The vast majority of people are not ever going to be comfortable with deer pronouns and that's just a fact. What you're saying is that we must box these people out until they're sufficiently compliant with radical social values held by a fraction of a fraction of a percent of people in the world.
Like I don't care. I will call you a deer if it makes you happy. But I'm not everyone, and the struggles for Liberation needs mass support. Not just locally or domestically but globally. People are saying "if you don't use neopronouns you're not a leftist" and all I can think is "would a devout muslim refugee whose family was slaughtered by US-funded wahhabists be comfortable using neopronouns, and would we box them out of the struggle of they weren't"
You're a very religious young man, fighting age. You have followed the Quran and the hadiths to the best of your ability. You safeguarded your sister's chastity from leering goatherders all her life. And then: your family has been killed by western interventionism. You have no support system.
You find yourself in a refugee camp, and a few white people gathered are talking about socialism and defying the west. You listen closely.
You realize that they are referring to each other as deer. At first you assume this is some kind of code, but then you notice that they insist everyone call them deer.
Baffled and disappointed, you lie down on your cot. You listen for the buzz of a drone overhead, and fall asleep because you don't care anymore.
Your version is accurate, yes, but it doesn't address the point: are highly religious people from unindustrialized areas of the Middle East going to readily accept people that want to be referred to--not, from their perspective, as a man or woman, but as a cervid?
The answer is no. So the next question is: you have people who can be radicalized leftward or rightward due to the precariousness of their position. Do you turn them away because they do not follow our norms?
Look, if during the American Civil War we got rid of every single Union soldier who wasn't on the cutting edge of progressive abolitionist and feminist thought, the north would've lost. The fact of the matter is that you're going to have to include a lot of people who are at different stages of moving towards that intersectional egalitarian thinking.
They probably won't become a fascist but they might get discouraged and alienated by a bunch of online Westerners dogpiling them for something that seems trivial to them.
I mean, maybe they would, but I'm not sure you've spent a lot of time with people from the global south if you think that's even the more likely scenario let alone the probable one. Most immigrants I've known, and I've known a lot working on construction sites and in retail in high-diversity areas, are pretty socially conservative and religious. Religious values aren't any less important to them than they are to our domestic fundamentalists.
Idk what kind of bubble your girlfriend lives in but the Communist movement in Africa as a whole is objectively socially conservative compared to the West. Most Communist parties still hold the line that lgbt identity is degeneracy born out of capitalist alienation. I think they're wrong because scientific understanding of these issues points to that theory being a false assumption. I'm not going to tell them to go fuck themselves because of that though. Their struggle is still deserving of my support and collaboration.
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The vast majority of people are not ever going to be comfortable with deer pronouns and that's just a fact. What you're saying is that we must box these people out until they're sufficiently compliant with radical social values held by a fraction of a fraction of a percent of people in the world.
Like I don't care. I will call you a deer if it makes you happy. But I'm not everyone, and the struggles for Liberation needs mass support. Not just locally or domestically but globally. People are saying "if you don't use neopronouns you're not a leftist" and all I can think is "would a devout muslim refugee whose family was slaughtered by US-funded wahhabists be comfortable using neopronouns, and would we box them out of the struggle of they weren't"
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Okay, I appreciate you giving them the benefit of the doubt, but come on.
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Let me reframe this for you.
You're a very religious young man, fighting age. You have followed the Quran and the hadiths to the best of your ability. You safeguarded your sister's chastity from leering goatherders all her life. And then: your family has been killed by western interventionism. You have no support system.
You find yourself in a refugee camp, and a few white people gathered are talking about socialism and defying the west. You listen closely.
You realize that they are referring to each other as deer. At first you assume this is some kind of code, but then you notice that they insist everyone call them deer.
Baffled and disappointed, you lie down on your cot. You listen for the buzz of a drone overhead, and fall asleep because you don't care anymore.
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Your version is accurate, yes, but it doesn't address the point: are highly religious people from unindustrialized areas of the Middle East going to readily accept people that want to be referred to--not, from their perspective, as a man or woman, but as a cervid?
The answer is no. So the next question is: you have people who can be radicalized leftward or rightward due to the precariousness of their position. Do you turn them away because they do not follow our norms?
Look, if during the American Civil War we got rid of every single Union soldier who wasn't on the cutting edge of progressive abolitionist and feminist thought, the north would've lost. The fact of the matter is that you're going to have to include a lot of people who are at different stages of moving towards that intersectional egalitarian thinking.
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They probably won't become a fascist but they might get discouraged and alienated by a bunch of online Westerners dogpiling them for something that seems trivial to them.
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I mean, maybe they would, but I'm not sure you've spent a lot of time with people from the global south if you think that's even the more likely scenario let alone the probable one. Most immigrants I've known, and I've known a lot working on construction sites and in retail in high-diversity areas, are pretty socially conservative and religious. Religious values aren't any less important to them than they are to our domestic fundamentalists.
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Idk what kind of bubble your girlfriend lives in but the Communist movement in Africa as a whole is objectively socially conservative compared to the West. Most Communist parties still hold the line that lgbt identity is degeneracy born out of capitalist alienation. I think they're wrong because scientific understanding of these issues points to that theory being a false assumption. I'm not going to tell them to go fuck themselves because of that though. Their struggle is still deserving of my support and collaboration.
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Writing off someone immediately like this is an obstacle to mass movements. Some people just need a little push. Some, a bigger push.
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