this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Women and enbies??
If I had meant that then I would have said that. But I don't, so I didn't.
Also I resent the implication. Don't pretend you don't know what performativity means in this context.
You said something intentionally vague that I suspect to be a dogwhistle. And now that I've asked what specifically you mean, you're refusing to be specific.
Huh. I never considered this before, but, the use of a shibboleth actually feels kinda related in a "two sides of the same coin" way to how dog whistles are used, aren't they?
Like, both are means of individuals using memetics to subtly transmit their IFF disposition toward their chosen faction in an ideological conflict.
Except that the connotation of a dog whistle is that it also paints a target, drawing attention from their faction to designate a given subject, be it an entity or concept or object, as IFF-Hostile.
Oh come to think of it, actually...! IF used cynically and manipulatively, accusing someone of using a dog whistle could ITSELF hypothetically be a dog whistle, couldn't it?
...
I feel the urge to clarify before I hit post that this is NOT an insinuation against you, though! I think you have a point, the person you're calling out is legitimately being shady and evasive.
Especially after that shit they said in their reply about "it's not my job to educate you" -- that's one of my biggest red flags for social media grifting:
When someone actually BELIEVES IN their rhetorical position, they're usually excited to share its details with other people, not dismissive and terse, because social media is an arena where the one person we're responding to is FAR from the only person who can be moved by our voice. Passionately elucidating one's points may not move one's interlocutors, but it CAN sway multitudes of observers who can become motivated to speak up.
Feels kinda poetically similar to how our neurons arrive at the consensus of a decision in our brains and how bee colonies decide which flower patches to visit and such!
...particularly from the performative faction on the left I alluded to, they love that line. Your usual fash would just call you dumb for not understanding them when they don't want to back their stuff up, which of course is kinda the same thing just without the smugness.
You're right that I don't believe in it, I was going for a "taste of their own medicine" thing which apparently backfired. There's a fucking metric fuckton of papers and discussions in leftist literature critiquing leftist performativity, goes back at least as far as Adorno (though not under that name, quoth him: "Actionism is the anti-intellectualism of the left". It's far from vague, or even obscure.
To the "I'm using the standard meaning of performativity, don't bend my words" (what? enbies and women are performative? Doesn't even begin to make sense) I got the reply of "vague" and "dogwhistle", adding to the prior "yo misogynist and enbie-hater". I thus concluded that they were sitting on a high horse, that they're engaging here to feel good about being, in their own eyes, a moral and upright person, not to actually engage. And I gave precisely that attitude of theirs as justification why "It's not my responsibility to educate them". More correct would've been "I'm not your therapist" but oh boy that's even nastier. I rather take the downvotes.
Overall, you indeed won the main prize today: Someone realised that in/outgroup mechanics work the same on the left and right. You don't see that kind of covert othering I was subjected to by MindTraveller from e.g. anarcha-feminists because, being anarchists, they understand the toxicity of these kinds of dynamics, how they reinforce rule and authority, how they're anything but organising horizontally, at eye level.
Also experience shows that explaining things to the performative faction doesn't change their position -- because they're not here to argue. They're here to beat you with their chosen cudgel so they can feel good about themselves. Related recommendation: Zena&Poppy on the puritanical "progressive, which often is the end-stage of performative folks.
It's not my responsibility to educate you about elementary political terms. I would be willing to if you weren't sitting there on your high and mighty steed, all morally superior, nurturing an appearance of being politically informed.
So either get down from there or, you know, google. Also google shibboleth while you're at it. And read up on the psychology of in/outgroup dynamics.