Arguing that there are many bad things in the world and that geek feminists should be spending their time on those is a silencing tactic. Examples range from systemic food shortages to Microsoft's activities in the software marketplace.
There is one particular case of this which is problematic: allegations of intersectionality failure. Feminism often merits criticism for perpetrating racism, homophobia, transphobia and other oppressions and such criticism is not silencing. However, the form of it that amounts to telling a feminist forum that "we've talked way too much about gender issues here, I think we should solve race issues instead" or "only when all this feminist talk stops, can we work on anti-racism" is. This is sometimes disingenuous, coming from critics who are not themselves active in any diversity or anti-oppression movements and don't seem to have any motive other than ending the conversation.
Examples
- But There Are Starving Children In Africa!™ and relative But What About Curing Cancer??™
- "Why am I not surprised that you people don't heap derision upon Eric Raymond for his right-wing extremism and borderline racism?" [1]
- During the controversy over an anti-marriage-equality post on Mozilla's "Planet Mozilla" blog aggregator, J. Paul Reed suggested that it was wrong for anyone to focus on setting community standards, because Mozilla's CTO had donated to the campaign in favor of California's anti-marriage-equality Proposition 8 [2].
- "You live in a first world country with heat, electricity, and running water. Why aren't you happy?!" - when spoken to a visible minority whose ancestors came from an third world country, implying that she should be especially grateful for being here in x heavenly first world country.
Responses and discussions
See also
- Concern troll
- Broader issue for the closely related "but this won't solve the broader issue of sexism/inequality/oppression" tactic
