Mind the Gap

I have a couple of things to say today. First of all, as a Socialist, I would like to dissociate myself from the kind of ‘unlimited socialism’ promoted by this website  .  

Their coverage of Tuesday’s pro-choice protest makes me glad I wasn’t there. I could come up with a bullshit ‘something came out at the last minute / I was washing my hair / the dog needed worming / I had to re-alphabetize my wardrobe’ excuse, but the truth is I had my doubts as to whether it would really be a peaceful protest to represent the pro-choice view. And it looks like I was right. Police brutality notwithstanding, you shouted at a group of elderly people (what, they want to kill women now? You told elderly women that? I can’t believe what I’m seeing!) and deny them the right to speak for themselves. Congratulations! You’ve managed to prove yourselves to be the real bigots.  

You’ve failed to recognise that abortion affects millions of women in millions of different ways, with different ethical dilemmas for each case. It’s not just one issue. It’s a million different issues. Besides, I won’t reiterate what I said in my previous post, but a lot of pro-life supporters are women of a certain age, and on those grounds alone, they should be respected and listened to. It’s not just about your body. It’s about everyone’s bodies.  

And besides, your body belongs to you? I thought you were against private property. If it belongs to you, why not stuff it and put it on the mantelpiece? Or sell it? Is it like the rest of your private property, that you want decisions about to be made as locally as possible? Do you keep pheasants up your cooch or serfs in your armpits? 

 I don’t know what you think you’re doing. What you are, in fact, doing, is reiterating your belief in individualism and isolation as opposed to community and socialisation.  You think you’re fighting for freedom for all of us, but as soon as anyone voices disagreement with you, we’re bigots, or all kinds of other things, and you don’t think what we have to say is of any interest to you. But if you want to liberate the lot of us, or you want us to rise up, you can’t treat us like an army of Duracell bunnies.  

If you think your opponents wouldn’t want you to have freedom of speech, that’s all the more reason to grant them theirs. You don’t want their opinions to sully your wonderful megaphone? Congratulations, you’re undoing hundreds of years of work by the left wing to grant everyone freedom of speech. You think you have to shout everytime someone is wrong, because they’re a threat to your right not to hear wrong things? Well, keep it on the fucking internet in that case, and don’t call it socialism, or freedom, or feminism, or anything else worthwhile.  

What’s the point of protest anymore? It’s just your playground, something you do in your gap year, sowing your wild oats. Sure, you do a lot of work, you network a lot, but it’s all self-promotion. All you really want is your identity, your place in the zines and announcements, if not the history books.  

If that’s all you want you can have it. It’s radioactive poison to anyone who wants to get any actual work done. Or to anyone who doesn’t like to see their hard work destroyed, or even be told what to do by a bunch of self-identified freaks with rich parents, a trust fund from grandma, and avant-garde hair that screams ‘I don’t have to work for a living’.  

Well, I’m politicised, and that’s exactly why I want nothing to do with you. You can cram your slogans where it hurts the most. Since I’m more generous than you, I’ll even let you choose where that should be.