curlicuecal:
gatesofmoonlight:
curlicuecal:
Re-watching Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (the parody movie where the rednecks in the woods are the hapless protagonists and its the bunch of paranoid college kids causing all the problems.)
I’d forgotten how much the situation was escalated by the one teenager who was clearly looking for an excuse to hurt people. The college kid that, at the beginning of the movie, explicitly declares himself a better person than those around him.
Chad.
He’s the one who tells his friends “what’s really going on here is worse than you think.” He’s the one who insists they handle it themselves and not through official channels. He’s the one who casts his opponents as “pure evil” and says “we finally have a chance to fight back without rules.” When some of the other teenagers express uncertainty he’s the one that says if they can’t handle what needs to be done, maybe they deserve to die, too.
“We have to burn this place to the ground. Destroy it completely. You have no IDEA what this is all about, do you Allison? These freaks are evil. And they deserve everything that’s coming to them.”
I’d never realized before how closely every single plot point in the movie mirrors the way mob culture instigators will rile up the masses under the guise of “social justice”:
You assume bad faith in your opponents.
You declare your opponents subhuman and acceptable to hurt by any means.
You discourage the use of peaceful or official methods to address the issue.
You keep your followers in line through fear of the “other” and threats of ousting them into that group if they become “contaminated.”
You revel in as much chaos and pain as you can inflict–
–after all, you’re the good guy.
If I’m stepping out of line, please let me know, and callout culture has definitely been super bad lately, but..
….this applies just as much to anti-social justice stuff, racism, oppression of all kinds, etc. It’s mob violence, period. I’m incredibly, incredibly uncomfortable with this being used explicitly as a “look at this people using social justice as a weapon” thing when the exact same tool is used in the protection of
family values
nationalism
against ‘war on Christianity’
masculinity
capitalism
…etc. It just seems in very bad faith in me to take a very common mob violence issue and make it all about those ‘pesky SJWs’. It doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. It just… puts a lot of the blame on the shoulders of people operating within a functionally flawed culture. Where do you think callout culture even came from? We live in a world that’s finally starting to come around to the concept that being gay shouldn’t be a death sentence for your life or career. It’s not like ‘SJWs’ exist in a vacuum.
I don’t think you’re out of line.
I 100% agree with you that this is a lens that affects all those issues. We like to frame ourselves as the good guys and we are very susceptible to issues being placed into the black and white of moral certainty. An article that has stuck with me hard through the years pointed out how people use their value structures to justify their actions–whether good or bad–rather than the other way around. (Hilariously, it was written by Orson Scott Card. I assume the irony was lost on him.)
I think you have misread my issue when you frame it as a complaint against “those pesky sjws.” I consider myself to be highly involved in social justice issues. I consider this to be a social justice issue. What I specifically wanted to point out was the instigators. The way in which abusers can use our blind spots to manipulate us and our movement. Cloaking oneself in the language of righteousness is a VERY common abuser tactic.
We need to learn to recognize warning signs of the people that want to herd us into being their weapons. We need to recognize the danger of ever applauding ‘this group is okay to enjoy hurting.’
The idea that we can be the heroes in the story where the other party are “pure evil” and “real monsters” and all the answers are really simple and easy is a very, very appealing narrative. And one that shelters and feeds abusers.
I guarantee you there are plenty of young people on tumblr doing their very best to Be A Good Person and make change for the better, and they are learning what is a healthy, safe, constructive method for going about this by watching the rest of us. We NEED to make sure they are hearing voices that point out “anon hate campaigns are harmful.” “Here are some warning flags.” “People that show up in your inbox and tell you to shun someone or you’ll be contaminated and shunned too are NOT THE GOOD GUYS.”
It just seems in very bad faith in me to take a very common mob violence issue and make it all about those ‘pesky SJWs’.
If I frame a broader issue around a specific way it COMMONLY and DIRECTLY affects me and people I care about, I promise you it is neither out of bad faith, nor out of any desire to minimize the importance of other ways in which this issue manifests. (Some of which also affect me. Some of which I have argued against on other platforms.) ((This, by the way, is the only portion of your post I take issue with. I’m totally cool if anyone wants to springboard off this to apply it to other issues or contexts. It’s a neat topic.))
And, since you asked, and I think it’s a pretty interesting and valuable question–personally, I think call out culture came from a very reasonable push to encourage people with more privilege in a situation to not remain silent and to speak up in situations where people are being harmful. It just, like many useful principles, goes awry when stripped of nuance and dogmatized into a black & white cure-all for humanity.
There’s also some really interesting ways call out culture (and more extreme SJ culture in general) parallels the way a lot of us were taught to approach moral issues in conservative evangelical Christianity. (Namely: you assume personal moral culpability for other people’s behavior if you don’t proselytize or chasten them constantly; all people are sinners/prejudiced; all sins are equal; and any sin can lead to hell/ small wrongs contribute directly to a culture which leads to deaths of innocents so all issues are ultra high stakes where anything could be fair game.). I reallllly want to write a post about that some day when I can get my thoughts straight.