...the fuck?! PONY!

Okay Hivemind, riddle me this...

How, the FUCK, am I supposed to react to the written skidsmarks you monocleclub wankers have left in my comments? tell me this. I've got Ren asserting that some physical law of the fucking universe forbids me from objecting to anything she says, Octogalore fails at life (again, I would not want ot be you when you reincarnate...) with both another failed attempt at grammar criticism (I speak vernacular english Octagalore! get the fuck over this concept already) and some classic bad faith arguement in form of the hoary old "conspiracy theory" chestnut.

*le sigh*

I've got Daisy mad at me because of, I fuck you not, a misplaced hyphen and Ravenm failing at Ally work quite spectacularly.

But it's the good kind of failier, you know, the kind that is wrong in that way taht is begs for a correction that is oh so right.

Folks, MLK has explained this already; it is very easy to trick a POC, you just have to make them trust your crackery ass and then punished them for that misplaced trust.

It's a side effect of living in a racist, white supremicist society, where it is literally beaten into POC's heads that white opinions are far far more valid than their own, where white voices are given room while POC voices are shouted down.

Being an ally means creating spaces where POC are accomodated and treated like equals, so when, after several years in which Ren has humored every crazy ass MRA and white racist misogynist that felt like posting a comment on her blog, she decides to pick out and hold up for ridicule - how dare Kate tell you that a phrase you use makes your blog a hostile place for her! The nerve of the chink Other! She almost acts like she doesn't ph33r your We-sha-sha! the impudence of it! - a POC who was just expressing how something Ren said made her feel, I am obligated to make some noise about that, and too keep making a noise about that because silence is what the racist society needs me to produce to enable it's bullshit.

And the absolute ally-vacuum into which I shouted in that comment thread is... well that's what "the silence of our freinds" thing MEANS you idiot white people. And far be it from me to point fingers, but could someone please remind me why, despite the fact that I, unlike "radical" folks like Daisy, am not a regular commenter at Ren the Magical Asian-jews's ethnically challenged asian lady's blog, I was the only one who called bullshit when Ren;

NOT ONLY, used the racist "Political Correctness" dogwhistle to silence and dehumanise a POC,

NOT ONLY co-opted the oppression experienced by asian americans so that she could use it like a commodity rather than the fucked up bullshit women like Kate have to put up with every fucking day of their lives that it actually is,

NOT ONLY then proceeded to pretend that she and her white regular commenters (like Amber) had authority enough to decide whether or not that POC was ALLOWED to be offended by something Ren said, when only a sociopath would presume that what a person feels is a debatable thing.

No agree to disagree there of course, and no allies hanging around that blog neither.

Let me now go off on a seeming tangent for second:

My objections as an anarchist to the monocle club are not to the group per se, but the power dynamics inherent to such exclusive secret clubs, linked into the same mechanisms for utilizing social capital that you find in Kos's townhouse group, or in the little club Vallenti and Marcotte formed a year or so back, or like the "safe spaces" Radfems are always using to fuck over sex workers and transexuals - And we can know that groups like this impose a hierarchy onto the social groups they arise from because that's what all the other groups have done, even though the other feminist groups who have these groups are, just like you guys, allegedly against such abusive power structures and hierarchies.

And yes, calling a safe space a "book club", or a hippo for that matter, doesn't actually change those underlying dyanmics and hierarchies.

My second major, philisophical problem you could say, with such groups is that they generally require an acceptance of what Marx in manifesto call "critical utopian socialism", and thus are inherently flawed and self restraining for the same reasons, and I cannot repeat what Mardx wrote better than him so I'll just quote the relevent section:

We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf [4] and others.

The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form.

The socialist and communist systems, properly so called, those of Saint-Simon [5], Fourier [6], Owen [7], and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians).

The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement.

Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that are to create these conditions.

Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action; historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones; and the gradual, spontaneous class organization of the proletariat to an organization of society especially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans.

In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.

The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society?

Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social gospel.

Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.

But these socialist and communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them -- such as the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into a more superintendence of production -- all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognized in their earliest indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely utopian character.

The significance of critical-utopian socialism and communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justifications. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavor, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realization of their social utopias, of founding isolated phalansteres, of establishing "Home Colonies", or setting up a "Little Icaria" [8] -- pocket editions of the New Jerusalem -- and to realize all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary conservative socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.

They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new gospel.

The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the Reformistes.

And So I must also object to your group on communist grounds.

Thirdly; As an ally I must again Object to your group on practical grounds. to summarize, no gated community ever changed the world.

That is largely my objection to the radfems' silly little safe spaces, you can't change hte world from outside, and if you think that you can build a shangri-la so awesome that unreconstructed crackers will flock to you and demand to be let in...well I have news for you, the crakcers like being crackers, more importantly the system that made them crackers in the first place is bigger, and weilds more of the power that these sorts of groups are trying to weild.

This is one way to intrepret Audre Lord's "you cannot demolish the master's house with the master's tools" - you don't take a knife to a gun fight, and if your opponent has more guns than you have, then going to a gun fight at all seems stupid.

And here's the thing that I suspect I've been leaving unspoken when I should have: surely there's a better way to do things than this?

You can't deconstruct privelage in a secret little exclusive group because privelage works by it being kept invisible - if your attempt to tackle privealge doesn't consist of being LOUD and being PUBLIC rather than polite and private it WILL fail, because of what privealge is and how it works.

More importantly you can't build a community from exclusivity - you partition off the conversation between allies and you stop the silent majority (the lurkers) from being able to gain anything from it, and you create a circle jerk.

And you try to pass that off as "ally work", as "SRS Anti-racist bizness", then well... don't.

Because that's the thing, I can't force you to listen, I can't force you to actually think or have an open and public conversation about this group, about what it should involve and the draw backs of various approachs, and how maybe you should set up checks and balances to stop abuses of power and to limit the degree of damage an unhealthy and uncritical social cohesion can bring about.

Because you have far more social capital than I can bring to bear, and you have more social captial than I am willing to accumulate to fight you all.

And while I suppose I could hack into your accounts, your email, your bank accounts and similar, and dredge up your personal details and basically utilize the exact same pre-existnt power structures that your group, as it stands, has been supportive of, I have a horrible sinking feeling that I'm morally obliged to take the higher ground. Also I is lazy and personal bank details has not got a flavor

But I don't expect you to listen, you've shown that you don't want to take anything I say in good faith, you would rather prefer to dismiss and dehumanize me to protect your clique, and you're free to do that I guess.

This is a public space and public spaces are, in our society, by definition, the "safe space" of assholes - sure the neo-nazis have to skulk around stormfront, but you visit most of the "big blogs", and you'll find that any talk about race, or sexism, or whatever and privelage will be quickly shut down, shouted down and then locked down, because there's nothing worse than being called "racist" or "sexist" and it's all so unfair to the poor opressed rich white guy.

Don't be the poor oppressed rich white guy, don't be self pitying.

And even more unfortunately the old saying goes that you can't teach a student who isn't willing to learn, so as of this moment please take it as read that I am no longer going to self identify as an "ally", considering that you guys will undoubtably drag the term through the mud, and make us whtie folk who give more of a shit about people rather than privelage look really fucking bad by association, during this year - even more so than you already have of course, thank you for that Ren and Amber - and I have no power to stop you.

So I guess you win? Or whatever this is exactly.

Bon apetit XXX