A Dyke A Broad #62 Ho-ho-homo for the holidays
On Christmas cats, the activist pack, and the diminishing returns of love.
Hello from Paris!
For the first time in ages I get to play Cat Auntie, looking after those beings which weren’t invited to visit grandparents, volcanoes or alpine ski slopes, and have nobody to hang out with but me.
If they don’t mind, I don’t. Because I really like cats, even if I’m semi-allergic, and don’t have my own. I dig how they exist in this whole other plane in which humans are largely peripheral except for snacks, litter box-changing, and the occasional cuddle. When they are stalking a bug, or chasing a shadow, they are entirely consumed, and don’t need either our affirmation or approval.
I should adapt them as my role model. I’m much more doglike, something sheepherdy. If I get ahead of my companions I’m continually anxious, glancing around, still there? Still there? Hurry up. Stay with the pack.
Which is ironic, right? Because I’ve strayed so far from my own.
The last few days, I’ve been thinking how what saves us often destroys us. More precisely, now, at the height of the holiday shopping season, I’ve been reflecting on how, in our fear of famine, drought and powerlessness, we plan, save, and hence survive. But some of us also hoard—not just food, but all resources, including capital, and personal and political power. Why else would men resent and sabotage women’s entry into what were once their exclusive domains? Protecting ourselves from scarcity, many of us don’t even recognize excess. We spur ourselves on with misery. Get only a brief little happy endorphin jolt when our cupboards are replenished, or we finally have the ideological upper hand.
That fear is why Covid has somewhat cooled off the fervor of globalization fans here. France, for instance, might find it cheaper to outsource the production of masks and paracetamol, but money isn’t the largest part of the calculation any more—it’s now control. When supply is interrupted in a life and death situation, interdependence can quickly feel like dependence, then powerlessness.
In fact, it often seems like fear is one of the few commodities still fully exploiting globalization, with social media marketing it on an almost unimaginable scale, and in many ways homogenizing it for easy consumption. The talking points of rabid anti-vaxxers in the U.S. for instance are very similar to those in Berlin or the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion, despite the different contexts.
In a few broad strokes, you get the anti-government types who think that any imposition like vaccine requirements are an abuse of their individual rights and fear that will lead to larger abuses. Then there are those who are afraid that the government is doing an insidious experiment, maybe even injecting them with chips—after all plenty of governments have experimented on vulnerable populations in the past (absolutely true!). Then there are those who are afraid that even if the government doesn’t have bad intentions, no one knows if the vaccines are safe, and there are certainly hidden side-effects, like sterilization.
The outliers are those—mostly on the “neo-progressive” spectrum—who think that their own individual antibodies are up to the job if they drink enough echinacea and ginger tea, especially if they’ve already had Covid, so why should they get jabbed? They protest a little too much, though, are a little too adamant that vaccination is unnecessary, so that you start to wonder if they, also, are afraid of something.
These ideas have largely spread via social media. The internet is good at fear. And hate. There is a 2021 Cambridge University study showing negative political posts with highly emotional language get twice as much engagement on social media than positive ones. Best is if you just slam somebody from your “outgroup”, no argument, no reason, no facts, just pure disdain and hate.
This raises the question for an aging Gen X activist, what’s the long-term impact on organizing for social change when the most effective way, maybe the only way, to build a large platform is with hate? Are we condemned to Twitter mobs instead of thoughtful collective action? If the means of mass communication at our disposal—once hailed as the ultimate tool for activists without resources—require inspiring fear and hate, should we think small, go local, shrink our aspirations? Should we abandon it altogether?
I can’t get on board with “neo-progressive” movements that seem to wield nothing but anger, shame and guilt. It disgusts me personally. But in tactical terms, I’m suspicious of what you can build on that. Maybe I’m missing something, though. After all, I came of age in the Eighties and Nineties when the work we did still reflected the tone of civil rights movements who were partially motivated by anger, but also talked about pride, and joy, sometimes even love. Which is now a dirty word. A word for suckers and chumps.
It makes the loss of Kentucky writer belle hooks last week particularly painful. She was one of the only writers I knew of who grappled with it, stuck it in the titles of several books, like All About Love: New Visions; Salvation: Black people and love; Communion: the female search for love; The will to change: men, masculinity, and love.
“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Let’s hear it for love.
Not entirely random links
’Tis the season for serious woman-hating
Angela Nagle asks if multinationals will leave Ireland, which will be in deep caca because they don’t have any real economy of their own. They’re like a giant hotel for the Big Boys of tech, only providing services and hoping the guests stick around and tip decently at X-mas.
Matt Taibbi is particularly lucid on the big industry of anti-racism etc. in his series Loudoun County, Virginia: A Culture War in Four Acts
There’s also a lacerating Freddie de Boer on the stupidity of focusing on SAT’s as a way to open more doors to poor Black students.
“…what I find so bizarre, is that all these PMC liberals in media and academia think they’re so endlessly disillusioned and over it and jaded, but they imagine that it was the SAT standing in the way of these schools admitting a bunch of poor Black kids. What the fuck do you think has been happening, exactly? They’re standing around, looking at all these brilliant kids from Harlem and saying “oh God, if only we could let in these kids. We need to save them from the streets! But we can’t get past that dastardly SAT.” They decide who to let in, and they always have! They can let in whoever they want! Why on earth would you put the onus on the test instead of the schools? You think, what, they would prefer to admit kids whose parents can’t possibly donate?”
And there’s also the CIA on how to sabotage an organization just in case you need the 411… Source in the thread.
And Katie Herzog reclaiming a very important word…
That’s it for this week.
Belly the Ho Ho Ho Mo Reindeer
P.S. If you’re looking for a holiday present, think about ordering a copy of The Lesbian Avenger Handbook: A Handy Guide to Homemade Revolution.
Or why not, Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger…