Real Answers for Freddie deBoer

“thinner skin”

There seems to be an assumption here that feelings are the only thing at risk when these accusations are made.

I think there’s a lot of useful stuff here, but (while I cannot speak for Freddie) I think his problem might relate to the following attitude:

“My first suggestion would be to not conflate “being guilty of” with “being accused of.” You may be accused of it, or you may not. But being accused of invoking privilege isn’t fatal, and the possibility that you may be accused of it doesn’t preclude you from speaking.”

In fact, as he writes about frequently, accusations of privilege *are* taken of prima facie evidence of guilt in left-wing (especially Twitter) discourse all the time today. You might say it’s not fatal, but to less established and experienced types it might not feel that way and has a real chilling effect.

“First, not every space is ever going to be a good fit for every person. There’s a cost to the kinds of in-group dynamics you describe, but there’s also a cost to catering to every passer-by at the expense of doing the work that needs to be done.”

Please excuse me if my question is dumb or very basic, or feel free to just refer me to something rather than explaining at length, but what is the work that needs doing other than to bring people into the fold who are not already in the fold?

In other words, if I correctly understand de Boer’s position, he would argue that this is precisely the problem he is drawing attention to: rather than working to make its positions intelligible and attractive to (even well-meaning!) outsiders, the left prefers to talk to itself. And this is why it doesn’t win.

Hasn’t the success of the same-sex marriage movement in the U.S. over the last 20 years been largely due to increasing familiarity and comfort with gay people in the American “mainstream”? Andrew Sullivan took an issue that was viewed by the uninformed majority as weird and marginal, and turned it into a fundamental question about human dignity that, nowadays, a majority intuitively understands: gay people just want to be able to get married and have families like anyone else. It’s like that old Onion article: “Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years.”

I think this is where someone responds with something about how respectability politics suck, but I honestly don’t know how else societal progress is made.

feministlib and Angus –

I agree with you that people who have experienced oppression should be entitled (and encouraged) to express that rage and it’s good that people hear that rage. But that is not what I am talking about.

I was recently called a racist and fascist on twitter for trying to explain (to an anglo) the political context of a certain Charlie Hebdo cartoon. I’m not racist and I’m not a fascist and I don’t need to be re-educated. I just simply disagreed with that person and just because I disagree doesn’t mean I am a de-facto racist, fascist ect. To be noted -when I told this person their rhetoric was alienating and just plain mean they told me that any movement would be better off without me.

Anyways I think we are getting off point.

In summary I think Chait (while imperfect) brought up a real phenomenon that I’ve experienced and that caused me to disengage from political debate and delete my twitter account. The solutions presented in your article are really great but far too simplistic for larger political arenas.

Do you disagree that this is real thing that the left needs to work on?

“To be noted -when I told this person their rhetoric was alienating and just plain mean they told me that any movement would be better off without me.”

So?

Apologies if this sounds callous but, you are, judging from your comments here, someone who is stable and while this exchange was off putting there was no lasting harm done. Your views on Hebdo weren’t reinforced or diminished and there was no pile on afterwards. This sort of exchange is going to happen whatever the issue and whatever your ideology is.

It’s very different from being harassed out of a classroom or harassed into silence.

One issue that I don’t think is addressed very well in activist/organizing communities (at least the ones that I run in) is mental health. As a person of color with clinical depression and anxiety issues, I feel particularly sensitive to those environments that don’t feel safe. If I feel like I’m going to be attacked regardless of the forum, I am unlikely to participate and I do this to protect my own mental health. I’ve seen numerous instances where people are called “unbalanced” or “crazy” and dismissed. I don’t think this falls into a PC/Anti-PC framework because it happens to different groups, people who feel like insiders and outsides, communities, etc.

LifeofMisadventure:
“This is not something we agree on. In fact this is something we’ve disagreed on in these last two threads. Many progressives do not want to exclude those “brosocialists” (or whatever the word) and have their exclusion as evidence that the left is toxic and unwilling to tolerate different view points.”

Give me a single example of a progressive who thinks the progressive coalition ought to make room for people who engage in online sexual harassment and cyberbullying.

AJ:
“MtnMule, I’m not calling for shunning anyone, but after the attacks deBoer launched against me in the wake of this post — both on Twitter and at his blog — I don’t have any particular interest in working with him. I don’t think he’s interested in having a real discussion about these issues, and it’s obvious to me that the discussion we’re having here right now is immeasurably enhanced by his absence.”

FDB is, well, moody. I’ve noticed that. He snaps at people — sometimes people that agree with him! But on the other hand, I think he’s provided a needed critique of certain discursive trends noticeable in places like Gawker Media and Huffpo over the last few years (this transformation of call-out culture into profit-driven clickbait, cynically disguised as “social justice”) and he’s succeeded in getting their attention.

I find myself lingering a bit in this comment thread because I don’t think it’s acceptable for the left to wind up in a place where people like FDB — basically millennial Old Leftists — are simply lumped in with centrists like Jonathan Chait, or disparaged as “brocialists,” or people who just doesn’t “get it” because of “privilege.”

Sheelzebub:

Thanks for this thoughtful response.

I won’t defend the way FDB’s failed to engage every time AJ tries to make constructive suggestions.

I’d like to think that there’s actually a very large, politically fertile area of overlap between what you and I would deem to be good codes of speech within the left. Angus writes above that nobody should be using hateful terms (like “bitch”) and I absolutely agree with that. I don’t really get what the term “herp de derp” means and where it comes from, but it sounds possibly ableist, and if it is, then it absolutely should not be used (but in that case, there needs to be a clear explanation in circulation for WHY it’s an ableist term, because it’s weirdly hard to get a straightforward answer from google).

But there are also plenty of tricky cases. Is referring to Chelsea Manning as “Bradley” and a “he” hateful? Is it ignorant, even? Is referring to America’s indigenous peoples as “indians” hateful and/or ignorant? Even when Marxist historians use that term, and the American Indian Movement used that term?

You write that it’s tiring to have to explain to people over and over what terms they ought to use. And I’m saying that yeah, when it comes to hateful terms, you have to keep fighting against people using them, and yes that can be exhausting. But with a lot of other terms, maybe these aren’t things worth fighting tooth and nail for! Maybe that’s energy best left for other things. Maybe it’s possible to have a successful meeting where some activists refer to Manning as “he” and others refer to Manning and “she” and this difference doesn’t start a huge fight.

Q:
My opinion of FDB is clear enough from my comments above. I think you are egregiously mischaracterizing him when you call him “a Trojan Horse with considerably more white-centric, libertarian, anti-social justice politics than he wishes to appear.” Freddie is an old-left socialist who is instinctively suspicious of identity politics, as will as digital triumphalism. That’s really all there is to it, and I think his conduct makes enough sense in that context.

I think that maybe your view of DeBoer is colored by the way you initially encountered him, i.e. as someone linked to via Sullivan, Douthat, and Friedersdorf. Just because those guys linked to him doesn’t make him a Sillivanite, a Douthatian, or a Friedersdorfian.

I initially encountered him as a critic of Gawker posts which were cynically manipulating progressive call-out culture to generate clickbait. To me, Gawker has done more well-poisoning around certain issues than FDB could ever do. I’ve always thought of FDB as similar in politics to Jacobin or N+1. The fact that he can sometimes function is a bridge between Sullivan left-libertarians and Jacobin socialists intrigues me. It tells me there’s a possible coalition there.

MtnMule: Thanks for your reply!

First, it’s interesting–Freddie deBoer is moody and snaps at people. Now, has he given any of the people he castigates as alienating potential fellow travelers the same benefit of the doubt? I just want to point out–he’s demonstrating the same dynamic he’s condemning.

About terms and if they’re hateful: It’s interesting that you brought up trans people and pronouns, since that’s one of the sticking points I keep running into with fellow activists these days. For the trans people whom I’ve interacted with, it comes across as very hateful. It basically erases their existence and their reality. It gives their detractors more power–“You’re really a man, not a woman. Even your fellow leftists think so.” Misgendering is something that has cut a lot of trans people deeply; people who target them for harassment do it intentionally. If their families are not empathetic or sympathetic to being trans, they often also engage with it. When it reaches a point of denial/rejection, we’ve seen people commit suicide. So yeah–it may not feel like a big deal to someone who is not trans, but a lot of trans people see it differently. In the context of what they’re dealing with, it’s one of a thousand cuts. So I would expect a fellow traveler, a fellow activist, to be mindful of this. I would tell someone who refers to a trans person by their old name, or by the wrong pronoun to not do that. We have had enough Leelah Alcorns. I don’t want more. And especially Chelsea Manning–who is in prison and completely fucked over–it just feels incredibly disrespectful to refer to her as “Bradley” and “he”.

Other terms, like Indian–well, here’s the thing. Yes, terms often change. The mistake may be innocent. But what is the harm in asking people to use Native American? Yeah, I used to roll my eyes at it but then. . .I’m not the one who is Native American (legally recognized, anyway). Yes, there are people in the Native American community who don’t mind Indian and who use it but I’ve never seen them get offended or angry at someone using the term Native American. Once you know that many in the community prefer a different term, it is hateful to continue using the one that rankles them. Someone may not feel hatred when they do it, but it really does come across as contemptuous. As in: “I know you prefer this thing but I don’t care.” And when others ignore it or shrug it off, it’s multiplied.

It might not feel like a big deal. And there are some things that don’t bother me that may bother another woman (like the term “man up”–well, it bugs me because I think it’s fucking trite but I’ll live). I think a good rule to go by is that if you’re told a particular community doesn’t like a term, don’t use it. If another activist you’re working with is bothered by a term, don’t use it. At the very least, it’s courtesy. But it is also so much more than that.

I used to roll my eyes at this stuff too but I sucked it up because as someone (kind of loudly) reminded me, I wasn’t the one who was bearing the brunt of the bullshit. And she was right. I don’t feel like it’s a waste of time since we’re all supposed to have the same goals here. If it means it makes a fellow activist more comfortable, if it means I send the message that yes, you’re welcome here and your issues matter and we are all here fighting the same fight and I have your back, I’ll do that. And if we do that, we can work together. If we don’t do it, and if people don’t remind others that misgendering is actually a big deal to trans people and the wrong racial terms can alienate people, etc., we’re going to continue to lose people.

feministlib and Sheelsebub,

I’m actually pretty good about using all the terms which marginalized people ask be used. But I’m also very aware that the reason I do this isn’t necessarily because I’m such a nice guy. It’s mostly because I received a really, really privileged education. So when I see some kid at my current university (which I suspect is very similar to DeBoer’s university, i.e. a cash-strapped public uni) use language more clumsily, my first instinct is to think “oh yeah. this kid didn’t go to Fancy-Pants Academy.” It’s not to think “oh this kid is being very hateful and ignorant and disrespectful and clearly is trying to cause a suicide.”

I think one of the things socialists like DeBoer and the people at Jacobin and myself find attractive about Marxist-socialism is that its themes trump its terms, and its themes (exploitation, inequality) are certainly not transient. To Marxist-socialists, these qualities jump out as intrinsically valuable organizing tools and sources of solidarity. So it’s kind of appalling when we see successful progressive media organizations like Gawker and Huffpo basically stampeding away from socialism and towards what really looks like a pretty capitalism-friendly type of identity politics, fueled by a conveniently clickbaity (i.e. profitable) call-out culture.

I think maybe someone like DeBoer gets especially frustrated because he’s in a place — an underfunded public university in the rural midwest — where the ravages of capitalism have been so extreme. And then he sees these Gawker editors living it up in W’burg, making tons of money by cynically clickbaitizing stuff like #gettingracistsfired.

Anyway, Super Bowl time. I’m really enjoying this thread though, I hope it continues.

Two things regarding class:

1) Many of those marginalized people who prefer a particular term are also poor or working class. People of color do not have the same opportunities that whites have. You can see MIT’s Poverty Action Lab’s research on this dynamic. And a lot of trans kids are especially vulnerable–many get kicked out of the house, lose financial/family support, and may not make it to college at all, let alone any kind of prestigious university.

2) As I said upthread, if you actually have a fair amount of interactions with diverse populations, you’ll learn what terms they prefer. And honestly, they don’t change from month to month. They haven’t changed in 25 years as far as I can tell, though if they do I’ll make allowances.

It’s not hateful to make a mistake. Since you mentioned the suicide thing, and I brought it up in reference to trans people, I’ll clarify: It is hateful to treat, say, pronouns as a trivial matter when trans people have been quite explicit in their preference for not being misgendered (since that was what my mention of suicide was in reference to). I’m not talking about you being used to thinking of Chelsea Manning as Bradley Manning since that is how she first was known. I’m not talking about someone who uses the wrong name or pronoun and corrects themselves. I’m talking about fellow travelers saying things like “it’s just a pronoun, who cares” and “it’s trivial” and continuing to shrug off when people misgender trans people. The trans people I have read and interacted with have been quite clear that they find misgendering degrading, humiliating, and erasing. So if an organization wants to be a place that is comfortable for anyone who is there who might be trans (and who may not yet be out about it) they’ll make sure to correct someone when they don’t use the preferred pronouns.

OK. Those are my thoughts. I’ve gotta turn in.

I’m a newbie commenter here. I’m white, a gay woman, 25 yrs old, an organizer in my city (Boston) that has been deeply involved in lefty movements locally and nationally and I helped start a left feminist organization. I’m not a Big Name nor do I follow the Big Names (like I only vaguely knew who Freddie deboer was until all of this). I’m not a student organizer, I got a year of community college under my belt but you know how that shit goes. I am prefacing with all this so people know that where I am coming from. So yea, couple of things:

1. It is completely bizarre to me to see all this concerns about people being driven away from the left during a moment where we are seeing one of the largest and most sustained social movements in recent history. How can we have a conversation about the State of the Left without taking into context the Black Lives Matters movement? It is especially bizarre given that queer black women that helped lay the backbone for this movement embody the kind of unapolegtic radicalism that deBoer and friends take issue with. Like you all gotta understand how silly it looks to see a white dude talking about how the left is too mean and driving people away when in the middle of winter in Boston, we are still having 1000+ people marches around Black Lives Matter. I frankly don’t even know how to process it.

2. Someone already spoke to this in the thread, but is also is confusing given the scale of the problem. I can’t really say anything publicly, online or in organizing spaces without risking at least threats of violence and attacks. A simple request for men to be please be more aware of talking over women can easily escalate to male leftists screaming in my face and threatening to rape me, fuck I have even been shoved in meetings before. And then this has escalated into other forms of violence. Hell, it was that dynamic that lead me to help start the lefty feminist organization. I mean, it was exactly that dynamic in the anti-war movement that lead to the start of the women’s liberation movement and funnily enough, a lot of these critiques of PC/Call out culture are incredibly similar to those directed at feminists during that time period. Basically, we have a real serious problem of people (women, black people, trans people but especially trans women) being driven out of moments because of actual violence but I really have yet to see these Big Names seriously address that dynamic and how it plays into callout culture. I would take a lot of these critiques way more seriously if they actual took in the larger context instead of pretending all this shit came out of nowhere.

3. The idea that PC language is inaccessible to working class people needs to die in a fire. I’m poor, but I ain’t stupid and being more doesn’t mean I’m more cruel than the cultured academic. If someone tells me that using a certain word hurts them, I stop. I’m perfectly capable of understanding the ideaology behind various types of language uses- because in case you didn’t realize this, a lot of this ideology came out of working class movements. Academics chiding each other over inaccessible language has to be one of the most patronizing and belittling things I have experienced in my own organizing.

Beyond the fact that assuming poor people can’t understand this shit, it is also a way for academics to not hold themselves accountable for shitty institutions they are involved in. Like you know what barriers me as a working class organizer actually face? Its not language or callouts- believe me, my family is old school Italian, I can handle people yelling. Its the fact that for all paid organizer positions, you need a higher degree. Its that for my org to get money, I need to navigate a grant system that is hostile to young, grassroots organizations and that requires a certain kind of language and presentation. Its that feeing when you show up to a coalition meeting and you are the only one not dressed in business casual. Its that private colleges in our city suck up public money, resources and land to the point where orgs i work with have trouble finding meeting spaces. Its that student +academic organizers are granted a huge platform and more money and support than I could ever dream of, just by virtue of being part of the academy. So, you know, stop worrying about language so much because that is so not the issue here.

4. I don’t get this conflation with educational and political organizations. A lot of the critiques of PC/ call out shit seem to make the assumption that all political organizations should have some sort of education component. I’m gonna use the feminist org I’m a part of again as an example. We are a political organization that works on long term campaigns in order to build a revolutionary women’s liberation movement. There is nothing on our website or in our materials that would suggest that we are a good group to come to learn about the basics of race, class and gender and that was deliberate on our part. If people showed up misgendering Chelsea Manning or lacking in knowledge on basic shit, yea we are going to ask them to leave. Why? Because we all volunteer our time, our budget mostly comes out of our own pockets and we just don’t see how educating random people are a good use of our time and resources. And funnily enough, we have still been able to build a base and do some significant work in our city. We’ve been able to do that by having a clear political platform and being smart with our resources (economic, emotional etc). We’re not perfect, we’ve had plenty of conflict over tactics and analysis but we have been successful precisely because we have held that basic line.

Also, since when has educating random individuals ever been a successful strategy for the left? Like let’s use one of deBoer’s examples- say this dude shows up to a meeting and claims there are innate gender differences. Okay, so what next? I could spend time, resources and energy educating him but there is no guarantee he’ll listen or how long it will take to get him up to speed and due to past experience, I know this could likely end in violence for me. But let’s say, I take this task on. I would first have to figure out the best way to teach him is, i would have to research and present materials, maybe I would have to dedicate whole meetings to this project- and if we are being honest, this project could take months to years. And at the end of it, there is still no guarantee he would accept leftist views on gender or that he would then be interested in long term organizing. How exactly is that a good movement building strategy?

Or let’s say, we don’t say anything and just let him organize with us. I’ve been in groups like this and I’ll tell you what happens. Over time, women will leave. Some will leave yelling and screaming and trying to draw attention to the issue while others will leave so quietly that no one notices. And before you know it, your organization has lost membership of people already on board with your message for someone who holds shitty beliefs, all for the sake movement building.

And obviously, its not always so black and white. But I’m trying to operate on terms deBoer laid out. Like I can easily see him profiling the groups I’m as part of the problem without ever considering that maybe there is rhyme and reason to what we do.

5. Its pretty ironic the deBoer can act like a jerk and people can give him the benefit of the doubt and still respect his ideas, meanwhile we have a slate of hysterical articles bemoaning the fact that women, trans and queer people are asserting their politics in not nice tone’s (because lets be honest, the vast majority of these examples of angry leftists are almost all feminists and mostly black women, glbq women or trans women)

6. If we are going to talk about the stagnation of the left or start assigning blame to shit, shouldn’t we first look at who controls the resources? The feminist movement is incredibly weak right now. I guess its easy to blame twitter activists (like Michelle goldberg did) but in reality, its organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL and NOW who have access to the most resources and who tend to exert the most control over the direction of the movement. And I mean, that dynamic exists across movements (gltbq rights, labour, etc). And if one has been paying attention the past few years, its been the work of these newer, more radicalized activists that have reinvigorated the left. Just to go full circle, we would not have the Black Lives matter movement if it was not for the uncompromising stance black activists have taken these past few months. Hell some of the women profiled in the toxix trigger wars artcles have had direct roles in building this current movement.

And this comment turned into a fucking beast. I can be wicked wordy sometimes but hopefully all this made sense.

Cole: [does not think that] “all political organizations should have some sort of education component”

I want to ask about this because I think I might be misunderstanding some words. What does a “revolutionary” organization do in 2015 that’s not either short-term or fundamentally educational? I mean we’re not making a revolution this year, right? We’re laying foundations and organizing and mobilizing–and trying to make more revolutionaries, because there aren’t enough of us now to win.

It makes complete sense to me that if you’re a feminist group you’re not going to spend most of your time educating men who think gender differences are genetic. I don’t think that’s quite fair to Freddie’s analogy though. Like what if somebody is down on the main thing you’re organizing around but has shitty ideas about something else? Not so long ago I was working with a coalition trying to get justice for a young man murdered by the police and a guy came around, call him X. X’s brother was himself killed by the police a couple years (I think) before the case that brought together our coalition. After a while it came out that X had some seriously bad politics on gender–he’d read and been influenced by MRA stuff. Now there was actually a blow-up on Facebook with some harsh “calling out”–and I think that was fine and maybe needed. It was also the case that nobody told X to leave, we didn’t want to organize with him anymore–and in fact we continued to. I mean, what would somebody have said: “sorry, your brother’s life doesn’t matter to us anymore, since turns out, a brush with the sharp edge of oppression didn’t make you perfect”?

A lot of the time, you’re not going to know where somebody’s coming from or what kind of raw experience might have got them involved in politics in the first place. So I think there’s some value in trying to be patient.

Is any of this in contradiction to what you’re saying, Cole? It may not be, I’m not sure what you mean by your distinction between the educational and the political. I just worry that it involves a misestimation of where we’re at already. The Black Lives Matter movement is great, but I’d guess there are still fewer people who’ve marched with it than who are directly employed by the mass incarceration system in the US, as police and prison guards (1.5 million, IIRC).

Angus: I’m not arguing for doing 101 work with a rando who wandered by the office, unless that’s your thing. Nor am I suggesting anybody’s got to have their strategic hat on all the time. But I don’t think that exhausts the question.

Right. I’m not suggesting Cole’s group is doing something wrong. (And I thought her comment was sharp & informative.) But in my reading, she uses an example of educating a rando with no stakes who shows up to a feminist group holding anti-feminist positions, which I don’t think is the hardest case to make a decision about, to argue that political organizations don’t need an “education component”. That’s what I want to question, or perhaps just clarify.

Your reading might be right!

Here’s where I’m coming from. Like Cole, I think of myself as a revolutionary. To make revolutionary change, I think its clear that we’ll need to mobilize millions of people into revolutionary action, many of whom today are unfortunately not just inactive but have actually backwards politics. That’s just where we are—better off than we were a year ago, but a long way from victory. (I’m a Marxist, so I imagine the agent of revolution as the working class, but I don’t think you need to be that specific for the purposes of this discussion.)

Not everybody shares that strategic conception. Some people think revolution is unnecessary, impossible, wouldn’t help, or what have you. And I don’t mean to be dismissive, but if you’re a liberal, not a radical, then you genuinely don’t need a strategy where you win on the basis of the self-activity of masses of people. You can win reforms by convincing the right people, getting the right politician elected on the basis of whatever ad-hoc coalition, etc. So the long-term educational demands of a liberal and of a revolutionary strategy are different.

There is an inspiring revolutionary tradition in the US, but the threads of continuity to today’s movements are weak. In that context the default terms and assumptions of activism, even radical activism, often end up being liberal ones. One of the ways in which this plays out, I think, is a certain dismissiveness towards people outside the left, and how much (we fundamentally rely on the hope that) their ideas can change.

I am not accusing Cole of being dismissive, or liberal! I responding to a specific couple of lines that I thought were ambiguous, and I’ve tried to be clear from the beginning that I wasn’t sure if there was any debate here or not. Perhaps I am only clumsily supplementing what she had to say. I think it is worth doing, even if Cole and I are on the same side of this debate, because not everybody is. And, you know, maybe I’m missing something and wrong about something of substance, in which case of course I’d like to know that too.

Angus- That would be really cool if this became a blog post! I never really had that happen with my writing before, so I’m down. I would like to keep it semi anonymous though (like not with my full name). I very recently got doxxed and thats only just calmed down, so while I know there is never any guarantee of safety, I would like to take precautions.

Kal- Angus covered your question really well, but I can go further with it. Your example is actually really relevant given we are a feminist group that works on traditionally feminist issues but we also are gearing up to help families build a campaign against Boston Police Department for repeated brutality and killings in black communities. We are also on several coalitions that focus on prisons and policing. Basically, we have found ourselves in many situations working with people who are coming from very different political places than us. We take it on a case by case basis. For example, if we want to build a campaign against BPD, working with the families is kind of non-negotiable regardless of their beliefs. One of the ways we have capacity to work with people outside our group is because we don’t use a lot of resources for internal education. I can leave a coalition meeting feeling very angry because someone said something homophobic and go to my groups internal organizing meeting and get support, validation and political stragetizing on how to deal with that (which could mean deciding to do an aggressive “callout” or reaching out to other coalition members about the issue or sending a straight member to the next meeting or well, there are a lot of approaches to shit). But imagine if I went to the coalition meeting and then went back to my group and had to face the same shit all over again. It would be fucking exhausting and frankly, I wouldn’t last long as an organizer. The expectation that people who get involved with our internal organizing already be up to speed gives us more room and leeway to form coalitions and build campaigns with people with vastly different beliefs than us.

Also, I just want to reiterate- we’re not perfect. We are still learning, trying to figure shit out and we are going to make bad calls sometimes in how to deal with people. Shit happens, that’s life- but we’ll learn from it and move forward.

Also, I should clarify- I agree that we need a mass revolutionary movement. I just am more in line with Angus- we don’t build that movement a person at a time, we build it by winning or at least, fighting like hell. To do that, we need organizers with fire and hope and we need to be able to sustain that over a long period of time. The quickest ways I’ve seen organizations die or their work stop is because of these shitty internal struggles over identity. One shitty dude can result in the loss of dozens committed female organizers. That is a loss the Left cannot afford and yet, this is something the Left has yet to take seriously (beyond writing these screeds about the mean feminists.) You are right, we are struggling. The left is weak and we need to build. But let me tell ya, nothing kills fire or hope faster than having to educate someone else on your humanity.

Angus, I’m not actually trying to ask a question at this point. I do agree my original question was answered both by you and Cole. Jupitaur took issue with my interpretation of a specific example I’d given (from my experience, not theirs) and I replied (I hope in a comradely way).

The only followups in which I believe I was reframing my question were my replies to you, before the previous (so I don’t quite know what to make of your saying “someone said”). And honestly, I feel like most of my reframing was directed at dispelling any impression that I was trying to start an argument, since you seemed to be interpreting my posts as an unfair or uncharitable reading of Cole.

In any case, it seems to me that you at 12:36 and Cole at 12:54 both said new things, at least for this thread. I’m not inclined to regret prompting you to make those points–are you saying I should?

I’m really starting to lose my patience here. Cole had a long post which beautifully outlined what it is she and other activists (and what *I*) have had to deal with from people who are just learning. People who scream in your face, threaten you, dox you, harass you. Because apparently *our* differing views are so threatening that we must be shouted down and possibly assaulted.

She outlined exactly what it is her organization does to navigate this–and what a lot of organizations do. We already have to toe a line drawn by the dominant culture. Sue us if maybe we’re not so open to having that line being drawn for us in our own organizations.

“But that only goes to show that the people who would be driven away were more attracted to the group because they felt safe and unthreatened by people with differing viewpoints, than actually wanting to do the kind of work needed to change the larger culture.”

Or maybe they’re just tired of being erased, belittled, and taken for granted by privileged white lefties who complain about PC mores. When the trans community is clear that misgendering is a big deal, it’s kind of shitty to act like pronouns are a triviality. When a community is clear about what kind of terms they prefer to be used in reference to themselves, it’s shows a real lack of commitment on the part of our fellow-travelers to make the effort to use those terms. And let’s not use the class dodge again–many of the working class that the white, privileged lefties are crying for are also part of these marginalized groups. They are gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans. They are white women, women of color, men of color. They people with disabilities. Being marginalized means you have a *greater chance* of being poor.

You’re acting as if this happens in a vacuum, that the marginalized people who deal with miroaggressions, violence, and institutional discrimination are somehow delicate flowers. This isn’t about two people with no stakes in this having a disagreement. This is about people who put in the work, the sweat, and the risk being told to suck it up and deal when others who are hostile to them want to join and don’t want to listen. This is about people who are marginalized, who have shown up, and who get shunted to the side in favor of people who are just learning. People who get driven away from these groups have often put in *years* and it’s demoralizing to see our concerns, our views, *our issues* get belittled as so much PC whining. We get driven away because the very people who are supposed to have our backs do not have our backs, despite all of the work, sweat, and time we’ve put in. deBoer’s original argument that the people who showed up to have our backs were part of the problem. I’m calling bullshit on that.

And you know? Your average activist organization is not here to provide 101 seminars for folks.

And FFS, can we just drop the lie that the left is getting stagnant? It’s mainly white privileged academic lefties who are making this assertion. And among white, privileged lefties, yes, that particular corner of the left is stagnant as hell. AGAIN, as Cole pointed out, #blacklivesmatter is still going strong and it’s been driven by the very people who have been dismissed as identity politics warriors.

Maybe I’m being an “accelerant.” But really, take a look at what you wrote. You basically read Cole’s post and came away with the idea that the people who have a problem with Chait and deBoer are somehow more interested in echo chambers, that they aren’t really committed. Cole wrote extensively about how she and other people in her organization work with/around these issues and conflicts.

> Is any of that correct?

I feel like the level of actual engagement in brokenyogi’s comment would have made a response of just “no, pretty much none of it” perfectly legitimate.

But given Sheelzebub has responded eloquently I’ll just add one thing, in response to the hoary comparison of Occupy and the Tea Party. Occupy at its peak actually had “wider appeal” in opinion polls than the Tea Party ever did. But it turns out that a popular movement which is attacking the power of the people who currently rule our society has a harder task than one which is just asking for what the most aggressive of the 1% want anyway.

I’m not! I’m kind of hopeless with that stuff but I have friends sending me the positive feedback and its be really neat to see :)

I was not hostile to you. I was–and am still-exasperated with people who are sealioning and refusing to engage substantively anything that Cole or anyone else here has said.

And frankly, if you are going to give *me* a tone lecture, I suggest you look at what *you* wrote and take your own advice about winning hearts and minds. Because this:

“But that only goes to show that the people who would be driven away were more attracted to the group because they felt safe and unthreatened by people with differing viewpoints, than actually wanting to do the kind of work needed to change the larger culture.”

this? Came across as hostile (oh-so-civilly worded hostility, but hostility), as patronizing, and incredibly belittling, especially after several people have taken a lot of time to explain, over and over, our perspective. Especially after you heard from people who have worked for change and who still work for change. That was beyond erasing and belittling. You obviously haven’t bothered to read them carefully or engage with them.

Finally, you could also flip the script. You want to make change, you need to start accepting and respecting the marginalized people who have done the work. That road you demand we walk on goes both ways, but I see no attempts from the side of the privileged to make any effort.

“Personally, I’m more interested in economic issues and economic changes than I am in social/cultural ones, though I support those as well. And I’m pretty strongly convinced that you don’t get those changes unless you win elections. Which means putting forward a real-world agenda that can actually be enacted in the world of government and commerce by attracting a majority to support you. Creating safe places on elite college campuses is of no concern to me. But I do care about working class environs and their social mores, especially since I’ve lived and worked in these my entire adult life (never had a white collar job). I just don’t think you’re ever, ever going to make much progress in such places with all this talk about micro-aggressions and so on.”

So you basically ignored the poor, working class, lesbian activist who shared her perspective here, whose group actually does work in poor and working class environs and with a variety of groups and populations. Way to go. Yes, at this point, I am hostile. I tend to get that way with people who refuse to listen.