The world is not simple; important issues such as domestic abuse, suicide, sexual violence, and the pay gap, are not simple either. Each of them require individual, nuanced, and delineated conversation; in a dispassionate, depoliticised, and evidence based way. Yawn. Reads like a text book. Are you bored yet? Most people will be. The problem is, so many of these issues fall into the alluring trap of vague ideological theories, blanket assertions, homogeneity, and of course, identity politics. Why discuss the the 35+ nebulous risk factors attached to domestic violence, and their subtle interplay with one another, when we can simply reach for a one word answer, that ties the problem up into an easy solution, suitable for your next tweet. And so brings vague, shapeless theories… I call them ‘the blob’. The meandering, meaningless and above all, lazy political view points that make no effort for nuanced thinking, and instead lean heavily on hashtags, rage baiting, and recreational victimhood. The pay gap? Blame the blob. Domestic abuse? It’s the blob. Why so many positions of male power? Yup, blob did it. And why so many men homeless? Blob. No need to find another solution for any of the above problems; when angry neologisms can simply be shrieked from rooftops, with the appropriate amount of fist shaking. ‘The Patriarchy’, ‘Toxic Masculinity’, even ‘Feminism’ are now all blobs in my eyes. Each equally meaningless. Each entirely subjective. All untestable, and unfalsifiable, and able to taunt sceptics through semantic hairsplitting and dancing between the lines of plausible deniability: “That’s not what the blob means”, or “you don’t understand blob,” you may hear. And so we argue in the trenches, ignoring those who need our help strewn across the battleground between us. So, is it time we interrogated what the blob means? Is it time we upped the resolution? Is it time we challenged the blob? ~ Images by Darius Bashar, Milad Fakurian, Richard Hovarth, from Unsplash. #identitypolitics #politics

2023-08-08