Pushing the easy buttons

Okay, I know I know, three posts inspired – at least in part – by Toshgate? There’s just so much to say though. I’m trying not to say exactly the same things everyone else has been saying so well, and I’m mostly trying to take a more personal approach so here you go, post number three citing Toshgate as inspiration.

I’ve spent the better part of the last week steeped in the muck of misogyny in the Twitterverse. While I haven’t been engaging nearly as much of some of my braver tweeps I have chosen to stick around and bear witness, showing support where I can.

And then today Shakesville posted this piece about Dan Savage’s track record of fat shaming and A Time to Laugh posted this piece about rape culture and slavery apologists in conservative evangelical circles.

And all of them bring me to the same point: These people who claim to be railing against the oppression of feminism/liberalism/political correctness want us to believe that they are speaking truth to power. Their rape jokes/fat shaming/slave apologia are a spark of light in the darkness, calling attention to uncomfortable truths. They portray themselves as being victimized or attacked by those who try to silence them with the muzzle of political correctness.

At first, the notion that they are pushing boundaries sounds kind of right. I mean their words are certainly shocking to hear.  But scratch a little deeper, take even a nano-second to reflect on what purpose exactly those shocking words are serving and you can see that there is nothing revolutionary about what they are doing.  Whether they are propagating the rape culture, promoting fat-phobia or denying the horrifying legacy of slavery their actions are simply a natural extension of the dominant discourse.

The only rule these people are breaking is the one that requires those with privilege to exercise and maintain that privilege by subtler, more insidious, more structural means.

Daniel Tosh, Dan Savage and Doug Wilson (triple D?) are not the black sheep of the family.  Rather they are that loud drunken uncle that tells abrasive black jokes at the table while the rest of the family tut-tuts, only to go home and discuss why it’s a shame that that nice George Zimmerman is getting persecuted for defending himself.  The Toshes and Wilson’s are extreme enough in their methods that the rest of us can just shake our heads, safe in the knowledge that “we’re not like that”.  But make no mistake, if you have ever even suggested that a woman “should have known what to expect” or that “Black people should just get over it already” then you are just as much a part of the problem as the most offensive maker of rape jokes out there.