tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post2602117806404478251..comments2023-05-28T23:41:17.406-07:00Comments on Whipping Girl: Regarding “Generation Wars”: some reflections upon reading the recent Jack Halberstam essay-juliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06703465310869693798noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-8223314537040288832014-07-22T15:56:06.979-07:002014-07-22T15:56:06.979-07:00Hey my dear Julia, this just popped up to help me ...Hey my dear Julia, this just popped up to help me out a little bit: <br /><br /><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-menachem-creditor/im-done-apologizing-for-i_b_5606650.html" rel="nofollow">I'm Done Apologizing for Israel.</a> <br /><br />See how the guy exploits LGBT activism and other pop-causes right at the beginning, in order to then explain why exterminating a swarthy native population is an acceptable act? As though the one can cancel out the other? <br /><br />The engines of our genocidal empire are always getting lubed up by the use of "domestic social progress" to spray perfume on mass murder. High Arkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14723123626955733759noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-25820464432649622882014-07-19T17:35:38.719-07:002014-07-19T17:35:38.719-07:00We're discussing these issues in the very real...We're discussing these issues in the very real context of the unjust, deliberate infliction of death and penultimate misery upon millions of human beings. Given that--if anything at all--does it not seem that these issues really aren't "very relevant and important" by comparison? <br /><br />For example, say that during the Vietnam War, we're having an argument about how fit black men are for positions of leadership? We're ignoring, say, the screaming napalm death of the latest ten thousand children's lives to be burned away, and instead focusing on "racial equality in American academic and leadership positions." <br /><br />Well, fast forward a few decades, and now we have a black man administering the imposition of Africomm on the dark continent, actively slaughtering god-only-knows how many children. We even have a more aggressive female being courted by neoconservatives to be the next leader. Wouldn't you say that proves the point that these issues are not really that relevant at all? Does it matter if the black people are enslaved, sharecropping, working for sub-poverty wages, or in prison? <br /><br />How many gay people were starved to death in Iraq by Bill Clinton? If you believe that one in four people are gay, that's at least 250,000. No amount of job denial or rude slurs in America can compete with 250,000 lgbtq people, most of them children, starving, slowly and painfully, to death. <br /><br />What about 50 years from now, when a handicapped transgender half-Inuit clone is President, and we're bombing Saturn? Will the point be made, then, that these issues are just a distraction from genocide? <br /><br />I share your desire that people not say hurtful things to one another, but no amount of American social discrimination can compete with cluster bombs or anti-food and anti-medicine naval blockades. In fact, I suggest to you that our focus on these things--even as low as 1% of our hallowed focus, though the real number far exceeds 50%--is an integral part of the narcissism that causes us to tolerate leaders who use incremental games of social progress as an intellectual bread and circus to drive policies of constant mass murder. <br /><br />That's why these kinds of discussions are ghoulish. We're inside a burning house arguing about who farted, while Obama and his friends are laughing as they drive away with an empty can of gas. Our argument isn't just misplaced; it is, in fact, the very reason we didn't respond to all the clunks, bumps, and scraping noises outside five minutes ago. We need to get over ourselves, and realize that, until the fire is out, it doesn't matter who farted, who stubbed whose toe, or whether Damian kissed Lance when Lance was supposed to be faithful to his second cousin Stu after what happened between Stu and Brian. It just doesn't matter while so many people are being killed. <br /><br />Throughout this giant surge of academic sensitivity that we've had from the 1960s onward, we've seen both a consistent, decades-long decline in real wages, the destruction of the academic job market and respect for advanced degrees, the reduction of Congressional speaking grade-level, and yet, more loudly-avowed concern about various class/subset issues than ever before in human history. <br /><br />These connections are not coincidental. These "seemingly minor things" are what drive privileged western audiences to think more about their own sexual identities, and how others respond to them, than about other people being ripped apart. High Arkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14723123626955733759noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-92123628281659196702014-07-19T15:31:45.186-07:002014-07-19T15:31:45.186-07:00So I am aware of the larger points Halberstam was ...So I am aware of the larger points Halberstam was trying to make, and in my response, I mentioned on numerous occasions that I share many of his concerns.<br /><br />I agree that we sometimes spend an exorbitant amount of time and energy debating (or as you refer to it, "infighting" about) seemingly minor things (such as terminology or media representations) rather more tangible/material/serious matters. But other times, those conversations play a determinative role in whose perspectives are given a voice within activist movements, and this does have a material affect on the issues that movement will notice and seek to address. So these matters are not unconnected, although I agree that often times they seem to be at odds with one another.<br /><br />Also, I made clear at the onset that the reason I wrote the piece was not to outright dismiss Halberstam's piece and all its points (although I did discuss my concerns with some of them), but rather to challenge the overarching narratives that different activist generations use to dismiss one another. I think this issue is very relevant and important, but it need not trump other important and relevant issues.-juliahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06703465310869693798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-20026859409228447802014-07-19T15:05:00.603-07:002014-07-19T15:05:00.603-07:00thank you so much for this correction! (I am admit...thank you so much for this correction! (I am admittedly rather tumblr naive.) I just edited the piece to add the link you provided. -juliahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06703465310869693798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-43092207185453900952014-07-19T13:33:10.962-07:002014-07-19T13:33:10.962-07:00Everyone who read Halberstam's essay, it seeme...Everyone who read Halberstam's essay, it seemed, missed the point. No, not the point that it was supposed to be "humorous"; some certainly identified that. His primary message was not, "Stop being triggered," but rather, "Our undue focus on surface issues is causing us to expend resources infighting about terms, rather than addressing the true roots of misery and discrimination." In this, he was much like Rev. Dr. King, who reminded us that the ability to sit at the lunch counter was meaningless if one could not afford the lunch. <br /><br />Halberstam spent a lot of time being cute with "trigger" anecdotes, but in the end (go read it again if you have to), he came back to the issue that actual economic inequality produced the vast majority of the tangible suffering out there. <br /><br />I.e., straight WASP men who lose their jobs, end up homeless, become invisible to society, get raped and beaten, and starve to death on the street, are suffering more than someone who gets shocked by the title of a talk at a conference at a fancy hotel on the eastern seaboard. <br /><br />I'll suggest what Halberstam only averred to indirectly: that it is <i>because</i> of the obsession with our own privileged trauma that we are able to so effectively ignore far greater injustices. That's why it's so vulgar that, in a globe filled with so many men being tortured in state prisons, and so many African children being daily torn apart, the thing that riles most Americans up--that causes them to write papers, vote, formally protest, and argue on the internet--is not the literal death and destruction of human lives, but the terms used to address the sexual identities of a comparatively tiny subset of financially comfortable people who don't live in war zones. Some might even say it's <a href="http://higharka.blogspot.com/2014/07/ironically-supreme-as-courts-go.html" rel="nofollow">Ironically Supreme.</a> High Arkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14723123626955733759noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-35401524818991475632014-07-19T02:40:50.765-07:002014-07-19T02:40:50.765-07:00The idea that the Millenial Generation is somehow ...The idea that the Millenial Generation is somehow more entitled, more selfish, more clueless, than what came before is so pernicious and is pushed by such strange bedfellows as Fox News and, apparently, queer activists. I'm getting pretty sick of it.Ericanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-44640184456245494602014-07-15T15:31:40.317-07:002014-07-15T15:31:40.317-07:00Terrific post, the best response I've seen to ...Terrific post, the best response I've seen to this thus far.Aaronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17929202615367902110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-86561654738657305692014-07-15T11:43:04.802-07:002014-07-15T11:43:04.802-07:00Just a quick comment: in your list of other critiq...Just a quick comment: in your list of other critiques of the article, the fourth link you give is actually a reblog of the original source text. The real author is tumblr user navigatethestream:<br />http://navigatethestream.tumblr.com/post/90947046597/another-anti-trigger-warning-article-has-come-and-imAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-19921956179979312532014-07-14T15:45:11.890-07:002014-07-14T15:45:11.890-07:00A brilliant response to both Halberstam's blog...A brilliant response to both Halberstam's blog post and the many issues it brings up. Thank you!Jack A.http://jackalop.esnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-1138750479881740702014-07-13T18:04:41.982-07:002014-07-13T18:04:41.982-07:00and for the record, I am not suggesting the issues...and for the record, I am not suggesting the issues I just mentioned are "micro" in the small and insignificant sense. I just mean that these are all issues that some (not me!) insist fall under some larger generational/theoretical distinction. <br /><br />For instance, the idea that this current generation is "anti-T-word" because they are "pro-trigger-warning". These issues seem unlinked to me, but stances on these issues are increasingly seen as establishing a person into one "camp" or another.-juliahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06703465310869693798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8432122252544693588.post-67033376726905824332014-07-13T16:37:18.016-07:002014-07-13T16:37:18.016-07:00After publishing this piece, I thought that I'...After publishing this piece, I thought that I'd explain the title, specifically the "Generation Wars" part. <br /><br />It is a purposeful reference to the so-called feminist "Sex Wars," which involved a potpourri of different issues that, together, seemed to create a distinction between an established generation of activists (e.g., second wave-feminist/"sex-negative" feminists/lesbian feminists) and an up-and-coming generation (third wave-feminists/"sex-positive" feminists/queer activists and theorists).<br /><br />While I didn't experience the "Sex Wars" era, the way in which positions on a plethora of current issues (sometimes related, but not always) are seemingly separating activists into two distinct camps (often based upon age/generation, but not always) brought the analogy to mind. <br /><br />Also, I am not insinuating that Halberstam, or any other individual, is waging an all out "war" on another generation. As I said in the piece, I was driven to write this because a number of older activists have forwarded the narrative I discuss here, and additionally, I find that some younger activists are forwarding a counter-narrative that wholly dismisses 1990's-era queer and trans activism. Since I feel like I kinda sorta straddle these two "generations," I wanted to debunk these overarching narratives (which I feel deny historical context, on both sides), even though I am aware that this essay may do little to sway either camp on the associated micro-issues involved (such as trigger warnings, the word "tranny," etc.).-juliahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06703465310869693798noreply@blogger.com