Cancel culture? Young people aren’t intolerant, we’re progressive

[Igneococcus]

Supposedly us older folk know nothing about feminism or violence against women:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/474fff50-5ad4-11ed-962f-53da0c787308?shareToken=546e4920254c77298c5e84d19894a71a

Quite fascinating really. Imagine thinking that the older generations of women and lgbt people who actually lived through those periods would somehow be less knowledgeable about how lack of rights impacts people than someone who didn't.
It's just all so shallow, isn't it? There's so little thinking going on.
But she got one thing right. Pontificating is the perfect word.

They're just teenagers, I was probably the same. Pontificating is fine with friends and close family but in the real world we learn to be tolerant of others views and that others may have a point. It's called experience and maturity.

Also how to develop a thick skin and not react to others conflicting views so hard. Cancel culture is going to go out of fashion.

Anyone could find out about the long history of feminism and radicalism on the web in 10 minutes, even if they haven’t been taught it. I think the reason they’re like this about it - acting as if they’re the first to think of it - is that like so much about modern middle class social justice movements, including gender ideology, they need to construct a false enemy with terrible right-wing (the horror!) views. Hence any concern or questions being “transphobia” and “bigotry”. It’s not, but when you don’t have a logical leg to stand on, you need to shut down counter-arguments. Anyone older than you is clueless and has nothing useful to opine - handy, not because it helps anyone get closer to the truth or a useful way forward, but because thinking that helps you to cling to your perceived self-identity of being on the moral high ground, and identity is everything. It’s extend solipsism.

The problem with being judge, jury and executioner and cancelling people with is that you can be wrong.

I thought that article was hilarious. It's just what most teenagers go through before they grow up and realise they don't know everything. Most don't given an article in the Times though.

Can you imagine sitting through Christmas dinner with those two! I'm getting heartburn just thinking of it. Having said that, she's clearly a Poly Filla in training. www.janklowandnesbit.co.uk/olivia-petter

She appears to be an extremely well off young woman, judging by this Daily Mail article. www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11178953/OLIVIA-PETTER-Soho-Houses-sex-columnist-having-men-winter.html

As so often, my mind turns to the depressing account of what happened to the Deptford Project when Goldsmiths students got involved. www.feministcurrent.com/2018/03/23/leftist-women-uk-refuse-accept-labours-attempts-silence-critiques-gender-identity/ Here's a taster.

^Gentrification brought a sudden increase in “very posh, white, ‘social justice’ groups and movements.” Now, the local groups who claimed to support the most marginalized seemed, to Mcdonagh, to be little more than “a social gathering for privileged students, using the community as a trendy trademark.”
“They used weird pronouns and called themselves ‘they,'” Mcdonagh said. She didn’t think this “rich kid’s trend” would affect her work so didn’t concern herself too much. “We were too busy trying to keep people fed, off the street, and out of prison.”^

After participating in a debate about housing with these students, Mcdonagh’s group was featured in a radical anarchist publication called STRIKE! Magazine. Looking through the publication, Mcdonagh was shocked to find an article promoting pornography and various sex industry-related “sex tips,” instructing women on how to “deep throat,” for example.

“How could I share this with the women in our community project?!” she asked. Mcdonagh explained that many of the women and girls she worked with were being pimped out daily. “One young girl — only 17 — had recently had her face smashed in by a punter and had 16 metal pins put in to hold her face together.” Mcdonagh got angry.

She’s ‘in awe’ whenever she hears her fifteen year old sister pontificate to her father on an issue? Yes, because we all know fifteen year olds are bastions of wisdom and rationality with all that life experience to draw on.

I ’d at that too.

The quote was :

”Whenever I hear Juliet pontificate on an issue, I’m in awe. No, she isn’t tolerant of transphobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, or climate change denial. And thank goodness for that — because it shows my dad that he shouldn’t be either.”

What is missing from this is:

“Whenever I hear Juliet pontificate on an issue, I’m in awe [of her supreme over confidence]. No, she isn’t tolerant of transphobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, or climate change denial [just any person’s well considered alternative point of view]. And thank goodness for that — because it shows my dad that he shouldn’t be either [tolerant of any pontificating or any views being ‘pontificated’ by a supremely overconfident 15 year old that cannot see past their phone!]

There’s a lot of young people are going to be very surprised in the next 25 years when the generation after them points out they didn’t quite have everything nailed as they thought they have.

...I believe it’s the older generation that needs to become more tolerant of us...

Ha!

We are the ones growing up in the modern world, don’t we have a greater sense of the issues that define it?

Not really, we all live in the modern world, too.

The casual ageism is so mind-numbingly stupid. If this young woman and her peers are lucky enough to avoid illness, accident and violence they too will become "the older generation". And based on my experience, that will happen sooner than their young minds can possibly imagine.

That’s Maoism with a plant-based latte!

That article was insufferable but I guess that's the point. It honestly read a bit like any troll post on any given day on mn. Faux wide eyed innocence with a pinch of goadiness thrown in.

It's amazing isn't it, so much knowledge available at the click of a mouse but so much ignorance.

Ugh, the casual ageism of MN.
I occasionally post to object but more often demur as I am weary of the stereotypical lazy thinking & comfort myself that they will sag soon enough.

This week had a feisty diatribe about elderly volunteers in charity shops underpricing designer labelled gear. Such indignation yet the notion that a seasoned eye might see the item for what it is does not register.

I shall now relish this thread.

I mean every point she makes simply illustrates why young illiberal progressives is an accurate description.

‘Of course we aren’t tolerant of those people; they’re just wrong.’

Person with zero insight into themselves gets to write for The Times

how the heck does that happen? I suspect the commissioning editor may have been setting her up to look like a twat

worked beautifully didn’t it?

Young people have always had that mix of over-confidence in their own opinions and blindness to subtlety - both about the situation itself and about the consequences of actions.

We all want to protect the vulnerable. But we oldies can see that a 40 year old accountant who gets off on wearing women's clothes is far less vulnerable than a 13 year old girl with ASD who has experienced CSA. And we can see that a policy of instant affirmation will benefit the Accountant (who gets people propping up his fantasy) whilst causing huge damage to the girl (who seeks hormone blockers then cross sex hormones as a reaction to her social difficulties from ASD and her desire to get away from the constant male gaze - then ends up with no sexual function, a hysterectomy at 25 and osteoporosis at 40). We recognise that once again the vulnerable girl is collateral damage to benefit the powerful male, and we can conclude that this is not a progressive social change. In fact, the opposite.

I think we develop more subtle understanding by repeatedly seeing things turn out in unexpected ways. By misunderstanding things - being wrong ourselves - and realising months or years later. Lots of times! But it takes decades of life to experience that, and (if we are thoughtful) develop more humility and a more subtle understanding.

The problem is how much power this generation have at such a young age. Mao's little red guards are a good comparison. With technology, this generation likewise have the power to destroy people's lives.

The cultural revolution ended when Mao died. But technology isn't going back in the box - and we wouldn't want it to, because it brings huge benefits. We do need to find a way to control it. Personally, I think it will be with a whole raft of new laws. But that will take hard work over many years to figure out.

i think the problem is the idea that everyone is supposed to take these opinions seriously. It’s all presented as ‘we know better than you, previous generations’ and somehow society has stopped viewing that as the arrogance of youth. Instead we are supposed to somehow agree that we need to be enlightened.

i suspect it’s also aligned to the ‘we don’t need’ experts thing. Knowledge, experience, perspective - all of it is viewed as less important than the purity of your moral cause.

And it’s so patronising to those deemed ‘vulnerable’.

Sweet Jesus! I know each generation believes they know it all, but this one is particularly sanctimonious. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I don't think social media helps at all either. There is zero interest or curiosity about the past. Unless Andrea Dworkin was dancing in front of them right now on Tik Tok she might as well have never existed. Then mix in the one acceptable -ism (ageism), double down on the particularly rampant, misogynist element of 'what would you know old crone?' and this is what you get. A generation of cool girl handmaidens doing the misogynists work for them, whilst thinking they are oh so feminist and progressive.

Of course not all young people are like this, not my Archie/Isabelle etc. But it's a definite, recognisable sub-set!

“I’m not interested in tolerating the views of others”, she says. Sounds a little like intolerance to me…

I thought it was Titania McGrath at first but now I'm worried that Titania is too liberal and easy going.

Well, yes. But if you are standing there yelling at women for speaking words you don’t want to hear, with dozens and dozens of your mates who assure you that they are tolerant. That are the righteous ones after all.

And adults who are also very intolerant of alternative opinions about what sex and gender are and the impacts to others but affirm your viewpoint, who is going to be able to tell you differently?

Honestly, who the fuck do they think fought against Section 28, fought for women's refuges, marched against apartheid, camped at Greenham?? The arrogance and ignorance is off the scale.

Basically history, culture and society beyond 10 years ago (and I'm being generous with the time frame there) doesn't exist beyond being some 1950s, racist, sexist, homophobic colonial Britain trope.

Spoiled self-important brat are four words coming randomly to mind.

When I was 18, I thought my father was pretty dumb. After a while when I got to be 21, I was amazed to find out how much he'd learned in three years.