Between about 1968 and 1970 women, people of colour and a bunch of other “minorities” (sic) woke up. Suddenly the “bosses” (white educated men) of the social movement organisations that claimed to speak for “everyone” didn’t look so heroic no more. And so, women, homosexuals and so on challenged – with the same tools (of disruption, delegitimisation, denunciation) that had been used against The System/The State/The Corporations – the make-up of the movement elites and the assumptions of their “betters”. No, women’s rights were not a distraction from the War. No, homosexuality was not a deformation that would vanish in a communist society. No, no and no again. It has made for a much healthier and more civilised society in the long run.
My analogy* is this: We have social movements that claim to represent everyone but – via the format of their meetings and rallies and marches and so on – encourage the participation only of those with the right social capital, the right economic capital and free time. What looks “normal” and “natural” is actually a constraining and funnelling process that only allows a few to be seen as ‘leaders’. Everyone else is passive, and their muteness taken as assent, consent.
What is needed (but won’t happen) is a similar upsurge of people storming the stages, grabbing the microphones and saying “enough. Stop claiming to represent us, when you are just using us to make up the numbers. Stop claiming to know how to make a revolution when all you have done is reinforce the very systems you claim to oppose.”
* These are the obvious problems with the analogy
a) The comparison is slightly skew-whiff. I’m comparing real full-on discrimination and power-over with the fact that it’s a small minority of people who ‘run’ meetings and rallies and so on. That’s apples and oranges.
b) I – a straight white middle class male – am claiming via analogy the same moral authority for my point of view as folks who were – and sadly still are – facing real disadvantage today both in the real world and in various social movements.
c) The likelihood of success is vastly different. The meek, and those who have only a certain amount of time/energy to give, are not going to (be able to) rise up and seize the moment in the way the feminists etc did. There’s less at stake (well, if you ignore the fact that only a mass outbreak of civil society sanity is going to give us any chance of preparing for the crash landing that’s coming).
See also
From Cannon Fodder to Ego Fodder
Gay Marriage and Movements
Welcome to the Smugosphere
