An Observation

I really hate the pejorative term "slactivism," which necessarily implies there's a hierarchy of activism, some of which is more valuable than other kinds.

Some activism is more demonstrable effective than others, and some people do less than the humblebrags about their awesome advocacy suggest, and other caveats, but the thing that I've noticed about the deployment of the "slacktivism" accusation is that it's most frequently used against nontraditional types of activism being done by marginalized people.

Online petitions and Twitter campaigns, as but two examples, are sometimes pretty useless but have also been employed with great effect and meaningful success by feminist/womanist activists, among others.

They are also very accessible ways of participating for people with disabilities who can't participate in marches or demonstrations, for poor people who can't afford a bus trip to D.C., for a person working two shitty minimum wage jobs a week to stay afloat and hasn't time for sustained immersive activism, for a young person just starting to dip hir toe into political activism, and lots of other people whose voices are minimized by many traditional forms of activism.

Frankly, the only time I look at someone's participation and think, "Well, your time could certainly be better spent" is when that participation consists exclusively of auditing other people's activism, and finding it to be insufficient.

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