assumptions

TotW: Helping People

There's an old story about a man who ran up to a woman on the street, threw her to the ground, rolled her around, and beat at her. He was then called a hero and given a medal. She had been on fire, and he was putting the fire out and saving her life. It's a story about story telling, but also about how context changes the meaning of what we do.

TOTW: competing identities

It is possible to imagine that identities (as abstractions, at least) don't have to compete with each other, but the default is that they do have to (that is, that some identities are the most down-trodden, or the most crucial to the status quo, and therefore that those identities should be respected more than others and/or that the people most closely resembling those identities get extra cred). Usually this is tacit, but some theories, like some radfeminism and afro-pessimism, are pretty explicit about the foundational role they claim for the oppression of women or black people respectively. And of course to the extent that people treat class as an identity, plenty of folks are all about that as the most foundational, relevant issue.

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