The site Everyday Feminism is devoted to two things: 1. Making listicles, and 2. Telling you why you’re oppressive. It’s good for a few chuckles, but its propensity for shaming everyone also exemplifies the identity politics that are ruining the Left. Go have a look at the front page and see how many ways you’re part of the problem.

When I saw the headline below on the Everyday Feminism site (click on screenshot to go to article), I had a pretty good idea what I’d be reading.

I thought I’d be reading a call for more violence in protests. I wasn’t wrong. But it’s a deeply confused piece, as none of the reasons it gives for the conclusion below lead to that conclusion, Here’s the conclusion first:

But we all need to be more critical about how we define violence, because we’re seeing a lot more marching, protesting, and direct action than has previously been covered in mainstream news media. And while it might make us uncomfortable to acknowledge, violence is often a necessary tool of resistance. The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can end oppression.

Well, it was only a matter of time. . .

Now the author, Kim Tran, doesn’t really specify what kind of violence is a “necessary tool of resistance”, but one gets the sense, especially from her discussion of MiloGate, that it’s okay to riot, break windows, loot, and maybe even shoot people. Here are her “reasons” (quotes indented, emphasis the author’s):

1). Non-Violent Action Has Always Been Violent In other words, the Civil Rights Movement that you think of as nonviolent actually included many actions that you might consider violent. Moreover, it’s important to note that the super nonviolent act of existing as a person of color has historically been in and of itself enough to get you killed. Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and Black people have been continuously killed for minor – if any – offenses. . . . It’s time to recognize that not all violence is created equal. Part of nonviolent protest has always been violent, and in fact, some of what we call “violence” might not be violence at all.

People do have the right of self defense if they’re being threatened by other people (not, however, police), but this argument fails to show why demonstrators should initiate violence.

2). What’s Legal Isn’t Always What’s Right A lot of people are encouraging activists to stay within the limits of the law when it comes to direct actions resisting their oppression. If you agree with these people, you might claim that the US has mechanisms in place for state-sanctioned protests. You tell us, “don’t break windows, don’t disrupt the peace, don’t assemble without a permit,” and so on. In other words, don’t stray from the boundaries of what the government has decided is legally permissible. But allow me to remind people that the law has never been race neutral and often, it hasn’t been fair.

Absolutely true! Much civil disobedience during the 1960s in the service of civil rights involved illegal actions against unjust laws. But those were peaceful protests, the heart of civil disobedience. And it was the peaceful nature of those protests, and those of the Indians resisting British occupation, that helped forward their causes. Again, Tran doesn’t make a connection between illegal peaceful protest and her perceived need for illegal violent protest.

3). Civil disobedience Needs to Be Disruptive Civil disobedience requires that we resist what looks, feels and frequently functions like the same old system we’ve grown accustomed to our entire lives. It means we decide en mass [sic] to walk out of work or school, to strike and boycott our favorite restaurants or rideshare apps because we must interrupt the ways economic, political, and physical violence has became routine.

Well, civil disobedience needn’t always be disruptive of people’s activities, simply of their sentiments, as in lunch counter sit-ins. Regardless, though, the actions that Tran mentions here are not violent, but peaceful. That is, unless she redefines violence, which of course is what the Regressive Left wants to do so they can ban speech they don’t like.

4). Ask who Is the Least Safe–and Why During Yiannopoulos’s talk at the University of Milwaukee, a trans student’s picture was broadcast to the crowd and mocked. Afterward, in an open letter to the administration, the student wrote: “I am done getting repeatedly abused and shit on, and expected to just take it and not be angry.” When we spend all of our time protecting the rights to “free speech” (harassment isn’t free speech, by the way) we’re protecting the rights of racists, transphobes, and pedophile apologists at the cost of the marginalized people who actually matter in this equation. We need to ask, who is the most unsafe here? Is it the millionaire white person with a fetish for dating Black men, or is it the trans, undocumented student whose life will be made a living hell when they’re outed to a room of 900 white supremacists? . . . What I’m calling for isn’t a form of the oppression olympics in which we rate everyone’s level of marginalization. I’m asking that we consider how some people at any given moment will bear the brunt of a racism, transphobia, and heteropatriarchy unevenly and that those of us with the relative ability to do so must show up to be in solidarity with them as needed.

So here we get to free speech, which appears to be “hate speech” that Tran doesn’t like. And yes, I criticized Milo for publicizing a trans student in one of his college talks. That was reprehensible, but it was not violence, and it didn’t justify violence at Berkeley. Real violence involves physical damage to people and/or property, and there’s no excuse to commit it. Sitting down at lunch counters isn’t violence. Chaining yourself to a tree about to be logged isn’t violence. Blocking entrances to nuclear weapons sites isn’t violence.Hitting someone or damaging property is violence, and is best abjured if you seek justice.

None of the four points made by Tran go even a millimeter to justify her conclusion, “violence is often a necessary tool of resistance.” But I can’t help but feel she thinks it does, and the “violence” she’s calling for is real violence, not hate speech.