Posts by Craig Young
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And to be honest, Scarlet Sorceress, some of us would much rather that the Auckland City Council repealed its implicitly transphobic ban on Manukau street soliciting and letting rental accomodation to those who might otherwise be forced into street sex work,
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We can, it's just more complicated.
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Er, no, it probably came from the fragmentation of Italian civil society after unification in the 1860s until the ascent of Mussolini, and the turmoil of German civil society during the days of the Weimar Republic. Ernest Thalmann and the KPD have to take some share of the blame for refusing to work alongside the SPD against the Nazis, though.
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...and followed it up with a brief cultural history of why the left seems to get into these dead-end spasms of cultural and social authoritarianism against popular culture from time to time. Cue the Frankfurt School, Mackinnon and Dworkin and the current anti-hiphop moral panic amongst some of us at the moment:
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Problem is, Russell, most of those street sex workers are young whakawahine and fa'afafine, so I really don't like that sort of blanket ban and I'm concerned Coney hasn't thought of that angle while declaring indiscriminate opposition. It exacerbates the effects of institutional racism and gender identity discrimination in those young transwomen's lives.
My Gaynz.Com critique of the BDO Odd Future ban is now up on Gaynz.Com:
http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/24/printer_11028.php -
This is somewhat ironic, especially considering that sex workers rights groups have major headaches with the (former) Manukau City Council's antisoliciting ordinance and refusal to let council-owned rental accomodation to street sex workers-most of whom are transgender and under ambiguous protection from the Human Rights Act at best. One wonders what Coney thinks about that...
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Anyhoo, Other Craig, many thanks for inaugurating this debate. I've penned an article for Gaynz.Com on the subject which tries to clarify the issue by pinning down what hate speech and hate propaganda/media content are, explains media effects theory to laypeople, and is firmly anti-censorship.
And hey, given my strong disapproval of hijack attempts directed against OutTakes and LA Zombies earlier this year, why wouldn't we agree on this one?
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Rich: Yeah, it was NWA, but Tiki Tane took it up, probably because it also reflects some Maori and Pacific Island experiences and perveptions of policing practice and policy in Aotearoa/New Zealand. And he had the right to freedom of expression in that context, whatever the New Zealand Police might have thought.
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As for 'hate media', it is simply film, television, Internet or other cultural products that promote the dehumanisation and vilification of specified communities of interest. In pre-Vichy France, it was Jews. In white supremacist discourse, it's African-Americans, Maori and Pacific Islands or immigrant communities. In the work of some militant fundamentalists, it is LGBT community members. And sadly, the same prevails in the case of certain Jamaican ragga music or gangsta rap.
Who was it that said "I may not agree with your words, but I will support the right to let you say them." I may support the right to freedom of expression, but that doesn't neccessarily mean that I endorse the content in this context.
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Russell, not all hip hop is. Certainly no *Polynesian* hiphop I've come across is.
However, there's a particular subgenre of such music that does have objectionable lyrics that condone violence against women, homophobic violence and intra-community gang violence. While I don't condone or endorse its censorship, I do have the right to disapprove of its content *without* urging its censorship. I have no problem at all with hiphop and rap lyrics that discuss poverty, experiences of institutional racism and other forms of social injustice within their lives- including Tiki Tane's attitude toward police officers, come to that.