{"id":6570,"date":"2020-09-08T09:18:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T13:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/?p=6570"},"modified":"2020-09-11T00:23:29","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T04:23:29","slug":"how-the-right-ignites-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/2020\/09\/how-the-right-ignites-the-left\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Right Ignites the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just so we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re clear, the Bow business was not great<\/a>. Not malicious, it would seem, but just so very Dumbass White^TM, in a way that can only go unchecked if there are no Black people in the room. Everyone concerned seems aghast in hindsight<\/a>, and so on. Fine. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a legitimate grievance. Everything else about the livestream, though, and the online firestorm in response? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in such intense bad faith, and in such a specific familiar way, that I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help but wonder.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a few things that precede these events, you see. Not long before this livestream, Noelle came out as non-binary\u00e2\u20ac\u201din some puttering, early, confused capacity, as one does. (Speaking from personal experience.) They also began to express they may be neurodiverse. And then they had a long, long interview with Rebecca Sugar, where the two of them compared notes. As it turns out, Double Trouble was\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 sort of, in part, a self-insert character. Stevenson had been thinking about this character for years and years, and using them as a way to work through some things before they really understood why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up until all of this, Stevenson was held up as some bastion of progressive showrunning. But after this series of revelations, we see baseless accusations of lesbophobia (?!?!), of ableism, and of creepy attitudes toward non-binary people.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see how this works, right. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all great to talk about marginalized identities until marginalized people start doing the talking, at which point everything they say comes under the most intense scrutiny. When Noelle came off as a normal white lesbian girl, they were largely free to talk about whatever. But now that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re exploring their gender identity and neurology, and revealing how much of this stuff was actually personal\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re on good terms with, comparing their own work to, the last person to take this dark turn toward the margins of society? Oh, ew, throw them to the wolves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The specific way that passing statements were twisted out of context with the worst possible interpretation, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like 2018 SU Crit territory all over again. Or just the TERf\/alt-right playbook. Not that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s any real ideological difference. Once you nail a plausible accusation, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter if it gets refuted; the impression remains: there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something off with this person; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best to approach with caution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the scurrilous accusations, lesbophobia is especially pointed and significant. Where it comes from: the host of the stream, when introducing a participant, read off the name of her podcast, which includes the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dyke\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a podcast by a queer woman about queer stuff. Right? So this gets abstracted out to, THE PRODUCTION TEAM USED THE D-SLUR. Which by metonymy gets translated into Noelle Stevenson in particular. Which is\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 not what happened, and just, you know, fucking hell, come on. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no good-faith way you could come to this reading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important is why we see this bizarre frame. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important because Stevenson just came out as non-binary. To emphasize this, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a similar kind of misrepresentation to suggest that the production team was intentionally creepy about Double Trouble, casting them as sort of a predator. Again: Double Trouble is Noelle. (Sort of, partially.)  Similar story for the purported ableism, in regard to Entrapta\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neurology, etc., when Stevenson is also apparently neurodiverse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What this framing is trying to assert without saying it directly is, okay, Noelle is creepy, deviant, and lesbophobic. And the Bow thing, which sucks and is real<\/strong>, comes as a convenient wedge issue so that people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t examine the other claims too deeply. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a perfect storm to try to take down a gender traitor, basically. <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just so we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re clear, the Bow business was not great. Not malicious, it would seem, but just so very Dumbass White^TM, in a way that can only go unchecked if there are no Black people in the room. Everyone concerned seems aghast in hindsight, and so on. Fine. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a legitimate grievance. Everything else about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[28,1099,1135,1075],"class_list":["post-6570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-film-tv","tag-queerness","tag-she-ra","tag-social-justice","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6570"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6592,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6570\/revisions\/6592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}