Oppression Olympics - Tumblr Posts

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/02/social-justice-abuse-ipv/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare

i swear some people saw this, and it took the feminist pages longer to realize some of their way of thinking could be problematic

Relatedly, this is why so much infighting on Tumblr is rooted in attempts at finding out who has suffered the most. Whoever quantitatively possesses the most pain, wins--and the winner gets to punish everybody else.

And it's also why folks try to invent the magical "identity which cancels out all suffering" every few years. That way, you can dismiss the pain of anyone with that identity, which means they can be punished without limit, forever.

Ten years ago, the phrase "gay men are the straight men of the LGBT community" was a real sentiment that really floated around on Tumblr. Nowadays it's "trans men are the men of the LGBT community". Both sentiments make no sense on their own. But when you couple them with the harassment campaigns, bullying, and the total dismissal of any oppression faced by both groups, then it becomes clear.

Both statements are highlighting that it is safe to publicly punish folks in these categories for claiming to be oppressed, when we all know they're lying attention-stealers distracting us from Those Who Truly Suffer.

This is why I'm not on board with "punch a Nazi" rhetoric. All that seemed to mean, to me, was that the speaker could redefine "Nazi" to mean "someone I don't like" or "someone I want to punish", and now, they can justify punching literally anybody.

And, well. The last year's work of redefining "Nazi" to mean "Jew" has shown this concern to be tragically valid.

I've been reading some stuff on punitive justice, and it made something click for me that I've observed a lot online but haven't been able to put into words before.

When someone does something wrong, that's bad, and the damage it does needs to be repaired while the person needs to try to do better in future to minimize repeating harm. We learn it in preschool - say sorry, don't do it again. If they keep at it, remove them from the situation where they can do the harm until they prove they're responsible enough to go back in.

So if it turns out someone DIDN'T do anything wrong, that should be a relief! There's no damage to fix, no internal errors to correct. Less work for everybody, literally no harm done. False alarm, all good.

The thing I've observed is, lots of people want them to have done something wrong. There's almost disappointment when it turns out there's no harm done. And I think that's because of this general undercurrent of punitive justice as morally righteous and desirable: someone does something wrong, you get to punish them. Turns out they're innocent? That's disappointing. Find another reason you get to punish them, or find another bad person you get to punish. But at the core of it is that desire to punish someone. Someone you can hurt in a way that makes you a better person for hurting them.

This particular brand of almost cannibalistic pseudo-justice is super common in tumblr, one of the most ostensibly liberal spaces on the internet; I see more borderline savagery in online discourse here than in the actually toxic parts of the internet that are just openly cruel for cruelty's sake. It's always thrown me for a loop, and has frankly also hurt me, because on the rare occasions I get personally dogpiled, it only actually stings when it makes me worry that I've legitimately hurt someone. If I did something wrong, or more realistically when I inevitably do something wrong, that would make it good and right for people to give me shit about it every day until I'm dead.

The thing that clicked for me most recently was this bit in Ijeoma Oluo's Be A Revolution:

Punitive justice is specifically, uniquely appealing to people who have suffered injustices. Of course it's the Tumblr zeitgeist. Everyone here is a marginalized person failed by at least one system. Punishing someone for perceived injustice is how someone the system has deemed worthless proves their value in blood, even if the person being punished hasn't harmed you directly - even if they haven't harmed anyone. "Righteous" anger isn't about the target in these cases, it's about the inflicter. This is how much my pain is worth.

And that kind of violent validation is so alluring and so very dangerous. It seeks an outlet, wearing the justification of justice. Who's in reach? Who's an acceptable target this week? What's a good reason to use?

Is there anything they could do that would make me stop?

I just saw a video of someone saying something along the lines of “being without ADHD medication is like being without a wheelchair! If people were waiting this long for wheelchairs and having to crawl around their homes then something would be done immediately, so why can’t I get ADHD meds??”

And just, can people stop assuming that wheelchair users get handed everything on a plate. Because we absolutely are not.

People wait months and years for wheelchairs – yes, even non ambulatory people. That’s months and years of suffering, of crawling or being confined to bed or stuck in unsuitable wheelchairs.

Yes, medication shortages are serious and need addressing… but making comparisons to wheelchair users when not knowing a single thing about the processes of accessing a chair in various countries is not the way to go about it.