Posts by Keir Leslie
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(I rather take issue with “dominated”: that word shows the extent to which “several women speaking in a non-women’s-only-area on the internet” is… unexpected.)
Eh when it’s a professor at Princeton, and a prominent journalist talking about a nice comforting other of white males I think there’s a useful point of noting the class/power dynamics here.
I think the idea that men don’t talk about the construction of gender is pretty insupportable — look at the man card thing, if that isn’t a consciously performative definition of gender I don’t know what is — rather I think it turns out they don’t reach the same conclusions as predominantly academic, predominantly female, scholars. And that’s quite a different problem.
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I think the core of the problem is actually that most of the people in power are still old white guys – in America even more so than in NZ. Society tells young white (cisgendered, heterosexual) men, still, that their viewpoints and desires and beings are privileged over everyone else’s. They are the baseline, the Normal. But that doesn’t make all of them powerful. And the question arises – if success is epitomised and embodied by People Like Me, why I am I, personally, not sharing in that success?
But this isn't quite right: power in America is dominated by rich white men (and, increasingly, rich white women). Being poor is being marked, it is being othered, it is all those things we attribute to race and gender and it is hugely frustrating that it's class which gets dropped the quickest.
Because you can apply the same analysis to a rich white women as a poor white man. If success/normativity is defined by being me (which in America it very often is now) then why etc? (If you are a rich women you retain privilege: the ability to buy things in hardware stores, say.)
It also interesting to what extent this is a conversation about (supposedly) disempowered young men initiated and dominated by women; there's a who's-speaking-for-who problem here.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Russell Brown,
Exactly.
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(Personally speaking though I'd just go for a massive compulsory buy back programme at this point in time and if the angry white men didn't like it they can talk to the G-Men. On the other hand that's super not Obama's style, so.)
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You know, when you talk about the power of white men, you make the baby Marx cry.
Most white men are hugely disempowered in the context of an American society primarily structured around massive wealth disparities. You can either buy into a model of taking power off white men (and end up with a hugely unjust society that has some different people at the top) or you can talk about taking power off the hugely wealthy and empowering most white men (and most black men, and most black women, and most queer people, and so-on.)
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It’s not racist or sexist to suggest that white men are struggling with a loss of power in this country. I’m not demonizing white men, many if not most of whom probably don’t feel powerful and in control. But the fact remains that in this country white men have long ruled–in public and private life. They continue to dominate government and media even as the nature of families and private life has evolved over time. No one likes to lose power. Losing power is hard and unpleasant, frightening and disorienting.
For this well educated, wealthy, and comparatively powerful woman, class is apparently just not something worth discussing when it comes to power relations.
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Am looking forward to seeing a Senator introduce a bill to the House.
Heller and progeny are the issue, but you know, Heller is a 5-4 ruling. You can turn those with the right program of judicial appointments.
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Hard News: Switched on Gardener: to what…, in reply to Yamis,
Sorry, I should say, if you tried as many regular gardening stores as they tried SOG stores.
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Hard News: Switched on Gardener: to what…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I don't disagree --- just that the `oh the cops had to do this' argument is pretty weak.
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You know, the cops don't actually have to enforce every law on the books to the maximal extent possible. In fact, that's just as draconian and unjust as selectively refusing to enforce the law. In general, there's discretion, and cannabis crime is a classic case where discretion really should be exercised.