Team STUFITT

by Ben Rosenfeld - July 2009 (revised)

             This year’s otherwise perfect RRR was marred by several vicious verbal attacks. In one incident, an apparently white male used the N word in a poem at the Night to Howl. Fortunately, a person who to this writer’s knowledge identifies as a Native American male condemned the slur on the spot, to rousing applause. In another incident, a young white woman overheard a white movement elder privately ask a group of rowdy wrestlers, “what are you, Mongolian”? While no one knows quite what this means, the woman was too triggered to speak up until the morning circle, where she generously complained, also to rousing applause.

            Applause won’t cut it. So long as any member of this movement oppresses any member of any racial or ethnic minority (i.e. anyone who is not White Chinese), whether publicly or quietly under his/her/their/ziz/zer breath, none of us is safe. This is especially true in light of the U.S. radical environmental movement’s longstanding hegemony over the Mongolian people. We should not model our behavior on self-pardoning Catholics who sin at the Saturday fire only to expiate at the Sunday circle (no offense to Catholics).

            In response, some have proposed the creation of a new team, STUFITT – or Strikeforce Trained to Understand, Ferret and Interrupt Trash Talk (no offense to ferrets). STUFITT would respond rapidly to gross language violations which afflict (or should afflict) the entire group, while also monitoring for those barely audible insults which might otherwise escape detection. Even this writer has from time to time muttered offensive remarks under his breath which, if unchecked, might mushroom into a full-blown politically incorrect syndrome (no offense to mushrooms).

            STUFITT operatives would of course be trained to read lips. Eventually, they would also learn to read our thoughts, based on mere gestures and expressions, enabling them to prevent humiliating slips before they occur. STUFITT could also profile subcultures within the movement, and anticipate when and under what circumstances they lash out.

            A word about the Old Guard: They are relics from an era of rank insensitivity who thought they could eradicate oppression without restricting free speech, the right to dissent, or the diabolical pleasure some people take in just being gratuitously crass on occasion. They should be permanently ostracized. One solution is to site future RRRs up steep trails far from parking lots where these doddering Neanderthals fear to tread. But this might unduly burden the barefoot-with-sores anarchist summer campers who come to wait in free food lines, and who currently make up the shock troops of the EF! movement.

            If STUFITT posts good results in its first year, we might want to empower it to pursue enhanced training techniques, greater reliance on undercover operations and informant recruitment, and the acquisition of robust listening technologies, like canine-borne eavesdropping platforms. In its annual reports, STUFITT could help bolster the badly needed case for a dry Rendezvous.

            For now, I’m sure we can all agree to purge the following words from our usage, in all contexts:  (1) paddy wagon: derived from a derogatory term for Irish people, describing the police vans used to haul them away drunk; (2) jerry-rig: from a pejorative term for German soldiers, describing their knack for using scavenged parts to repair vehicles and weapons; (3). fuck: from the Indo-European root fuk, meaning both “to strike” and “to copulate,” thus equating sex with violence; (4) biocentrism: an antiquated movement term which subordinates people and their pronouns to flora and fauna which don’t even possess pronoun consciousness.

            We must all work together to expand this list, and to remind ourselves that only by banning offensive words, regardless of their context or subtext, will we relegate them to the lexical trash heap. Irony, sarcasm, and humor simply are not funny, and have no place in this earnest movement.