What Strix said. One of the more confounding sub-phenomena of this benighted year so far is how "transgendered restrooms" became this hill to die on for both diehard socialcons and equally diehard pwoggies. There simply cannot, even in a nation of 320 million people, be that many individuals, be they drag queens or just casual takers of dumps, who are affected by this is any meaningful way.
More to the point, why is it this issue that becomes the cause for Springsteen, Maroon 5, the NBA, et al, to exert economic coercion over a cultural backwater like, say, North Carolina? This is not a terribly meaty ankle; why the sudden communal urge to bite it? Most of these southern shitholes are far worse when it comes to reproductive rights, environmental protection, health care -- you know, things that actually affect more than .01 percent of the population, or whatever the sub-niche is that consists of transgender and cross-dressers.
Don't get me wrong; I support the cause and all. If I'm draining the weasel at Costco and some dude in a dress walks in and uses the urinal next to me, I couldn't care less, so long as they keep to themselves, just like any other user of the public skunk-works. But I can't help but wonder what it would be like if the celebrity boycotters went after something slightly more universally applicable, and I can't help but feel that this is the sort of nonsense that SJWs are particularly adept at ginning up.
Anyone can look back through the archives here, and know that I don't take lightly the concept of social justice. But the preening SJW movement earns my contempt because it seems comprised of know-nothing do-gooder assholes who have yet to leave their college campus, and consistently seem to have the notion of economic justice as being untethered from their Special Cause.
Economic justice is, of course, much more complex, and much more deeply entrenched, and therefore much more difficult to Do Something About. But is not only correlative with the social issues the SJWs inveigh against, but I would suggest it's causative to an enormous degree. In other words, when people are financially secure and comfortable, and have a future to plan and look forward to, they don't really have time to worry about peripheral issues like restroom usage and gay marriage and such like. This is because they're too busy enjoying their prosperity, traveling and buying and spending and planning and eating at restaurants, celebrating their lives and having as much sex as possible.
We can -- and do, of course -- make fun of John Miller and his dopey cult of maroons. But the core truth of Miller's following is that they are economically desperate, and no one is doing a fucking thing about it. And when they see a bunch of smug twittards fueling a "movement" to "protect" a microniche of people, while completely ignoring the daily suffering of huge demographics of people, they get annoyed at the fecklessness of it. They would rather buy the secularized "prosperity gospel" lie of an obvious clown, than listen to this hectoring nonsense that helps them not at all.
"Okay," they think, "you got your fucking bathroom. Do you have anything for me or my family or my community now, or am I just supposed to look forward to a future of retiring on cat food and watching my kids work at a fucking vape shop?" That the Obama administration feels the urgency to issue "guidelines" to schools on the subject -- right here, right now, in the middle of the most toxic electoral climate in generations -- illustrates this fecklessness to a sharp degree.
I promise you, some guy losing his job and/or his house ordinarily would have no fucks to give about the sex lives of others, but is enraged at the idea that his gubmint gives more of a shit about transgendered bathrooms than they do about his plight, which likely came about through no fault of his own. And you know what? He has a right to be angry about such misplaced priorities.
Not that it has to be either-or, but it starts to take on that appearance when you hear a disproportionate amount about one, and not the other. In other words, I'm willing to put down some serious real-world money on the proposition that there are a lot more hard-working people watching their lives go down the tubes, than there are transgendered individuals experiencing discrimination in public restrooms.
But getting a social-media movement going for that cause would require actual work, and effort, and attention. It doesn't compress to a six-second Vine, and it doesn't make convenient clickbait or listicles. It doesn't boil down to micro-aggressions or trigger warnings or checking one's privilege. It doesn't give its participants the easy reward of Doing Something Quickly. It requires effort on the part of the readers and fans to contextualize all the information, so it takes more effort to like or follow.
Most of all, it requires a call to action, and action is what we're short of most of the time. But it's a necessity, because unlike the SJW micro-causes that clutter our landscape and attention, the EJW would actually be taking on something that affects everyone. And that goes for the celebrity do-gooders out there as well. When Springsteen boycotts Miami because Rick Scott is a scumbag who is fucking up his state while its largest city is slowly drowning, then I'll be impressed.
More to the point, why is it this issue that becomes the cause for Springsteen, Maroon 5, the NBA, et al, to exert economic coercion over a cultural backwater like, say, North Carolina? This is not a terribly meaty ankle; why the sudden communal urge to bite it? Most of these southern shitholes are far worse when it comes to reproductive rights, environmental protection, health care -- you know, things that actually affect more than .01 percent of the population, or whatever the sub-niche is that consists of transgender and cross-dressers.
Don't get me wrong; I support the cause and all. If I'm draining the weasel at Costco and some dude in a dress walks in and uses the urinal next to me, I couldn't care less, so long as they keep to themselves, just like any other user of the public skunk-works. But I can't help but wonder what it would be like if the celebrity boycotters went after something slightly more universally applicable, and I can't help but feel that this is the sort of nonsense that SJWs are particularly adept at ginning up.
Anyone can look back through the archives here, and know that I don't take lightly the concept of social justice. But the preening SJW movement earns my contempt because it seems comprised of know-nothing do-gooder assholes who have yet to leave their college campus, and consistently seem to have the notion of economic justice as being untethered from their Special Cause.
Economic justice is, of course, much more complex, and much more deeply entrenched, and therefore much more difficult to Do Something About. But is not only correlative with the social issues the SJWs inveigh against, but I would suggest it's causative to an enormous degree. In other words, when people are financially secure and comfortable, and have a future to plan and look forward to, they don't really have time to worry about peripheral issues like restroom usage and gay marriage and such like. This is because they're too busy enjoying their prosperity, traveling and buying and spending and planning and eating at restaurants, celebrating their lives and having as much sex as possible.
We can -- and do, of course -- make fun of John Miller and his dopey cult of maroons. But the core truth of Miller's following is that they are economically desperate, and no one is doing a fucking thing about it. And when they see a bunch of smug twittards fueling a "movement" to "protect" a microniche of people, while completely ignoring the daily suffering of huge demographics of people, they get annoyed at the fecklessness of it. They would rather buy the secularized "prosperity gospel" lie of an obvious clown, than listen to this hectoring nonsense that helps them not at all.
"Okay," they think, "you got your fucking bathroom. Do you have anything for me or my family or my community now, or am I just supposed to look forward to a future of retiring on cat food and watching my kids work at a fucking vape shop?" That the Obama administration feels the urgency to issue "guidelines" to schools on the subject -- right here, right now, in the middle of the most toxic electoral climate in generations -- illustrates this fecklessness to a sharp degree.
I promise you, some guy losing his job and/or his house ordinarily would have no fucks to give about the sex lives of others, but is enraged at the idea that his gubmint gives more of a shit about transgendered bathrooms than they do about his plight, which likely came about through no fault of his own. And you know what? He has a right to be angry about such misplaced priorities.
Not that it has to be either-or, but it starts to take on that appearance when you hear a disproportionate amount about one, and not the other. In other words, I'm willing to put down some serious real-world money on the proposition that there are a lot more hard-working people watching their lives go down the tubes, than there are transgendered individuals experiencing discrimination in public restrooms.
But getting a social-media movement going for that cause would require actual work, and effort, and attention. It doesn't compress to a six-second Vine, and it doesn't make convenient clickbait or listicles. It doesn't boil down to micro-aggressions or trigger warnings or checking one's privilege. It doesn't give its participants the easy reward of Doing Something Quickly. It requires effort on the part of the readers and fans to contextualize all the information, so it takes more effort to like or follow.
Most of all, it requires a call to action, and action is what we're short of most of the time. But it's a necessity, because unlike the SJW micro-causes that clutter our landscape and attention, the EJW would actually be taking on something that affects everyone. And that goes for the celebrity do-gooders out there as well. When Springsteen boycotts Miami because Rick Scott is a scumbag who is fucking up his state while its largest city is slowly drowning, then I'll be impressed.
1 comment:
Excellent analysis, Heywood.
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