On this day of celebration of the formation of a state which revels in the above atrocities, I defer to Leo Tolstoy, who said in Christianity and Patriotism (1894)
Patriotism … for rulers is nothing else than a tool for achieving their power-hungry and money-hungry goals, and for the ruled it means renouncing their human dignity, reason, conscience, and slavish submission to those in power. … Patriotism is slavery.
Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. […] Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.
Governments do not create, give nor protect freedom. They only infringe upon it in different ways. Is independence from one state worth celebrating when it was immediately replaced by another?
Inequality is disparity between two groups. There’s no two groups being valued any differently than the other. Commercial seduction does not urge anyone toward true agency or real empowerment. Being offered different kinds of stereotypes isn’t inequality, it’s blanket curtailment of potential.
It really is nice having your culture be the laughing stock of the nation. I remember someone remarking that he was amazed that actual NASCAR fans were loving the movie Talladega Nights. Apparently the thought that they might find the stereotypes as funny as everyone else was beyond him. And that it was a movie making fun of stereotypes must have really eluded him, because, you know, all those southerners are really idiots, right?
However, it’s still beyond me why otherwise intelligent, supposedly open-minded and tolerant people, who stand against all other forms of prejudice, have no problem openly mocking anyone and everyone from the south. You’d never laugh in someone’s face for talking “black” or “gay,” but someone who has a southern accent? All bets are off. Because, they *must* be a complete idiot for talking that way. Just like @BowlingAlleyLawyer said, the first thing any ed-ja-ma-cated southerner must do to be considered even remotely intelligent is to learn how to talk right.
And then Ellie (have I mentioned Ellie? I have a mad internet crush on Ellie, especially when she says things like this) brilliantly adds
I’m a Southern transplant myself but I still bristle when I read crap like this. Pretty easy for Northeastern folks to call poor Southerners racist, etc when those poor Southerners have NO INSTITUTIONAL POWER TO PERPETUATE RACISM.
At some point I’d like to write about growing up white and male in a culture in that teaches you that white males are in control, yet feeling none of the control yourself. I’ve seen different ways that the men in my life responded to that, the ways I responded to that. But I’m honestly afraid of the scathing backlash something like that would bring about. Any time I see someone even approach the issue there seems to be a shouting match revolving around “BUT YOU’RE PRIVILEGED!” as though privilege discounts the reality of someone’s experience.
The whole thing reminds me of one of my favorite songs about being a Southerner, “Good Ole’ Boys Like Me” by Don Williams.
I’d try to pull out a snippet or two from Ren’s post to hook you, but I can’t pick just one thing. So just go read it (if you think you can deal with the douchebaggery of the person to whom she’s responding).
This is the first music I’ve completed in ages. I think it’s rather beautiful, but I’m a bit biased. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, the theme is that of a physical entry into a grand drama, embodying a story and living its reality. That’s really all of the backstory I want to share at the moment. If you have the time and inclination I’d appreciate you giving this a listen and sharing your responses to it.
Kyriarchy - a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and derived from the Greek words for “lord” or “master” (kyrios) and “to rule or dominate” (archein) which seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination…Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression.
Patriarchy - Literally means the rule of the father and is generally understood within feminist discourses in a dualistic sense as asserting the domination of all men over all women in equal terms. The theoretical adequacy of patriarchy has been challenged because, for instance, black men to not have control over white wo/men and some women (slave/mistresses) have power over subaltern women and men (slaves).
- Glossary, Wisdom Ways, Orbis Books New York 2001
See, I’ve never been terribly comfortable with the term “patriarchy.” The description of power along gender lines just didn’t seem complex enough to fit my description, and the root of the word referring to fathers just made me uncomfortable. Felt like demonizing scrotum-toters. It just didn’t explain my experience of power and the way that it’s used. Kyriarchy does, though. I’m glad to know it.
Pronunciation: \və-ˈləp(t)-shə-ˌwer-ē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural vo·lup·tu·ar·ies
Date: circa 1610
: a person whose chief interests are luxury and the gratification of sensual appetites
So I can simplify my business card next time I create them. “Gabe, Voluptuary and Pleasure Advocate/Activist.”
Apparently a couple was asked to stop kissing at a baseball park in Seattle “because it was making another fan uncomfortable.” Yeah, that’s fucked up. And justifications for it ranged from making out not being appropriate for anyone to do at a “family friendly” place to it forcing parents to explain to their children why two women would be kissing. OH NOES!
But the part that really gets me is this…
Since the incident, Guerrero’s job and her past have come under scrutiny. She works at a bar known for scantily clad women and was a contestant on the MTV reality show “A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila,” in which women and men compete for the affection of a bisexual Internet celebrity.
Oh well, if she’s obviously a slut anyway, then she had to have been doing something inappropriate in public. And even if she wasn’t right then, we all know she does bad things, so she needs to be punished anyway.
Trinity’s most recent post at SM Feminist got me thinking about parallels that can be drawn between the state and BDSM. In it she quotes a feminist opponent of S/M who addresses the sexualization of and desire for male dominance, referring specifically to Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind
A thorough overhaul of desire is clearly on the feminist agenda: the fantasy that we are overwhelmed by Rhett Butler should be traded in for one in which we seize state power and reeducate him.
Of course anytime someone starts talking about “seizing state power” then I don’t really know how to engage with them. But this passage did start my wheels turning.
A very popular guideline among many BDSM inclined folks is that everything should be safe, sane and consensual or risk-aware and consensual. There are those who will not even make conspicuous BDSM elements of their relationship in public, because to do so is to involve others who have not given their consent (see the variety of responses to a couple being kicked off a bus because one of them was collared and on a leash). Everyone is given a choice on whether or not they wish to be in a BDSM scene or relationship. Those who choose not to are not threated with violence or otherwise pressured.
We’re not given the same option with the state. Even in the most representative and participatory forms of government we’re not given the option of opting out. We can have some voice in our collective masters, but we can never truly consent because we’re only presented with the option of being governed.
I don’t think that everyone should be forced to live in an anarchist society. I think that people should have the ability to create governments for themselves, but the only way that is compatible with free choice is if one of the choices is not to govern nor be governed at all. As it stands those who would choose not to participate are threated with violence, so even when someone makes use of the input they have into the American democracy, they have not done so with full consent, because consent under threat is no consent at all.
But sometimes people choose to confine their relationships and decision making considerations to self-imposed zero-sum structures.
And sometimes unnecessary and horrific problems arise when people perceive problems only through zero-sum considerations.
I chose at differing points in my life to no longer live as if life was a zero-sum game. And even though my unilateral changes of behavior would not likely lead the others involved to create more benefits for me and would not likely change their decisions, I still unilaterally chose to perceive and participate in the social games of life differently.
…
I didn’t want to live in a world where social relationships were perceived as zero-sum games. I had benefited too much from too many people working together for common good, outside of zero-sum structures and zero-sum mindsets.
…
Art cares about tomorrow.
Art cares about more.
Even when art focuses on the simple, the quiet, and the neglected, it is caring about more than most other people show concern for.
Life is not a zero-sum game.
Sexuality is not a zero-sum game.
Art is not a zero-sum game.
I would add beauty and love to that list as well. What can you think of that is not zero-sum, but is often treated as such?
