This Salon.com story encapsulates a lot about what I think has made lefty culture so politically ineffectual:
https://www.salon.com/2022/06/08/island-bechdel-test/
Basically, a liberal media type tweeted criticism of a liberal movie that's about Asian gay men. Her criticism was that the movie lacked good female characters. She said it failed the "Bechdel Test," which is a test named after comic book writer Alison Bechdel, who called attention to how few movies have female characters who talk to each other about anything other than men.
That criticism inspired backlash from other liberals, who were pissed off at a white woman taking issue with a movie that provided rare representation for gay Asian Americans. Then the author of that original tweet posted a self-flagellating tweet for her thoughtlessness.
It's a pretty standard lefty circular firing squad... and also one that is particularly vulnerable to the conservative criticism of the "Oppression Olympics." That's a reference to the idea that there is an implicit hierarchy to victimization, and a liberal must defer to anyone who outranks her in that hierarchy: the critic would have been fine firing a rote feminist critique at a movie focusing on white men, but when it's gay Asians, that's an intersectionality twofer that makes them easily outrank women in relative marginalization, and so the white feminist should know to hold her tongue.
Far too much attention and energy on the left goes to these little intrafactional squabbles. We've got hearings going on about an attempt to overturn our democracy, and the same forces are out there constantly trying to make public opinion even less of a consideration in how our leaders are chosen. And that's just one of a great many major issues facing us, including a pandemic that even now is killing around 350 Americans per day. There's plenty of important stuff to focus on. Do we really need to be wasting effort nitpicking one another about relative trivia?
https://www.salon.com/2022/06/08/island-bechdel-test/
Basically, a liberal media type tweeted criticism of a liberal movie that's about Asian gay men. Her criticism was that the movie lacked good female characters. She said it failed the "Bechdel Test," which is a test named after comic book writer Alison Bechdel, who called attention to how few movies have female characters who talk to each other about anything other than men.
That criticism inspired backlash from other liberals, who were pissed off at a white woman taking issue with a movie that provided rare representation for gay Asian Americans. Then the author of that original tweet posted a self-flagellating tweet for her thoughtlessness.
It's a pretty standard lefty circular firing squad... and also one that is particularly vulnerable to the conservative criticism of the "Oppression Olympics." That's a reference to the idea that there is an implicit hierarchy to victimization, and a liberal must defer to anyone who outranks her in that hierarchy: the critic would have been fine firing a rote feminist critique at a movie focusing on white men, but when it's gay Asians, that's an intersectionality twofer that makes them easily outrank women in relative marginalization, and so the white feminist should know to hold her tongue.
Far too much attention and energy on the left goes to these little intrafactional squabbles. We've got hearings going on about an attempt to overturn our democracy, and the same forces are out there constantly trying to make public opinion even less of a consideration in how our leaders are chosen. And that's just one of a great many major issues facing us, including a pandemic that even now is killing around 350 Americans per day. There's plenty of important stuff to focus on. Do we really need to be wasting effort nitpicking one another about relative trivia?
