A while back there was a thread about eliminating intelligence-based insults from our vocab. Words like "Dumb", "stupid", etc.
https://hexbear.net/post/15636
My gut instinct to this was to get angry, and berate the OP u/QuillQuote for his ideas. I insulted him, I called him dumb, and when he pm'd me, I dismissed all his arguments and called him dumb again. Then he told me to go fuck myself and I told him I would masturbate later
Since then I actually thought a little about the issue and I began to see their point. An intelligence-based insult is fundamentally wrong, because it concerns something that cannot be controlled.
Insults about race, gender, and sexuality are all de facto verboten here because they target traits that can't be controlled--and I agree.
Intelligence can't be controlled either. And intelligence is actually one of the most disadvantaging traits to be handicapped by. Ditto for appearance.
Likewise, AGE cannot be controlled either, you only age in one direction and that's it. If I was 55, there's nothing I can do to be more like a 30 year old. MOREOVER, some people actually have inborn disabilities that make them age faster, with some 10 year old children having the biological age of a 40 year old adult.
So I'm making the proposition that we should attempt to eliminate these words from our arsenal of insults. Words like "dumb", "stupid", "boomer", "ugly", "short", are all words that target people on traits that they cannot control, and worse, they insult other bystanders in the process who may have committed no offense.
In fact, I called someone a boomer jokingly just a few minutes ago. That was the trigger that made me think about this. I apologize if my words hurt anyone.
Yeah well. I just think you're misusing the word stupid and clinging to this idea that because you're using it without the intent of it harming the disabled you think that it therefore does not harm them. Having actually visited, spoken to, and taken the time to understand the arguments of those in this group I empathise and really see it with very little difference. I hold pretty much all of your arguments as nearly identical to that of those arguing against the f-slur several years ago. Whether your intent is to harm them is irrelevant, it does harm them, they say it does, and it is exceptionally easy for us to change that just as it is exceptionally easy for people to simply use the correct pronouns or not use f-slur as an insult.
I don't expect you to get it immediately. I didn't either. But I believe that if you came around on others you too will come around on this.
Regardless, I will push back against official policy on the site for it on the basis of strategy.
When the new generation reaches their mid-30s this battle will be as good as over and they'll be starting the next one.
I think if anyone feels such tremendous harm by a word as common as "stupid," then that's their own problem, not mine. As I said, socialism is about power, and one dimension of that is a proper socialist should make themselves strong enough to withstand something as common as hearing a mildly mean word, without being so selfish as to try and force everyone else to deal with their distress. I can't trust someone who can't handle hearing the word "stupid" to have my back against the bourgeoisie.
Yeah. That's what we said back then too.
You said "socialism is about power" when you were an edgy teen on 4chan? Somehow I don't think you did. And it's the thing you keep not hearing. This isn't about edgelordism, this is about the need to be powerful and strong enough to achieve socialism, and a bare minimum of that is that you have to learn to withstand the minor pain of the word stupid, to the point where it's not painful at all. If you can't do that, then how are you going to be strong enough to withstand the hardships of a fucking revolution?
And what's the point of a revolution anyway? Is it to make a world perfectly tailored to weak people who are distressed by the word stupid? For fuck's sake NO SOCIALIST SOCIETY ON EARTH HAS EVER DONE THAT! And I really don't fucking want ours to be the first, because that society would be utterly nauseating and pathetic.
No, we said "It's their own problem for feeling that way about the word, not our problem for using it despite their calls against it due to the harm it does them".
This has little to do with socialism. It's just one more marginalised group doing a battle against normalised slur use that harms their group. You keep trying to dismiss it because socialism but socialism is irrelevant to it.
If it does them harm then they need to make themselves stronger to the point where it does not harm them anymore. Frankly, this whole idea of some vague nebulous "harm" that is so often invoked in woke spaces is pure idealism, not materialism, and it reinforces the thing I keep trying to tell you: This. Isn't. Socialism.
Anti-idpol is counter revolutionary. Their fight is valid and good. It improves the conditions of their groups, both under capitalism and later they will still be fighting those fights under socialism because, as you demonstrate, socialists can very much fall on the wrong side of these fights too. Nobody is saying it is specifically socialist, we are however saying that it is good and right and just and something everyone will agree with years from now as the zoomers have already normalised this argument in schools and will normalise it moving forwards into their workplaces and the following generation will further it even more.
Their struggle is valid and it should be understood and support, just as my trans struggle is valid and should be supported, just as racial struggles are valid and should be supported, just as homosexual struggles are valid and should be supported, just as patriarchal struggles are valid and should be supported. And on and on the marginalised groups can be reeled off, as each struggle steps into the light one after another, wins some battles and moves forwards.
This is the rallying cry of the caucus that caused Adolph Reed to cancel his DSA lecture because they selfishly demanded it be turned into a debate on "class reductionism." The fact is, the opposite has proven true- idpol has proven to be counter revolutionary. It causes so much unnecessary conflict because so many people demand to have their specific pain validated instead of sublimating their egos into a revolutionary collective. It turns what should be the building up of strength and solidarity into infighting and a weird celebration of weakness and pain and fragility, to the point where it becomes selfish.
We saw the Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn movements get hurt by idpol- they validated and apologized to every accusation that they weren't sensitive enough to every little slighted group that it hurt their effectiveness and alienated them from the masses when they should have had the most appeal. With the way idpol language has been so easily appropriated by liberals, it's become abundantly clear that idpol is a tool of the bourgeoisie to sow internal division into working class movements. This tweet sums it up better than I could.
This idea of generations fighting each other is counter-revolutionary. Generations are a spook invented by marketers to better segment the population. The Zoomers' politics are a reaction to their material conditions, and they're not fully formed yet.
Smells like opportunism.
I don't think you should bring up Jez to me, I knocked 2000 doors for that campaign and threw a lot at it. What you're asserting just is not true. 2017 was just barely lost in what should have been a completely unwinnable election and it was lost by literally a nose hair (2100 vote difference would have put Corbyn in) because of internal sabotage of ad platforms by the liberals.
You're absolutely right that using racial or other cultural politics is a tactic they use. This is not new or special. The Bolsheviks did not throw Jews under the bus nor did they reel back on being anti-religion in the face of an absolute onslaught from the bourgeoisie on these cultural fronts simply because it "did not appeal to the masses". They stuck to it.
You are merely demonstrating your willingness to throw aside groups that should be defended in order to hopefully gain some opportunist ground. That ground you gained will simply be lost when they rile a different cultural battle., and if you throw those groups under the bus too they will move to the next. Pretty soon the entire history of your movement will be about how you threw every marginalised group under the bus whenever it suited your opportunism. That sounds like precisely what the liberals do to me.