Of course, I’m happy about the gay marriage ruling. But there is also a sense of nostalgia that accompanies the joy. Is this the very last social justice movement?
The politics if activism and mass movements is going out on a high note. But it still is going out.
“last social justice movement”=”end of history”
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The newer terminology is “the collapse of the nation-state” but yes, it’s the same thing.
I have smart readers. 🙂
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I’m in favor of same sex marriage and don’t actually see the slippery slope that some do.
Same sex marriage ties in with the historical development of equality of spouses and doesn’t really require any laws to be rewritten (beyond omitting sex distinctions which were not even part of many laws).
I do find the whining from some people that this means the end of revolutionary queer culture or some such nonsense to be pretty irritating.
Polygamy or polyamory (which some think will be the next push) require fundamental reworking of existing marriage laws so I don’t see them getting much traction quickly.
I maybe see the attempted normalization of pedophilia as a possible danger (not tied to same sex marriage). They say that childhood (from around 6-7 to puberty) is essentially an invention of the 19th century and it seems to be … weakening, both in terms of increasing sexualization of children and helicopter parents treating teenagers how 6 or 7 year olds used to be treated.
But as long as some people need victims to give their life meaning there will be “social justice” causes, you just probably won’t be on board.
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I won’t be on board for sure because I’m way too old. This is something that young people engage in, usually. But I spend a lot of time with young people, and the indifference to any collective endeavor or cause is absolutely glacial and impenetrable. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing necessarily. It’s not something we are used to in my generation and older, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad development. It’s just weird. 🙂
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I maybe see the attempted normalization of pedophilia as a possible danger (not tied to same sex marriage).
I’ve been watching a lot of movies from the 70s lately, and it strikes me that it was pretty acceptable in mainstream films back the to sexualize very young girls in a way that would almost universally be considered creepy today.
So contra the slippery slope worriers, it’s not the case that standards move in one direction only and every change is destined to become the new normal. Sometimes a new development is ultimately rejected, as this weird 70s trend was.
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“Polygamy or polyamory (which some think will be the next push) require fundamental reworking of existing marriage laws so I don’t see them getting much traction quickly.”
Polyamorous people want nothing to do with marriage. Polygamous, yes.
Before the reworking of laws, there’s the movement stage. Who are the affected people here? Muslims in the US, who don’t want to attract the attention of the government for obvious reasons, and FLDS christians, a bunch of right-wingers who have nothing in common with liberals. Like, do they even want liberal allies? Has there ever been any coalition of any sort between them? Have they ever been sympathetic to any social justice goals in the past?
I don’t think the polygamous constituency is looking for political recognition, and if they were, they’re not looking to ally with a bunch of flaming godless liberals anyway.
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I wouldn’t expect any eventual push for polygamy to start in the US, Europe and/or Canada seem more likely.
Apparently the UK already recognizes polygamy for welfare purposes (if the marriages took place in countries were it’s legal).
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“Apparently the UK already recognizes polygamy for welfare purposes”
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\ Apparently the UK already recognizes polygamy for welfare purposes (if the marriages took place in countries were it’s legal).
Israel doesn’t recognize polygamy and pays welfare to Arab ‘single mothers,’ aka second, third and forth wives. Why are we doing that? They have a husband!
In 2015 ” two men on the Arab community’s Joint List ticket are in polygamous marriages in violation of the law.”
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“Israel doesn’t recognize polygamy and pays welfare to Arab ‘single mothers,’ aka second, third and forth wives. Why are we doing that? They have a husband!”
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Israel doesn’t recognize polygamy and pays welfare to Arab ‘single mothers,’ aka second, third and forth wives. Why are we doing that? They have a husband!
I suppose the stated reason is that they’re not married if their marriage is illegal. FLDS Mormon non-primary wives get welfare as single mothers because their marriages are not recognized and they are super poor — on paper. It’s actively encouraged in FLDS as a way to “starve the beast” and the monies go to the patriarch of the family, who distributes it as he sees fit.
Supposedly, in scripture you’re allowed to have x number of wives as long as you treat them (and by extension, their children equally) in financial matters, but in practice it doesn’t work out that way.
I’m against polygamy because the overwhelming majority of the time it means polygyny. Also, what about the men? Polygyny is only sustainable in societies where there is an excess of women and a numerical scarcity of men, which means a lot of young men get killed in war or pushed out (aka “the lost boys”) because they’re competition for the high status dudes who collect women. (I’ve read a lot of “escape from FLDS” memoirs.)
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“Polyamorous people want nothing to do with marriage.”
This is not true. Many polyamorous people I know are in multipartner committed relationships and would be very happy if they could all be married. One woman, in particular, would love to be married to both her co-husbands, not just one of them. They do all live together and have for over thirty years.
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“One woman, in particular, would love to be married to both her co-husbands, not just one of them.”
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Polyandry is a special case of polyamory. The point is that polyamorists want long term committed relationships with more than one partner, regardless of the genders of the people involved.
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Stopping voter suppression is another big social justice movement.
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I don’t think it can be. I don’t understand what it’s about, and if I don’t understand, let’s be honest, what are the chances that a great enough number of people will?
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Stopping voter suppression is an outgrowth and a continuation of the 1960s civil rights movement which is an outgrowth of prior civil right movements.
The right to vote is the essential right of a citizen and is the cornerstone of participation in our representative democracy. It is the base amount of participation for a citizen. How many times are we told, “If you don’t vote, don’t complain?” As a right, it should be made convenient and unabridged as possible.
Voter suppression is directly responsible for the horrors of Shrub and Alito and Roberts.
Shrub was much worse than I dreamed he could be and he was a fucking disaster. Voter suppression tactics are aimed at people who historically had to fight for their right to vote: ethnic minorities of all stripes (14th, 15th amendment, 24th amendment) , the young (26th amendment), women (19th amendment), people who don’t have property and means, people who have served their time in prison.
If you believe that anybody besides white men above a certain age who own x amount of property should have a say in our government, you should be against voter suppression. Rights mean nothing if they are impossible or almost impossible to exercise.
I know nation states are on their way out but as long as representative democracy and nation states exist, this matters. If they believe the United States is the greatest nation on earth and an example to follow, your students should care. If the government affects their lives, and they want a say in the government, they have to protect their right to vote and their access to that right.
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This is all true, but the problem is, there are no real impediments to anybody voting. We’ve had this debate here on the blog already, so I don’t want to repeat it. It all ended with people who have cars lecturing me – who’d never had one at that time – about what carless existence is like. I don’t want to go to that same set of arguments again. All I can say is to point out that if I don’t get the issue, good luck getting less politicized people to care.
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I agree, it’s just as much (probably more) a question of voter apathy than voter suppression.
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Your mind is a cesspool, turn your obsession elsewhere.
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Coming from a deranged racist lol-libertarian, it feels like a compliment.
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\ Black people too lazy to vote!
What about white people? When things are going more or less fine, many citizens are too lazy to vote. You need wars or huge crisis to bring voters. For instance:
Voter turnout in Israeli 2015 elections was 72.3%
VS
In America – “Voter turnout during presidential elections is, as a rule, significantly higher [than for midterms]. More than 58 percent of eligible voters submitted ballots in 2012 and nearly 62 percent did so in 2008.”
Now I checked “Voter turnout data for Sweden” and the numbers are sky-high. In 2014 – 85.81% . How do they do that?
Data for Sweden:
http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?id=197
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I guess white people are just better at voting. And everything else.
El, thank you once again for your nuanced understanding of the subject matter under discussion.
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\ El, thank you once again for your nuanced understanding of the subject matter under discussion.
I should’ve checked USA statistics, but don’t have much time now.
I began talking about a different subject without making it clear: why people vote or don’t, if my theory of crisis=voting doesn’t always work.
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For example, at Appalachian State University in Boone NC, the polling place on campus was closed in 2012 and students and others who live on or near the University campus had to travel about ten miles to vote. There was/is no bus except one which left at about 6:00 am and another that returned after 5:00 pm. This meant that students or faculty would have to take an entire day off to vote if they had no car.
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What you are describing is an inconvenience for sure. But I can’t imagine this story firing anybody up in a big way. I’m sure these students somehow find a way to visit all the parties they need off campus, so it’s hard to feel too much compassion for them.
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I think it’s more than an inconvenience. Plus, why are republican controlled states making it harder to vote? What is the problem they’re trying to solve here? There’s no voter fraud, everyone loves early voting, this system works. Why the sudden need to ‘fix’ the system, especially in the light of 2008/2012 presidential elections when minorities came out to vote in huge numbers?
Problem: Low-income workers can’t take time off easily.
Solution: Let us abolish weekend voting.
In which planet does this make sense?
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Does anybody doubt that legalizing polygamy is the next step?
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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