I think the bad politics just kind of stem from thinking that Functionism is the Bad Politics of the Bad Guys, and exists solely as a vehicle for bigotry and to justify the oppressive structures in the story. And fair enough, if you read Functionism as entirely a race and gender metaphor, that might make for a sensical frame, since there are no racist stereotypes that are founded in reality.
However, if I lean towards an allegorical reading, I mostly lean towards one of class and ability -- and while ableist stereotypes sound similar to racist ones, some of them are actually tenuously based in reality, which means that countering them requires a completely different strategy, and flat denial won't fully cover them.
It's why I make the distinction between lower case functionism as a framework of mecha sociology and and upper case Functionism as an overt political position. Both IDW and Aligned technically only have upper-case Functionism but that simply means lower case functionism is fully left as an unexplored field for me to take a stroll around, y'know?
(Another thing is that I don't think it makes a ton of sense, if you're trying to map real world liberal-socialist politics onto the robots, to argue that anti-Functionism is the communist "to each according to their needs" position. Megatron is much more of a toxic individualist than anyone, the Decepticons are founded on a principle of Fuck You Got Mine -- if you want to explore real-world political allegory, then his revolutio would be a Chicago School one, not a communist one.)
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Date: 13/3/22 09:04 (UTC)I think the bad politics just kind of stem from thinking that Functionism is the Bad Politics of the Bad Guys, and exists solely as a vehicle for bigotry and to justify the oppressive structures in the story. And fair enough, if you read Functionism as entirely a race and gender metaphor, that might make for a sensical frame, since there are no racist stereotypes that are founded in reality.
However, if I lean towards an allegorical reading, I mostly lean towards one of class and ability -- and while ableist stereotypes sound similar to racist ones, some of them are actually tenuously based in reality, which means that countering them requires a completely different strategy, and flat denial won't fully cover them.
It's why I make the distinction between lower case functionism as a framework of mecha sociology and and upper case Functionism as an overt political position. Both IDW and Aligned technically only have upper-case Functionism but that simply means lower case functionism is fully left as an unexplored field for me to take a stroll around, y'know?
(Another thing is that I don't think it makes a ton of sense, if you're trying to map real world liberal-socialist politics onto the robots, to argue that anti-Functionism is the communist "to each according to their needs" position. Megatron is much more of a toxic individualist than anyone, the Decepticons are founded on a principle of Fuck You Got Mine -- if you want to explore real-world political allegory, then his revolutio would be a Chicago School one, not a communist one.)