Some morning thoughts came to me while I was preparing a strong brew of coffee. Only black; always strong.
The word "problematic" has always humoured me. It reminds me of the Rocko's Modern Life, where our wallaby star lived in O-Town and everything was something-o-matic. I guess the social justice sorts in this world found things problem-o-matic. Now, if you ask Google, 'what does matic mean?' you get this wonderful result:
""Automatic" can be broken down into auto-, meaning self, and -matic, willing. It therefore translates to "willing to self-perform"."
"Willing", eh? A willing problem? Of course, going back to the dictionary to dig up root meanings of words or particular suffixes or prefixes is pedantic, but this was my original line of reasoning behind why the word 'problematic' makes me laugh so much. Issues to the regressive left are simply automatically a problem, or said another way, are inherently a problem simply for existing, as subjectively evaluated by that given person or ideology.
Skype, the most ubiquitous of online call services, came into being from two Estonian programmers. The service includes a simple echo test for the user's speakers and microphone. The echo test uses a woman's voice. The woman's voice has British accent--I believe a Geordie accent to be specific. Here is how the regressive left deals with something a benign as this. The following is satire and shouldn't be taken seriously.
The Skype echo test voice is problematic as it uses a female voice to depict women as a secretary at the whims of a call service uses.
It is doubly problematic as it fetishizes the accented voice as being more desirable than the user's local accents while also keeping the woman in a submissive support role.
Echo test is triply problematic because it prevents the woman from being able to assist the user, perpetuating the stereotype of women being incompetent with technology, disposable to men's needs as a mere testing agent, and stripped of agency!
It might seem like a caricature of the modern progressive movement, but a moment of reflection on a few recent topics demonstrates the eerie accuracy of this satire. Take, for a quick example, the protests against the Silent Sam statue on UNC-Chapel Hill's campus, the protest against Thomas Jefferson's statue on the Missouri University campus in Columbia, MO, and the feminist protest/activism at the opening of Suffragette, a movie about women's empowerment.
No, this satire is pointed and accurate. That is what makes it satire. Every time I hear something is "problematic", I immediately think of the half dozen spin off issues from the original one, and then play a game of mental bingo to see how far the regressives take it.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
Cattle ranchers, after realizing their bovine were being removed from their care, decided on a rather simple method ensuring their walking steaks would not be easy to steal by branding them. This practice ensured the ranchers' remained honest with each other and made it too difficult for cattle rustlers to sell the animal in local markets.
History has examples of humans being branded for a various reasons, with ownership and punishment being the leading two reasons. A branding label of "B" was used to denote a blasphemer in 17th Century Puritan North America, for example. This terrible human being was not to be trusted and became a pariah--in all communities which he traveled to.
In the internet age, people enjoy labeling others either out of convenience or out of intellectual laziness. This is the point I am going to write to here, illustrating the tricks and paths taken to quickly dismiss or claim others by the most vapid "enlightened" groups of people. It is cultish behaviour to seek out people and label them to be your own as much as it is to proclaim others as heretics.
Go onto YouTube and look up "what is a feminist?" and you'll get a standard block of videos of (mostly) young (mostly) girls reading a dictionary definition of feminism into a webcam. It is the same approach that others, while recruiting, use to get others to "realize" they are a feminists. Do you believe in equality between the sexes? Do you think that women should be paid the same for the same work? Do you believe that woman should have equal access to university and the workplace? If you said 'yes', then you're a feminist! The thing is, I'm not.
Then you're a misogynist!
That is the game in action. Despite saying 'yes' to those questions, I am not a feminist. There are many other tenants which are not listed above that I do not agree with which actively keep me away from the modern feminist movement. The pay gap falsity, the 1-in-4 lie, and Marxist "lack of representation in politics" narratives all keep me away from drinking that particular flavour of Kool-Aide. Not to mention accepting modern feminism is also accepting there is an invisible, unyielding, and unbeatable (but don't tell the zealots) force controlling everything called The Patriarchy.
Using simple data points, which are not comprehensive the entire picture, as anchor points for slapping a label onto someone is lazy and is most certainly disingenuous. Even when attempting to bring in a newest adherent, it is sinister to simplify a movement down to such ambiguous, self-evident facts. Take another example, this time stripped of intent: I own a gun. Now, what does that say about me?
The answer that I own a gun. Nothing more. I could be a pacifist who views it as art. I could be a paranoid man believing aliens will get me and that the gun will protect me from interstellar travelers. I might be a hunter. Or a game warden. Or just a sport shooter. Whether or not I own a gun is only a single fact, unable to be extrapolated into a larger theory. Just as a single datum or case-study does not make a new theory of everything. Facts, however, can be placed under ideological light.
When speaking to a Republican, I'm just an American. (I'm not. I'm a Canadian living in the United States).
When evaluated by progressives, I'm a threat who doesn't care about the lives lost to gun violence.
If asked by my mother, I get a long, "Why?"
Of course, there is some good and some bad from this. The NRA would love to have me as a member based on that single fact. Some gun-control activists want me to register in a mental institution. There is no benefit to being labeled a good person or a bad person based on factoid of me owning a gun. Yet, there are many out there who would be ready to label me something based on it, despite it being entirely neutral.
The quip above about saying that I'm not a feminist leading immediately to being called a misogynist is a general view on how the process works. Again, if I agree that the penis of a baby boy should not be cut because some women find it more appealing when he is older, that does not make me a men's rights activist. Nor does saying that I am not an MRA make me a de facto feminist. The labels are thrown around to either be claimed as part of a movement to bolster numbers and drum up support or they are being rashly applied to the neophytes exploring their understanding of the world know not to encounter the blasphemer.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
