I am black and I am a woman; this means that I face two areas of stigmatization. My body is controversial because for some it exists solely as a thing that can be exploited for personal gain. Whatever feelings I may have in regard to the exploitation are irrelevant in a society that daily reinforces a hierarchy of beings. I am complicated because I refuse to submit to those that believe that my life should be spent increasing their creature comforts.
When you have more than one area of stigmatization, it is easy to become an invisible other. To speak out, one risks being cruelly disciplined in some way. So dearly do we hold the right to oppress that for those us that are marginalized, we risk death simply by daring to breathe the same air on a planet we all share. It’s ironic isn’t it, that intangibles like diamonds, and gold, are understood as valuable but yet another human being can be deemed disposable amongst a species that is clearly interdependent.
Meanwhile, today it is the cool or the “in thing” to be progressive. All you need to do is slap the appropriate coloured bracelet on your wrist, learn some quotes that you don’t understand, and look appropriately pissed off at the correct times. If you want extra brownie points, you wrap up your message in esoteric language while declaring that it was not your intent to obfuscate. The elitist with a thesaurus is pompous, bumptious, and just generally annoying.
It would be a much more pleasing world if we could all afford to ignore such obnoxious behaviour. Every time I see a fauxgressive moaning about the unbearable lightness of being, while inside secretly saying gee I’m glad I’m me, wearing their best American Apparel, I just want to hit the mute button and bang my head against the nearest desk over and over again.
Everyone knows one of these people. You know the type that reads the coles notes, never the original books but thinks somehow that original thought is their expertise. You know the “it’s not sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc., because of the I-R-O-N-Y” person.
I would love to ban the word “irony” from the fauxgressive dictionary. It is not ironic to appropriate the struggles of another for a cheap joke. It is certainly not ironic to demean another because you think it makes you look cool.
The fauxgressive is a walking this is a “your brain on drugs commercial” – filled with failed logic, and insensitivity of epic proportions. I often wonder how they don’t trip on their sense of inflated self importance. Each time I think that it is impossible to be even more idiotic, a new standard is set and I find myself wishing that there was a stupidity clause to free speech.
People like this make it harder for me to walk out my front door each morning. As a woman of colour, not only must I deal with the racist who are determined to reduce me to the status of wormwood, but the sexists who think that women exist to breed babies, while worshipping at the throne of the phallus. Fauxgressives come in the guise of friend and yet they are just as self-interested as any other group in society. The largest problem with them is how deceptive they are. They will tell you that racism and sexism are sins of humanity, all the while wearing an ironic t-shirt promoting the very systems they claim to be outraged about.
Of course, as a woman of colour I don’t exist with the right to complain. Lesson number one in Fauxgressive School, is that black women are too angry to legitimately critique the forces that seek to create us as other. We are so obviously biased that a fauxgressive most come to our rescue and articulate the point for us. How dare black women get ideas just because the government decided that we should have an edjumication?
Reading and thinking are two very different things and clearly the fauxgressive with their heavily memorized prose, have decided that they are the thinkers in this society. Thank goodness Dr.King left them so much work pre 1963 to appropriate.
Whether you call it hipster or fauxgressive, it all amounts to the same thing; wallowing in privilege because hey, this social hierarchy thing we have going works just great when you’re the one on top. Fauxgressives are often just as purposefully obtuse as the right wingers and, in fact, the day that they realize just how much they have in common with the Limbaughs of the world, they will be a real force to be reckoned with. It is their very potential to do harm that worries me the most. Just look what a C-student did to the US for the last 8 years. That ought to be enough to tell you what can happen when we allow idiocy to lead.
In closing, though it would be nice to be able to ignore the fauxgressives, we simply cannot afford to. Each and everything that supports our perverted social system must be dismantled if we are ever to reach a point of true equality. Existing as the continual butt of someone’s joke, even when said joke is the product of idiocy, can never be tolerated. It is either dignity for all, or dignity for none; there is no grey area.
“It is their very potential to do harm that worries me the most. Just look what a C-student did to the US for the last 8 years. That ought to be enough to tell you what can happen when we allow idiocy to lead.”
Yes. Absolutely. Great post.
And, oh my god, I so hear you about this:
“Every time I see a fauxgressive moaning about the unbearable lightness of being, while inside secretly saying gee I’m glad I’m me, wearing their best American Apparel, I just want to hit the mute button and bang my head against the nearest desk over and over again.”
Well, I usually want to bang their head on the desk instead of mine, but yeah.
Great post.
I would go for “fauxgressive” over “hipster” myself. Hipsters don’t necessarily assume progressive stances, however faked. (Liking indie rock doesn’t automatically inoculate one against being a Ron Paul Internet libertarian, for example.)
Besides, I like the way “fauxgressive” defines itself.