PDA

View Full Version : Cathy Reisenwitz vs Julie Borowski




Cutlerzzz
01-27-2014, 07:22 PM
https://www.fee.org/the_freeman/arena/a-question-of-privilege

Did not see this anywhere the last few weeks or find it on RPF on google, but its kind of old now.

Who won?

specsaregood
01-27-2014, 07:27 PM
The girl on the left can stick her privilege guilt claptrap up her own privileged white ass.

Brian4Liberty
01-27-2014, 07:43 PM
The girl on the left can stick her privilege guilt claptrap up her own privileged white ass.

She's such a stereotype she's almost a parody.

Occam's Banana
01-27-2014, 08:25 PM
Did not see this anywhere the last few weeks or find it on RPF on google, but its kind of old now.

I'm certain there was a thread about this. It must have been in one of the "unsearchable" forums, like Hot Topics.

Cap
01-27-2014, 08:35 PM
Shoot, I was hoping to see a Julie Borowski tube. Damn it.

NorthCarolinaLiberty
01-27-2014, 08:38 PM
I've never heard of or seen these women. Unless they are clantily scad in a mud wrestling event, then I am not interested in this contest.

eduardo89
01-27-2014, 08:45 PM
Cathy is very pretty, too bad she's got no brains.

seyferjm
01-27-2014, 09:43 PM
Cathy and other left-libertarian types annoy me when they whine about privilege.

FloralScent
01-27-2014, 11:10 PM
Cathy and other left-libertarian types annoy me when they whine about privilege.

She's not a libertarian of any type.

Rothbardian Girl
01-27-2014, 11:31 PM
Am I missing something here? What exactly is the problem with Cathy's argument? People like Cathy don't claim that privilege is a zero-sum game in which straight white males win 100% of the time. Any honest discussion of privilege doesn't necessarily involve shaming or guilt-tripping people - it's simply understanding how the world works. Everyone is privileged in some way, just as everyone lives at the margins of society in some way. Any honest discussion of privilege also has to include the concept of intersectionality and how different forms of advantage create the society that we all live in today.

I think the excessive focus on individualism within the movement simply doesn't work that well, and it's too simplistic. The laws regulating social behavior that libertarians rail against all the time have to come from somewhere. We will never strike the problem at its root without changing societal perceptions.

PS: Today's left-libertarians are the intellectual heirs of people like Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre and Dyer D. Lum (just to name a few), who were all also rather socially radical for their time... so I'm not sure how anyone can claim that left libertarians aren't "libertarian".

PPS: The OP apparently missed the seemingly endless barrages fired by both camps on this issue... the original FEE article was popping up in my news feed on Facebook for about a week. I'm following Cathy on FB, and the debate was nothing short of entertaining, if nothing else.

fr33
01-28-2014, 12:24 AM
Well sure there's different forms of privilege. Every one of us is more or less privileged than others. The problem I have is that Reisenwitz actually says she wants government policies to try and fix it.

That and this is such a broad and incorrect generalization, that it need not be said unless one is pandering to certain groups:


While only white people are intimately familiar with the sting of affirmative action, only black children know what it feels like to be punished more often than their white peers for the same offenses. While only men know what it’s like to be feared more than women for the same behaviors, only women know what it’s like to have to choose between being successful and being liked.She just had to go there and use the word "only" repeatedly. Not even one of those statements are true.

Brian4Liberty
01-28-2014, 12:28 AM
Am I missing something here? What exactly is the problem with Cathy's argument? People like Cathy don't claim that privilege is a zero-sum game in which straight white males win 100% of the time. Any honest discussion of privilege doesn't necessarily involve shaming or guilt-tripping people - it's simply understanding how the world works.


Acknowledging privilege isn’t putting people in categories or discriminating against them. It’s recognizing that one’s identity shields oneself from firsthand knowledge of others’ oppression. This isn’t a description of how things should be. It’s an admission of how things currently are.

Berating "libertarians" for supposedly not acknowledging or understanding reality is a bit ironic followed directly by "oh, and this discussion should not result in shaming, guilt tripping, or other forms of retribution".

It's comes off as MSNBC talking points. Oppression everywhere. Social justice. Check your privilege. It concludes with several paragraphs of age discrimination. Millennials are the greatest thing in the history of mankind, and no doubt that goes hand in hand with the more and more common demonization of baby boomers. Every other group is oppressed by old, white, straight males. The solution is obvious: loyalty to the Democrat party, and an undercurrent of hatred and distrust for a certain group.

It's not enough to be against the war on drugs, and advocate for the complete decriminalization of drugs. No, if you are of the obviously uber-privileged group, you need to understand the position of those in jail for drug crimes. You must fully comprehend their position. You must explicitly and publicly express your empathy. You must acknowledge your crimes. You must walk a mile in their shoes. Hell, let's be honest, you must switch shoes, jobs and houses, and then all of the crimes in the history of world will be made right. Or maybe not.

angelatc
01-28-2014, 12:42 AM
Plus rep.

The hive-mindedness of the left never ceases to amaze me. Privilege is their new buzzword. Nobody is successful, they are privileged!

Brian4Liberty
01-28-2014, 12:43 AM
On the other hand, I do agree with her point that the "government" is not the sole root of all wrongs in the world. But it certainly doesn't mean I want to go on a collectivist witch hunt and label other groups as the source of given evils.

Rothbardian Girl
01-28-2014, 01:03 AM
It's comes off as MSNBC talking points. Oppression everywhere. Social justice. Check your privilege. It concludes with several paragraphs of age discrimination. Millennials are the greatest thing in the history of mankind, and no doubt that goes hand in hand with the more and more common demonization of baby boomers. Every other group is oppressed by old, white, straight males. The solution is obvious: loyalty to the Democrat party, and an undercurrent of hatred and distrust for a certain group.


Yeah... and? It's no secret that MSNBC establishment liberals like to pretend they actually care about issues pertaining to social justice. That doesn't mean libertarians have to eschew talking about those things. The similar social justice armies on tumblr aggravate me sometimes, too, but I can still agree with their identification of the problem even if I don't always agree with their proposed solutions. The thing that most of these MSNBC people may never realize is that the state itself is the most "obvious" agent that perpetuates divides among people. Libertarians are usually spot-on in recognizing this fact, but Cathy's main point is still valid in my view -- that the state is one piece of the puzzle, and oppressive social attitudes are the other.

I do see your point regarding her love for millennials, though. I don't necessarily agree with Cathy there, and have to wonder about her faith in them, because most of the people that tend to commit her "cardinal sins" have been millennials, from what I've seen.


Well sure there's different forms of privilege. Every one of us is more or less privileged than others. The problem I have is that Reisenwitz actually says she wants government policies to try and fix it.

I'm not sure where you are getting this from -- are you referring to her support of gay marriage? I don't think she supports it because she thinks it will "fix the problem" in the long term. I think she supports it for very much the same reasons as Stephan Kinsella supports it/ (http://www.stephankinsella.com/2009/06/the-libertarian-case-for-gay-marriage/). Gay marriage doesn't infringe on anyone's rights, but monopolizing the legal systems behind marriage and then denying people access to the benefits of legal protection does infringe on the excluded people's rights (to paraphrase Kinsella's last paragraph). This is simply an easier battle to fight than trying to persuade people who won't even consider the possibility that the state doesn't need to be involved in marriage at all.

The practicality standpoint is sometimes brought up in the context of the Civil Rights Act as well: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/06/16/david-e-bernstein/context-matters-better-libertarian-approach-antidiscrimination-law


Beyond that, my own view is that the basic federal laws banning discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations, as originally conceived in 1964—before the courts and civil rights bureaucracies devised problematic doctrines like “disparate impact” liability—were relatively benign. If everyone from farmers to military contractors to ACORN is able to successfully lobby the government to protect their interests, I don’t find it especially troubling that members of minority groups, who have more legitimate grievances than most legislative supplicants, also use legislation to protect their interests.

That doesn’t mean that libertarians have some obligation to support basic private sector antidiscrimination legislation; rather, I think that from both a moral and tactical perspective, opposition to such legislation should be rather low on the libertarian priority list. Indeed, I would be troubled if there was a sudden popular move to repeal antidiscrimination legislation, if it were unaccompanied by broader libertarian political trends, because it would suggest that opposition to such laws came arose from hostility to minority groups, not from opposition to Big Government.

I do think sometimes Cathy could be more careful with what I think are her oversimplifications (as fr33 pointed out; I could nitpick that paragraph as well), especially when the subject matter is so dicey. I guess I enjoy the uproar she causes more than her actual articles. There are people that write about the same subject matter that I agree with more. That being said, the commentary that can be found earlier in the topic (^^^) only serves to prove the points she loves to make about certain people in the so-called "liberty movement" and their treatment of women.

Anti-Neocon
01-28-2014, 01:14 AM
It seems like Cathy signs up with the "it's all whitey's (the state's) fault cause blacks get arrested more" crowd.

Same with the whole "male privilege" thing. Are there times when blacks and women are discriminated against? Sure, but it seems like most people overstate it with a smug sense of self-righteousness.

I don't think criticizing such things is "collectivist" as much as most of the time it is just wrong and based on misinterpreted statistics. I take that line of thought as more of a flawed critique on collectivists.

It's socially acceptable and politically correct to cast the white male as an oppressor over all, even when there is little to no evidence to back up such claims. I find this attitude anti-white and anti-male. And I happen to believe in equal treatment for all. I'm not some misogynist racist.

Feeding the Abscess
01-28-2014, 04:01 AM
Plus rep.

The hive-mindedness of the left never ceases to amaze me. Privilege is their new buzzword. Nobody is successful, they are privileged!

'predatory' and 'rape culture' are two others.

Brian4Liberty
01-28-2014, 11:06 AM
I don't think criticizing such things is "collectivist" as much as most of the time it is just wrong and based on misinterpreted statistics. I take that line of thought as more of a flawed critique on collectivists.


It seems pretty collectivist when they start using terms like "collective responsibility" or "collective guilt". Acknowledge your membership in the grouping!

Acala
01-28-2014, 12:00 PM
Second only to fear, the Tyrant's greatest friend is factionalism. Dividing the people and setting them against each other, spurred by envy and intolerance, insures that the people will not be able to unite to overthrow the true oppressor. Arguments, like Reisenwitz', that emphasize the differences among groups (black and white, men and women, gay and straight, young and old, rich and poor, Christian and Muslim, etc.) serve primarily to weaken and divide the people. And almost inevitably, government steps into the fray that it helped create, offering a phony solution that merely inflames the divide.

No privilege that any private citizen might have, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation, can compare with the privilege claimed by the state - to tell each of us at gunpoint what to do with our minds, our bodies, our lives, and our property. And so we should oppose anything that diverts us from defeating government coercion, which is the most pernicious, destructive, and ubiquitous privilege on Earth.

Anti-Neocon
01-28-2014, 12:08 PM
It seems pretty collectivist when they start using terms like "collective responsibility" or "collective guilt". Acknowledge your membership in the grouping!
Of course that'd be collectivist, but I don't think Cathy used those words. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Brian4Liberty
01-28-2014, 12:16 PM
Of course that'd be collectivist, but I don't think Cathy used those words. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, she didn't use those words. I was talking about the larger conversation that occurs on MSNBC and CNN.