I'm in the Market for Shoes Made Out of Soapbox

So, due to a lot of stupid reasons I would summarize as old-car-smash-and-go-boom, I've spent the last week trying to buy a car. Early on in this whole process my mom made a comment about not liking one of the car dealers we went to because she knew him in high school and he traded his wife in for a "newer model" a few years ago. It struck me how in our capitalist world, I can draw some weird parallels between buying a car and choosing a significant other. There are a lot of factors to consider about the car/person you want. Some people have snazzier features than others, some people are more high maintenance and less reliable, some are more attractive while others have more substance, some will fuck you up more than others if you get in an accident. But then I felt kind of gross. If people are like consumable products, no wonder divorce rates are so high.

It makes me wonder if maybe anti-capitalist activism is a more important component of the radical feminist agenda than I usually want to admit. It seems to me that if women are seen as consumable, if porn, prostitution, sex clubs, and plain human trafficking is big business, maybe that is all part of the larger fall-out of a system where people build their identities based on the objects they buy and perceive the people in their life as defined by the objects they buy. At what point do people stop being people and become things? When does the character of what we own, characterize us altogether? In a certain light, it's a good example of identity politics at its worst. And I think that its a large part of what fuels the modern boycotting tactics that I see used with so much frequency among my peers.

To me, boycotting something is not an effective or particularly impressive form of activism because it rarely, if ever, is successful unless it is organized on a massive scale. And even if it does manage to accomplish some of it's goals, I'm still unconvinced that the best way of acting out politically is by abstaining from an action. It seems to me that you'll do more for sweatshop workers by organizing a campaign to send them aid or to lobby congress than by refusing to buy ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING from insert-outrage-of-the-week-here, only shopping at thrift stores, or dumpster diving all the time. But thinking about boycotts in the context of our consumer-identified culture, I realize that often it's not about helping workers or changing the system at all; it's about identity. By NOT owning or consuming product X, you and your identity can somehow stay untainted of the blood that is on this entire country's hands. The logical fallacy in question? If you are what you buy, what you do NOT buy is what you are not.

To be fair, I realize that it's really difficult to deal with the guilt, frustration, and powerlessness of being an American with a conscience. There are definitely times when I feel totally demoralized about my ability to do anything about where this country is going. Sometimes I wish that I could drop out of it entirely, stop buying, stop eating, stop existing, stop stop stop. I want to shut my eyes and lock my door and pretend that if I don't do anything, well at least I won't be hurting anyone. The truth is though, other people, the planet, animals, fucking FUNGI suffer because of things I do on a daily basis. I can only boycott so much and the general population isn't willing to give up hardly any of the comforts they enjoy. I don't blame them. We are raised feeling entitled to them. We can no longer really conceptualize our lives without them. And knowing these things, I feel like the only way to push out of the rut we're in is to be pro-active, to DO, to give time and effort and money and not just withold those things when we come across something we don't like.