Hugo Responds
Published by McBoing June 15th, 2006 in Feminism, HUH!?Feminism is a big house, and there is room within that house for a variety of approaches to “spreading the word”. Confrontation has its place. All good movements for justice, in other words, need their “Martins” and their “Malcolms”! (Please know I’m not trying to compare myself to either Malcolm X or Dr. King.) I’m more interested in adopting an incremental approach because it’s the approach that I think works best with the greatest number of young men and women. My students always hear me, for example, compare becoming a feminist to getting into a cold swimming pool: a few will find it easiest to just dive in, but most of us will climb down, step by step, shivering all the way, only gradually becoming comfortable. And none of us can fully immerse ourselves forever; we all have to keep a head above water in order to breathe. That image may not work for everyone, but it comes as close as any to describing my “slow and easy” approach to transformation.
Bold his, italics mine.
Click here to find out more about how feminism is suffocating and makes your toes wrinkly.
Shrinkage, too?
” we all have to keep a head above water in order to breathe. ”
Unless one is a fish. Without a bicycle.
Is Hugo advocating political lesbian separatism? Or does he have chronically bad metaphoric language?
Do you know Phil Ochs’s song, Love Me, I’m A Liberal?
A lot of people incorrectly identify everything to the left of center as “liberal,” but a key part of what it means to be liberal is the explicit rejection of radicalism. Hugo is almost a self-caricature. He boasts of his casual abandonment of principles as virtuously pragmatic, and he’s forever making insincere apologies for his insults to people to his left, just before insulting them again. But he’s always careful not to hurt the feelings of people to his right.
One problem with Hugo’s approach is his tacit endorsement of the social acceptance of woman-hating. He feels comfortable “taking conversion slowly” with a man because he knows that it’s kinda okay to be chummy with him on sexism. As I said on his site, he wouldn’t have the same policy for racism, and that’s because he would feel uncomfortable participating in casual racism to “help bring someone along.” Sexism, though? Okey doke.
Yeah. *sigh* Yeah. Very disappointing.
So does that make us all gill-necked fish people then, since we don’t feel the need to take a sexist “breather” every once and a while?
FoolishOwl, I am quite confused by your juxtaposition of liberal and radical. I don’t really see them as mutually exclusive–in fact, I would consider myself both a radical and a liberal. Since I am not a political historian, I read the Wiki entry for both looking for more information. The idea that radicalism is incompatible with liberalism doesn’t seem to be universal: the page included information on movements that struck me as potentially rather radical–social liberalism, for example. It seems to me that “radical” is a relative term, whereas liberalism is not. How then can they be said to be incompatible?
To keep it concise: as I’m using the terms, liberals acknowledge the existence of social inequities, but believe these are aberrations in a fundamentally good and trustworthy social structure, and that it’s a matter of straightening out the inconsistencies. Radicals see social inequities as results of a fundamentally bad and untrustworthy social structure, and what’s needed is a restructuring of society at its roots.
He boasts of his casual abandonment of principles as virtuously pragmatic, and he’s forever making insincere apologies for his insults to people to his left, just before insulting them again. But he’s always careful not to hurt the feelings of people to his right.
Then he’s a centrist, like Kos and armtong and avarosis and all the rest of them.
By the time someone is describign you like that you’re a centrist, whether you self-idenitfy or not with that name.
R. Mildred, liberalism and conservatism constitute the political center.
That’s a TERRIBLE metaphor.
Not much else to say, really.
Also, as a 22 year old male, I want to emphasise that we aren’t all complete morons.
Don’t worry Christopher, most of us know that.
Which is why we are so annoyed with Hugo’s unwarranted coddling of your peers.