its nyoom time

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

It's not about being tough on crime, because the absolute toughest most brutal measure you could take against "crime" as a social problem is to alleviate poverty, and increase access to education, healthcare and social mobility.

It's about performing "tough on crime" as an aesthetic by enacting violence against a prop, i.e. minorities and the impoverished, who are fetishized and objectified to represent "crime." They are brutalized as punishment for crime, but never with the purpose of alleviating the problem of crime.

This also is not making the claim that everything done by police is morally objectionable. In fact a lot of work that ends up being done by police departments is pretty unambiguously prosocial. But even if it were the case that most or almost all of it were, if you take a job at a food kitchen where the contract stipulates you need to shoot every 1000th client, you're still the guy who just agreed to murder a bunch of folks for your boss. "But 99.9% of it was just serving nutritious food to my community!" is not a good defense to the charge leveled especially when you could in your own time dedicate yourself to serving your community without also agreeing to wield violence against it.

For the record I don't think that the percentage of police work that is "good" is actually that high, but the point is that it is immaterial. The point is that intrinsic to the role is the use of state violence to uphold unjust structural power. That's the point; not that every cop is an asshole in an interpersonal way, or personally evil in their every day life (although many are). But I'm just as sure many are extremely personable or even typically fairly kind people who are uninformed or have bought the propaganda, to the point that they can ignore the reality of what they are doing.

"It's really fucked up that some parents abuse their children, and that should not be happening."

"There should be more access to parenting resources for people who have or want to have children."

"There should be more access to contraceptives and abortion for people who don't want children or who know they are not in a position to raise children."

"There should be less pressure on people to have or raise children if they don't want to for any reason."

"There should be more open discussions about how hard parenting can be and how to manage that stress and not take it out on their kids."

"There should be more community support for parents and children."

"Children should have access to safe adults in their community, not just their parents."

Many people (including myself) have addressed a lot about how there is no difference between "male" and "female" brains, and gender/bioessentialism is bullshit. Hormones affect secondary sex characteristics, but the differences are largely a social construct enforced by our patriarchal society on every level, and any attempt to claim that difference is real is literal fascist bullshit.

A few alternatives for that last point, which especially in the US is also incredibly tempting (I get it, I promise):

"Our education system should include a more robust history/civics/voter education for everyone."

"It should be more common to talk about how voting affects our society on every level."

"It's really frustrating/upsetting/counterproductive that politics/voting has become so adversarial/polarized, especially in online spaces."

"It's frustrating when people vote based on peer pressure or who those around them voted for, instead of voting their conscience."

"Political propaganda negatively impacts people's ability to vote in their own/everyone's interests."

I could go on, but truly, "some people shouldn't be allowed to vote/parent/etc." is such a lazy way of saying, "I'm really frustrated by what underinformed people are doing with their right to do this thing, and I feel helpless to change anything systemically that would improve this outcome," and/or "I have fallen for the idea that some people are simply inferior" (classist at best, eugenicist at worst, racism and ableism inherently embedded)

but when you start getting hostile towards efforts to make life better for people who don't pass / don't conform to those standards, like getting pissed off at people who draw art of clocky trans people or want to normalize gender/sex nonconformity, its like. so egocentric right. its giving transmeds complaining about other trans people's decisions or just existence because "it gives me dysphoria!!" or cis women who freak out over people being happy about being infertile or getting top surgery because "well I want to have kids and can't / had breast cancer and its disrespectful to enjoy something that causes me discomfort/distress!!"

ultimately i think everyone needs to be respectful to each other & like, if someone is talking about like, really wishing they could get a surgery, or celebrating having gotten that surgery, you don't need to remind them its okay to not medically transition, time and place etc. and the same goes for pushing ten million passing tips onto people just because they expressed frustration or sadness at their gender being disrespected.