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esorlehcar
2011-07-30 11:52 pm UTC (link)

The number of people who loudly support social justice until it costs them something to do so is incredibly depressing, especially because after they completely drop all their SJ morals to avoid being angry at a friend or to pretend whatever racist/sexist/ablist thing they just did doesn't actually count, they go right back to loudly condemning others for the exact same behavior (while still passionately hating anyone who called them or their friends out when they did it, because that wasn't fair. It's delightful!)

All that means, of course, is that people who support or claim to support social justice are people, and people tend to be fucked-up hypocrites, not that people who care about social justice are more hypocritical than people who don't, but that doesn't make it any less exhausting or infuriating. And if you can't hold people who have crafted their fannish personas around fighting for social justice to a higher standard, who the hell can you?

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	ickle_snowflake 2011-07-31 01:05 am UTC (link)
	And if you can't hold people who have crafted their fannish personas around fighting for social justice to a higher standard, who the hell can you? TBH, I'm not even sure if it is a higher standard, but I can't word why. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jackandahat 2011-07-31 01:27 am UTC (link)
	"Don't make apologies for rapists" really should be a basic human standard. It's sad that it isn't. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ickle_snowflake 2011-07-31 01:34 am UTC (link)
	'This' doesn't sound like enough, but it covers my feelings pretty effectively. (Reply to this)(Parent)

esorlehcar
2011-07-31 01:32 am UTC (link)

"Higher standard" might not have been the best word choice. I meant that whenever someone in the social justice community does something shitty, people who are unhappy about the idea of social justice jump at the chance to say, "Look! Everyone who supports social justice is a hypocrite and bad person, so the rest of us should keep fighting to make sure 'isms never become a thing of the past!"

On the one hand that's ridiculous, and it's a tried, true, oft-used method of attempting to silence anyone who doesn't think the status is all that quo. But at the same time, I find it way more upsetting when someone who campaigns or presents themselves as an advocate for social justice engages in this kind of behavior than when a random person on the street does, and I think that's perfectly fair.

Those two things aren't really linked, except that a lot of times SJ people jump to accuse anyone justifiably disturbed by the behavior of someone else in the community of doing the former. That's what I was trying to get at, though I may just have made myself even less clear...

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jackandahat
2011-07-31 01:42 am UTC (link)

I think it's the hypocrisy issue.

It's like politicians. If regular Joe politician cheats on his wife... eh, that's between him and his wife, none of my business.

If Ultra-Conservative politician who has been banging on about the sanctity of marriage and trying to dictate what I can do with my love life gets caught shagging his secretary, then it's very much my business - because he involved himself in my business, and he set standards of behaviour for me and then didn't live up to them himself.

So if Jane Average does something wrong, then that's bad. But if Jane Social Justice who has been telling everyone else how to live their lives does something, then it seems worse, because she the one who set the standards for what's allowed and what's not.

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	ickle_snowflake 2011-07-31 01:59 am UTC (link)
	Oh, I wasn't arguing with you, I'm sorry. My brain is scrambled rn and I think it must have come out as more aggressive than I thought it did; I was just kind of trying to tweak something that bothered me (and what bothered me was more the situation than your comment.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	esorlehcar 2011-07-31 02:06 am UTC (link)
	Oh, I didn't read you at all as aggressive--I just wanted to clarify what I meant. It was unclear phrasing, and using a term like "higher standard" when talking about things as fundamental as "rape is bad, no matter who fucking does it" shouldn't ever have to happen. Rape culture, we are eternally soaking in it). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

ickle_snowflake
2011-07-31 03:11 am UTC (link)

Yeah, I feel the same way, but I do get where you were coming from with the bad wording. (What I was trying to word is still a whole jumble that I still haven't sorted out, but it had a chunk of "I don't like the idea of a 'lower standard' with this," plus that I also feel the people who seek to define what is and isn't acceptable should adhere to their own rules, or everything falls down; I just hold most people who try to define what's acceptable to that standard. I get this weird feeling that I'm word-salading rn.)

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fernmonkey
2011-08-01 11:12 am UTC (link)

All that means, of course, is that people who support or claim to support social justice are people, and people tend to be fucked-up hypocrites

I think it also shows that rape culture is so deeply engrained that even people who would normally fight against it (and see themselves as the sort of person who ALWAYS fights against it) will immediately resort to the standard rape-culture rhetoric and rape-apologist arguments when it's a rape they can't be objective about, with one of their friends being accused.

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