Canadian Politics Today

I'm glad I don't give a crap. I hear it was a bore as usual without even a wardrobe malfunction to bring at least some mindless excitement to the party.

Well I saw almost all the Best Picture nominees, but I didn't watch Shape of Water because, well, not really a big Del Toro fan (like his visuals though, but stories are boring), and it didn't seem like a movie that grabs me, and that won, so yawn fest of show.  Oh well.

It was insulting to lump someone like Peele in as just another man, just another part of the problem, especially when black people have been so poorly recognized by the Academy.

To say that a Male White Director is just another man is pretty dismissive. It seems you do have ranking as to how minority groups should be treated.

Intersectionality sounds like other terms like Microagressions and Trigger warnings that just fuel offence to everything anyone does.

Also, I want to mention the difference between what Stone did and what McDormand did, since Kimmy brought that up. Stone's comment ignores racial oppression by lumping all the men together; this undermines the struggle of women of colour. McDormand did not exclude women of any kind whatsoever. She asked that all women rise up, regardless of their intersecting barriers. She did not ignore racial oppression with her comments.

Stone didn't raise a barrier based on race, she raised one based on gender, just as McDormand did.

Emma Stone recognized the one (1) female director nominated for an award, while not giving special recognition to the Mexican man and black man nominated in the category.

Frances McDormand asked for all the women to rise to be recognized, inviting a possibly non-zero number of non-white women to rise while leaving a decidedly non-zero number of minority men seated.

Stone is being pilloried for doing the exact same thing McDormand did, yet McDormand's speech is being hailed as a "mic drop" moment while Stone is being ridiculed.

I have to ask: do you think that if Dee Rees rather than Greta Gerwig had been chosen as the token female nominee in the Best Director category, do you think April Reign would have still been howling that Stone slighted del Toro and Peele?   I mean, it's speculative, but I'm thinking probably not. I'm thinking that if Emma Stone walked up to the mic and said "...these four men, and Dee Rees, created their own masterpieces" April Reign would have been so stoked at how "woke" Emma Stone is that she wouldn't have even noticed any supposed slight at Peele and del Toro.

In short, I think April Reigns' (and other peoples') main problem with what Stone said is that Greta Gerwig is white.



And as I said earlier, I think that the attacks on her for working with Woody Allen or for taking a role that would later be criticized for offending culture-warrior sensibilities are decidedly low. They're attacks on her character rather than on her actions.   Attacking her for accepting a starring role in a Cameron Crowe movie is pretty bad. Attacking her for working with Woody Allen is worse. If everybody who ever worked with Woody Allen took the advice to shut the **** up, there'd be precious few people left to talk about Harvey Weinstein. April Reign can go eat a bag of smashed **** as far as I'm concerned.

 -k

Read that comment in the context of white feminist women, not just "white women." She's talking specifically about the limitations of the arguments of many of the Twitter feminists who miss the point that their liberation cannot be on the backs of others' oppression.

Many of the radical feminists, especially the vocal ones on Twitter, completely forget tvhe writing of bell hooks. She warned that feminism cannot simply be about flipping the roles and taking control of the mechanisms that oppress. It needs to be about equality, not inverted dominance.

I don't think any white feminists are saying "man, I want to be in charge so that I too can oppress black people."

I completely understand why you object to what she said, but I think you're actually just objecting to how she said it rather than what she was saying. It was essentially a criticism against a long history of white feminists erasing colour, consequently contributing to the oppression of minority women.

I get the idea of "intersectionality". I read the brochure. I understand the concept.    But in practice, it seems like "intersectionality" is being used as a justification for pushing race to the forefront of every **** dialog.

Black activists are big on talking about "intersectionality" when they're saying that Pride has been taken over by privileged whites who don't care about racism against black members of the LGBT community.  But a month later when Jamaican dancehall bands are at Caribana singing about stomping down fags and dykes, "intersectionality" is not such a big deal anymore. "Intersectionality" seems to only work in one direction.

I am really **** grated by this idea that instead of talking about the continued invisibility of women in Hollywood circles of influence, Emma Stone should have instead talked up the accomplishments of minority men this year.  **** that.

White feminists, who aren't aware of standpoint theory and intersectionality, contribute to oppression by acting as though they speak for all women, while only coming at the issues from a white perspective. That's exactly what Stone did. Her intentions were not at all malicious, but her speech act is an example of a consciousness that does not recognize intersectional barriers (in this case, the barriers faced by Mexican immigrants and blacks). Subjectively erasing the racial barriers as she did ignores those barriers for women of those races as well. Erasing the barriers women of colour face by reducing everyone to what's between their legs, makes her a bad feminist. It shows that her concern is only for those issues that are important to her from her standpoint. It's a narrow-minded conception of feminist activism that is staunchly rebuked by most present-day feminist activists.

Listen.  While I think it's great that Jordan Peele had a breakthrough this year, I don't see why women should be comforted by that.  I think it's great that a black man got elected President of the United States, but that doesn't do anything to address the fact that women continue to be drastically and chronically under-represented in any area of influence.  I have probably 5 to 8 Prime Ministers and 5 to 8 presidents left in my life. Think any of them will be women?  I'm really not sure. But at least we got a black man. 

**** that.

 -k

Intersectionality sounds like other terms like Microagressions and Trigger warnings that just fuel offence to everything anyone does.

So on "microaggression", my experience is this:  I know that if I walk into a computer shop or auto-parts shop or similar, the guy is going to talk to me like I'm either a toddler or mentally impaired, because he's already decided, based on my appearance, that I'm dumb and gullible.

So I can, at least to some degree, empathize with the person who is assumed, because of their race, to be a care-aide rather than a doctor, or a trespasser rather than a student, or a purse-snatcher rather than any other transit-rider, or so-on.

These are interactions that are not, taken in isolation, are not malicious or damaging or debilitating... but when taken as an ongoing, recurring fact of daily life, begin to weigh on you.

"Microaggression" is a term that was coined a long time ago to describe these little incidents that are, on their own, not intended to be harmful to anyone, and yet, in sum, tell someone that society as a whole has a low value of them.

Hypothetically, Boges... and I don't know anything about you or your economic status or your appearance or anything like that... but hypothetically... if you go out in public, and everywhere you go, people reach into their pockets and give you their spare change... sooner or later, you're going to think "holy ****... people think I'm a hobo," and you're going to start to become self-conscious about it, and when people start giving you their spare change you're going to start becoming self-conscious about it and start feeling offended.  You're going to put up your hand and say "no thanks, I don't want your spare change" and when you get home at the end of the day, you're going to wonder "why do people keep doing this? Why do people keep thinking I'm a hobo?"

No one of these individuals means you any harm, and yet, the cumulative effect of these gestures starts to have an abrasive effect on your own self-image.

That's what the term "microaggression" was intended to describe. It's a completely rational, understandable, relatable concept.

 -k

There seems to be an implication that "her" context is unimportant because she's white.

A year ago I was an oppressed female member of the LGBT community, and today I'm a cisgendered white oppressor. I've haven't even been an oppressor for a whole year and I'm already sick of the **** whining.

 -k

The implication is that she didn’t take the time to understand others contexts. Hers isn’t unimportant; she’s just trampling on others’ barriers by having tunnel vision on women and specifically the position of white women. She didn’t do it intentional or maliciously. It was an oversight and what Reign was talking about is how easy it is to overlook the barriers of others when you’re not part of that group. Emma Stone has never experienced the kind of barriers you face in a society that was built literally on the oppression of her race. She overlooks racial barriers because she doesn’t experience them. All Reign and anyone else criticizing Stone is saying is that she should be more aware of what she’s saying.

And yes...,the white position is discounted because American society was built for whites from the white perspective without any regard to others. That consciousness of how others are treated and what barriers they face is only just now, some 200-250 years into these State projects, being addressed in any meaningful way..

Not just as McDormand did at all, as I mentioned in my reply above. McDormand elevated women regardless of race, Stone trampled on others’ issues by lumping a Latino immigrant and a black man in with white American men, who have been traditionally the only ones recognized by he Academy. That’s why Stone’s comments are tone-deaf; they show a serious lack of awareness of others’ struggles.

Latino men have been killing it in the Best Director award the last several years

2013 - Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity
2014 - Alejandro G. Iñárritu for Birdman
2015 - Alejandro G. Iñárritu for The Revenant
2017 - Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water

Black men haven't been killing it, but they've had some nominations here and there, including Moonlight last yea, but haven't wonr.  Women nominees are more rare.

I wish Emma Stone would have just STFU and present the damn award.  Let the best person win.  If they have a **** or brown skin who cares, completely irrelevant to talent.