It's your lucky day, folks. I'm going to present two peeves in this rant!
Something I appreciate about a certain listserv I subscribe to is most members' adherence to a practice of labeling any "political" posts (it's not an explicitly "political" listserv) as such by prefacing subject lines with the letters "POL." This helps me avoid reading a number of posts that I, personally, may find boring, in the best case scenario, and pain-inducingly political correct, in the worst. What peeves me is when posters neglect to include the "POL" warning in their subject lines. As happened today.
Worse (and this gets me into the second peeve), I'd bet that the poster in question wouldn't even see her post as "political." After all, the fact that she simply named the magazine she writes for regularly (with no prefatory adjectives attached) while deriding a magazine known to be on the opposite site of the political spectrum as "arch-conservative" and "anti-feminist" has no political implications, right?
Wrong. Just because you're a liberal (or a conservative; and I should note that I really dislike the all-or-nothing mentality that seems to prevail these days--I just find life too complicated to split every last thing into one or the other camp) doesn't mean that yours is an "objective" default position, and that you somehow see things with a clarity the "other" is simply not capable of possessing. So admit it. If you're going to label others, label yourself. Be honest. Then I might have a little more respect for you--and might take your (political) arguments more seriously.
--Prunella
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I agree that it is helpful to have labels on listservs (especially if posting on a topic that is different from the main theme of the list). But I do get tired of all the labelling we do in general (and, as you point out, life is too complicated for everything to be boiled down to choice A or choice B). We think we know what someone means when she says she is conservative, or a feminist, or straight, or black, or Muslim, or whatever. But the spectrum of, say, "liberalness" is so wide that we don't really know all that is implied in the label/term. And someone doesn't really understand me just because she/he finds out that I am (as I have posted about here) bisexual/queer. So, really, how does the label help? It just leads us to box people in and to think we get them. It can make us lazy, since we don't feel we need to really get to know the person. Labelling is sloppy shorthand.
So I agree that it has its uses, but I try to move away from labels, because I feel they are too constrictive.
Sorry to rant on your rant, Prunella! But I both see your point (in some arenas) and disagree with it. So how can we label this comment? ;-)
--Curly
Yes, I understand what you are saying here, Curly. I suppose I just don't see a day in which people will abandon labels altogether. So given that, when people use labels (usually pejoratively) to describe others, they should at least acknowledge/clarify their own biases.
And go ahead and rant on my rants anytime!
--Prunella
I know labels have their uses, but sometimes they can be so limiting or can cause problems (the "us" vs. "them" mentality that can start wars). I have wondered whether there could be world-citizen passports (rather than country-specific ones), for example, so that people feel a sense of belonging to the world, of being like others, of sharing. Maybe that's silly.
But, anyway, to get back to your point, yes, call out other people's biases but also admit to your own.
I'm happy to label myself a "peevish ranter"!
--Curly
Post a Comment