The set-up in The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, is that the Bad People have managed to end women’s economic independence at the tap of a few keys on a keyboard.
You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. Not for the groceries though, that came later. It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowrie shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank. I guess that’s how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult
All those with an F in their gender slot find they have no access to whatever money they had. Bish bosh.
This came to mind after reading Cory Dotorow’s latest blog post. Here’s the key (for these purposes) bit
Where do the leopards come in, I hear you ask. Well, as per the Internet Meme, nobody thinks it will happen to them. This shit is always going to happen to the poors, the women, the people silly enough not to have chosen to be white, middle class, male, able-bodied etc. The state (and corporates) only punish and exploit those who actually, you know, deserve it, who shouldn’t get – what is the word – “uppity.” Just World belief systems etc etc.
And then, lo and behold, the leopard eats your face and you whine about it.
I am a climate obsessive, and so everything gets seen through that lens. A couple of years ago when floods ripped through German towns, shocked locals were quoted as saying “but this is the sort of thing that only happens in third world countries.” They got slammed online for racism (I am sure they didn’t notice, or care, given what had just been swept away). There is obviously some truth to this accusation, but I also think there’s a more interesting (or apologetic?) take, where we as Westerners assume that we have “conquered” (or at the very least subdued) nature. Nature only bites the poors, the women, the people silly enough…
Right, finally. The Fafocene is upon us and meanwhile, the System (man) offers us countless distractions (says the man who, with his better half, has binged The Pitt, The Wire (rewatch) We Own This City, Show Me a Hero and is now two episodes into Succession). Sometimes these “distractions” can contribute in an oblique or relatively straightforward way to a cognitive map of the blizzards.
But they’re not enough, of course – you need commentators who dig up useful facts, who are neck deep in important struggles. They will have their views, their blindspots etc. Falling under the spell of any single guru is madness, or madness begun (1) .
Cory Doctorow is not setting himself up as a guru (afaik). I’ve read a bunch of his novels, essays and attended a book reading in Manchester (where I learnt the term ‘sausagefest’ – all male questions in the Q&A). You could do significantly worse in terms of people to pay attention to. Also, Quinn Slobodian, Heather Cox Richardson, and a few others. I would be very interested to hear other folks’ suggestions for sense-makers/sense-sharers.
Finally (1) I read Tony Greenfield’s statement to the jury. Greenfield was recently acquitted of absurd charges put together by what must be a fairly desperate and demoralised Crown Prosecution Service. For me, the key bit was this –
- This hopefully banal, but if anyone is telling you they are The Way And The Truth, run – don’t walk – in the opposite direction.
marchudson.net 
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