Big Night Tonight

I haven't watched most of the episode, but I caught the ending and I almost cried.

 

Yeah, that got to me too.

And part of me is torn. Obviously, the two girls are just female versions of young Cory and Shawn, which makes it feel unoriginal, but it also makes me want to ask the question (in a good way) "what kind of trouble would Cory and Shawn get into today?"

 

I am absolutely baffled that you chose to use these examples because they aren't examples at all. There is no such thing as racism against white people or sexism against men. Interpreting racism or sexism in this way fundamentally ignores the presence of power and institution, and equates it to discrimination.

Writing sexism and racism off as you do ignores how deeply it is embedded into the very structure of our society, and boils it down to something like "white ppl b hatin' haw haw haw." It's a lot more serious than that.

Once again, your examples do not represent ableism at all. While there are valid everyday examples of ableism -- way too many, of course, which is why it's an issue -- a lot of what you're describing isn't anywhere near what the term actually refers to. I'm wondering if you object to my usage of it because you don't understand what ableism is.

The particular example you used that astounds me is the hearing aid example, as hearing aids make the world more accessible for a disabled person. The example you gave about racism doesn't have anything to do with ableism.

Once again, the gigantic disclaimer to all of this is that I am not disabled and am not the person to be talking about this. I've tried to link to more appropriate and valid sources, which I highly recommend your looking at.

Oh good, something I can speak about with a little more authority.

I come across this argument a lot when in my women's club or representing my school's feminist magazine. Now that some celebrities have 'come out' as feminists, people are growing more familiar with the term -- which is great! Don't get me wrong, I am jazzed about that. But what many of these celebrities are totting is what I've seen called "mainstream feminism" -- that is, an incredibly watered down version that pays little attention to the metaethics, intersectionality, and so on of the movement. People equate feminism to a movement for women's equality -- and yeah, I guess that's a start on properly defining it, but the words "equality" and "justice" are not interchangeable -- and justice is what social movements are working towards. Because on paper, men and women are, for the most part & within US law, equal. But we all know that isn't the case at all.

I like to use this basic example, which I found somewhere on the internet a very long time ago and take no credit for, to explain the gap between equality and justice: think about society as a track (as in, for running). Let's say we started everyone at an equal point, like so:

Spoiler

And told everyone to run around the entire track once. We'll use a basic black and white example here -- to reflect our society, the white man would be in lane 1. The black man might be in lane 5 or 6. For the two of them to run the entire track, the man on the inside lane -- the white man -- would have the run substantially less to reach the destination. That is an unfair advantage he is given over the black man, and it's why tracks have these beginning lines:

Spoiler

The advantage that the runner in line 1 -- the white man -- is mitigated by making him start further back then the black man. That is justice. This is an incredibly oversimplified example with holes in it, so a bit easier to understand is this political cartoon:

And this is why I won't relent in using the world justice. Equality is a nice idea and all, but in our society, equality is not always justice.

Once again, I'm going to give you some links to check out:
http://jezebel.com/5992479/if-i-adm...op-turning-it-into-a-self-fulfilling-prophecy (I know it's Jez but bear with me, I like this article a lot)
http://evilfeminist.tumblr.com/post/53571946857/could-you-compare-and-contrast-rad-fem-vs-lib-fem (scroll down)
http://teaandfeminism.tumblr.com/post/69220772103/the-problem-with-dismissing-tumblr-social-justice
(my examples are primarily geared towards feminism because it's what I'm mostly involved in and comfortable talking about but if anyone has any other relevant links please do share)

 

This thread might have literally just given me an intelligence deficiency. I can feel the brain cells dying ... I have no idea what's going on in here.

Anyway, I totally missed the premiere but I'll watch it later (been watching Fringe lately) as I normally watch things online.

^In reference to Korra as I hate sitcoms and Zapped just sounds moronic. I hate sitcoms because, unlike it was in the happy days, they just aren't that great anymore. They target the majority and couldn't care less about the minority consensus. Most people can find something they like about a particular show which ropes in all kinds. Sitcoms, at least this is what I've found, often only attract those of a similar nature. Sitcoms just aren't as fresh prince of bel-air as they used to be. Okay, I forced that last one.

I love Disney movies, with a passion ... but I don't watch the TV releases anymore. If it doesn't hit theaters, then count me out. The movies are cheap for one thing, as they're released directly to television. Actually, being cheap is the originating problem. Cheap lines, cheap graphics, cheap writing (in general), and cheap advertising. Cheap is cheap and you get what you pay for.

Btw, our idea of a big night differs vastly. Just sayin.

-Nights

 

To those debating in this thread:

Everyone's a little bit racist, alright!
Bigotry has never been exclusively white!
Maybe if we just admit, that we are racist a little bit
Even though we know that it's wrong,
Maybe it would help us get along!

 

I'm racist, I'll admit it ... I hate Raxacoricofallapatorians, Daleks, Cybermen, Demons (except Crowley), Angels (except Cas), Vampires (the sparkly kind), Werewolfs (the always shirtless kind), and there's a few more. I'm a bit ashamed of myself. I'll have to send them all an apology letter for my ignorance.

Seriously though, I'm about as far from racist as you can get. If I hate someone, it's because of the things they do not who they are. I can't comprehend racism ... at all. It boggles my mind to understand my grandparents who, while they'd never admit it, are extremely racist. It's not only racism that I don't understand. I can't even understand prejudices, except for Xbox hate (Playstation will always be better). I was having a conversation just today about gay marriage being legalized in the state of Indiana. Someone said, "Well it shouldn't matter if it's legalized here, they can go somewhere else and get married." I was dumbfounded. I do have one other prejudice and that's for people with idiotic prejudices like that. I don't know. I know I'd probably be the coolest dad ever because I'd accept my children's life choices extremely easily (oh, there's a test. If you're not racist/prejudice you wouldn't be upset if you're kid said they were gay with a person with a different racial background than yours) excluding my one Xbox prejudice, I would be so disappointed.

Just felt the need to rant a little bit. At least I threw some jokes in there, right?

-Nights

 

Disclaimer: I agree with you.

This is an obvious counter argument to the movement for justice. In the example with the boxes, the boxes have to come from somewhere. The picture is a little misleading because it assumes that we have three boxes to work with. In most cases with society, this is not the case. If the boxes were government mandated, the government itself would not produce these boxes using its own resources. It would tax or outright steal the funds in one way or another to do so. Someone would suffer.

It happens that the able and advantaged produce the most capital for taxing and seizing. As a result, they are 'punished' for being better by being forced to take care of those less able than them.

In this sense, KS is not wrong. However, he is seeing from the side of the person who is able and is being 'punished'. To him, it looks like you just want to take the product of his labor.

@KS: From the other side of the fence, this looks like being a utilitarian humanitarian who doesn't want anyone to suffer. You are intentionally letting others suffer so that you may prosper.

Both of these arguments assume that we are at a clean slate and that your ability to succeed as a straight white male in the USA is your natural ability and that others are working from their own natural abilities. This is not the case. Misty implied that there were systemic disadvantages, but may not have noticed that one of her pictures demonstrates it well.

The fence in the Equality vs. Justice photo represents the systemic standards. I represent a third option.



(I saw a chance to use that image and I took it.)

 

Doesn't this also apply to racism, sexism, ageism, classism, and any other -ism that I may have missed?

See, I understand that as what it's supposed to mean. What I'm complaining about is that the majority of people who use the term don't know what it means and that has twisted its meaning over time to just be that "catch all" that I mentioned. It's like how "literally" now means the opposite of what it's supposed to mean.

I understand that there are actual people who get offended by things that are legitimately offensive. Things like using the term "******" derogatorily or refusing someone service because of their race as well as many other things that I probably haven't thought of because I don't spend my time trying to tiptoe around every little thing that could offend someone. What I'm saying here is that people who actually get offended by things are far outnumbered by people who spend all of their time looking for ways to be offended just so they can play the victim. The worst part is that it's often impossible to know for sure who is actually offended and who's just grinding for oppression points. However, I think that which it is should be pretty obvious when somebody gets all hot and bothered when I don't use "xer/xis/xerself" when I I had no way of knowing that those were the person's preferred pronouns.

[For reference, I'm referring to all -isms here, not just racism.]
I'm not denying that systematic racism doesn't exist. I'm saying that any discrimination based on race is racism. Systematic racism is absolutely many levels worse than regular racism and needs to be taken care of before other racism can be phased out, but that doesn't mean it is the only racism .

As I responded to Makaze, I understand what ableism is supposed to mean. The examples I provided are of what it has been twisted to mean by people who use it when they don't know what it means who happen to be the very same people who keep me from taking it seriously.

In that example I was referring to a surgical procedure used to make a deaf person not deaf anymore. A person who doesn't know what ableism is but throws the term around anyway would think of it as ableist because it basically says that deafness is a problem to be fixed.

Did I not acknowledge that when I said that it wasn't as relevant as I originally thought but left it in anyway because it was a cute story about a little girl who didn't understand why black people couldn't sit in the front of the bus? It's called trying to lighten the mood in an attempt to help the argument wind down. (That's actually one of the stories my grandmother tells about her childhood, by the way, so it's probably no less than 80% true.)

At this point we're just arguing semantics. What you call "equality" I call "legal equality." It should be a well known fact that when it comes to social issues, the law only ever does the bare minimum. What you're calling "justice" I call "social equality." After all, it's up to society to make the law's "bare minimum" actually work. Using your example with the boxes and the fence, the left shows legal equality which attempts to remedy the situation by giving everyone a box to stand on while the right shows social equality, where the tallest man (who doesn't need a box) has given his box (which the law stipulates must be given to him) to the shortest man (whose single legally allotted box isn't enough). Meanwhile, in what I call "legal justice," nobody gets any boxes and tallest man has to stand in a hole in order to obstruct his view just as much as anyone else. What I call "social justice" is the same except the two shorter men get as many boxes as they need.

For a more extreme example (and one where I feel justice is good), suppose I kill ten people in a state where the death sentence is outlawed and get sentenced to life in prison. That's not justice at all. That's treating me just like any other criminal. Justice would be having me painfully executed by the loved ones of all the people I killed. I'd also like to point out that under my proposed system I, the one to be executed, would have the right to a swift and private (save for those who I wronged) execution and would have to give my express written consent for any appeals to my case, none of which would be allowed to be funded with taxpayer money.

1. Does Jezebel still get click revenue if I have Adblock turned on? I'm totally willing to read that article, but I have no desire to fund that site in any way.
2. I can't take evilfeminist seriously. I can't really tell what it is, but something about the way she words everything makes it feel like she's trying really hard to be a victim.
3. Teaandfeminism is alright. The only point that I actually want to tear down with is that academia is "skewed towards upper middle-class, straight, white, able-bodied, cisgender men." The very fact that it is skewed that way should be all the more reason to get off tumblr and write something in a medium that will reach more than just the tiny amount of people who have heard of tumblr. I would probably buy several copies of a real physical book written by this gal just to loan out to friends and donate to libraries where somebody who will take it seriously will see it. Believe it or not, there are real men and women of all backgrounds who will take it seriously if it is in a medium that is accessible enough to be taken seriously. Believe it or not, the vast majority of people don't even know what tumblr is and that's why nothing on tumblr will ever reach anyone who can make a difference.

On the contrary, I do understand that there are systems in place designed to keep people down. Let me tell you a story.

I dealt with systematic disadvantages all through my schooling when I was misdiagnosed with ADHD and had all sorts of accommodations forced on me. In elementary through middle school I went with it because it made things easier. It was mostly stuff like being allowed (read: forced) to take my tests in a separate room with extra time and have a scribe because they thought I had trouble expressing myself in writing. In 8th grade I was rediagnosed with Asperger's and in high school during my freshman class on drugs and alcohol I realized something extremely important: "I'm becoming dependent on all of these accommodations." They were a crutch that I didn't want to need. From that point on, I started to wean myself off the accommodations that had been imposed on me since third grade. Instead letting the system make things easier for me, I tried twice as hard as it was letting me. First I stopped using the alphasmart, a little keyboard with a screen that replaced my scribe from elementary and middle school. When I had a good writing speed down, I imposed the normal time limits on myself. When asked why I didn't finish a few tests, I would say that I simply didn't know the answers. When I got to the point where I could finish a whole test with time to spare, I stopped going to the special testing room all together.

By my junior year, working twice as hard wasn't enough. I was studying hard subject matter that actually required real effort to understand. I was determined to not have to go back on accommodations, though, so I pushed myself three times as hard, then four, where I stayed all the way up to graduation. It was grueling to push myself that hard and still have time to be a teenager, but it taught me to value effort more than any other quality a person can have because effort is unlimited. If I had kept going with my accommodations, I would not have brought myself up to what should be everybody's standard for hard work and I would still be expecting everything to be handed to me.

As for your liberation idea, I love that. However, we need to go one step at a time. Legal equality, a crutch that doesn't really work, was the first step. Step two, which we're working toward now, is social equality: a crutch that works, but won't solve the real underlying problem. After that comes something big: All of the oppressed classes will wake up and realize that they don't want a crutch anymore. That's when Step 3, liberation, will happen. Instead of relying on their crutch, they'll go out and work four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and maybe even ten times as hard as they thought they could to rise above the systems that tried to cover up the oppression rather than actually fixing it.

I'm tired. Bedtime.

 

Your definition of justice is why I hate the word justice. Glorified revenge does not make the world a better place.

 

He just does things without explanation then shouts his name....[DOUBLEPOST=1403950464][/DOUBLEPOST]

Give it a bit to settle in >_>

 

You definitely had it worse, and I'm sorry for that, but I also had to deal with that, so I feel your pain, though it was only in elementary school. I was also misdiagnosed with ADHD and had to take 10 milligrams of ridiline (I still don't know how to spell that) twice a day. This is because I had behavioral issues that stemmed from me having to leave my father (who later came up when I was in third grade) when my mom and I moved permanently from Mexico to the United States.

Well, one night because I kept being pressured by my mom, who, in turn, kept being pressured by the school, I took 60 milligrams of the ridiline because I wanted to behave. That night I was all out of it, but my mom just thought I was really tired because I had played hard with my friend that day. In the morning, I told her about it, and that was the final straw for her. I didn't go to school that day and was taken out later, then went back part-time, and then taken out again for good before I decided six months later that I wanted to repeat the fifth grade at another school to have a better fifth grade experience.

I mean, I could have died overnight while sleeping.

 

pls note I'm keeping this short because I: 1) do not know exactly what I want to say because 2) I am tired as balls

Disclaimer: I agree, although

I heavily disagree with the track example. Justice should not be concerned with lowering the privileged down to even things out, but rather focus on raising the underprivileged to a level on which they're capable of being on a fair footing with those who are privileged. It is not just to throw complications into people's way for the sake of justice. Let's say there's a white girl and a Vietnamese girl taking a history final in high school, and the Vietnamese girl didn't know English all too well. You wouldn't give the white girl less time to complete her test, you would make the needed accommodations for the Vietnamese girl, give her more time or allow her to take a translated version of the exam in whichever language she operates best in.

Programs like the Urban League, which focuses on assisting minority students in their academics and helping them build skills in leadership and teaching them a variety of social, political, and economic skills, are the kind of justice that should be recognized and should remain prevalent. This is getting into anecdotal territory, so take this with a grain of salt, but I was part of the Urban League for all of high school (my city's chapter was actually one of the first chapters in the US), and there were so many opportunities it afforded for me and the other youth within the program. The message wasn't one that boasted "you should start ahead of white people/white people should start behind you," but rather the significantly more empowering "You deserve to start up here with white people and with just as much an opportunity as they possess. other kinds of people."

I know you probably endorse the second image much more, and I feel that is much more representative of the kind of justice needed, but the track example rubbed me entirely the wrong way.

---

But yeah, the Girl Meets World pilot was nice. The pacing was really weird and Cory/Topanga felt pretty hammy, but I liked it and they did have a nice message to it. It does have the vibe of modern Disney sitcoms, and I know that it is not going to be Boy Meets World (nor should it be!), but I'm hopeful that given some time that it'll pull through.

THAT ****ING FEENY CAMEO OH MY GOD??? I HAD SUCH A STUPID GRIN ON MY FACE, I MISS MR. FEENY SO MUCH.

 

I have yet to watch the GMW pilot, the LoK opening, or read the majority of the debates in here. I'll probably stream the episodes tomorrow considering I don't have my laptop today. I'm very hesitant to watch GMW, but given the few comments I read, I'll definitely give it a shot. Hopefully it will be something we can grow to love with time. I just really can't stand Disney's sitcoms yhese days. I haven't watched anything on the Disney Channel in ages.