Thorns

Is there a mailing list or something that updates people on rallies/petitions/government calls for comment(*) etc in Australia? I mainly heard about these things via Twitter and Facebook and have stopped reading both of those because they are Not Good For Me.

If one doesn't exist, part of me wants to make one, if I could get people who do read Facebook etc to submit to it. It feels like a useful resource, I can't be the only person who hates having to sift through 10000 "this is why X is bad" posts to find the odd "this is what you can to actually try to fix X" one. But it might be too much work and stress for me, unless I could get co-mods. *throws the idea into the ether*

I like spoonlessactivists in theory but most of it isn't relevant to me, and all the requests for money for individual people make me anxious in a way charity posts don't, for some reason.

(*)I don't go to rallies myself, but like being able to pass the info on. Personally I am more interested in stuff like "Here advice on contacting your local representative about X", when I happen to have the energy to do something like this I often get stalled not knowing who I should be talking to about what, and how.

This has been building for like 8 months, which means I look back on the me who collected some of these with weary nostalgia. But here we are.
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Make no mistake: Gamergate condones harassment, of Zoe Quinn, and of others. And the thing is, Gamergate is not the first time people supporting a good cause have found themselevs associated with awful people. But usually what happens is people go "Wow that is AWFUL I really don't want to be associated with them" and they make a really clear strong break. Like, cis feminists who don't hate trans women pointedly and publically cutting ties with TERFS.

I reblogged and commented on a post about politisization which then led me to to I can tolerate anything but the outgroup. As he admits at the end, this purports to be an objective skewering of partisanship while deep down actually being incredibly partisan propoganda for centrism. And he is far less self aware about the MASSIVE CLASS ETC BIAS of his POV, even aside from the fact thast is US focused I'm pretty sure red vs blue looks pretty different to a disabled trans black street kid or even, like, Barack Obama. THAT SAID it still made some good points and made me think.

Like, the thing he's criticising is the way people turn every complex specific situation into "proof" that their pov is better, and that the other "side" are a bunch of selfish ignorant harmful losers. But of course his moral often ends up being "not-being-too-political is the best pov, and overly political people are a bunch of selfish ignorant harmful losers" which is EXACTLY WHAT HE'S CRITICISING. It is not inherently bad to have strong, specific, and possibly extreme opinions on the world which mostly align with some existing politcal movement. That is not actually the problem. The problem is how you deal with people whose opinions of the world differ to yours.

I had more thoughts but they got incoherent. Maybe later.

This is me trying to organise my thoughts after a very interesting twitter conversation got too convoluted for my cold addled brain. It's very important to note that my friend Helen who started the conversation and the people we're talking about/to are white Australians (mostly women) with similar politics, and we're discussing both things that affect us (like feminism) and those that don't (like refugee rights). This is NOT about people using anger as an excuse to denounce opinions or points of view they can't handle. (Which is a thing that happens a lot. A LOT. So don't do it here :P)

So! The question is: "Some people really aggressively tweet all the activism and outrage. But what good is this doing?".
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PC World I had something to say about this but I don't remember what...

Me pondering conflict anxiety and accessibility in online arguments

Fragments of Evolving Manhood: Notes Towards a Discussion of Male Self-Hatred Points out the ugly underbelly of the idea of "protective" dads/big brothers "guarding" girls from their boyfriends. I hate the way fandom gleefully embraces this trope and applies it to male characters who've shown no signs of it (Tenzin from Avatar: The Legend of Korra for example) My dad has always treated my boyfriends like any of my friends and been friendly and welcoming (in his quiet way) and I think this is much more endearing.

Peril Asian Australian online magazine

Pick your battle: a practical guide to social activism I thought this was pretty good for what it was, but I was a bit annoyed by the way it glossed over the possibility of fixing problems with anything other than formal activism (plus there seem to be accessibility issues)

Sure, you can join an organisation for volunteering to visit old people, but why not just visit the ones you already know? There's a division of the world into Activists, Victims, and Ignorant Masses To Be Educated, and while she gives a lot of very good advice about being inclusive it still feels like she's missing something crucial. Perhaps the fact that we all wear all three different hats at different times. There's a danger of people going "I'm an Activist, so by definition I can't be in need of education/complicit with any oppression" etc, or of seeing Activists as better qualified to know how to fix things than the Victims.

Formal activism is the right tool for changing government legislation and other Big Issues, and it's something I want to get more involved in. But I also see a lot of value (and for me, accessibility, an issue she glossed over as well) in smaller more organic connections within one's own community, helping those who need helping and educating/lobbying those who need to change, while also being open to change ourselves.

Another thing that's been making me think about these divisions is some surveys I did about attitudes towards charity, and this charity related quote.

I already posted an almost identical locked version of this, but I've decided it would be useful to link to for context in broader conversation.

The archetypical "fandom activist", as far as I can tell from the assumptions I see around the place, is white, female, cisgendered, from the US, able-bodied, may or may not be lgbt, and middle class. She never really thought about social justice before joining fandom, but now pursues it with an almost religious fervour, with rigid ideas about acceptable behaviour, and attacks anyone who has been declared a Bad Person with angry comments on their journal and "signal boosting" posts. She also has no interest in activism outside this.

This does not describe me or the people I know who are involved in discussing social justice in fandom, at least not entirely. I used to think that maybe I wasn't the sort of person people were talking about when they made these posts, but my name has come up a few times so I guess I am.

So I've decided it would be helpful to get my experiences all laid out so that I can poke at them and maybe compare notes with other people.
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