Perspectives

LET’S CHECK OUR THIN PRIVILEGE- AGAIN! A RESPONSE TO MATILDA CARTER’S “CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE A LITTLE MORE THOROUGHLY”

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Matilda Carter’s original article here.

by Robyn Sands

It doesn’t take a long look at society to see that ‘fat-shaming’ is a problem. Katie Hopkins recently put on 4 stone for a TV project called ‘To fat and back’, going from 8 to 12 stone (am I the only one who thinks she looks great?) with the express purpose of ‘proving’ to fat people that being fat is their fault for being ‘lazy’. And while her particular brand of in-your-face nastiness might not be representative of the entire country, her attitudes towards size are unfortunately widely held. Despite the average size for women in the UK being 16, shop mannequins and clothes models are nearly always a size 6 to 8, a ‘plus size’ model wears a UK size 12, and moral judgements about body size and shape are rampant in our media. This particularly affects women, who are taught from an early age that we are entitled to a smaller physical space than men.

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FERGUSON AND BEYOND: WHAT TO SAY NEXT

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by Cadi Cliff

When a celebrity says something explicitly racist, we make a noisy ritual of shunning them. We’re able to do this because the multiculturalism movement changed the rules of civility.  It has taught us what not to say to each other, but not what to say next.

Michael Brown, 18, was shot on August 9 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. The black teenager was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, 28, a white Ferguson police officer. The disputed circumstances of the shooting and the subsequent protests have ignited debate about law enforcement’s relationship with African-Americans and use of force by the police. The grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer over the death of Eric Garner came ten days after a grand jury in Missouri decided that Darren Wilson should not face criminal charges. The failure of any prosecution in both the Brown, Martin, and Garner cases highlights a trend in the American judicial system; once is a tragedy, twice is a pattern.

Every time toxic, tragic events reveal the unequal ways that different Americans experience re-segregation and state violence, we talk about having a productive discussion, but we never really have it. Instead, we’ve regressed a half-century in our racial progress.Continue Reading

WORK IN A POST SCARCITY WORLD

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by anonymous

Unemployment in this country, as well as in most of the Western world, is the buzzword on people’s lips. Our generation is constantly demonised as lazy, feckless and unable to face the harsh realities of adult life. We lack the work ethic of those before us, or so people say, and our entire country is doomed to economic failure because of it. Many of us choose to live off of minimum wage jobs and pursue other interests; there are even some people, though few in number, who choose to live off of welfare. Why? Well the right wing press would tell you it’s because our parents did a bad job of raising us. I would argue that it’s because we’re undergoing a fundamental shift in our way of life, and we’re still wedded to old, outdated ideas.

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CAN BUSINESS BE RADICAL?

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by anonymous

Business seems to be the very opposite of a radical political strategy. Businesses are, after all, the primary unit of the way capitalists view the world and are, by virtue of their definition, intrinsically linked into the capitalist system. When left-wing radicals talk about how goods and services would be distributed in a post-capitalist world, they focus on need rather than profit, and social good rather than endless innovation. In the long-term, businesses as we know them are terrible for our livelihoods, our understanding of each other as people and for the majority of the human race. However, given the distinction between short-term and long-term strategies I laid out in my last article, the question remains: can business be part of a short-term radical political movement?Continue Reading

THE BLURRY LINE BETWEEN EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION

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by anonymous

As Russell Brand and his particular form of revolutionary politics has seemingly become the popular voice of the disillusioned left in recent months, disengagement from electoral politics among us seems more and more prevalent. Brand’s views on the current political system are legitimate, insightful even, but as many left wing commentators have written in recent months, his conclusions are at best incomplete and, at worst, highly dangerous. Given the rise of UKIP and the right across Europe and growing inequality, it is important for us to acknowledge that revolution and evolution are not mutually exclusive. Continue Reading

ADULT EDUCATION AND THE FLYNN EFFECT

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by anonymous

In a rather incendiary headline earlier this year, The Independent presented findings from a survey for Kings’ College London and the Royal Statistics Society that seemed to prove that the British public were “wrong about everything”. From overestimating the number of migrants in the country to believing that crime is rising whilst all the evidence shows that it is falling, it seems that we live in a society of stupid people who believe stupid things, which I’m sure The Independent are delighted about.Continue Reading

IN DEFENCE OF THEORY

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by Jack Palmer

Like any well-trained student, I’ll open with a quote. It’s one from the forever-sniffing, forever-scruffy, cultural critic and contemporary theorist Slavoj Žižek: “We need theory more than ever today. We should not feel terrorized by this false sense of moralistic emergence: ‘no time for theory, people are starving’ and so on. My god, it is only through theory that we have at least a hope to learn what to do!”

Žižek’s assertion is a provocative one: it challenges our understanding of that word ‘theory’. In the scientific sphere, ‘theory’ means a comprehensively proven idea – one, crucially, that forms the foundation for knowledge. In the humanities by comparison, ‘theory’ is abstract: it’s speculative, faddish and maybe even a little indulgent. But the claim staked here is that theory in the humanities is not all groundless conjecture; for Žižek it’s vitally grounded, and where the real work of thinking happens.

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CAN SCIENCE BE RADICAL?

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by Ella Gilbert

One of the most fundamental rules of science that any student will learn is the importance of objective thought. The strength of scientific observation lies in the ability to weigh up evidence without assuming pre-defined outcomes, while investigating all possible hypotheses with equal exactitude. The triumvirate of ‘reliability, accuracy and precision’ are concepts drilled into students throughout their education, and the importance of withholding judgment until conclusions can reliably be drawn is underlined in experimentation and practice. Indeed, the process of science in itself is about careful, reasoned consideration of the available evidence, rigorous data analysis and logical extrapolation and conclusion. Science’s strength lies in its claims to objectivity – it wouldn’t work without it. Any deviation from these well-defined parameters and rules constitute ‘bad science’, tainted with opinion, ideology or personal belief. So, in this context, can science be radical? Or should it?Continue Reading

AN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH – MEN UNDER PATRIARCHY

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by anonymous

The case of Elliot Rodger sent a shiver down the spine of people both inside and out of the feminist movement. This callous slaughter erupted from a mind so confident in its twisted perspective that the perpetrator seemed to view the act as entirely just. It’s not often that we get to see a detailed video of a murderer explaining his motives and the video Rodgers shot before taking innocent lives seemed to confirm the fears feminists have about male entitlement, slut-shaming and the patriarchy in general. In fact, news analysis seemed to, perhaps uniquely, speak with one voice: we live in a misogynistic society and this is what happens when young boys are brought up to believe that they are owed sex.Continue Reading

ADVOCATING THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

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by anonymous

Political debate often takes a binary form. We cast the left and right as two belligerent armies, fighting for the control of the political and economic apparatus of government and we dehumanise those who disagree or object to our values as part of an amorphous mass of evil. If you oppose aspects capitalism, then those on the right will cast you in the light of a statist, Stalinist, pseudo-intellectual and if you mention any benefits of the system then the most diehard socialists will dress you down with all the fervour of a zealous priest, preaching platitudes and quotes from Das Kapital. This is not something we should necessarily take the blame for, as much research suggests that it is a borderline insuppressible instinct, in fact I do it several times in this article, but I open with this because I’m about to attempt to defend believers in the global free market economy.

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