they also translate into real world actions, like putting a sexual predator on the Supreme Court and passing laws that take away bodily autonomy from a particular group of people, for the moment (at least on this website) known as women. The insults and bullying also lead to policies that separate children from their parents at the border, that disenfranchise entire groups of people, and that threaten to turn journalists into targets for rage and violence.
But again, if you are not in the targeted groups, perhaps you don’t see that as a bad thing. Too many people who are comfortable and cozy in the cosseted classes, who live in positions of privilege, are unwilling to even see the shit that other people go through. It isn’t unable; that is out there, it is available for them to experience vicariously if they wish, but it is a matter of being unwilling. To see the danger in Trump’s misogyny and racism is to be obligated to do something about it, and that would mean moving out of a zone of comfort, and perhaps never being able to return to the position of privilege you currently enjoy.
I think it is probably OK to say that presidents shouldn’t go around bullying people. Is that such a shaky, unattainable standard that people have to justify it by blaming the victims?
Well yes, yes it obviously fucking is.
This is how low the bar is now. People tut at you for suggesting that the president probably shouldn’t be an enormous bully.
This doesn’t seem quite right.
Very verbose, that Lindsay fellow. It doesn’t take three tweets to say ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.’ Well, not for non-philosophical types, anyway.
Strike up another chorus of ‘Don’t Let’s be Beastly to the Germans.’
And who the hell is Lindsay?