Circular Firing Squads Of The Left

I'm certain our readers already know that Amanda Marcotte recently wrote a book which was published by Seal Press, a publisher that focuses on works by women writers.  It's intended to be humorous, satirical and um, blunt - pretty much everything we've come to expect from Amanda. 

At her blog, Amanda uses quite a bit of retro-looking artwork to go with her posts.  It's usually old ads featuring women and/or women's products that are slightly tweaked to have them poke fun at the attitudes they espouse.  Things like Lysol Douche ads (how we survived as a species I'll never know) and other ridiculous products.  Given that practice, Amanda and Seal decided to use some old comic book images in her book that would go along with the title, It's a Jungle Out There.  Campy, cynical, ironic - the essence, in my opinion, of Amanda's writing.

Unfortunately, old comic books contain some of the most offensive racist and sexist images our culture has ever produced - the other great source of these types of images being the classic Warner Bros. cartoons.  The sexist imagery was actually what they were looking for, since their intention was to use it satirically.  But the racist overtones of the images went right past the people at Seal Press and Amanda; my understanding is that all of them are white.

Amanda has apologized, Seal Press has apologized.  In neither case was the apology of the sort where people are sorry that someone was offended - a type of "apology" that should be known as the Republican's Sorry or something like that.  They both owned up to the pernicious, blinding effects of white privilege.  Seal Press has already redesigned the book and issued another edition without the images.  I can't think of another public apology that has been as forthright and clear as what Amanda and Seal Press have done here.  It's actually a bit shocking; apologies in our culture, no matter the reason or source, are now carefully worded to convey no actual remorse on the part of the person apologizing except that other people failed to properly understand what they clearly meant.  No responsibility is taken, because people seem to believe that taking responsibility is the same as admitting some sort of legal or financial liability.

But these apologies have not been enough, and I've basically had it.  This ties in to several things I've been reading and hearing over the last few months, both in the blogosphere and in real life; I'll discuss them in more detail below the fold.

The problem with It's a Jungle Out There has been linked to another fight people have been waging primarily in the feminist blogosphere over Amanda's alleged plagiarism of the work of one brownfemipower, who you might guess has been blogging from the perspective of being a non-white woman in America.  The whole thing is confusing as hell, but it seems that Amanda was at a conference where brownfemipower gave a talk, after which Alternet published an article by Amanda on the same subject.  Therefore, plagiarism.

I don't have links because I really am confused by the whole thing.  brownfemipower decided to stop blogging over this issue and wrote a post which left me more confused about the issue than before I got to it - which is much more likely to be my fault than hers.  In fact, if anyone has some place to which they could point us for a recap on this, I'd appreciate it.  I had to follow probably ten links to find a post that had the decency to refer to Amanda by name instead of what is, in my opinion, the very juvenile moniker Person [X].  I mean, make the charge or don't, but don't disguise it.

I read one post - again, I have no idea where I read this; I'm not trying to disguise links - claiming that Amanda has a history of racism in her writing, and that Pandagon never deals with issues of feminism and race.  Astute readers will remember that Pam Spaulding writes for Pandagon, that Pam is a woman and that she is black.  And that she writes about feminism, and race.  But I've not seen Pam mentioned at all in any of this; she's been entirely sidelined and ignored.  She even has a post on the issue in which she talks about how she's not been a part of this at all.  Given Pam's relationship to Amanda, her status as a woman of color and her status as a blogger and commentator outside of the blogosphere I can only imagine that sidelining her has been intentional since her work at Pandagon and Pam's House Blend is discomfiting to those who want to paint Amanda as a callous racist.

All of the above to say that I do see a tendency to refuse to acknowledge the sincerity and legitimacy of anyone in a privileged group - whites, males - when they make a mistake and apologize for it afterward.  Not when they issue the Republican Sorry, but when they take it on the chin and apologize.  It's a "one strike and you're out" mentality, and it deeply disturbs me. 

Because in the USA, whites and males have been conditioned from birth to make certain assumptions, to say certain things, to have a profound blind spot to the realities of what it means to be a woman and/or a person of color in this culture.  I'm not making excuses for those who would call a black man "boy," or even those who would refer to a women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."  There's a lot of words and phrases that are clearly wrong, even to knuckleheaded bigots like the Freepers or the ones at LGF.  They use terms because they're offensive, not because they don't know any better.

But there's also a lot of offensive imagery in this culture that hasn't yet been fully outed - such as old comic book panels.  And if white and/or male progressives are going to accept try to understand and actively support the anger and resentment that women and/or people of color feel to phrases, images and practices which we have been taught are innocuous, then to be just starkly honest I'd like to be cut a little bit of slack.  I'm going to make mistakes.  Amanda is going to make mistakes. 

To wit:  I'll watch various comedians on Comedy Central or HBO On-Demand, and I find myself laughing at gay jokes, rape jokes, jokes about domestic violence, even jokes about race, although I'm much better at filtering those out. I'm troubled whenever my son plays with my daughter's dolls or puts on her dress-up clothes.  I get nervous in neighborhoods where whites are a minority.  I even tend to assume that a minority driver of a car near me won't be a good driver, and how utterly cliched and lame is that?

And so on.  I'm a white man in America, and I've been taught by this culture from my birth to be that way.  I'm going to make mistakes - for the rest of my life, I'm going to harbor prejudices, I'm going to overlook injustices, and I've already spent years intentionally trying to overcome this.  I cannot get rid of my pre-judgments.  It's impossible.  And I'd appreciate it if my fellow progressives would offer up a little bit of grace on that.

But there's another side to this.  And this other side means that if I'm going to ask for grace regarding my unfortunately-entrenched biases and prejudices, then I'm going to have to own up to them when they're pointed out.  I'm going to have to not only work on changing my habits and thought processes, I'm going to need to show real progress on it.  I'm better about it than I have been; I don't tell the types of jokes I listed above, and I don't watch comedians again who tell them.  I do a pretty good job of not laughing at garbage like that when I'm in the presence of those who do.  I recognize that I have bigoted and sexist attitudes and I intentionally try to not let those attitudes make me into a bigot and a sexist.

When I make mistakes on this blog, I fully expect to be called out on them, and I will apologize for them.  I hope that people won't decide that making a mistake of this sort disqualifies me from the progressive coalition.  Obviously if I keep on doing the same thing or never admit to what I've done, that's another issue.  But from what I've seen - correct me if I'm wrong - Amanda in particular has done everything possible to make things right, and she's still being vilified over it.

The liberal/progressive community is a strange beast.  We've got all kinds, and unlike our political counterparts, our continued existence and success relies upon accepting those who are different, no matter how different those differences might be.  For example, I've seen some pretty outspoken atheists declare their appreciation for religious liberals, declaring them allies in a common fight, and I've greatly appreciated it.  What we need is much, much more of this.  We need to have a better understanding that while I might be some knuckle-dragging Neanderthal who doesn't want his son to wear his daughter's frilly dresses, I'll never deny my son the right to be who he is, whoever he is, and I'll never campaign or vote for any politician or law that seeks to enshrine heterosexuality in American law.

We need to work a lot harder at understanding one another, at giving one another the space we all need to grow.  It's not too hard to spot the fauxgressives among the progressives even if we don't automatically and eternally reject someone after one mistake.  Ideological purity only occurs in groups of one, and there's too much work to do to waste our time on that.

Comments

[ikl]

This is a nice post. Well said.

[ikl]

This is a nice post. Well said.

[sujal]

Hey Stephen,

I just linked to this from my blog, but I wanted to share my thoughts here.

I spent some time reading a couple of threads scattered around Feministe and a couple of other blogs linked from Holly's post. I came away feeling like you did, that the attacks were over-the-top on both sides (and I feel it's worth mentioning that Amanda's response was over-intense, though understandable).

The big thing to me is that this became personal very quickly, and that always makes it extraordinarily impossible to pull back and reconcile. It pretty much was over when people starting claiming Amanda plagiarized the post and Amanda took the accusation seriously.

Anyway, thanks for writing this. It mirrors my own thoughts quite well.

[weboy]

There's a nice detailed discussion of the Brownfemipower brouhaha at Feministe, with more links that provide additional detail. I think te most instructive thing is that, while Amanda has gone onto various threads to argue her case, she's said nothing at Pandagon, which is probably the clearest indication that she can't win on this, whatever she says.

I find the more curious silence on all of this is Pam Spaulding - who surely can't have missed the painful nature of this whole unraveling, and whose silence has been deafening (at least from what I can tell). She barely dropped in to criticize Amanda's book cover, and more or less let the apology serve as an excuse.

I don't think it does, and I think you're right to point out Amanda's failings on this score are deeper and longer than a lot of people like to face. It's a complicated subject...

... and as such I respect and admire your decision to examine it in depth, though I think your final points ramble a bit. I think "liberal guilt" on these subjects is wide and deep; I too wince when watching clearly outrageous comedy with umor that certainly defines "objectionable" to someone. But at the same time, I find myself thinking... lighten up. If we can't laugh, if we can't find the humor in our absurdities... then we really are sunk.

Indeed, isn't humor the point here? A lighter, less defensive posture - one that doesn't insist, really, ona rigid sense of rightness (or righteousness) - would, it seem to me, give Amanda the room to admit mistakes, to say, as she really kind of needs to "whoops, I messed up" more than she does. We all do. We're fallible, and this is all a work in progress. I see your point.

But I think the question is what we hope to accomplish, as well as living with things we don't necessarily like. The thing I really think has no place here... is rigidity. And I think that's the problem with Amanda's often airless arguing, arguing that simply won't brook dissent. Or challenging. I'd rather be flexible... and laugh about it.

[Stephen]

though I think your final points ramble a bit.

True. Though I hope it shows how that comes from a real struggle I'm having with all this. It's the kind of post I would normally avoid due to "liberal guilt" as you rightly point out. But I'm tired of that, and I need to learn how to talk about this someday. Might as well be today.

[Sir Charles]

Maybe I'm too fucking old -- well true -- but how am I suppose to view this as a cosmic issue? This is why I could never stand being in any leftist group. Sooner or later it all comes down to who can be purer and more humorless. And it is pretty apparent to me that many people are jealous of Amanda's success and are enjoying taking her down a peg.

I'm sorry she spologized.

I'd suggest that anyone who is concerned with the plight of women or people of color might read what I posted immediately below about John McCain -- the man who would be president who wants to demolish the Ninth Ward in NOLA and helped prevent the Lebetter bill from passing. Because what people are doing over these "Phantom" like cartoons is just so much bullshit posturing signifying nothing.

[Stentor]

"Plagiarism" wasn't really the issue in the BFP controversy, although some people (on both sides) hyperbolized it into that. The issue was that BFP and other bloggers of color had been writing -- for a long time before BFP's speech -- about exactly the issues Marcotte wrote about in her article. But the article failed to mention those other bloggers, either as the source of her ideas or even just as other useful resources with more to say about the issue. And it happened within the larger context (beyond just the blogosphere) of white people using people of color's ideas without giving them credit, and getting taken more seriously than the people of color were. So a lot of justified anger was getting channeled through this one hook.

As for the book apology, I think a major reason it's not being accepted as well as you'd like is that Marcotte has failed to give even a hint of an apology for the BFP issue. So I think it's understandable that those who feel she was in the wrong there are disinclined to trust that her apology for the book will have any ramifications for examining her white privilege beyond issuing a new edition of It's A Jungle.

As to your larger point about "one strike and you're out," while I sympathize (being, after all, a white dude myself and quite easily on the recieving end of such a blogstorm if anyone were ever to actually read my blog), I think it's unwise for allies to make too many demands for accommodation from the people we're trying to ally with, since they have enough on their plate dealing with the racism and/or sexism etc. So I think the thing to do after a screwup has been called out is to take a deep breath and think "This isn't about me personally, it's about ending oppression." Try to learn what you can from it, and jump back in the fray.

[Crissa]

Uhh, Amanda didn't choose the images that went into the published book. According to reports, she said they were troublesome.

Please, if you're going to report something, look it up, first.

[nimh]

Isnt this the problem with blogs - or with any other talk-focused activism for that matter? The bubble of interest and concern becomes ever more narrow as all most of the participants do is blog and write and talk, for a good part about themselves or each other. Senses of proportion are lost, and degrees of narcissism take over.

Like Charles said above, just take a moment and realise the kind of policies a President McCain would implement, the kind of appointments he would make, and reflect on the real world, material consequences they would have for women and people of colour, as well as for anyone in the bottom half of the income scale.

Think about that for a moment, then look again at an endless proliferation of threads and impassioned accusations about whether writer A has properly credited writer B and C or, for that matter, whether an incrowd publication is sensitive enough in its choice of illustrations.

People need to a) learn to pick their battles on issues, b) to realise that in the face of various scary strands of conservatism ready to wreck more havoc on society, fellow liberals with an ideological flaw here and there aren't the right target for indignation and protest, and c) relativate themselves, their own importance and that of their book or their blog.

[Sir Charles]

nimh,

Amen. There is a mindess narcissism in all of this, coupled with an utter lack of proportion.

Most of us in the lefty blogosphere mine certain areas that are of common concern to many others of our world view. The notion that these common themes are indicative of a kind of plaigarism is just puerile. There is little that I have written that doesn't owe something to some insight or observation available on some other site.

As for the cartoons, they strike me as utterly campy and in keeping with the spirit of Amanda's work. I suspect some people are simply always looking to take umbrage whenever they can.

[BruceMcF]

I could never see the point in taking too much umbrage ... for one thing, where do you put it? Its not like there is a First Prudential Uumbrage Bank to deposit it in case you are feeling too happy on some sunny day.

And like hot pepper sauce, while a little bit of umbrage can spice things up, consuming too much at once causes indigestion.

[Toast]

Holy fuck was that a great post. I'm giddy.

That said, I do want to point out something about Amanda's forthright apology: She apologized to a non-"privileged" group. That's easy. Anyone can do it.

What's hard is apologizing to a "privileged" group. Because, frankly, there's a presumption that if you offend privileged white males, hey, who fucking cares? Amanda demonstrated that when, after her bullshit post claiming a relationship between being a computer programmer and being a deadbeat dad glibertarian asshole, she offered a classic Republican Apology. She never could admit that she was just fucking wrong. And yep, as a white male computer programmer and a progressive, I still hold that against her.

[Corvus9]

Hi! Long-time Lurker, first-time poster.

Yes. Great post, Stephen. Much better than talking about how Obama is now radioactive, although not quite as badass as discussing the badassery of John Brown.

[Corvus9]

However, to follow up on what Sir Charles wrote, I think that there is indeed a very dangerous tendency on the part of various groups that could be called "of the left" (I would prefer to reserve that term for groups of a economic bent, but oh well) to engage in habitual castigations of its fellows. Maybe I am just being a prejudicial pig here, but I feel like this habit is particularly intense within the more "identity" based portions of left. Not to say that this habit isn't common within the rest of the left—just this morning Matt Stoller is accusing Obama's campaign of being liers trying to promote right-wing institutions, because he went on Fox for an interview, and didn't spend enough time berating the host or someting—just that it can get particularly intense among the Identity Left (if that application makes sense). Sometimes this means jumping on things and conflating things out of proportion to the actual crime.

Sir Charles seems to think that the images in question are not necessarily objectionable. I am not so sure about this—judging from the pictures posted by Holly at Feministe, it seems that the combinations of pictures and captions position the Savage Natives characters as the brutish sexism that women must confront in the everyday world. The issue at hand, I think, is whether and how the various levels of irony involved can be sorted out. Like on Pandagon, the images seem meant to be deliberately kitschy and retrograde, to exhibit images and social views that are now thought, at least by the readership, to be repugnant, objectionable, wrong-headed. Where I think this issue is complicated in regards to the Jungle images is that, while the images on Pandagon are often, like douche ads, meant to be rejected whole cloth, there seems to be a suggestion that the reader is meant to relate to the Jungle Girl character. How exactly is one supposed to relate to her? Because she's strong? Self-possessed? Has a physique straight out of adolescent male fantasy? Obviously does not strenuously think of the dominant opinions concerning fashion and grooming? Or because she spends her time beating up The Other (and alligators)?

Like I said, I think it's really hard to pick apart all the various levels of irony and meaning, which is why so often the response to the images' use is based on gut reaction.

[exlitigator]

I bought Amanda's book and enjoyed it. Yes it had campy images from Sheena of the Jungle, yes there were natives with spears in it.(correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't many African tribes actually carry spears?) I will freely admit to white privilige, but jesus, the comments and reactions are incredibly overblown and reinforce every negative stereotype about liberals and femninists. We want to bitch about the treatment of Obama on stuff and then turn around and do this to one of our own is ridiculous.

[Lisa Simeone]

As Michael Kinsley put it, "Welcome to the wonderful world of umbrage, the new language of American politics . . . The constant calls for political candidates to prove their bona fides by condemning or denouncing something somebody else said or to renounce a person's support or to return her tainted money are a tiresome new tic in American politics."

Umbrage is, indeed, the current coin of the realm, and the left is just as guilty as the right. Perhaps more so. I'm so tired of humorless leftists. No wonder the right wing beats us so often.

(And I second whoever it was who said Amanda shouldn't have apologized. Good grief, camp, people, camp! Camp and kitsch! Ever heard of them??)

[Matt Weiner]

I will freely admit to white privilige, but jesus, the comments and reactions are incredibly overblown and reinforce every negative stereotype about liberals and femninists.

As a white guy, it's my understanding that part of white/male privilege is the prerogative of telling the Other to lighten up after you've offended them.

[Bruce Webb]

Well I deleted a rambling post. Let me respond briefly to Lisa.

Camp and kitsch themselves are infused with specific ideas about class and gender, each in fact serves to mock other implicitly identified groups, people who are too dumb or too white or too straight or too male to understand the symbolic subversion involved. Ha, Ha! Well one mans in joke may be another's insult. People suspect, and in my experience rightly, that urban sophisticates really do look down on people with suburban or rural sensibilities, and those people will push back when encountering it. And of course the attitudes flow back the other way, think of the multiple implications built into white wine and brie eating liberal Californian.

Camp, kitsch and similar phenomena are well and good when confined to a loft in SoHo or a blog or social space that is only visited by a selective set of like minded people the problem is when they spill over in larger forums. An effect that is totally amplified in Amanda's case where there are identifiable people who are actively targeting her. For better or worse it is one of the costs of becoming a public figure on issues that touch deep nerves, you have to examine how your idea will get received by people who may be pre-disposed against you.

And the answer 'Lighten up' doesn't always cover the basis. After all isn't that always the defense of the guy who gropes a woman?

[Sir Charles]

Bruce,

You're not really conflating campy cartoons with groping are you?

And are we all now required to engage in discourse that is geared to the lowest common denominator so that no one is offended or befuddled or made uncomfortable? Fuck that I say. Because what we will end up with is a world that is far less rich and nuanced and fun and interesting.

[Corvus9]

I think it's really hard to argue that there is no place for camp and kitsch in the mass market. That sounds kind of boring. Also, almost all the people who organized the complaint around the book are unfailingly familiar with Amanda's online work, so even if that were the case, I don't think it explains this controversy. (It works better to explain the whole Edward's Blogger fiasco, though. Whatever Amanda's strong points as a writer, she really is just to controversial and rhetorically combative to fit into the enforced blandness of a presidential campaign.)

Also, this is like the second time in a row that a prominent feminist blogger has written a book to receive harsh denunciations from within her own inline circle. It's almost a pattern.

[Lisa Simeone]

I repeat Kinsley's and Sir C's observations about umbrage. (And totally agree with Sir C's remark about the jealousy being directed at Amanda.)

Of course one can take offense at anything. I can't keep track of all the things one can find "offensive." And I'm sure that neither can black people, gay people, transgendered people, making-up-their-minds people, Eastern Indian people, American Indian people, on and on and on. One can always find something to offend one's hothouse flower sensibilities if one wants to. This is one of the most pernicious aspects of political correctness, which is, in my view, entirely what this whole navel-gaving, blogosphere-only kerfuffle is about. Nobody else gives a shit. And the people who've taken offense are no more "sensitive" or "tolerant" or advanced in their thinking than those of us who know damn well what racism and sexism are but who also still know how to laugh.

I've already written about political correctness a couple of times on this blog and don't want to ramble here. (I also want to save up the story of my out-of-her-frigging-mind former friend who now won't use the term "flip-chart" because some even more out-of-their-mind person blankly asserted that it's offensive to Filipinos.) There's just so much piffle and blather from the supposedly enlightened, sanctimonious Chosen Ones out there telling the rest of us what REAL sexism and REAL racism and REAL -isms are, because we're obviously too benighted to get it.

Perhaps I should be offended at the big boobs on the Jungle Girl. I have big boobs. What is Amanda trying to say (another favorite: "trying" to say -- what a crock) about women with big boobs? Or perhaps it's the other way around. Maybe she's "trying" to say something about women with small boobs. Ooops. Sorry. I used the word "boobs." Offensive! I meant "breasts."

And Jungle Girl is blonde. I'm sick of being told that blondes have more fun (sorry for the ageist reference, those of you who are too young to remember this hegemonic cultural reference -- I don't want to offend you). I'm not blonde. I'm dark-haired. What is Amanda "trying" to say about blondes and dark-haired gals? Oops. I said "gals," I meant "women." There go my culturaly biased inherently sexist tendencies again.

There aren't enough cuss words in the language for me to say what I think of all this shit. But just as well. Cuss words would probably only offend somebody anyway.

[has_te]

Pandagon and both the girls are daily fare for this old white guy.
I have NEVER picked up on anything a'tall, ever, racist
in Amanda's stuff. Ever.

[and -in my sensitized day-...God or anybody! forgive me-- I was a Lester Maddox correspondent and supporter, a voter for Geo. Wallace and a sender of Bircher post cards depicting MLK as a communist...actually kinda hope he was, as we speak, but]

Anyway...I have the first edition of Amanda's book with all the ever so offensive images and I have t'say...
I grew up in an almost unmanageable, nearly slithery pile of comic books and the book's images went totally over my head..it was just the way they were.
Just never saw, matter of dated perceptions, obviously.

And if you have secret information, Sir, to the contrary...
Do please fully disclose...we can handle it.

....don't think it does, and I think you're right to point out Amanda's failings on this score are deeper and longer than a lot of people like to face. It's a complicated subject...
Posted by: weboy | April 26, 2008 at 08:05 PM

[Matt Weiner]

I wish to associate with the comments of Messrs Somerby and Lemieux about the phrase "political correctness."

I mean this:

And are we all now required to engage in discourse that is geared to the lowest common denominator so that no one is offended or befuddled or made uncomfortable?

and this:

One can always find something to offend one's hothouse flower sensibilities if one wants to.

are really quite rich coming from people whose ox isn't being gored. Yes, it would be a dull world if no one was ever made uncomfortable. But it seems to me like Lisa and Charles (not Stephen and definitely not Amanda) are being every bit as protective of their own comfort zones as the people who are objecting to these pictures could be. Yes, the pictures are campy. Can campy pictures ever have pernicious effects? It seems as though it makes you very uncomfortable to even contemplate the idea. Yet black men are still depicted as savages and apes today, and that's not a good thing -- is it?

When you ascribe people's criticisms of these images to an unwillingness to be made uncomfortable, you're shutting down discussion of their effects. And that makes the world every bit as bland as the one you fear.

And again, it's the very definition of white privilege to decide unilaterally that it's OK to exploit depictions of black people as savages because they're being humorless.

[Sir Charles]

Matt,

I was responding specifically to a point made by Bruce above that very broadly attacked camp, kitsch and other forms of discourse that he viewed as "urban sophisticates" making fun of yokels of some kind. Essentially he seemed to be saying that such modes of communicating should be kept among our own kind in the lofts of Soho and other similar venues, but not aired in broader company among the great unwashed. I found this a bit absurd, hence the comment you quote.

I was not advocating exploiting depictions of black people as savages -- it seems to me that people are reading this into the works in question in a way that paints Amanda in a light that is simply not consonant with her work or world view.

I must say I tire of guilty white liberals throwing around the term "white privilege." The only privilege I am asserting is the right to have my opinion and to state it to the best of my abilities. People are free to disagree, but I reject wholesale the notion that I have to state my views apologetically or sotto voce.

[Lisa Simeone]

You have no idea what my so-called comfort zones are. Or my oxen or sacred cows or whatever you wanna call them. Absolutely none.

[Lisa Simeone]

Oops. Hit "post" too soon.

I'm a believer in freedom of speech. Many on the left are not, protestations to the contrary. They are believers only in freedom of certain speech. But as I said earlier, I've written about this a couple of times before on this blog and don't feel like repeating the whole arguments again.

[Matt Weiner]

Charles:

I must say I tire of guilty white liberals throwing around the term "white privilege."

That's unfortunate, because it's a very real phenomenon.

My reaction to the idea of privilege is shaped by experiences in another forum, which got really unpleasant because of a bunch of issues where some guys did some things that upset some women, some of the women complained very mildly -- not even asking them to stop, just pointing out that it upset them -- and many of the guys point-blank refused to acknowledge that the women had a point at all. (The words "humorless bitches" were used, though sort of applied indirectly.) And the men didn't start off intending to assert any privilege. They just wanted to talk about what they wanted to talk about, and they got annoyed when women said -- not that they shouldn't talk about it! -- but that it bothered them. But it still made things very difficult for the women at the forum, who basically had to either shut up or get called humorless bitches.

Which made me realize that there were a lot of times that I was doing things that I didn't think were harmful, that I might not think about at all, but that might be hurting people who had taken the brunt of a lot of societal oppression. And that just maybe, when a woman (or in this case a black person) complained that what I was doing was really obnoxious, I should consider their point of view instead of dismissing it. I might think it was harmless, but what makes me the judge of whether someone else is being harmed?

No one's demanding you state your views apologetically or sotto voce. I'm just saying, maybe you should consider whether the people who are complaining about these issues have a point. There's a reason why "humorless" is one of the stereotypical insults that's been used to dismiss people fighting for equal rights.

[And of course defeating John McCain is more important than any of this stuff. That doesn't mean this stuff doesn't matter at all.]

Lisa, I'm a believer in freedom of speech too, but it has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on here. Freedom of speech includes freedom to criticize other people's speech. But, as you say, you've expressed yourself on this, I've read some of what you had to say there, neither of us will convince the other.

[Sir Charles]

Matt,

My problem with glib assertions of "white male privilege" is not that such a phenomenon does not exist, but rather it is used crudely as a blunt instrument to dismiss out of hand the thoughts and opinions of a rather significant chunk of humanity. It is an essentialist, reductive view of a person -- you are white and male and therefor inherently an oppressor or insensitive to oppression, etc. Moreover, the suggestion that being white and male, without further analysis of someone's class offends the unreconstructed Marxist part of me.

I am actually pretty damned privileged, although I would argue that this is based more on my profession and income than my race and sex. But I wasn't defending myself, but rather Amanda, who I am a longtime reader and admirer of, and who I continue to feel is getting a thoroughly unfair rap here.

At some point I will address the white male privilege issue from the perspective of the many white men in society who aren't particularly privileged and who are, I think, baffled by insistent suggestions that they are. It's something that we on the left need to look at, because it would be nice to expand the base to include people who should belong in the progressive fold.

[Lisa Simeone]

"It is an essentialist, reductive view of a person . . ."

Hammer hits nail head.