http://cheyennecheyenne.tumblr.com/post/151127246428/ive-been-reading-this-thread-on-reddit
I… wish I could agree, but I’m honestly not sure I can. Because yes, you can “criticize something” without saying “there oughta be a law.”
But what does criticizing mean? What ends is it designed to achieve? Very often, no one knows. And if they do know, they tend to parse to getting someone disgraced or making it difficult for someone to make money, which… well, a lot of people don’t have issues with those things, but I kinda do, because I don’t think people are one thing they did.
If there oughta be a law, then it’s clear what your end goal is, and you know whether you’re achieving it or not. You also know how far along you are, because even if your law has not been passed yet, you have things happen along the way like legislators sponsoring it. You know what challenges are occurring and whether they’re minor wording – everyone agrees this is a good idea but they don’t agree on how it should look – or whether you’re facing a serious uphill battle.
With “you can criticize a thing,” okay. You wrote a blog post. Now what do you want to happen? Are you looking for your post to go viral? Are you looking for a formal apology from a content creator? (Are there particular formulaic elements you require in the apology, such that if they are not included the apology is a “fauxpology?” Does the person you want the apology from know this?) Are you looking for a firing? Are you looking for an especially intelligent hatedom that impresses people with its incisiveness?
Etc. “Liberal feminism” gets lambasted all the time, but at least “liberal feminism” is clear about what it is looking for.
This kind of thing is actually the stuff I think looks reasonable at first and is actually a tumblrism (or better said a neo-Marxist impossible project regardless of platform), not the other way around.
Most criticism isn’t trying to make anything happen as a direct result, it’s just putting out opinions to inform and change the conversation.
When I, say, complain about sexist media (this isn’t something I do often but it does come up) I’m generally trying to (a) complain to someone about a thing that annoys me (b) give my friends information about whether they should watch the thing © explain to people why I find this sexist, and if I’m lucky, convince others.
The idea is that the culture gradually changes through people gradually changing their values and preferences. Maybe eventually this will lead to less sexist media, but even if not, meanwhile I like having people around me who agree with me on this stuff.
Also, media criticism can be a lens for talking about actual behaviors. Like if I say “this character’s behavior is sexist and hostile to consent, and I don’t like that he’s portrayed in such a positive light”, and someone disagrees, we can dissect the minutia of the character’s behavior in a way we couldn’t do with a real person without being super accusatory (and having access to a real person’s private moments). If I convince someone about what *behavior* is wrong, that has obvious benefits as they’re less likely to behave that way in the future.
“Like if I say “this character’s behavior is sexist and hostile to consent, and I don’t like that he’s portrayed in such a positive light”, and someone disagrees, we can dissect the minutia of the character’s behavior in a way we couldn’t do with a real person without being super accusatory”
In theory, yes, but in practice that often demonizes the person who disagrees with you or who is more okay with dubious consent than you.
Also, it doesn’t really make social change most of the time I don’t think. I mean I guess it can, but… it seems to me that what goes on is a lot of public shaming that only sometimes changes what writers other than the shamed choose to say.
It’s not that I don’t want people to say what they don’t like in media. It’s that public shaming is a nuke, and to me when people start calling their critiques “feminist analysis,” well… that raises a yellow caution flag, because the people who talk like that are the people who are more likely to have a Trumpy attitude toward their nukes.
“ In theory, yes, but in practice that often demonizes the person who disagrees with you or who is more okay with [thing] than you.”
Siiiiiiiiiigh this is very true.
And this is why discourse norms are important! It’s actually really important for Person A to be able to signal “I disagree with Person B’s position here, strongly and morally, but am not attacking Person-B-as-a-speaker in any way.” If you can’t do that, then…bad things happen.
EITHER
(1) Person A will feel he has no way to express his position at all, or
(2) Person A will say “fuck it” and go after Person B directly with fire and sword.
Situation (1) usually devolves to Situation (2), since people with strongly-felt moral opinions are generally unwilling to sit on them forever in the name of Nice Discourse.
Excruciating politeness and interpersonal generosity are really useful for this. It’s kind of a pain to keep throwing off the explicit signals of WE ARE ALL BEING SUPER RESPECTFUL OF EACH OTHER YES WE ARE, especially when you want to be venting at your interlocutor, but…it pays dividends in terms of actually being able to have a conversation.