Self-imposed exile from Butch-Femme.com

I recently left Butch-Femme.com, most likely for the final time.  In my three years, I tried to be a positive presence and while a lot of my posts there were academic or, at least, intellectual they were also, I hope, entertaining.  I wasn't the most popular person there, but my personality isn't one that is driven toward popularity at any rate.  About a month ago, I started a thread on BF where I asked a question about the over-the-top religiosity in the current American Presidential campaign.  In the last few days, a newcomer came into the thread and started ripping on myself and another poster, Matthew, who consistently have tried to use reason and rational argument in our postings.  This poster was insulting (to put it mildly) and the end came for me when she claimed that my posts were coming from the perspective of  'dead white men' and that there was nothing 'black or brown' about my rhetoric.  I know racism when I see it and this was easily the most racist thing said to me on BF.com.  What's more, all of these wonderful, liberal/progressive and allegedly oh-so-open-minded lesbians just sat back and watched.  No cries were raised in my defense or in the defense of Matthew, even while these women were patting themselves on the back for how 'open-minded' and 'tolerant' they putatively are. This was the straw that broke the camel's back.   All points of view are not respected, despite whatever rhetoric is used.  Rather, what is respected is fuzzy-thinking, platitudes and spiritual posturing.  Clear and reasonable thought is put-up with but is not tolerated and certainly not protected in the same way.  If this poster had said to any of a number of other BF member what she said to me, she would have been pilloried and rightly so. 

However, there is more to my leaving than merely a few incidents with a few fanatically New Age posters.  In the course of my three years there, I witnessed people doing everything they possibly could to avoid ever being in error.  By this I do not mean that folks did their homework to make sure that they had their facts straight.  Rather, they took a position that 'all world views are true to those that hold them' which, in one sense, is entirely true.  People do not believe things that they believe to be false.  However, to acknowledge the latter is not to endorse the strong relativism that has become part and parcel of the American Left.  Because if everyone is entitled to their world view and all world views are equally true (well, except a scientific or rational world view.  Say that you believe that the Virgin Mary appears in your tortilla, THIS is to be respected.  Say that humans share a recent common ancestor with chimps, and no such respect is forthcoming) then you need never be wrong.  The logic of this (if you can call it that) is straightforward.  If the person you disagree with can never be wrong, you can never be wrong.  It doesn't matter how contra-factual the statement is, if you believe it, it's true, and therefore it cannot be wrong. 

To offer up another example from BF.com, someone posted some New Age poppycock about a polar flip that is supposed to occur on 12 December 2012.  Now, at some point the magnetic poles will flip but this will not be a physical shift of the planet, merely the magnetic poles.  It has happened before, it will happen again.  Another poster, picking up the theme, claimed that the map of the Earth would change (it won't) and that this would be a sign of 'the final alien invasion' (I am not making this up, I swear).  So, it was left to me to point out what a polar shift entailed, why the map of the Earth won't change and why this has nothing to do with the orbital direction of the planet.  But did it make any difference?  No, of course it didn't!   Folks are still convinced that this has to do with the Mayan calendar, alien invasions and the planet literally being turned upside down!

At some point, I had an epiphany that folks not only dislike being wrong but that this particular sub-culture is obsessed with never having to admit to error.  From the 'if I don't call you wrong, you don't call me wrong' to the embrace of ignorance as a sign of moral strength and mature wisdom, it became clear to me that the worst thing that could ever happen was that one might have to say "I was wrong" or "I was in error".  And so, by unspoken agreement, a mythology has become an ideology.  The mythology is that we can get through life without having to admit error.  The ideology is multicultural relativism. 

Let me be clear that when I talk about multicultural relativism, I am talking about bromides like the idea that Native Americans are one with the Earth (they aren't, ask the Anasazi--oh, that's right, you can't they wiped themselves out in an environmental disaster), Indigenous People are holistic thinkers, etc.  What's more, the 'we love this' attitude, which I do not dispute or doubt, covers over the elephant in the progressive living room; these ideas are the very essence of racism.  It does not matter that one is coming from the perspective of "this is something to celebrate", the moment you start to say "well, Asians have an affinity for calculus and I respect people who can do calculus so that's wonderful" you have engaged in a stereotype and have made a statement that is, at its heart, racist.  (As a quick aside which I'll take up in another blog post, racism is not just what the guys in white sheets do)  It is racist because it attributes to a group qualities more appropriately adhering to individuals.  Saying "Indigenous People" are holistic thinkers dehumanizes the people talked about.  It does not matter if one is talking about ones' in-group, if one attributes this to something that people of group X are, because they are members of that group, it is still racism and still dehumanizing.  Wrapping it up in nice language doesn't change that equation at all.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Greatest Hits - Don't Come Around Here No More