(Untitled)

[me_ves_y_sufres]

This is intended as a question asked totally out of interest, and with no judgement implied, whatever your answers.

It goes out to all the people on my flist who identify as being interested, invested, involved or activists in one or more of the following areas:

• Tackling homophobia and heterocentrism. LGBT or queer rights, identity, representation

Comments

[steerpikelet]

Also, I now have that march chant in my head -

Unemployment and inflation
are not caused by immigration!
That's bullshit, come off it!
The enemy is PROFIT!

/irrelevant aside.

[loneraven]

A distinction I want to note while I remember - I will come back to this later - is that for me activism is something I do for me, and employment and workers' issues are part of my "day job", so to speak, so splitting them out is the first thing I would have to do before I decide what I think.

[me_ves_y_sufres]

Oh, that's really interesting! Just to get this clear: you feel more of a personal connection with the first three lists ('social' political issues although that's an incredibly flawed way of phrasing it) and a professional connection with the second ('economic' ones)? Or am I totally misunderstanding you?

I was particularly hoping to hear from people who do separate the two and maybe even think of them as antithetical to each other, ie, people who view themselves as, say, anti-racist or feminist activists but as economically 'right wing' or even libertarian. I possibly phrased it badly.

[highfantastical]

I wonder if the rather consistent responses you've got might be a function of the v. broad/inclusive definition of 'economic' political issues that you've provided? I mean, I am definitely interested in classism and some of the other things listed, but am far more towards the right than some of our friends (incl. you, obviously) as far as my Actual Views on economics & politics are concerned - I'm not anticapitalist. But with the broad-ranging list you provided, I felt more like a Yes than a No, if that makes any sense...

[me_ves_y_sufres]

Yeah, you're absolutely right, I think I should've phrased the question a lot better, it was incredibly unclear what I was getting at. Probably "do you believe that these 'social' issues (racism, feminism) are intrinsically linked to capitalism" would've been a lot clearer.

Again, thanks for answering!

[necaris]

Do you view the issues as linked or not?
IMHO it's a bit disingenuous to conflate them all (not that that's what I think you're doing), but because of the history I think it's impossible to deny the linkages.

[proskynesis]

Yeah, I'd say they're linked.

Specifically, I once wrote an essay on class and gender, and how they intersect. One of the most interesting things I found was an article that spoke about working class British men having access to a communal area in which they could form a group awareness (usually the pub or similar), whereas working class British women were largely denied this type of gathering and tended to be restricted to the home. Perhaps as a result of this lack of class self-identification, studies found that working class women were more likely than the men to vote in a conservative manner.