[tedks]

This isn't the decline of agency, it's feminism and anti-racism creating agency for oppressed people.

Traditionally, if a woman or ethnic minority is being harassed in their workplace, they are unable to speak out against it for fear of being fired by their bosses. In this sense, capitalist hierarchies (as the author identifies) are used to enforce gender and race hierarchies.

Now that it's become unacceptable to be outwardly racist or sexist, capitalist hierarchies are occasionally used to stop oppressive behavior. This is still rare, and not at all at the level it should be, but this is a positive trend. Just as we as a society decided that public segregation was not acceptable in the 1960s, we as a society are currently in the process of deciding that private bigotry is not acceptable.

What the author is really calling for any conflict between privileged and oppressed people to be limited to exactly those people -- which of course means the privileged person wins.

The author misses exactly the point of liberatory social struggle: to reduce the agency of privileged people, in favor of expanding the agency of oppressed people.

(As an aside, to appeal to class when discussing software engineers is laughable. I'll take the author seriously on this when he starts organizing a union for developers in his workplace.)

[epochwolf]

This is arguing the ends justify the means. Allow me to quote a relevant section of the article as to why this is a bad idea.

> Appealing to capital to enforce one’s political agenda (no matter how noble that agenda might be) implicitly places that agenda as reliant upon and subject to capital itself. It’s just plain bad politics.

> ...it sets a terrible precedent. It expands the role of the employer to managing the totality of our lives, rather than limiting that influence to our professional lives. It changes us from professionals into frightened children.

[tedks]

This rings very hollow to me. When I was in school we were constantly reminded that employers would mine our social media and that we need always police ourselves to ensure we were maximally employable. This xkcd reflects that sentiment: http://xkcd.com/137/

I would also point out that virtually all liberal activism is an appeal to some authority to enforce political ends. All electoralism, even, conservative or liberal, is an attempt to appeal to an authority to enforce political ends.

The author doesn't seem like enough of a radical to be able to make the claim that political action should be entirely self-contained direct action; if he is he's misguided for thinking that tactical use of capital or electoral resources makes the political movement in any way subservient to those resources! Resources are resources and anyone with political (or indeed any) goals should use all those available to her.

[sqrt17]

There is a slight difference between name-calling and oppression. Oppression can only be done from a position of power, and it stabilizes the power of the oppressing. Namecalling can be done by any person who wants to do it, because it does not presuppose or enforce any kind of power relation.

Pure namecalling can be differentiated from libel/slander (saying things that are discreditable), abuse of employees (which presupposes and enforces an extant power relation) or ethnic or sexual discrimination (where the offender encourages the public to discredit a whole group of people).

Claiming that all men are potential rapists would be both slanderous and discriminatory. Calling someone a cunt or a dick on the internet is a public display of immaturity, whichever the sex of the calling and/or of the callee. Insinuating that such namecalling is slanderous is ridiculous, and the claim that it's sexual discrimination doesn't ring true to me. Obviously repeated and insistent immature behaviour towards someone would constitute harassment, but we're not talking of that either - we're talking of someone writing a tweet and then deleting it shortly after.

It's also outside of the sphere where working conditions within a company are affected - someone writing and then deleting a tweet is hardly having a lasting influence. Which means that it's not within the obvious interest of an employer to maintain good working conditions.

What role is the employer then fulfilling? It is an agent for the privilege of female outrage, a modern "lese majeste" that, through the construction of women as an oppressed minority (spoiler: they're not a minority and more of those that speak out are annoyed than oppressed), allows an ill-meaning person to terrorize people without fear of reprisal.

You're also using a different definition of agency: the author uses agency as a term for responsible action by the person (her|him)self, whereas you include people acting on your behalf. The idea of female hypoagency is exactly that women have less of the former and more of the latter than men do, and a widespread criticism of (a particular variety of) feminism is that it reinforces female hypoagency while outwardly claiming a goal of achieving equality. To which the proponents of that particular variety of feminism reply that females need to be more equal than the others, because they are an underprivileged group.

[tedks]

> There is a slight difference between name-calling and oppression. Oppression can only be done from a position of power, and it stabilizes the power of the oppressing. Namecalling can be done by any person who wants to do it, because it does not presuppose or enforce any kind of power relation.

A man using misogynist slurs against a woman seems to be oppressive by any reasonable metric.

Based on the rest of your comment, it seems you are confused as to what oppression is, if you think men are somehow oppressed by feminism. Awakening as a feminist is the most liberatory action I have experienced in my entire life as a man. It has made every aspect of my life better and if you are a man and continue to be a reactionary and an anti-feminist I genuinely pity you. I hope you have enough sense to stop holding the proverbial fire hose on the civil rights protest. I hope you can find it in your heart to let go of privilege, whatever the benefits to you personally might be, in favor of tolerance, love and respect for your fellow humans, and forward-thinkingness.

[JoeAltmaier]

I think many bristle against feminism for exactly the reasons you give: they want tolerance and respect instead of blame. The blame-language is endemic to the feminist literature - e.g. men are 'privileged' when they exercise ordinary rights that women would like to share.

[tedks]

>The blame-language is endemic to the feminist literature - e.g. men are 'privileged' when they exercise ordinary rights that women would like to share.

I don't follow. Is the act of being able to exercise basic human rights not a privilege if others are denied those rights? Why the scare quotes?

[A_COMPUTER]

If some baseline human right can be defined as a privilege, then there still needs to be terminology to distinguish it from undeserved privilege so that it can be properly addressed. Undeserved male privilege should be eradicated, but basic human rights and dignity should be extended to all. I have seen some people make this distinction and some not when using this term.

[tedks]

For most of feminism "privilege" was not a concept. There is only the concept of oppression and possibly of rights. The introduction of "privilege" came to try to explain oppression to men in ways they could more easily stomach, and is something I personally tend to avoid because I'm not shy about confronting men with the damages of masculinity.

You'll notice that framing many things in terms of privilege removes the concept of the oppressor. Men oppress women though rape and sexual harassment, but a privilege notion frames this in terms of "men have the privilege not to be raped or sexually harassed", is a passive-voice esque weasel.

So, if you're confused, just think in terms of oppression. Oppression needs to be eradicated. Any advantages stemming from oppression of women will be eradicated with the oppression that enforces them.

Of course, if what you really care about is not liberatory social justice, but playing language-lawyer to avoid confronting the ways in which you, personally, oppress women and benefit from the oppression of women, this will not help you; you will not become a wiser and better person; you will be left in the dustbin of history with the people who opposed integration of public schools and gay marriage.

Choose carefully.

[JoeAltmaier]

That's the dirty word, used to explain that men aren't owed anything, its all unearned respect and undeserved rights.

If they aren't owed then I guess women don't need them either, right?

[opendais]

Would you say a woman using gender-based insults against a man to be considered oppressive when she has the power to have men fired?

[rrss1122]

Are we really achieving equality for women and ethnic minorities when we are using the old system's punishments on so-called privileged classes though? You do not achieve equality for oppressed people by oppressing the former oppressors. This is not a positive trend, this is still bullying.

New system, same as the old system.

[tedks]

The old system's punishments are not oppressive in a vacuum. Firing someone is obviously not always oppressive. Oppression is created by a hierarchical social context, not by any isolated act.

You'll note that this person wasn't fired because they spoke out against women objectifying him in his workplace, he was fired because he was using misogynist slurs on social media and generating negative publicity for his company.

It's often difficult for technical people to think of social justice correctly, because we're used to seeing things in terms of very reduced concepts. When we think of social justice we have to think in terms of social relationships, not of individual actions. Actions that are oppressive in one context can be liberatory in others.

[gress]

Agency is not a zero sum game. We don't have to reduce the agency of 'privileged' people. We just have to resist oppressive behavior.

[tedks]

You're right that agency is not zero sum, but in this case we can see privilege as having enhanced agency in some areas (ability to call women names on social media with impunity, ability to command higher salaries, ability to get into better schools, etc.) and oppression as not having agency in those areas.

Resisting oppressive behavior is limiting the agency of privileged people to oppress others.

You can construct some notion of agency that doesn't say these words, but at the end of the day you're reducing the amount of available actions and that is reducing agency. Sometimes it is good to reduce agency.

[gress]

You are conflating agency and privilege. In the case of resisting oppression, the available actions are unchanged, but the consequences are different.

[tedks]

This is a weak sort of agency. Indeed I'm able to resist capitalist oppression by not working, but if the consequences are that I starve to death than I hardly see that as a reasonable outcome.

I think this is an uninteresting definitional question at this point, though. If I'm misusing agency than so is the author of this piece; the important thing is that we be able to communicate, which I think is possible. If you want to further nitpick specific words to garner karma, do it with someone else.

[gress]

There are lots of other things you can do to resist capitalist oppression - e.g. Unionize, or create other kinds of social support. A strawman isn't very useful.

I'm sorry you've chosen to be accusatory instead of reasonable.

[aidenn0]

Agency seems to be zero-sum to me. If I can command 100s of people who have to do whatever I please, then granting them freedom reduces my freedom.

Giving someone freedom necessarily reduces the freedom of those who previously took advantage of their lack of freedom.

[gress]

Agency is not zero sum. That's why you couldn't use it to make your argument and had to switch to using the word 'freedom' to construct a straw man.

[aidenn0]

Plese educate me on the difference, as (at least in this context) they seem to be interchangable.

[edit]

To clarify, consider a hypothetical total autocracy, where the autocrat makes a decision, and everyone's behavior is altered by various means. By my reasoning, the autocrat has collected everyone's agency to themself.

Maybe it's not a perfect zero-sum, as you have inefficiencies in the system, but it does seem that you reach a point at which increasing one person's agency happens only at the expense of reducing others'

[gress]

Your example of the autocrat who has a magical means to alter everyone's behavior is totally artificial and has no corollary in the real world, and therefore isn't relevant to the real world concept of agency.

[aidenn0]

Given that it is possible to alter people's behavior via non-magical means, I disagree that it's "totally artificial"

[carlsmith]

Wow! Is this for real or a white dread, lesbian, earth first parady?

[arzugula]

What a load of crap. Shanley spews rude, toxic, curse-laden streams of hatred at people in the tech industry with her every waking-hour.

When someone returns the favor she has them stripped of their livelihood, tries to ensure he can't ever return to the industry, and then tweets her delight over the situation.

You want to talk privilege? How about Shanley is the founder and owner of a successful media company vs. this guy was a lowly contracting programmer at a startup nobody's heard of? How is Shanley at all oppressed in comparison to this dude?

Is this 3rd grade? "I use put-downs on other people to build myself up!" How about you don't reduce _anyone's_ agency and instead work to lift everyone up to the same level. Your zero-sum approach to gender equality solves nothing while increasing resentment, mistrust, and hatred.

[carlsmith]

Right on brother man.