Failing at Irony and Alienating Your Allies: The Liberal Dude's Guide to Satire

So I open my blog reader and the Huffington Post. What do I have the pleasure to find?

Oh Christ, who's the genius behind this?

I know this might be rocket science to liberal dudez who think things like rape are funny, but this really tasteless and poor excuse for satire is not inducing anything but my gag reflex. You know you fail at irony when your art work is indecipherable from the message of those you intend to mock. While I was sleeping, someone decided that mocking the Republicans by depicting the Obamas with racist stereotypes was effective and funny. I can imagine a bunch of balding upper-class white dudes giving each other congratulatory back slaps around some editor's desk at The New Yorker, engaging in mutual masturbation inflation of their over large egos as their wit goes to press.

You know what's really funny? Mocking Nazis by walking around in public, in places where there may or may not be Jews, and acting and dressing in such a manner completely identical to Nazis. So what if you offend a few Jews along the way? Your completely nonsensical message must be conveyed in the manner you see fit, even if you offend a demographic that would otherwise be allies. I might be white, but even I know that the picturing of an afro-sporting woman in military fatigues is probably a dig at her deviant blackness and her radical opposition to white culture. Also, if you think drawing racist depictions of prominent political figures is funny, you might be racist.

The purpose of satire is to shock and inflame your opposition. If your illustration could be used as a poster for the far right and you are offending your political allies, then it's about time someone fired you.

Then again, I am not really surprised. Anyone remember this? :

That was a "liberal" blog, the DailyKos, really failing to understand the nuances of irony.

Heads up to white dudez: if you think the appropriate manner to object to bigots on the right is to be a leftist racist, on the name of "humor", kindly get the fuck out of my political party.

Invisibility

Cross-posted at Female Impersonator

A huge topic in Feminism is the claim that minorities and women are invisible in our society. The default "human position" is male. When reading something in which the author is not specified, the average American assumes that the author is male. If the author is female, of color, or homosexual, we praise it as a "fine piece of work by X minority". In short, a white man can publish a book and be praised for his contribution to academia, while a woman, person of color, or any other minority is primarily identified by that minority specification, not their accomplishments. Their contribution is something that belongs to a collective, whereas a white male's work is attributed solely to him, not to his unstated group membership.

Being a Feminist, I abhor when the majority subconsciously classify the words of a "minority" as representative of that minority group. It creates this sort of "otherness" in which we are all hyper-aware of race, gender, and sexual orientation because it seems to be known as the most important facet of one's identity.

However, when this identity is not stated, we simply assume that someone is a straight white male. Perhaps we might think the tone is sufficiently feminine, and then we consider that the author is a woman. Unless a piece of literature specifically alludes to homosexuality, race, or religion, we assume that the author is heterosexual, Christian/Atheist, white, and usually male.

I, just as much as the rest of you, am equally guilty. I subconsciously make distinctions of "otherness" when reading something by a woman, a homosexual, or, for instance, a Muslim. I make insensitive comments even about my own gender unknowingly because I grew up in a society that counts privelege and many different bigotries as a standard part of socialization.

What I really do not like about the mainstream Feminist movement is that it ignores a lot of these intersections of privelege. We do discuss issues that affect all women, but I have noticed that when we discuss relationships we always seem to discuss them in the context of heterosexuality. Among other things, we generally do not touch issues facing South American women or Middle Eastern women, or concentrate on the inequities facing a "stay at home Mom" or a particularly poor woman.

More than anything, however, I notice the assumption of heterosexuality. As a bisexual female, many of the discussions in the context of heterosexuality do not apply to me at all. A huge portion of my identity is not covered by mainstream Feminism, although I do not think it is by design. The pursuit of a feminist relationship between two women is not absent of its pitfalls. Absent, however, from the usual columns on how to craft a feminist relationship is any mention of homosexuality, polyamory, or transgenderism.

I only thought of this recently because of the discussions surrounding Amanda Marcotte's racially offensive illustrations in It's a Jungle Out There. Privilege very often results in a subconscious prioritization of issues. I see that many feminists place women's issues above racial issues and gay rights frequently. It is not appropriate to demonize the privileged, because we all are in our own way, but it is useful to point it out.

I suppose then that this is my two-bits. I would like to see a lot more about gay issues under the Feminist umbrella, not only because both are important to me, but I think that it is instrumentally important that Feminists remain cognizant of all types of priviledge, especially those types we might unknowingly further.

For what it counts, I suppose this is a bizarre sort of post that I write more as a minority than a majority. Considering my educated whiteness, this is a rare state for me. The fact still remains that when I write, I do so knowing that all of my readers assume that I am heterosexual. This is both a blessing and a curse. One day, I hope that my invisibility as someone who is not heterosexual will be obsolete.

Racism: not dead, affects young children

Cross posted at Essembly

Video:

A 17 year-old's documentary tests how black children perceive race. Mirroring a study done before desegregation, black school children are asked to choose which baby doll is the "good" or "bad" doll, which doll looks like them, and which one is their favorite. The two dolls are identical except for their skin color.

The results mirror the study done centuries before: out of the 21 black children, 15 prefer the white doll as the "good" doll, although all of them recognize that the black doll looks more like them.

It is not rocket science to conclude that the black children, who both know that the black doll is "bad" and looks like them, probably have already picked up on cultural racial stereotypes. What kind of sick world do we live in where children are taught to hate the color of their skin?