Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Here's a long considered post about why Lifestyle Activism is stupid. I'm going to riff off of it, as I usually do. Personally, I think that declaring that the stuff we are already doing is 'activism' or 'feminism'[a HUGE pet peeve of mine, as you can tell.] is just spinning our wheels. We can pretty much retcon any thing we already do into being activism. I like playing video games and reading shoujo manga. I COULD say that me playing Persona 4 is lifestyle activism because there's storylines about gender roles, and anyway, GIRL GAMER!!!!! but come on, I'm not fooling ANYONE.

I think this sort of navel gazing is pretty comfortable for those in power. I mean, me going on about how freecycle is so much fun, brings together the community, and helps clean house is NOT going to break down the capitalist system that has people hoping someone will take pity on them and give them some food.

And yea, western style liberal feminism did start with consciousness raising, but I get the feeling it wasn't about how much they loved mopping the floor, and how great those new dresses at Marshall Fields are. If they were, I'm sure it would have been a whole lot less threatening to the status quo. Sadly, the backlash is so pronounced that feminism nowadays is reduced to the modern day equivalent of saying we love to mop the floor.

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