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In reply to the discussion: It is not about the swimsuit issue it is about basic respect for women [View all]BainsBane
(54,087 posts)Last edited Tue Feb 25, 2014, 05:22 PM - Edit history (2)
When he locked the Kate Upton thread? When he said he had alerted on SI posts?
Hundreds of DUers find it unacceptable. Your response is what? Too bad? You don't care about anyone but yourself? You have explicitly said that saving lives of children is not worth the inconvenience to gun owners from modest restrictions. You are indeed ideologically consistent in showing that your own wants are more important than the social good. Your views toward a hostile environment are in keeping with that. The inconvenience of going to another site or actually buy an SI issue is too great to forsake posting the images in DU and enjoying the subsequent shit storm that ensues.
This is a public place. It is place for Democrats. Real Democrats value diversity. They know their primary voter base is women and people of color. Skinner also locked the Upton thread and told the GD hosts such posts are not allowed. It is indeed private space, but that private space isn't your toilet. I have never tried to silence progressive voices. There is nothing progressive about male supremacy. In fact, I haven't tried to silence any voice. I've tried to convince you to listen to someone's besides your own, to the hundreds of members who are sick of the misogyny. We have said we don't like the SI and other bikini pictures in GD. SI is, I suppose, a voice of sorts, but it is the product of a media conglomerate. That it generates millions in profit may make it more valuable to you than the views of the majority of members of this site, but most of DUers do not share that belief. The fact you claim you don't have to pay attention to common offline practices meant to enhance diversity certainly shows that those of us who would like DU to behave accordingly are not the extremists. You claim a loophole for why you shouldn't have to be concerned about civil rights and equal opportunity law. You are right that DU is not required to abide by such laws. It would be a neo-Nazi site if it wanted to, but the fact is most people here are liberals and maintain liberal values of inclusively. You are openly hostile to that position and claim there is something "conservative" about valuing the diversity of voices in this community rather than just yourself and those who think like you. I hate to break it to you, but Ayn Rand is not a paragon of liberalism.
Ideology as consumption: I believe Laci is making a point. A point that should be easy to understand for people of all educational levels, which is why the video is valuable. I understand that you have no conception of a world outside of capitalist commodity fetishism and that you think the current ethos generated by that economic system is somehow natural and immutable. That is an attempt to justify the status quo with tired old appeals that it has always been that way. I have no reason to question that your conception of ideology is entirely linked to consumption and profit. You have repeatedly shown that your values correspond with consumer capitalism, which makes sense because you, like all of us, are a product of the current system. However, history is instructive in that it shows what people assume to be constant and immutable is not so. The notion that profit is a virtue and somehow natural dates from the late 18th century onward. It was not always been that way, and there have been many different kinds of ideologies that produced no profit and did not seek profit. The Moral Economy of the crowd, for example, is a popular ideology that in fact arose in opposition to profit. The notion of the Inkari as an indigenous religious figure who would descend to earth and free the Quechua and Aymara peoples from Spanish colonial rule was not only not a product of consumption, it arose in part in response to attempts to impose consumption. There are hundreds of other such examples. Ideology existed long before consumer capitalism; ideologies have risen in opposition to consumer capitalism; and ideologies will arise after the demise of consumer capitalism.
Bullshit on your Southern Baptist canard. It completely misses the issue. Amazingly, human beings can and have had perfectly happy sex lives before corporate pornographers and media conglomerates generated profits. In fact, those genres substitute for actual sex. To pretend it is about innate sexuality is truly sad. I can't imagine what it must be like to feel your most intimate nature cannot exist without corporate profit in mass media or the human trafficking endemic to the porn industry. Imagine thinking that one's very sexuality depends on a system than reduces millions of women and children to slavery. What a sad and exploitive notion of human sexuality you have. But hey, the Christian right opposes human trafficking too. That must mean it's a good thing, right? Guilt by association? Since we're playing that game, You know who is in your corner 100 percent on these matters? The cavers and freepers. They share your views on the subject down to the tee because they too resent equal rights and think the only people who matter are white men and those who bow to their will.
You want to pretend that liberalism includes only the ethos of old men nostalgic for period before the Civil Rights era, that it by its very definition excludes women and others who care about human equality. Bullshit. You are seeking to justify male supremacy and the denial of equal rights. There is nothing more reactionary that that. You've may have convinced yourself there is something liberal about opposing the rights of the majority of the population, but few people are going to fall for it. It's a transparent effort to justify exploitation and cling to privilege. The body politic no longer exists for white men only, and the Democratic Party certainly does not.