Update on Tasks:

OK since the last session I have made a list of 10 blog topics these ranged from

• Feminism today
• Monogamy
• Racism
• Hegemony
• Road rage with your partner
• Housing crisis
• The changing role of print media
• Health Care
• Its not ok to be white today

I Have encluded some pictures I took of some of the hard copy notes i took in prepoaration for writing here

They are not the clearest pictures but i did my best to sharpen up the focus but it gives you an idea of my thought progression and creative process.

The reason I picked this topic is because it was the riskiest it scared me the most I am about to step into the Lions den here. Unfortunately I am a straight White Male and as such I have privilege or so some would say. I don’t however feel privileged and I don’t feel that I agree with racism, homophobia or sexism which the Straight White Male moniker tends to imply that I have or am.  this is in a nutshell identity politics classifying people by the colour of their skin there sex and their sexual orientation.

why is it not ok to be white ?

Well maybe not if you look at the spectrum today its not equal… Today if you are white straight and male you are fair game it is open season. Now in writing on this topic I am confronted with my own inherent bias. I am a man and I have a mans brain. Its distinct from a female brain, not better or worse but different, more similar than different but nonetheless.

So off the bat day one I’m a male and I think like a male, then i go through society and I am shaped and influenced by that environment. this is a sentiment echoed by C Clement stone and conversely Margaret Meade said that it is a sin to just be a product of pour environment we must strive to be a product of our choices.

So Meade seems to ask more of us and calls it a sin. I  like this because we know its their, the pull to be a product of your environment and not of your choices we know its there we know its real and we know it happens all the time and we know its wrong. So its wrong to just be a product of our environment but we are pulled hegemonically to conform to this stereotype to be what we are to think the way straight white men think. This is natural enough if i was a women black or gay i would feel the pull to those causes.

So I am a product of my environment but i should strive to be a product of my choices. ok so how do i make choices? I weigh up past experience and this is where I feel the pull. The older I get the more experiences I have, the more experiences I have affect the way I go on a particular topic, the more negative the experience the I believe the negative the more positive I believe the positive it affects me and my outlook on the world. the people that i interact with also have been impacted by the society. It feels like the longer I live the longer I’m being exposed to this society and the longer It goes on the more cynical I become its like angry old man syndrome. Angry old men are annoyed because of the pussification of our culture and society. In the world that they grew up in it was ok drink drive not wear a seat-belt to be racist sexist and homophobic and it just keeps getting worse as far as they see it. so basically what im looking to do is to

I settled on the final one, upon further investigation I found that if I broke it male and I think like a male. then o go through gender or orientation. this type of hireachy and almost like an oppression Olympics its a form of identity politics that people use.

Terms like toxic masculinity, mansplaining have been taken into the mainstream and used as a pejorative to beat people over the head with.

Headings from my hypothesis:

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• How online identity politics affects people in the real world day to day
• Why its now ok to judge people based on things they have no control over
• Race orientation and Gender where do Irish people stand on this how does technology affect how people feel about this
• Is the straight white male the new Boogie Man
• Am I a toxic male
• What side are you on?
• We live in Ireland but we hear the whole world speak
• Is it fair to judge on grounds of sex race or gender online
• online being judged on grounds of identity politics
• identity politics online today how comments online affect people in Dublin
• Online identity politics why it matters today in the real world
• Online Identity politics Olympics how this affects me and you today in the real world
• Online Oppression Olympics in Dublin Ireland affects and symptoms
• Oppression Olympics and identity politics politics in Dublin
• Oppression Olympics and identity politics the state of the public sphere in Irish social media.

Risks and issues:

Biggest risk and issue in this subject seems to be avoiding being lumped in the the alt right misogynists. I don’t happen to think they are right or agree with a lot of their ideas. I felt this from my lecturers and it was here where I started to get push back on what I was researching and I could see that they didn’t like what I was finding out and moreover didn’t agree with it. This on reflection saddens me as they are not there to agree or disagree but to guide and help I did not feel helped I felt it was a very adversarial tone to the interactions in class and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Problems: 

The barriers I had to overcome was to narrow down my searches to Ireland, which I was able to do. However Angela Nagel in her book “Kill All Normies” states “that most young people nowadays develop their political views for the first time online”. so whether we like and accept it or not young people nowaydays do not get their information through the traditional media channels

Personal reflection:

I feel that as I listen to and read both sides they both tend to double down on their original beliefs and in that sens both are pulled in a Gramcian way. Hegemony and counter hegemony as Nagle puts it in her book

The ideas are now pulling on the people and pulling them away from seeing the others point of view.