social consequence, subculture community, and capital

For those who want light-hearted writings to keep you content: skip this one entirely. 

I'm still writing about the lolita fashion community here, but more abstractly and dispassionately than usual. 

This is still a blog post, though, so no proper citations unless y'all specifically ask.  

When Friedrich Engels coined the term "social murder", he was firstly describing a new-ish phenomenon of his time, whereby the systemic processes of industry-- poor working conditions, inadequate rest and food, the perpetual threat of starvation, and the pressure of constant wage labor-- could kill a worker just as surely as the thrust of a knife or the launch of a bullet. By adding back the "murder", the viscerality of death, Engels brought back the human animality from the detachment that delegation to systems had granted. That is, murderers who used drudgery, deception, and deprivation as weapons (rather than the brutal honesty at the barrel of a gun) were nonetheless guilty. 

The world has since changed, and with it our applications of the term social murder have broadened. Choking neighborhoods with gas turbines, eliminating healthcare programs,  setting computer-determined usurious apartment rents-- these are all modernity's postscripts onto Engels' initial message. 

Engels was watching the emergence of capitalist alienation: to survive the incoming tremors of capital's unending appetite, people sought new work in new industries in new locales. Industrialization tore people from their existing (largely informal and/or kinship based) support networks. Although this relocation was superficially voluntary, the changing world and its many crises meant the industrial centers were the only viable way for workers to survive. These people were, in effect, refugees of capital. To work or die is no choice at all. 

We, today, live in the aftershocks of that same upheaval. From food to housing to healthcare to dating, all aspects of modern life have been commodified into neat packages. We, a social species, have been atomized beyond all comprehension in order to maximize extraction. The basics of living well have been transformed into pay-to-play subscriptions; everything from transit to housing to food to dating has been turned into an app-mediated, gamified nightmare.  The working class has been paywalled out of essential social necessities. 

According to the Human Rights Campaign, there are 13 states in the United States of America where it is illegal for trans people to use the bathroom. There are 22 states that have no protection against discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation. The ACLU is currently tracking over 500 anti-LGBTQ bills, ones that may well restrict trans people's freedom of movement. If sentenced to prison, trans people are often deliberately placed with the wrong gender, with their systemic abuse serving as a 'reward' for other inmates. It is, plainly put, cruel and unusual. 

Trans people in these affected areas are in physical danger on all sides-- trans presence in public life has been declared a crime. It's technically possible for people to stay in these hostile environments, but they are taking a constant risk. This is especially true for people with bigoted birth families: leaving is their only real option. 

In the US's federal structure, it's difficult to determine whether people fleeing across state lines qualify as refugees or as internally displaced persons. Either way, trans people in Chicago or Seattle today face many of the issues experienced by refugees throughout history, including poverty, unemployment, targeted violence, and housing insecurity. 

The United States is a place of profound inequality. The same police that can be a helping hand to the few are a death sentence for others; the rich own dozens of houses while thousands die unhoused every year; an unexpected medical expense can either be trivially covered by insurance or completely exhaust emergency funds. The concept of the invisible boundary between security and precarity, America's "kill line", is particularly apt here. And for already-persecuted trans people, that kill line is much, much closer than one likes to imagine. 

 As a US-based lolita community, we are wonderfully, beautifully diverse, in gender, age, culture, wealth, and a million other prismatic spectra that characterize each scintillating, unique personality who clads themself in frills. We each embody our many intersections, and one of those intersections just happens to be on the cuter side. The nature of the fashion can both highlight and obfuscate the very different lived realities outside of the frills. For a trivial example, some members of my comm spend ample time in Japan, and are somewhat surprised to hear I have never gone. This is because of my limited finances and history of precarious museum work-- going to Japan during any of my previous employment would completely demolish my savings and possibly lead to unemployment. I don't consider my finances unusually precarious, but I'm far from wealthy. 

Other intersections can have more visceral consequences-- anecdotally, I've noticed that my Black lolita friends experience more street harassment than I do. Historic meet venues might be cute, but endless staircases and cramped corners exclude lolitas with mobility issues. Autistic lolitas might seem annoying or make inappropriate comments without meaning ill by it. These are all part and parcel of membership in a diverse community. Recognizing these differences and accommodating for them is a key part of being a mature community member and not just a part of a clique. 

Taking the kill line and the many intersections of lolita into account, it's clear that our communities need to be extra supportive of marginalized lolitas. Banning someone from a server for weird comments might be trivial if that person has secure housing and employment, but it could result in homelessness if they're a refugee relying on mutual aid. Scheduling meets carefully might be a neat cool additional weekend activity, or it might be someone's only chance to exist in public without harassment. For neurodivergent lolitas especially, a certain amount of miscommunication is to be expected.

Good community stewardship is not a matter of applying ironclad rules. Instead, community members should look into the actual consequences of those rules when applied. Safety is paramount, and tolerance requires the intolerance of intolerance. After all, in our desire to prevent our own discomfort, we might be accomplices in social murder, and I for one am not deserving of the powers of life and death. 

This is all to say: have compassion, be critical, and please take into account that actions and consequences don't apply equally in an unequal society. 

 

 

P.S. I'll be back on my goofy bullshit soon.