Dan Kim

http://i.imgur.com/sWYjYjz.png?1

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Remember: their goal is not defeat counter arguments or propose concrete actions or futures, but to "smash the patriarchy". That means (roughly) reformatting the entire discursive landscape (roughly the power and knowledge structures we used to call "institutions" and "rationality") so that the intelligibility of any thought, any word, any concept, simply has to take the Capital-T truths of the oppressed for granted. This seems sensible from their point of view because (as they see it) the Capital-T truths of the oppressors are already there, all around us, in just this way.

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And since even the most sincere, open, honest talk is really just patriarchy-speak (the more rational and normal the speech, the more tightly such speech must be laced about the normative and semantic pillars of patriarchy-speak), you gotta create your own counter-discourse in which thoughts untainted by patriarchal truths can be expressed. Your job then is to undermine normal discourse with this revolutionary discourse. Once people are trapped in this new discourse they'll simply accept your ideals because all intelligible thoughts, truths, and actions will have their content furnished by those ideas. Feminism (or whatever its revolution gives birth to) will be as invisible and powerful as The Patriarchy. We will be new fish and that will be our new water. All this "check your privilege" stuff is, as they see it, an attempt to get the old fish to notice his water (and hate it).

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That's their justification for all this "hashtag activism", blogging, and hijacking comics, games, music, etc. by the way. It's trying to dump out the poisoned water and fill the pool with new water.

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It's a strange idea, but you can see why it gets a grip on people. It as all the fun of flogging yourself to the tune of proselyting messianic millennial religion (My eyes are open, I must awaken my brothers so that the oppressed will awaken to their group consciousness and one day bring about the glorious revolution which will overthrow the evil oppressor class to which I belong but against which I eternally rebel) with a complex theology and none of the responsibility (you're a perpetual victim if you protect the oppressed, of course, and you're under no obligation to perform the labour of justifying your claims in the terms of your oppressor's oppressive patriarchal language -- that just gives him more power and prevents him from seeing his water).

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What I think they get right is roughly what overlaps with a nominalist, functionalist, historicist -- that is, pragmatist view. Which isn't much. I think they have a demented view of knowledge, meaning, and human nature which just does not take us seriously as limited, evolved natural beings with a lot of tragic quirks. In any case, I don't pin my social hopes to these people.

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Anyway, at this point I just consider this one of humanity's many temporary madnesses -- i.e. business as normal.

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