The idea that individual trauma is exalted in activist circles makes me think of that awful recent George Will column claiming that young women on college campuses are going around falsely claiming rape to get privilege and prestige, which is apparently something that George Will thinks that people who speak out about sexual violence on college campuses get.
Yeah. I mean, I can see a reflection of a shade of something it might be talking about, which is that everyone understands and uses political thought through the lens of their own experience/beliefs/understanding of the world/understanding of themselves, etc. So most people's political views and activism are also serving some psychological function for that person, whether internally or socially. Nobody's political activism is entirely "selfless" or divorced from their own egos and social relationships.
But that doesn't mean that the problems people are talking about aren't real; just that we interact with them on multiple levels, and our activism serves multiple functions both for us and for the rest of the world. Whether or not outspoken activism gets us social capital in our social circles is irrelevant to how important that activism is, or whether the problems we're talking about need to be fixed.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-09 12:56 pm (UTC)Yeah. I mean, I can see a reflection of a shade of something it might be talking about, which is that everyone understands and uses political thought through the lens of their own experience/beliefs/understanding of the world/understanding of themselves, etc. So most people's political views and activism are also serving some psychological function for that person, whether internally or socially. Nobody's political activism is entirely "selfless" or divorced from their own egos and social relationships.
But that doesn't mean that the problems people are talking about aren't real; just that we interact with them on multiple levels, and our activism serves multiple functions both for us and for the rest of the world. Whether or not outspoken activism gets us social capital in our social circles is irrelevant to how important that activism is, or whether the problems we're talking about need to be fixed.