nyamlae

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[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (5 children)

But, like everything, context matters and I believe directing harm towards “bad” people is “good”

That's not what bodyshaming does, though.

If you punch or kill a nazi, that harms the nazi.

If you joke about nazis compensating for having a small dick, then you are reinforcing the idea that small dicks are bad and something that needs to be compensated for. This harms people with small penises.

In addition, lots of nazis will have average or big dicks, and will find this kind of post laughable and irrelevant. It's not even harming them.

So, this post mainly stigmatizes men with a certain body type, and not nazis. This is not good praxis.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

These are not "stages", these are just different activities. Lots of people don't have kids, but this doesn't make them at a lower "stage". Not everyone wants to climb some kind of career ladder, nor does everyone respect those who do. Not everyone gets married, nor does everyone even care about marriage. People live differently -- they do not progress through stages.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's a good point, and explains the existence of this comic. They're anti-WN but still have some regressive attitudes.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Bro" I am a gay man. I love small penises. This post is reinforcing stigma around small penises, by associating them with white nationalism.

It's weird to make jokes about them. People don't need to make up for having a small penis, because it's not a flaw, so there is literally no basis for this joke other than toxic masculinity.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I mean, we're also using social media but can still recognize that she's delusional. There's a lot of different factors contributing to people's delusions.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Context doesn't justify bodyshaming, full stop.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

the same stage of life as I am

I would say they are living the same type of life as you, not the same stage. Life doesn't have stages once you're an adult. There are just common activities, and nothing more.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A lot of people with autism diagnoses really should look into trauma. This is a textbook trauma response.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago (10 children)

hA hA sMaLL pEnIs

Leftists bodyshaming men to criticize their fascism is some real regressive shit. It's also super off-the-mark. Bodyshaming harms all men, not just the fascists.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

How do we improve society, if all societies are equal? It's nonsense!!!

By evaluating individual stats, not entire societies, and by letting societies determine what they value.

No those are stats EVERYBODY should value

You don't need to share other people's values. But you have no right to determine what other people should value. Big colonizer energy from you.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

How would you tally up the score of "development"?

If the score depends, essentially, on racist ideas of how human societies should look, valorizing old people who can read as the epitome of human achievement, then I think it should be dismissed.

And more than that, I think the entire game of defining a single consolidated "development score" is laughable at best. We can measure stats individually, and consider them in their own right. Any attempt to weight the individual scores to contribute to a total score is going to depend heavily on the judge's personal values. There is no value-neutral way to do it.

You may feel strongly that certain cultures are more developed than others, but that is based on the stats that you value. Even if you base it on data in some way, you are basing it on the data that states have bothered to gather, which almost always captures metrics that align with their priorities and views.

[–] nyamlae@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

One obvious measure would be literacy, another would be life expectancy.

The idea that literacy and life-expectancy are signs of a more "developed" country is essentially just racist colonialist propaganda.

Many cultures worldwide have traditionally transmitted knowledge orally, and their societies were built around this, with lots of in-person meetings to disseminate information. If a person speaks their traditional language and is well-versed in their traditional culture, but does not read or write (because they don't need to), then by the standard of literacy they will be deemed as less "developed" than some 4-chan troglodyte.

Likewise, life expectancy past a certain age is kind of a ridiculous metric. People seriously believe that the longer you can stay geriatric, the more "developed" your country is.

Meanwhile, metrics like knowledge of botanical medicine or percentage of communal land ownership are often left out of these scoreboards of "development". Things that can materially improve people's lives are only seen as having value when non-Indigenous people do them. It is racism through and through.

 

A good bit of literature has studied the problem and arrived to recommendations that overlap in parts & depart in others with this playbook.

A former parliamentarian of the Hungarian government studied its slide into illiberalism, and suggested remedies for the current, similar trend in the US. Resist in the courts & media, and build a powerful social base at the state & city level throughout the country. The latter means

the Democratic Party must reconnect with the working class to preserve liberal institutions

Doing that means

  1. "creating new and strengthening existing local organizational structures, especially labor unions". Do not "on issues important to the active base only" such as "media freedom or democracy": this leads to "failures of mass mobilizations". "[E]ngage with [ordinary people] outside elections, focusing on issues that matter to them".
  2. "[T]o push through popular reforms that elites oppose", free "the party from elite capture" by shifting financing "from the corporate elite to small and micro-donations".
  3. "[C]ommit to left-populist economic policies".
  4. "[L]earn symbolic class politics", "embrace the mundane and be down to earth".

you don’t protect democracy by talking about democracy — you protect democracy by protecting people

I'm seeing the playbook overlap a bit with points 1 & 4, diverge from point 2, and not treat point 3.

Another article reviews research observing a decades-long trend of class dealignment: workers abandoning the left-wing party & joining the right. As unions have weakened and Democrats abandoned them, the party has increasing relied on & shifted appeal to urban middle class professionals & minorities. The review names 4 paths researched or discussed to reverse dealignment.

  • inclusive populism: "appeal to working-class voters’ sense of resentment at economic elites and stress how elites use racial resentment to divide segments of the working class that share a common interest in economic justice"
  • anti-woke social democ­racy: make "a clean break with factions of the party that embrace unpopular social and cultural messaging that alienates working-class voters"
  • deliverism: "pass and implement large-scale economic reforms that benefit working Americans"
  • institutionalism: "[reinvigorate a] labor movement capable of advancing working-class interest in politics and [re-embed] Democratic and progressive politics into the lived experiences of working-class communities"

It looks like the playbook is going with anti-woke social democ­racy & institutionalism, rejecting inclusive populism, not mentioning deliverism.

They seem to think the way to win the working class is to go more MAGA-like (anti-woke social democ­racy) instead of trying a competing strategy like inclusive populism. It also looks like they're choosing not to break from elite capture, which seems like a huge mistake.

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