I always thought of Ozy Brennan as something of a pretentious intellectual lightweight, who only achieved the status she currently enjoys by bestowing romantic affection on a handful of socially awkward geniuses for whom this was a relatively new experience, and who were so pathetically grateful for the favour that they were only too eager to allow her to ride their coattails for years, despite having very little of meaning or substance to contribute.
However, the observation that, in trying to minimize the harm and offense you cause you're optimising for being a dead person, is a genuinely penetrating insight, and my respect for her has grown significantly. When people talk about her, that should be in her greatest hits, not her incoherent rambling about the trans experience and "cis by default".
I've heard the same argument from radical environmentalists who (optimistically) say that it's not enough to just reduce your harm, you need to be better than a corpse and actually help the environment. Pesimistically they use it as a dogwhistle to call for people to commit eco terrorism.
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Notes -
I always thought of Ozy Brennan as something of a pretentious intellectual lightweight, who only achieved the status she currently enjoys by bestowing romantic affection on a handful of socially awkward geniuses for whom this was a relatively new experience, and who were so pathetically grateful for the favour that they were only too eager to allow her to ride their coattails for years, despite having very little of meaning or substance to contribute.
However, the observation that, in trying to minimize the harm and offense you cause you're optimising for being a dead person, is a genuinely penetrating insight, and my respect for her has grown significantly. When people talk about her, that should be in her greatest hits, not her incoherent rambling about the trans experience and "cis by default".
I've heard the same argument from radical environmentalists who (optimistically) say that it's not enough to just reduce your harm, you need to be better than a corpse and actually help the environment. Pesimistically they use it as a dogwhistle to call for people to commit eco terrorism.
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