Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Category: Gender (Page 3 of 5)

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov, Science Fiction, and Harassment

April 27, 2020 /

Here’s an experience most of us had during the #MeToo movement: a cherished cultural figure – a favorite musician, filmmaker, author, actor, et al. – did bad things. The victims of those actions came forward. These events provoked in us as many reactions as it did experiences – from revulsion to condemnation to indifference to defensiveness or even apologism. Some of the cultural figures I love were a part of this, including Isaac Asimov.

As Alec Nevala-Lee documents, Asimov had a reputation as a harasser, and the science fiction community knew all about it. Asimov exemplified for Nevala-Lee a certain type of harasser: the awkward, nerdy boy who, through his intellectual efforts and outputs, gained social power with which to lord over women who wouldn’t otherwise attend to him.

Here are some thoughts on Asimov: what his work meant to me, how I see that work now, and how harassment locks people – especially women – out of spaces.

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Misogyny Warren American flag

Misogyny and the Warren Campaign

March 12, 2020 /

Recently, I wrote about why Elizabeth Warren lost the race for the Democratic nomination. My thesis? Warren failed to consolidate the progressive vote, and then her pivot to the center didn’t work. And even had she done these things, she’d have quickly run into problems winning among voters of color, especially black voters. Many Warren supporters, by contrast, cite misogyny as the major factor in her loss. They think the U.S.’s culture of misogyny cost Warren the win.

I didn’t mention misogyny in my own post. But not because I forgot about it or think it’s not important. I didn’t, and it is. I think it operated as an important background force rather than as a major cause of her loss. And getting at these things required more space and time than the previous post offered.

So, let that space and time be here and now.

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How Elizabeth Warren Lost

March 5, 2020 /

elizabeth warren lost angelic photo

Elizabeth Warren 2020 began in 2015. A coalition of liberals and progressives lifted her up as the right person to lead an electoral coalition. Why? Her bona fides as a consumer advocate and legislative leader – and her broad appeal across the Democratic Party – suggested her as the champion of a movement to push Obama’s Democratic Party to the left without leaving the Obama coalition behind.

Her 2020 campaign aimed to do just that. But the terrain changed. It was no longer a unity between Obama and the myriad forces of the shattered electoral left. It was a surging electoral left – united by the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign – and the Biden/Clinton/Obama ‘party establishment.’ Warren promised to combine the progressivism of Sanders with the practicality of a campaign that could mobilize Democratic voters and win over a bit of ‘Middle America.’

Or so the theory went. We know it didn’t work out that way, and I’ll discuss why. Here are two major factors I see contributing to her loss. And one factor some Elizabeth Warren defenders cite that I’ll argue wasn’t really much of a factor.

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looping effects making up people ian hacking

The Looping Effects of ‘Bisexual’

February 10, 2020 /

After the 2004 US election, pundits – and college students like myself – went looking for answers. How could Americans re-elect a buffoonish warmonger like George W. Bush? Over the course of a decade, this search guided me from pundit-generated pablum like ‘NASCAR Dad‘ to the philosophically compelling ‘looping effects of human kinds’, as Ian Hacking put it. Let’s trace that journey.

What struck me about the punditry is their attribution of an ordinary event – the re-election of a president – to hidden, mysterious forces. Who were these NASCAR Dads riding to Dubya’s rescue? As it happens, they’re no one new. Lifting up the hood reveals the same white, mostly male, non-college educated voters who elected Reagan in 1980 and Trump in 2016. They vote Republican in every election. ‘NASCAR Dad’ is only a seemingly fresh take on an old story, loaded this time with cultural references.

But I drew lessons from getting burned by bad punditry and bad political science. Through works like ‘Making Up People‘ and The Social Construction of What?, I found philosophers doing great work on classifications of people and how people react – the ‘looping effects’ of my title! And so, I’ll start there. What are ‘looping effects’, and how do they apply to the term ‘bisexual’? Does it mean people aren’t really bisexual, just as people aren’t really NASCAR Dads? Or are NASCAR Dads real after all? Is there some ‘authentic self’ prior to how we’re grouped?

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political currency various pieces of US political propaganda

Using Identity as Political Currency

January 20, 2020 /

There’s a certain line of thought out there in the political ether. The idea goes something like this. People use their identity to take political action, win offices, pass legislation, steer conversations, or direct movements. Or, to put it more simply, they use identity as political currency.

Now, when people say this, they often speak ominously or conspiratorially. By ‘people’ here, they have in mind members of marginalized groups. They think those sorts of people (i.e., others) use their identity as political currency. That’s something we should keep at the back of our minds, because people (and here I mean ‘white people, usually white men’) tend to overlook cases where members of their own group do things like this.

So…what is it to use identity as political currency? How’s it done? Is it a good thing, a bad thing, or both/neither?

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