#but I need something to distract me from my anxiety and general shittyness of today

[hxhhasmysoul]

bro get over ur 'performative feminism' idiocy 🙄 personally, i think half of ur analyses r shit but i can still find valuable or at least respectable commentary in them, just like i can find valuable or respectable commentary from those 'performative feminists.' as i should. bc thats how critique and discourse needs to be approached. just bc u can write a rant and do research doesnt mean ur arguments will be worth anything. and theyre prob not worth anything if u cant even respect the ppl ur addressing

I have to tell you, I’m fucking fascinated by this. There’s just so much here.

This will be an honest attempt at interpreting this, a long and at times quite serious reply to your rather unserious anon. 

What is the point of sending this, anon? When I get anons like this, I can’t help but muse what prompts their authors. 

1. I mean the least charitable interpretation would be that you want to insult me but in a way that to you subjectively upholds the pretence of respectability or intellectualism? 

2. Or maybe your goal is to actually encourage me to change my behaviour?  

3. Maybe you want to educate me on the proper way to do fandom “discourse”? Or on the merits of the philosophy you present here?

Any of those? None? All of the above a little bit? 

______________

If option 1 was your sole objective, I’d say it works only as an insult. The tone of your ask is all over the place and it doesn’t really match its content. If I were writing this, I wouldn’t have called my analyses “shit” and the “performative feminism” “idiocy” while chastising me for lack of respect for the opinions of others. I don’t mind you matching my lowbrow energy and tone, it’s just that in my opinion you contradict your point by going down to my level.

Maybe something closer to this:

“(...)the phrase ‘performative feminism’ doesn’t have a place in proper critique or discourse(...)”

“(...)I find half of you analyses poor quality, unwarranted or downright wrong(...)”

______________

If you were aiming for 2 exclusively then, alas, shaming and condescension doesn’t work on me at all, for personal reasons. 

______________

Third option is the one actually fascinating to me. You’re not the first person here that would be trying to lecture me on how there is a right approach to fandom “discourse”, namely your way. But you know, why not. I too hold very strong beliefs.

There are two issues with this working, though.

1. I don’t find your argument internally coherent. I will try to interpret what you’re saying, to show you how I understand it. Which may be completely contrary to what you were trying to say.

2. If my reading of what you’re trying to say is close to your intentions, I sense that we’re not really close ideologically and we don’t share values. 

1. 

The way I understand your last sentence is that according to you an opinion loses its value by default if it doesn’t meet some respectability standards. 

Yet a few sentences up you claim that you manage to find some “valuable or at least respectable commentary” in my rants, I’m not 100% sure which rants do you mean exactly here. All of them? Or just those that are “shit”? How can you find value in something that you seem to consider to be by default void of value? 

I’ll be real, idk what “respectable commentary” could possibly be, but if I show no respect to the people I address, then how could my commentary be respectable. 

This confusion is also amplified by the mismatch of tone and message. Because according to the rules you laid out I should disregard what you’re saying completely, because how can your arguments be worth anything if you aren’t showing respect to me. 

2. 

And here we come to the clash of values. 

The way I understand yours, is that you subject yourself to fandom takes that you find low quality or wrong because that’s the right thing to do. That according to you we should all strive to find something positive in all sides of an issue. 

It reminds me of the centrist political “both-sidedism” almost turned into an art form. And centrism irks me because I’m a nasty lefty, a social justice warrior. I’m very far from the so-called “centre”, which in real politics is usually just non extremist right wing ideology. I will use “leftism” as an umbrella term here for various ideas, both economic and social, including feminism. It's a very reductive approach but in this case I don’t think a distinction is needed. 

Social media platforms can have a heavy political slant, and fandom Tumblr on average slants left.

The problem is that in many cases it’s image building and not true understanding of the issues that comprise the political leaning. It’s using, but more often misusing buzzwords and appropriating language, sometimes in active attempts to render words or terms meaningless. All in the pursuit of maintaining the image of being “for the good things and against the bad things”. It’s a performance.

Performance that is self perpetuating because the people, who indulge in it, will pressure one another to express “correct opinions” on whatever is the hot topic of the hour. To always be available for outside scrutiny. Those people feel obliged to have public opinions, and have them fast.

Fandom and social media are a funny territory where petty arguments about characters or plot choices get mired in real world political topics and ideologies. While it is true that art is always political, political criticism usually can’t be nailed down in one catch phrase. And it definitely can’t be done without honestly engaging with the text and the context it exists in. 

In the JJK Tumblr tags you will find a shit ton of posts, no longer than a paragraph, usually no longer than a single sentence, that call Gege a misogynist, that say that “Gege hates women”. And they will usually use one argument for that, namely that female characters die in JJK. Or more recently, that they are irrelevant to the plot. Both these takes stem from bastardisation of academic discourse surrounding female characters in fiction. They are in bad faith, they show that the person reflexively regurgitating them has no desire to engage with the text seriously and probably doesn’t know where such considerations came from, or understand how they functioned in their original context. But sometimes you will see more dedicated clout-chasers, who try to write meta posts on the misogyny in JJK without having a basic understanding of feminism, just trying to string together popular hot takes. Just to show that they don’t “mindlessly” consume media, that they are not afraid to criticise it and its author, an all out a woman hater. Show it in the most vapid and thoughtless way possible. 

That’s why they are a performance. And this performance is to build the image of the op as a feminist, a "Tumblr good person". That’s why they use the trappings of feminist critique. That’s why I call it “performative feminism”. 

An important thing to understand about me is that I don’t treat leftism as a zero sum game. I believe that political movements, organisations, people and works of art, can be doing some leftist things right and some wrong. That perfection on this is impossible. But there are also non negotiable issues, issues that you can’t really do a bit right, because human dignity, safety and livelihood is at stake. For example I’m not interested in listening to people who will condone genocide, I don’t think I should try to find value in their arguments. But I also don’t find value in reactions to genocide that dehumanise and use genocidal language towards a different group, even if a subset of that group is committing genocide. For me genocide is a non negotiable issue. I don’t respect people who try to perform support for genocide victims by justifying genocide others. People who instead of donating to relief support, or promoting relief support and direct pressure on government, chase clout by shouting out their vile opinions under the guise of supporting the victims, regardless whether they understand their own bias or not. 

But you may say that I’m exaggerating, using a real life issue to illustrate my disagreement with your values, when maybe you were just limiting your philosophy to fiction. But my character flaw is that I’m very principled. Especially when it comes to my grander principles trickling down to more trivial stuff. 

I don’t think I should respect people who appropriate and misuse feminist language to chase social media clout. I don’t find any value in their behaviour. I find it actually harmful. It reinforces this trend in first world leftism that activism can be done by yelling the right buzzwords on social media. Especially the right buzzwords about popular media. That activism and social critique doesn’t require engaging with the ideas, interrogating their own preconceived notions. That it makes them a “good person” when they misuse academic language to shit on a work just because it’s popular, just because they want the clout of an intellectual who can see through the mainstream. While it’s painfully obvious that they have no idea what feminist critique academic or casual is, or what the words they abuse mean, or what modern feminism even entails. 

Can you see how funny it is? This idea that they can position themselves as above the mainstream, as the betters of those who enjoy mainstream, by reflexively regurgitating the most popular hot takes. And this lazy behaviour is purely voluntary because no one has to have an opinion on everything. It’s actually impossible to have an in-depth and well researched opinion on everything. So if you don’t have the time to do research, or to even properly familiarise yourself with the work you have the very valid choice not to. Have the choice not to parrot a hot take for the sole purpose of performing activism. You have the choice to just divert your attention elsewhere, towards things that you will engage with in good faith. 

Because this kind of bad faith approach can lead to darker things. Because you can actually make yourself believe that your behaviour isn’t just a vapid social media act, you can convince yourself that you’re on some moral high ground, that you’re actually fighting against evil.

If Gege is a misogynist, if they hate women, it means that they are actually vile, a bad person and it’s ok to use violent ideation while writing about them. This is normalising dehumanisation for clout points. Priming yourself for viewing people and situations like this.

Gege is kind of an abstract entity for these people, it feels harmless because, come on, they will never meet Gege. And obviously this is all hyperbole and they wouldn’t really get violent. 

I witnessed it in real time when a group of people in fandom decided that my friend was a bad person. Over trivial fandom shit. They dehumanised my friend amongst themselves and proceeded to attack my friend for months, until they left Tumblr. Attack them in racist, misogynist and queerphobic ways, while claiming it’s okay because my friend is an actual evil person, they are actually dangerous for existing in the fandom. And also their attacks are okay because they are PoC/queers/women and as members of these groups their behaviour can't be racist, queerphobic or misogynist by deafault…

You also misunderstand my actions towards those people. I’m not engaging in “discourse” with them. This is not academia, I’m not an academic. I’m pushing back against their behaviour. I’m expressing my distaste towards the groupthink. I’m not pretending to be respectable because I don’t think their behaviour deserves respect.  

This is the crux of our disagreement, anon, our values don’t align.