Post 23 -- Hitchens and the "Personal is Political"

I am a proud owner of the Quotable Hitchens, a great book of impressively produced quotes by Hitchens throughout his career. In the modern day efforts of reactionary Social Justice Warriors, from GamerGate, to Dr. Taylor's "offensive and ostracizing" shit, to "metalheads are what's wrong with metal", the term "personal is political" is thrown around as easily as the term "misogyny".

Before I get into the Hitchens' quotes, something I will do leading up to his death day, I want to give a solid example of how "the personal is political" is about feelings and devoid of reason. Faggot. That word is used extensively. Originally used to describe a tightly bound bundle of sticks (sometimes for the purpose of fire building), the stick/dick rhyme and stick-on-stick imagery was applied to homosexual men. Well, almost exclusively in American; but in the United Kingdom, the term fag was derived more to the burning element of the original description and applied to cigarettes. Faggot is currently viewed as a derogatory word against homosexuals, and some argue that the flippant use of it in online spaces and in school yards between men only reinforce the negative and denigrating connotation of the word.

This, however, shows how some do not recognize how words and language evolve. Otherwise meaningless words can be changed into hurtful ones while intentionally harmful words can be co-opted and "taken back" into positive ones. Ratchet, the helpful tool, is also used as a slur against "ghetto women" who believe they are "every man's eye candy", and is applied to any woman who acts in a similar manner. On the other side, the word queer was used as a disparaging term against homosexuals of both genders, but was re-purposed by the LGBTQ community as a word that, to them, carry no harm. Words and their meanings are somewhat flexible--we won't be swapping the meaning of verbs any time soon, but certain nouns can take on or lose given meanings and, in some cases, turned into verbs themselves.

Back to faggot, though. It is a favourite word of those in online spaces, particularly image boards (e.g., 8chan). The usage there has nothing to do with sexual orientation but to do with ones usefulness to the conversation. Acting in a meaningless way, not thinking for one's self, or intentionally attempting to block or disrupt a conversation will result in being called a faggot. Here's Louis C.K.'s take on the word:

Again, in the context that Louis C.K. is talking about, faggot has nothing to do with sexuality or sexual orientation. It is a word used to point out a person who is acting in a weak, pedantic, whiny, cowardly, or any otherwise annoying manner--again, nothing to do with sexual orientation.

Enter SJWs: because there are homosexuals who feel the word faggot is a slur against them, they make that personal element political. This action directly leads to attempts to censor the use of the word in nearly every context. We are seeing that in the recent issue regarding metal (genre of music): The Problem With Heavy Metal Is Metalheads: Stop Calling Everyone A Faggot.

Here are Hitchens's thoughts on the "personal is political".

"The idea that 'the personal is political'--and idea that emerged in an era of post-1960s depoliticization--has come to mean that personal identity or preference is a sufficient political commitment." - "Missionary Positions", Wilson Quarterly, Winter 1991

"In the meanwhile, of course, the political has conversely become personalized with the result that public affairs are dominated by celebrity-style posturing." - "Radical Pique, Vanity Fair, February 1994

"I remember very well the first time I heard the saying 'The Personal is Political'. It began as a sort of reaction to the defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they felt, not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its subgroups and 'specificities'." - Letters to a Young Contrarian, (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 112-113

"From now on, it would be enough to be a member of a sex of gender, or epidermal subdivision, or even erotic 'preference', to qualify as a revolutionary. In order to begin a speech or to ask a question from the floor, all that would be necessary by way of preface would be the words: 'Speaking as a ...' Then could follow any self-loving description." Hitch-22, (New York: Twelve, 2010), 121

(Quotes taken from The Quotable Hitchens (Cambridge, MA: Windsor Mann, 2011))

This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi