I'd compare them to South Park. Sometimes they strike a great blow at oppressors, but then there's all the ableism, body shaming, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transantagonism...
So if someone did the awful thing and hurt a South Park writer for some of their particularly down-punchy material, I would feel like I needed to express support in a way that wasn't as likely to cause splash damage to the very same people already being slammed by South Park and likely to be further shat on in the aftermath of the attack. I would post examples of South Park punching up or no examples at all.
This would not at all be an issue for me if I didn't see people posting really appalling selections from Charlie Hebdo from a position of gleeful moral superiority that they are not going to let anybody stop them from being racist and misogynist sacks of hickory smoked horse buttholes. If I'd just seen the more subtly flawed images of terrorists' guns versus the pens of the civilized west, I would never have even had this conversation with anybody. Instead I see these tan-skinned beardy gap-toothed turban-wearing scimitar-wielding racialized Muslim caricatures--not even getting into things like how CH portrayed the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram--with people saying, "I POST THIS BECAUSE I AM FREE!"
No, they post that image out of all possible selections because they're fuckin' racist. There are plenty to choose from that aren't hideously anti-Semitic and anti-Arab, so the fact that so many white folks are taking this opportunity to vent some anti-Arab bigotry? The fact that it's so totally unnecessary to make the point is what makes it so so telling.
I'm all about criticizing religion. I'll criticize religious teachings that I think are borked all the livelong day. What I won't do is completely gratuitously racialize my critiques so that they're as much about "Islam" as complaints about "welfare queens" are actually about welfare. That is what I'm not gonna do.
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chiming
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Date: 2015-01-12 10:44 am (UTC)From:So if someone did the awful thing and hurt a South Park writer for some of their particularly down-punchy material, I would feel like I needed to express support in a way that wasn't as likely to cause splash damage to the very same people already being slammed by South Park and likely to be further shat on in the aftermath of the attack. I would post examples of South Park punching up or no examples at all.
This would not at all be an issue for me if I didn't see people posting really appalling selections from Charlie Hebdo from a position of gleeful moral superiority that they are not going to let anybody stop them from being racist and misogynist sacks of hickory smoked horse buttholes. If I'd just seen the more subtly flawed images of terrorists' guns versus the pens of the civilized west, I would never have even had this conversation with anybody. Instead I see these tan-skinned beardy gap-toothed turban-wearing scimitar-wielding racialized Muslim caricatures--not even getting into things like how CH portrayed the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram--with people saying, "I POST THIS BECAUSE I AM FREE!"
No, they post that image out of all possible selections because they're fuckin' racist. There are plenty to choose from that aren't hideously anti-Semitic and anti-Arab, so the fact that so many white folks are taking this opportunity to vent some anti-Arab bigotry? The fact that it's so totally unnecessary to make the point is what makes it so so telling.
I'm all about criticizing religion. I'll criticize religious teachings that I think are borked all the livelong day. What I won't do is completely gratuitously racialize my critiques so that they're as much about "Islam" as complaints about "welfare queens" are actually about welfare. That is what I'm not gonna do.