| Majin-Tenshinhan said: Here's some research for you, sir. |
That is all sorts of terrifying. Here in Sweden, they put on a show where an actress performed the SCUM manifesto, one journalist/author gave the performance a fairly bad review, the actress proceeded to harass him over the phone, threaten and even show up at his house (which was quite a long drive away). Reviews of the play were printed in all major papers but this incident was never mentioned in mainstream press and no one was willing to listen to his story, meanwhile she was lauded for her efforts both on and off stage.
Those quotes are something else though, damn. The problem with all "-ism's" is that so much is subjective, the same goes for racism as well, some groups take upon themselves to define and decide what different terms entail, or even come up with brand new terms of their own to cover certain subjects, appearances or behavior, this is problematic for several reasons, the most obvious being that these movements themselves must become consensus driven, which sort of deflates the whole "protecting the smaller voices" motto. A slight paradox of most far-left movements across the globe; their voice will inevitably turn against their own in one way or another and when dealing in absolutes and ultimatum only, this becomes a huge issue and causes friction.
My main gripe with modern feminism is the turn it has taken towards censorship, turning a blind eye to blatant injustice so long as it's not directly disadvantageous to women, or even causing or encouraging it in some cases, in order to "tip the scales", it boils down to a perpetual argument over semantics and moral principles, same goes for discussion on racism, which is usually closely tied. Any and all members of any minority who disagrees with definitions and ideology is shut down, ignored or even threatened in some cases. There is no room for nuance in the utopian society modern feminists want to build, and the tools with which one tries to achieve equality are grossly incapable of doing the job, or simply morally obtuse. One great example in a Swedish paper called Metro (a free, highly left-oriented paper you get at the metro stations, as the name implies) writing an article about how around 87% of all students at the dentist studies at universities were now female and how this was good for equality. I showed a colleague of mine the article and asked his opinion, he agreed with the piece, I asked if he didn't see it as better for equality if there was 50/50 male/female students at said studies, he didn't understand me and simply answered that "But men dominate in other areas."
That's when I realized how deeply ingrained the issue is within even intelligent people here (he's a smart guy), and he didn't fathom when I stated that this is the exact problem and by simply replacing men with women as the dominant force and presence, we're just making another construct that is unfair to sexes.
On the same note, people are a lot more accepting of violence from the far left than the far right, it is seen as more benign violence, the ultimate display of ends justifying the means. Again; no nuances allowed.
One last story, again from work, same person I was talking to before. They had the Eurovision Song Contest here, only a mile from my house actually, about a month back or so. The Norwegian contestant, who is also Sami, wanted the Sami flag to be showed during her performance, but the committee denied her that for some reason, my co-workers said that it was because no one wanted the event to become a "political thing". I pointed out that the rainbow flag was allowed and that the rules stated that any member of the UN can show their flag during the show, that's really, really political. They argued that the rainbow flag was an excpetion and represents an oppressed minority, I reminded them that Sami are as well, and a much smaller one at that, and I implied that the contest was suggesting we create a hierarchy of minorities within which your value was measured against that of minorities and that the reason the contestant didn't get any Swedish support was that the Sami are not generally in the media, they're not in the town square shouting or trying to shut down those who disagree and they don't write blogs or tweet about the oppression they've suffered. I also implied that this very fact showed that were all fairly ill informed and rely too much on mainstream media for their opinions and views.
Sorry for the rant. It's related to the subject though, the artist mentioned in the OP is rarely, if ever, challenged in mainstream media here, even when she says stupid things, and she's given way too much credit for intellectual capacity. The same has happened with a (fairly dimwitted) blogger in my home country, she has newspapers and outlets defending her every move as well, and she's basically just parrotting what others have said before, only in a less eloquent manner.
