Next time you seek to silence an individual who has offended you in some way with words, especially one sworn to an ethic of do no harm, and you seek to silence them with their privilege, then wonder if you’re not simply reinforcing it. That’s privilege as a wall of your making, over which two people can no longer even shake hands to explore the differences that make life the celebration it should be, rather than each left to guard their side of the wall, wallowing in a morass of ignorance, and too often, fear.
[The
first section below was originally this post’s ending; I’ve rearranged the
order as the initial two sections were only ever about getting to this …]
Identity Politics and Privilege
– Law Revue Girls & Context of Comedy:
On
Twitter, Saturday night, identity politics got itself into its usual abject
mess. Though of all its victims, I wouldn’t have put my money on the Law Revue
Girls, clever makers of that feminist
parody of Robin Thicke’s execrable Blurred Lines:
Saturday night the Law Revue Girls Twitter account tweeted the following, defending feminist Lily Allen’s music video from being racist:
I would put calling @lilyallen racist up there with calling Macklemore privileged, in the stakes of no purpose. Missing the message.
— Law Revue Girls (@LawRevueGirls) November 16, 2013
You
can imagine what ensured. Let me show you:
For all those who don't understand why we make fun of #WhiteFeminists, the @lawrevuegirls multi part tweet defence of Lily Allen sums it up.
— Aunty Haurangi (@_surlymermaid) November 16, 2013
And:
Despite
one of the Law Revue Girls described herself as a racial 'fruit salad', they
belatedly attempted to extract themselves from the shit-pond they’d unwittingly
dived head first into:
Not trying to start a war, I *just* think the world's a bit screwy if the only thing you notice when watching a music video is skin colour
— Law Revue Girls (@LawRevueGirls) November 16, 2013
They
should’ve known better; the Left aren’t forgiving, and they’re hardest on their own, and so it on went all night. I suspect the Law Revue
Girls will now do what all wise people should do – I’m not a wise man - when
their privilege is stuffed into in their mouths: shut up. Even Left stalwart,
Chris Trotter, admits this mainstay of Left politics, on the silencing of
Willie Jackson and John Tamihere:
Rather than korero, the left-wing social media’s first instinct was to condemn, threaten, punish and shut down.
Because
the Left typically, arrogantly, are not interested in interacting with
differing opinion: they simply seek to shut that opinion down. (For
Libertarians reading, that’s an interesting link).
Was
Lily Allen’s music video racist? Here’s her defence: you decide.
That’s
not the point for me anymore; which is this new linguistic puritanism stalking
the land through our fellow citizens, sifting every word for privilege and
thought crimes. Giovanni Tiso used this new puritanism of language (hence thought)
to take down Willie and JT: I’ve written why I’m not comfortable with that. I wonder
if Giovanni understands he’s put himself in the same moral arbiter role of ‘the
people’ as Whaleoil has, who would shut down, I suspect, much of the comedy I
love: I’ve written on that, also – can a rape joke be defended. About the time radshitzy,
neo-Marxist feminist Thorny put herself so humourlessly in my life, checking my
privilege for daring to enter her Tweet timeline – that’s all I did, I chipped
in on a tweet – I noticed she was also attacking comedian Raybon Kan; I have no
idea why, it would be some joke or other she thought he should be shut down for.
I
love comedy. Read this link. I love comedy; ‘it lights a fire that warms the coldest nights of my mind’. I
record the stand-up on the comedy channel to watch on Friday night: so let’s
not kid ourselves where this leads. I suspect less than fifty percent of the
stand-up acts on Apollo Live, et al, would
survive this new citizen policed thought-crime puritanism. Of home-grown shows,
I can guarantee you 7 Days, and Jono and Ben at Ten, two great shows,
will very soon not pass muster.
I’m
over it. And remember no surveillance Big Brother state can survive for long without
an acquiescent people: the secret police usually only ended up on your door
when your neighbour potted you in. So though this post doesn’t initially impact
on the coercive state, you can bet it ultimately does: hate speech laws, cyber
bullying laws, will be the legislative manifestation.
The
ethic of this blog is individualism. It is only a classical liberal
individualist ethic that will ultimately heal the –isms: sexism, racism, et al.
I’ve written further on collectivist identity politics on my post regarding
that radshitzy clique of neo-Marxist feminism, but for the record:
In some enlightened age we will meet each other as individuals, representing only ourselves,.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 16, 2013
Next time you seek to silence an
individual who has offended you in some way with words, especially one sworn to
an ethic of do no harm, and you seek to silence them with their privilege, then
wonder if you’re not simply reinforcing it. That’s privilege as a wall of your
making, over which two people can no longer even shake hands to examine the differences that
make life the celebration it should be, rather than each left to guard their
side of the wall, wallowing in a morass of ignorance, and too often, fear.
[Following, is how this blog post
started …]
Gender Quotas:
I’ve
been meaning to get back to the Labour Party’s gender quota again: passed, at
last, in their annual conference some weeks ago, they'll be running a quota to
ensure women comprise 50% of their caucus. This weekend, my loquacious
slanderer, Thorny, has kindly provided me with the impetus to make a
comment, albeit vicariously. By showing the logic hole, or at the least,
missing piece, in her latest post, Ladies, Step Up To The Platform, - Just Not The Mic - nice title Thorny - I wish to keep a promise I made to the Labour women MP’s in
this old post of mine concerning this year’s Labour Party leadership contest,
which ultimately no woman MP contested (link below):
… all I’m saying is a Labour woman MP must have a tilt [for the Labour Party leadership]. Because this will become my business if, when Labour ever gains that sandpit in the Fortress of Legislation, it then attempts to implement not just a gender quota within the party - which I couldn’t care less about, that’s Labour Party business - but also force it on the private sector, making gender quotas an issue of the voluntary, free society, versus the coerced one again. If no woman contests this [leadership], I'll be pointing out the double standard here. [Why should you demand, by force, what you’re not prepared to do the hard yards for?]
I
would love to put the below questions to Thorny by posting on her site, but
like so many Left blogs, she lacks professionalism, either deleting comments,
or worse, over-writing and mis-representing them, so here we go. Thorny is
opining the representation of women in Martyn Bradbury’s Lefty diatribe, The Daily Blog:
Just one question.
How the fuck are you going to do any of that when you’ve already got a roster which is 38% women …But those women only provide 6% of the posts?I have done this math. I have a goddamned spreadsheet. Because I’ve seen so many people comment about the fucking flood of chaff which covers the TDB front page.38% women posters. 6% of the total posts.
Trouble
is, the accuracy of her conclusion of misogyny, or certainly larceny, can only
be proven by a second series of related questions, namely:
Have
more women that those 38% approached Bradbury about contributing content, and
has he turned those women down?
If
this is the case, Thorny has a valid point, given Daily Blog’s Left-Liberal-quota agenda nonsense. Unfortunately
Thorny provides no evidence of this; so I’d be interested to know from
Bradbury’s point of view what the answer is. Perhaps someone might ask him for
me: while I read widely amongst the cross section of blogs, my experience has
been very few of the Left have any interest outside their own bullying world
view, and if I'm not mistaken, that walking ego, Martyn Bradbury, has blocked
me, also.
Further,
of the 38% of female contributors providing only 6% of content, are they
actually producing an equivalent 38% content which Bradbury is then refusing to
publish? Is their productivity that of the men on the site? Bradbury can only
publish what he’s been furnished with.
Again,
if that is the case, Thorny has a point, but no evidence is provided of same.
It’s just the accusation not backed up with detail, and the smear against a
Bradbury it's postulated is concerned only with his ‘liberal cred’- (on which
Thorny may well be right).
Until
those points are answered factually, then based on the fact that ultimately no
Labour woman MP did put their hand up to contest the Labour Party leadership,
preferring, instead, an enforced quota, I’m going to fantastically – don’t you
dare take this out of context – put myself on Bradbury’s side of the equation,
until the numbers are given one way or the other.
Mind
you, the Left continuing to pull itself apart: what a shame. I guess the bright
side is the more time they spend being vicious to each other, the less time
they have visiting viciousness on the rest of us.
Blog Inequality:
By
the bye, Thorny’s statement in her piece that her blog is ranked in Ken
Perrot’s Open Parachute blog rankings, led me to do the irresistible: checking
her ranking against mine. Damn: she’s above me in the blog rankings :)
Over October she was placed fortieth, I – ahem, low posting month – was way
down at eighty fifth.
That's
hardly fair; surely my viewpoint is being stifled here? In the worthy
cause of combating blog inequality, shouldn’t her readers be forced to read
mine to give equal weight to our views? Just as I am forced by that ruthless
mechanism of state, the tax department, to share my income with all and sundry,
and supporting Thorny's tax surveillance state I have no agreement with, then
why shouldn’t Thorny be forced to share her readership with me?
…
The answer is obvious: because such a notion is stupid. More than that: unjust.
But that’s exactly what the Left advocate with my income, and if you speak up
against them, then as is their modus operandi, they will simply seek to beat
you into silence with your privilege.
Albeit, before leaving this topic, I would like to
take the time to sooth my sore ego, almost the size of Thorny’s, who the odd
time I’ve ‘interrupted’ her on Twitter since she first falsely foot tripped me, has - pot/kettle - laid the
charge against me of attention seeking; ironically in the exact manner
Edwardian gentlemen sought to side-line the suffragettes by condescendingly
calling them attention seekers, as if they were but truculent little children. It seems Thorny has gone full circle.
But
of course my readership is minute: my central ethic, unfettered freedom of an
individual human being to do and say as they like so long as they harm no one,
is an ethic not shared anymore in the West. The battle I fight was lost a long time ago, and I'm just filling in time between drinks, while they remain legal. And I’m not overlooking the seeming illogic that Libertarian
NotPC gets something like thirty thousand visits a month, way more than me also:
people who believe in freedom tend to be working people, with little time for
reading, and what is happening here is that over more than twenty years of hard
grafting, Peter Cresswell has formed for himself a monopoly for that time –
bastard. I’m working on my complaint to that oxymoronic Commerce Commission
right after this missive, to see if I can get them to pare him down to my size:
my recommendation will be that he only be allowed to post once a fortnight
until his visits are reduced to my level. I don’t plan to do anything
different, such as be more productive or more creative: I don’t need to so long
as the state will intervene to take the share he has won in the market of blogs,
and give it to me under the sanction of fairness.
Related Posts:
Of Comedy, Whaleoil, Kim Dotcom Freedom of Speech and Bounded Liberty.
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