Tolerance, acceptance, deference, dominance

Transgender extremism suggests that tolerance contains within itself the seeds of its destruction.

See

https://www.christianpost.com/news/a-parents-worst-nightmare-son-given-illegal-sex-change-operation-school-system-claims-mother.html

https://newspunch.com/texas-mother-son-undergo-chemical-castration/

The most important living US Philosopher Billie Eilish said:
”You know, some people just love horrible people. It’s weird”.

AND it can’t be said more ”philosophically” than here:

https://youtu.be/DyDfgMOUjCI

likbez @ 1

regarding the first link, as far as I can tell:

So, someone (referred to as EJK by court documents) is assigned male at birth, and has sought legal emancipation from their mother (it is not clear they were successful, though they had been living away from their mother for two years). They wish to transition. Their mother demands she has control over the now 17 year old EJK’s medical rights. EJK has stated that they a) are making the choice to transition of their own free will and b) do not wish their mother to have control over their medical decisions.

How is this “transgender extremism”, and why does this sow the seeds for the destruction of tolerance?

Oh, please.

I’m supposed to believe a couple of stories from wingnut sites, perhaps authored by some GRU operative in Mommie Dearest Russia?

I’m not sure I’m reading you right but this post suggests that you see identity politics as a strategic choice rather than a thing that often just sort of happens when you have egalitarian ideals but unfair treatment of individuals mainly because of the social groups they belong to.

Can we really avoid identity politics at this point?

It is true that there is now orientation away from tolerance because tolerance depends on dominance.

Another way to look at this is that the more heated battles in identity politics (broadly defined) are occurring now because the dominant group is having difficulty with the shift from noblesse oblige ‘granting’ of equality to others to the insistence by these others on complete and total equality.

To oversimplify, when people in whatever oppressed identity group come to ask themselves ‘why can’t I be on a completely equal footing with those who do well/benefit from, etc. the current system?’ they tend to lose patience with noblesse oblige, and are unwilling to behave with deference. Deference might seem too much like internalizing one’s inferiority or the rightness of someone else’s dominance.. This means that the groups are more likely to demand things from others rather than wait to receive them.

These things are necessary for full social equality but there will be a lot of hostility among some within dominant groups, and you’re now seeing people commit to whatever version of social hierarchy they think works best for them. They ignore or are blind to whatever versions they’d be screwed by. They tend to make common cause on the naturalness of that social hierarchy, and the importance of social hierarchy generally.

This is one reason why affinities between oppressed identity groups aren’t merely strategic. Having recognized the legitimacy of this type of demand for full equality for themselves, people with certain identities are probably more likely to recognize it for others. Certain subcultures within oppressed group develop a set of standard moral responses–and these types of demands for full equality for others will seem par for the course. They’ll commit themselves to meeting them even for groups whose political interests aren’t clearly aligned with their own. Often though, the political interests are broadly aligned but this process does create moral affinities, and general commitments to egalitarianism that the far right ridicules but which follow logically from a broad commitment for social equality.

Even so, there are fights among groups struggling for different types of social equality. Sometimes they are actually in one another’s way or are viewed as competition for resources. Sometimes the concern seems more symbolic and maybe motivated by worries that there isn’t enough equality to go around.

The interesting consequence is maybe the only power some people making claims for equality have is the power of moral suasion. They are depending on the broader acceptance of social equality, and the logical extension to themselves. So naturally a backlash tries to undermine their moral standing. E.g., you have people calling transgender people ‘transgender extremists.’ In order to strengthen their case, they predict a lot of devastating outcomes when full recognition of equality comes to pass. I cannot think of a case where this is not reactionary but the anti-trans movement definitely tries to cloak their backlash in terms that take up earlier moments in identity politics. This is because they are trying to convince people who have already committed to egalitarian norms.

The dynamic JQ describes does occur often, but it is not the whole story. I think two distinctions can help in separating where it works from where it doesn’t.

The first is between symbolic and concrete relative positioning. JQ is describing a realm in which hierarchies are matters of symbolic exchange: do I relate to you as my inferior, equal or superior? A lot of social interaction is like this. But there are also concrete hierarchies in which people exercise power over others or gain relative advantage irrespective of how their actions are displayed symbolically. In its pure form, for instance, institutional racism is a hierarchy that is not visible at the individual level but shows up through the structural dynamics of the institutions people are embedded in. I think of the interaction between racial segregation in housing, unequal access to credit and the financing of public schools through local property taxes as an example of this. No single individual has to be racist in outlook or intent for the system as a whole to reproduce generation after generation of extreme injustice.

The second is between zero-sum and positive-sum redistributions. Some inequalities are largely zero-sum, in the sense that the benefits to those on the top are due to the deprivations of those on the bottom. An example is the gender division of labor in housework, where more chores for you means more freedom from them for me and vice versa. The Marxist view of profit works that way too (but not necessarily other views). And then there are inequalities in which the benefits of the better off group don’t depend on the deprivation of others, such as the risk of being arbitrarily abused or killed by the police. I’m white and less likely to experience this abuse than someone who isn’t, but ending this abuse for them doesn’t put me at any greater risk.

I think identity politics has been excessively divisive (more precise: has engendered surplus divisiveness) because of the blurring of these two distinctions. Contests over symbolic status, as JQ points out, have an inherent zero sum aspect, especially as we move to the meta level of who should have the right to award respect in the first place. To some extent, these contests are an unavoidable part of social change, and we just have to roll with them. Unfortunately though, symbolic disputes have tended to crowd out concrete ones, where it is often possible to find (ahem) Pareto improvements.

Meanwhile, there is very little awareness of the difference between zero and positive sum situations, as shown by the tendency to call all relative advantages “privilege”. A privilege is an unjust, unearned benefit, typically based on the exclusion of others. (Membership has its privileges because nonmembers don’t get them.) Private equity billionaires who profit from exorbitant surprise medical bills that bankrupt ordinary people drip with privilege. But heterosexual couples who benefit from marriage laws did not gain at the expense of non-hetero couples that were excluded, and changing the laws to benefit the latter does not harm the former (except perhaps in the world of symbolic hierarchies).

We are awash in sloppy thinking about difference and hierarchy. (There’s a lot more than what I’ve brought up here.) Why we’re in this mess is an interesting question.

@notGoodenough:

Help us out here if you would and don’t ask questions of the likes of “likbez”, “ph”, “steven johnson”, et al.

They might answer!

This is a deep and subtle topic, into which I venture with great caution.

But going through the OPs claims: if identity politics involves “a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly” can that not be applied to majority groups?

“the idea of tolerance implies the existence of a dominant group that does the tolerating”. Fair enough, unless you are arguing that there should in fact be no dominant groups.

“Members of the formerly dominant group may be willing to extend acceptance to others, but …they expect to be treated as the default identity for the community as a whole.” Well yes, heterosexuals expect to be the default identity. In Japan, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Scotland people of those groups overwhelmingly expect that to be the default identity for their communities. Do you have any problem with that? You may be aggrieved that people in England, Australia etc may believe similarly: why?

“Instead of being accepted as one element of a diverse community, the formerly dominant group becomes the object of hostility and derision.” If you are arguing that no members of minority groups have ever felt hostility and derision against the majority, I think you have never got to know many members of minorities. Or listened to, say, Islamists expounding their views on tolerance of the kuffar.

Yours in the cause of genuine, reciprocal tolerance.

likbez@1 I think you’ll have better luck with this sort of thing if you learn to read the media a little more skeptically, and gain some understanding of how reports like the ones you cite are formulated. The Calgaro suit wasn’t even trying to make a legal point — the arguments were so ridiculous that the judge dismissed them completely. This was a publicity stunt aimed at suckers and abetted by the Christian Post, whose article failed to describe what actually took place in the court, much less what was going on in this young person’s life.

Notably, the C. Post just straight up lies about the school district’s involvement in the case. Calgaro does not allege, as the C. Post claims, that the school district began gender transition treatments on the youth. (Read the decision.) The C. Post just made that up.

The piece in “Newspunch” purports to link “court documents,” but that turns out to be a Facebook page with no court documents. It links to a Federalist article that also appears to be sourced exclusively to the Facebook page and, in the case of Townhall, to a suspended Twitter account.

Newspunch, Townhall and the Federalist didn’t bother to ask the mother what was going on. Can you use your critical thinking skills to ask yourself why they failed in that basic bit of fairness?

But as with all these conversations, in the end the real question is: What is the role of factuality in public discussion. Is there any value in tolerating the truth — or are falsehoods required to arrive at the correct answers?

John,

I’ve been thinking about the various versions of and critiques of identity politics that are around at the moment. In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment. But “fairer” can mean lots of different things. I’m trying to think about this using contrasts between the set of terms in the post title. A lot of this is unoriginal, but I’m hoping I can say something new.

You missed one important like of critique — identity politics as a dirty political strategy of soft neoliberals.

See discussion of this issue by Professor Ganesh Sitaraman in his recent article (base on his excellent book The
Great Democracy )
https://newrepublic.com/article/155970/collapse-neoliberalism

To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important to politics. But neoliberalism’s radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into identity groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity. Self-government requires uniting through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared future.

When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the political community gets fragmented. It becomes harder for people to see each other as part of that same shared future.

Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals — likbez] rely on this fracturing to inflame racial, nationalist, and religious antagonism, which only further fuels the divisions within society. Neoliberalism’s war on “society,” by pushing toward the privatization and marketization of everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that further undermines the preconditions for a free and democratic society.

The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, “Without the bedrock of class politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot.” What this means is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in politics and the economy.

Critics argue that this is “neoliberal identity politics,” and it gives its proponents the space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and austerity.

Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the very groups that inclusionary neoliberals claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven’t fared much better than economic policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the war in Afghanistan for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in Iraq lead to a domino effect that swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi government — and more than 100,000 Iraqis are dead.

Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a peaceful transition to stable democracy but instead civil war and instability, with thousands dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups. On the grounds of democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those motivated to expand human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as humanitarian victories — on the civilian death count alone.

Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment have been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers largely assumed that all good things would go together — democracy, markets, and human rights — and so they thought opening China to trade would inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought Russia would become liberal through swift democratization and privatization. They were wrong.

They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was desirable even if the political system never corrected for trade’s winners and losers. They were wrong. These aren’t minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump had nothing to do with them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.

If we assume that identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party (“soft neoliberals”) many things became much more clear.

Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represent a mechanism to compensate for the loss of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 “en mass” defected to Trump.

Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it was correct for first decade or so of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit, compare with Brexit) and that where identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.

So in addition to issues that you mention we also need to view the role of identity politics as the political strategy of the “soft neoliberals ” directed at discrediting and the suppression of nationalism.

The resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct of the dominance of neoliberalism, resurgence which I think is capable to bury neoliberalism as it lost popular support (which now is limited to financial oligarchy and high income professional groups, such as we can find in corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of medical professionals, etc)

That means that the structure of the current system isn’t just flawed which imply that most problems are relatively minor and can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because the “Identity wars” reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal ideology. And they can’t be solved within this framework.

I agree, John. Identity politics reifies categories that are abstract. It divides people instead of uniting them behind universal rights and entitlements. We should be aiming for a more equal distribution of power, a more equal distribution of stuff, and more security and stability for everybody. Framing politics in terms of abstract identity groups distracts attention from the economic justice framing that can appeal to people from all racial, gender, sexuality, and religious categories.

William S Berry @ 13

Fair point. Honestly I did spend quite a bit of time thinking about posting that comment – on the one hand I think it is good to query when someone makes a statement like that to pushback, on the other I’m not sure if I am legitimising a debate over people’s humanity.

I suppose I also hope that asking people to actually provide evidence and a logical argument to validate their position will pay off – of course, it rarely does.

Chetan Murthy @ 14

Indeed. The first link seems pretty egregious – even on its own merits and without being aware of the additional story, it is pretty clear that EJK’s wishes are being overridden (and the additional statements by EJK make it evident the situation is even worse). I am uncertain as to why anyone would post this as an example against people wishing to transition (I also note that they continuously misgendered EJK, against their wishes, all the way through – so that’s nice).

the idea of tolerance implies the existence of a dominant group that does the tolerating

I’m not certain this is true; the history of religious tolerance seems to feature many cases where no group was a majority, and “we’ll argue but not fight, and the government won’t take sides” was designed to be the best available system when everyone was a minority. I’d say a very key feature of US politics since the 1960’s is that the elite have been increasingly unwilling to tolerate, or provide equal protection of the law to, those who disagree with them–so principles like “free speech doesn’t include malicious falsehoods” or “the government doesn’t take sides between conceptions of the good” only last until they would protect a previously-normative group that the elite has turned on.

I also think you are missing a key point in the discussion of deference: a normative identity creates both a Schelling point and some incentive to assimilate, and so builds its own majority; think of “white” identity in the US.

Stephen @ 15:

This is a deep and subtle topic, into which I venture with great caution.

You should have used more. In sum, your argument is (for instance)
that white cis-het people of traditionally German ancestry are the
only true Germans. And while that might work for Germany (though IIUC
work like Tony Judt’s _Postwar_ demonstrates pretty conclusively that
this is bollocks — many European countries had many ethnicities going
back for centuries) it certainly doesn’t work for Australia or the US.
Just to give an example, black Americans almost all have far, far
greater claim to being “real Americans” than most white Americans, for
the obvious reason (slavery, rape of female slaves by white masters).
And yet, black Americans continue to live under a reign of terror
(witness “talk talk” that parents give their children, in hopes it’ll
help keep them alive to adulthood).

And this matters, because along with “who gets treated as the default”
is also “who gets treated as an exception”. And so we get “sundown
towns” where black people better not be found after dark. The
kerfuffle over “cake baking for lesbian weddings” is really a stalking
horse for denying service to LGBT people at hotels,
bed-and-breakfasts, restaurants, etc. After all, if they’re not
“normal,”, then people don’t need to treat them like other folks. It
wasn’t that long ago, that women were explicitly and blatantly in this
category, too: Senator Elizabeth Warren has talked about how a female
teacher who got pregnant would lose her job, and it wasn’t done
surreptitiously at all. I’ve read the same for teachers who got
married, in an earlier time, but Warren’s story is obviously within
living memory. The treatment of women at Catholic hospitals is another data-point — that anybody even pretends that it’s justified that an entire gamut of treatment (reproductive care) is basically off-limits at Catholic hospitals is an opprobrious scandal. And it gets justified because “being male” is the “default”. And there, there’s no possible argument from “the majority”: it’s a simple argument from power.

One last thing:

If you are arguing that no members of minority groups have ever felt hostility and derision against the majority, I think you have never got to know many members of minorities. Or listened to, say, Islamists expounding their views on tolerance of the kuffar.

This is a pretty serious tell. The vast, overwhelming majority of
Muslim-Americans are just as assimilated as any other immigrant
minority — just as assimilated as (say) Hindu-Americans, just as
successful, etc. To cite the extreme behaviour of (a few) Islamists
against these communities, is the same as to tar every white American
(*every one*) with the behaviour of David Duke.

Here, let me demonstrate: “Are you a stone racist? The kind of man
who kills black Americans without compunction, because they’re less
human? [maybe you remember the case of that white guy with a sword to
went to NYC and basically killed the first random black man he met,
b/c he wanted to kill a black man (and cofessed to this fact, afterwards)?] I mean after all, you’re white,
and there are whites who do that, d00d.”

Stephen,

Maybe then I misunderstand what this is about. I understood the original post to be about scenarios like this:

“Society X was dominated by blue-skinned Pastafarians. Over time immigration turned the society multicultural, and the Pastafarian church lost many of the young, resulting in an increasingly diverse and secular society. Laws and constitution were changed to reflect that, removing the official and institutional discrimination against orange-skinned people and against the minority Church of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Political backlash occurs; white protestants form a radicalised political movement, recapture the state for several electoral cycles by gerrymandering, political appointments to the judiciary, etc., and oppress the heck out of minorities. But sixteen years later they finally lose power for good, and now being blue-skinned and/or Pastafarian is a liability, as they have completely discredited themselves.”

First, a genocidal civil war is a totally different situation than the one I thought this was about. Second, in any of the situations that I saw this post being about I do not see the discrediting having happened. France, for example, is now secular, and the former power of the Catholic church has been broken; but unless I completely misinterpret the political situation in France, today’s Catholics are not an ostracised, despised minority.

Stephen @ 16:

(1) Your example of the Rwandan genocide in fact has roots in colonialism.

(2) the French and Russian revolutions were revolutions overturning the prior regime, and not about any sort of “identity groups” in any real sense — unless you’re going to argue that “the rich” is an identity group, as is “the poor”, in which case, uh, you’ll have reduced the term to meaninglessness.

likbez @ 19:

To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important to politics. But neoliberalism’s radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into identity groups can be used to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity.

You quote from this guy, and others have written the same thing (e.g. Mark [spit] Lilla). Their argument, simply put, is that “identity politics” is a fracturing of society into smaller groups who don’t/won’t unite.

BUT. THEY. AND. YOU. ARE. WRONG.

At least in the United States (thankfully) “identity politics” unites us all in our opposition to white supremacy.

And here’s the thing: White Supremacists were doing this “divide-and-conquer” routine decades ago: pitting Hispanic Americans against black Americans, black Americans against LGBTQ Americans, etc, etc, etc.

This is what you’re really afraid of, isn’t it? That all these oppressed groups will come together and then you won’t be able to play your old tricks on them. Yeah, if I were you, I’d be afraid, too.

Alex SL @ 29:

But sixteen years later they finally lose power for good, and now being blue-skinned and/or Pastafarian is a liability, as they have completely discredited themselves.

It’s actually even more anodyne. Being blue-skinned and/or a Pastafarian is not a liability — it merely doesn’t confer any advantages *whatsoever*. B/c, as you noted, they’ve completely discredited themselves. And throughout it all, the blue-skinned have remained the majority demographically. Even at that future date when they aren’t the majority, they’ll remain the plurality. And this, *this* is their “apocalypse.”

A (white) friend of a relative of mine (in Texas) once noted that the reason white people fight so hard against all this ‘equality’ is that they know how badly they’ve treated black people (and other people of color) and they’re quite certain they’ll get that back. What those white people don’t understand, is that (for example in the US) black people are firm believers in the rule of law, in our democracy, in the arc of justice. And in not being the kind of scum that so many Deplorables seem to be.

There won’t be a bloodbath on that day when white people are no longer a majority, for the same reason that there isn’t one in California *today*: nobody wants to do that sort of thing — they’re all too busy being Americans.

JQ:

In its most general form, identity politics involves (i) a claim that a particular group is not being treated fairly and (ii) a claim that members of that group should place political priority on the demand for fairer treatment.”

To understand critiques of idpol from the left, we need to add a few limbs to this definition:

(iii) a claim that anyone, member of the group or otherwise, who doesn’t place political priority on the demand is an enemy, and should be excluded from the movement (whatever the movement is, and whether or not they have their own problems to deal with);

(iv) a claim to absolute epistemic privilege with respect to all matters concerning the group, such that nobody outside the group can legitimately represent it (or maybe even speak about it).

These claims leave open the possibility of groups working together against a common enemy (the dominant ethnic group, minority ethnic groups, the rich, the poor, feminists etc.) but make it very difficult for them to work together to achieve anything positive that might require compromise between competing interests.

This is really the basis of the leftist critique of idpol; identity-based groups that lack (iii) and (iv) don’t tend to be criticised from the left so much.

“All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island (1790)

Peter T @ 38:

What bundle of markers are to make up being “American” or “British” or “European”? These things are always contested, but the pace of change is usually slow. We live in a time when the question is unusually prominent, so more heavily contested. If, as Chetan says, lots of groups just want to be “American”, then by that want they change “American-ness”. If they can’t agree on some new definition, then the US fractures.

Well, I also argued that many immigrants, and certainly their children, want to be American in *precisely* the same way as native (white) Americans are. And this is also true of black Americans. A friend said to me 25 years ago, that “the American dream is the most corrosive social force ever known.” By which he meant that the desire to be like other Americans was so strong, that no amount of “back in the old country we did it thus” can withstand it. And he was right. If not for the pervasive and pernicious forces of racism in American culture, we’d all be “white on the inside, {black,brown,yellow,whatever} on the outside.” And the same is true for gay people. Here in San Francisco at the corner of Castro and Market, on good days there’ll be some guys out there fully nekkid. Our district supervisor got an ordinance passed to ban the practice. And several gay residents of the neighborhood, including a well-known gay-rights crusader from back in the day, were quoted talking about property values, and “how do we explain these guys to our children” as an argument for the ordinance.

And all of this goes a thousand times for the way that black Americans are treated. Black Americans are *precisely* as American as white Americans: they worship the same God, listen to the same music, eat the same food, like the same fashions, and on and on and on. And yet, because they have a different skin color, they’re foreign, alien, not-American.

More than anything else, this is what convinces me that a great part of American racism is literally skin-deep. They don’t actually care about the -person- — only about what that person looks like.

To come back to your quote: yes, if we can’t agree that what makes us American is what’s -inside-, not what’s on the outside, then YES, America will fracture.

@30
”One thing that I don’t think is so obvious to a lot of people, is why people from certain minorities make such a fuss about their ethnic/religious identities. And I think the answer is actually pretty simple. First, nobody wants their children to grow up handicapped in life. And this includes immigrants. So of course they want their children to be completely conversant in (e.g.) American culture, and even in those cases where they do not (I know of such) the children want it anyway. So why do these children (who often are extremely immersed in American culture) reach for ethnic identities? I think it’s a reaction to the racism they see every day”. Every day they’re taught that they’re not the normal American, that they’re different and by implication less worthy. And so, they reach for attributes from their ancestral ethnicity, as something they can be proud of — to push back against the racism they receive every day…”

Yes – as traveling a lot with ”(mixed) minorities” who can’t be ”identified” that easily anymore – and always get asked:
”What – or who are you – woman or man? black or white – or perhaps – even ”asian”?

The only solution is – to completely ”mix” it up – with no possibility anymore to say that – for example – likbez – is the –
”tough guy –
chest always so puffed guy”
(in the green shirt at TC 1:01)
of –

https://youtu.be/DyDfgMOUjCI

Peter T 12.28.19 at 5:50 am @38

I’m finding it hard to think of examples where the formerly norm-giving group becomes derided or humiliated.

You can probably try to look at the situation in (now independent) republics of the former USSR. Simplifying previously oppressed group, given a lucky chance, most often strive for dominance and oppression of other groups including and especially former dominant group. This is an eternal damnation of ethno/cultural nationalism.

And not only it (look at Mutual Help and The State in Shantytowns.) In them ethnic comminutes often own protection markets, offer services that hire people and replace the state, pay off gang leaders. they also provide some community support for particular ethnic group, enforce the rules of trade within themselves, etc. In GB the abuse of children by ethnic gangs was sickening ( https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/sep/30/abuse-children-asian-communities )

In many cases of ethnic/cultural nationalism this looks more like a competition for resources with the smoke screen of noble intentions/human rights/past oppression/ humiliations/etc

Or you can look at the language policy in the USA and the actual situation in some areas/institutions of Florida and California and how English speakers feel in those areas/institutions. Or in some areas of Quebec in Canada.

That actually suggests another meaning of famous Randolph Bourne quote ” War is the health of the state ” (said in the midst of the First World War.) It bring the unity unachievable in peace time or by any other methods, albeit temporarily (from Ch 14. Howard Zinn book A People’s History of the United States ):

…the governments flourished, patriotism bloomed, class struggle was stilled, and young men died in frightful numbers on the battlefields-often for a hundred yards of land, a line of trenches.

In the United States, not yet in the war, there was worry about the health of the state. Socialism was growing. The IWW seemed to be everywhere. Class conflict was intense. In the summer of 1916, during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco, a bomb exploded, killing nine people; two local radicals, Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, were arrested and would spend twenty years in prison. Shortly after that Senator James Wadsworth of New York suggested compulsory military training for all males to avert the danger that “these people of ours shall be divided into classes.” Rather: “We must let our young men know that they owe some responsibility to this country.”

The supreme fulfillment of that responsibility was taking place in Europe. Ten million were to die on the battlefield; 20 million were to die of hunger and disease related to the war. And no one since that day has been able to show that the war brought any gain for humanity that would be worth one human life. The rhetoric of the socialists, that it was an “imperialist war,” now seems moderate and hardly arguable. The advanced capitalist countries of Europe were fighting over boundaries, colonies, spheres of influence; they were competing for Alsace-Lorraine, the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East.

Neo-McCarthyism now serves a somewhat similar purpose in the USA. Among other thing (like absolving Hillary from her fiasco to “deux ex machine” trick instead of real reason — the crisis and rejection of neoliberalism by the sizable strata of the USA population) it is an attempt to unify the nation after 2016.

Chetan Murphy @ 42:

I think that one of the rebuttals from identity groups (including from women’s rights groups) is that we can look at the history of class-based movements, and they never get around to addressing the injustices and oppression suffered by these minority groups.

…

I mean, it’s a fine thing to say “don’t worry, come the revolution, you also will be taken care of” but after a times around that particular playing-board, and things not getting better, people realize it’s a mug’s game.

This is definitely fair. The problem is that the kind of uncompromising and divisive idpol that I was talking about @ 37 doesn’t seem to be working either, for anyone. Maybe there is no solution.

Or was:

”Transgender extremism suggests that tolerance contains within itself the seeds of its destruction”.

a ”cold opening line” from ”SNL”?

(but by whom? – as words like ”tolerance” and ”seeds” couldn’t have been uttered by Mr. Baldwin impersonating ”the Don”?)

nastywoman @ 43:

The only solution is – to completely ”mix” it up – with no possibility anymore to say that

Heh, we have a word for that: “Californian.” I see groups of young Californians, and they’re almost always mixed-race. I remember taking Lyft a bunch of times to a short-term job I had, and talking with the drivers about their lives and backgrounds. “Miscegenators R Us!”

I must say, likbez’s last comment is just brilliant! He can’t stop putting his foot in it, can he? He equates minority ethnic groups with gangs of pedophiles, moves on to equating them with drug gangs in shantytowns, and awaaay we go! It’s as if he hasn’t heard of … *California*! Minority-majority and nobody seems to mind (except the Nazis who can’t seem to get any traction in the voting booth).

CM@42:

we can look at the history of class-based movements, and they never get around to addressing the injustices and oppression suffered by these minority groups.

Several questions present themselves from this: first, how good of a job do identity-based movements do at addressing injustices and oppression based on class? Is every movement supposed to solve all problems, and are we to assume we can only solve one problem at once? The above quote sounds like it implicitly denies the idea that class-based injustices and oppression is even possible, or at a minimum it is not worthy of our collective attention. It’s quite understandable why a putative leftist would be unwilling to explicitly articulate that.

Second, how comparatively successful were contemporaneous identity-based movements at the time in terms of addressing injustices suffered by members of minority groups – to include members of minority groups whose intersectional identities included the identities “poor” and/or “poorly educated”? There is a certain “perfect is the enemy of the good” implied by your stance – is improving the lives of many members of minority groups unworthy simply because it does not simultaneously improve the lives of the most privileged among them?

Third, were there successful or at least impactful identity-based movements during the window you’ve graciously defined for economic-oriented justice movements to solve all of society’s problems? And perhaps more to the point, did these movements succeed in their aims, or were they partial measures forced on an uncooperative hierarchy and hobbled and subverted as soon as was feasible? In addition to defining single movements as needing to solve all ills, you seem hellbent on pitting economic justice against essentialist identity politics in a binary zero-sum game. It is entirely possible to work towards multiple ends simultaneously, yet you seem unwilling to consider that – tellingly, you damn class-based movement politics for failing to solve identity-based injustice, but seem to have no problem with the idea of identity-based movements failing to address class-based injustices. Indeed, your framing of identity-based movements as including a strong desire to impart socio-economic privileges on the members’ children is even more telling. As is your statement that identity politics can’t include class (intersectionality would like to have a word with you!) and that identity politics’ work will be done as just as soon as essentialist identity injustices are no more (but until then, economic reforms need to be de-prioritized, and this is totally different than the “come the revolution” rhetoric you ridiculed?)

Members of the formerly dominant group may be willing to extend acceptance to others, but they still expect a kind of deference in return.
[…]
When that expectation of deference is not fulfilled, the choices are to accept the new situation, or to support what might be called default identity politics.

There is at least one more option – carve out exceptions. A recurrent trend in identity politics – both the modern essentialist variety and the older class identity politics – is for some members of the dominant group to extract or reclaim their threatened deference not in identitarian terms, but personally – namely, by positioning themselves is-à-vis the identity-based movement as an ally or even leader and then expecting their persons, ideas, and opinions be treated with deference or allowed dominance as architects or commissars of the new flattened or inverted hierarchy. Communist intellectual vanguards are the most glaringly obvious example of this, but it’s certainly also present in modern Western essentialist identity politics, particularly within academia.

Chetan Murthy@27

Oh dear, you are a very angry person. Cool down and think, please.

When I wrote “in Japan, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Scotland people of those groups overwhelmingly expect that to be the default identity for their communities”, you are going far beyond the bounds of logic to conclude that I mean ‘white cis-het people of traditionally German ancestry are the only true Germans.” I see no difficulty in someone believing both that being German is the default identity for that community – you know, something that one would believe to be normal, but not invariably so – and that people who do not meet the default identity may still qualify as Germans. And I have known a few homosexual Germans – there have been many in German history – who nobody would doubt qualify as true Germans.

I quite agree that the situation of black Americans has been and is deplorable. I don’t think you can generalise from America to other countries.

Lastly, it would help if you could learn to distinguish between “some” and “all”. You say, indignantly, that the majority of Muslim-Americans are well assimilated, which I do hope is true. But that does not at all mean that I am wrong in denying that “no members of minority groups have ever felt hostility and derision against the majority.” Some Muslim-Americans do, surely, even if most don’t.

Yours in the cause of genuine, reciprocal tolerance.

Lastly, it would help if you could learn to distinguish between “some” and “all”.

In mathematics, the difference between zero and one matters hugely, because numbers are predictable and consistent.

In social studies this is not true. People vary, and they vary enough that the difference between one and zero ceases to have any import.

In mathematics you — we! — use the word “some” in the way you describe. In social studies, actually-zero vs actually-non-zero is rarely if ever a useful distinction, so we’ve repurposed the word “some” to reflect the distinctions we do actually find useful, between low-frequency and vanishingly-low-frequency events.

[the same thing applies to the way they write dictionary definitions, btw: they might be written all absolutely, but the actual way you’re supposed to read them includes this sort of variation. Simpler to put limits to the vagueness in the preface once rather than reiterate it in each definition, no?]

Stephen @ 57:
Let’s quote your original comment:

[quoting the OP] “Members of the formerly dominant group may be willing to extend acceptance to others, but …they expect to be treated as the default identity for the community as a whole.” [now your words] Well yes, heterosexuals expect to be the default identity. In Japan, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Scotland people of those groups overwhelmingly expect that to be the default identity for their communities.

Yep, yep, I agree, you’re not, not, not saying that people of Turkish descent in Germany aren’t just as German as ancestrally-German people in Germany. Yeap, I agree with you completely. And for sure, you’re 100% on the side of LGBT folk getting treated just like hetero folks.

Gosh, I stand corrected.

Orange Watch @ 53:
TL;DR: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

I wrote a(n even) long(er) point-by-point answer to your questions. But then at the end, I realized that in fact, there is a simple and single answer. Your questions all presuppose that the economic harm, the class-based harm, is more important than the other harms that people in these identity groups suffer. Also that it’s fair to judge these identity groups by how much progress they make towards resolving the “class-economics-oppression problem.” And I think this is both unfair and a double-standard. At every level of society, in every class, men oppressed women. It isn’t like there was some enlightened part of the proletariat, where women were equals. And the same is true for gay rights. The situation for our black American fellow citizens was just as awful, and it remains so, even in so-called enlightened places like Califnrnia. [then again, the same can be said for women’s conditions of labor and life.] In all these cases, it’s not just economic oppression, but also physical oppression in daily life. And again: in none of these instances, did any part of the proletariat stand up and act to relieve this oppression, until these groups stood up for themselves (and had to endure violence, again often at the hands of that same proletariat) and demanded their rights.

Remember what Margaret Atwood wrote: “men fear women will laugh at them; women fear men will kill them.” Until the gay rights movement really started going (and even today in many places) gay men fear for their physical safety: I grew up in such a place. And black people have had to take that into account everywhere. These are not inconsiderable.

Look: I’m a cis-het highly-educated male in a very technical profession. Outside of my time growing up in a racist hellhole Weatherford, TX, I’ve never experienced even one *iota* of the kind of discrimination and threat that my female, gay, and black fellow citizens have experienced.

But I have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to feel. And it is manifestly evident that unless these people (and others) speak up, demand their equal rights, and refuse to settle for less, they’re not going to get them.

And that’s true even when they’re demanding them of some proletarian class-based movement to take power back from the wealthy.

Yeoman’s work being done, as always, by Chetan Murphy here. Ganbatte, Chetan!

“Identity politics” is a bullshit concept made up to attack civil rights and to divide the left. We should be ignoring it, lest we fall for the kind of junk that we see on this thread[1].

As an example of how this division works, let us consider this pithy piece of junk from Nicholas at 21:

Identity politics reifies categories that are abstract

No, what “reifies categories that are abstract” is the police or other armed agents of the state hunting down black people on the streets and murdering them; or stealing their babies and raising them in orphanages to be forced into domestic servitude. What “reifies categories that are abstract” is white cishet men hunting gay men on the streets of Sydney, and beating them up because of who they choose to love. That is some reification right there.

What happens then is that the victims of those actions fight back, and to fight back they first gather around the flag that the white ruling cishet men stuck in the ground – the flag of their identity, that they didn’t care about reifying until white cishet men started murdering them.

Once you understand who is “reifying” what “abstract” categories then you can dispense with arguing about identity politics, and pay attention to building a world where everyone lives equally, regardless of their identity. But if you’re a white cishet male leftist, that means sharing a bit of your political and personal privilege with people who aren’t like you. Don’t be surprised when those people organize around the categories you assigned them to demand the rights that you are denying them because of their identity. And don’t be so shallow as to think their political projet is the problem!
—

fn1: Likbez is an out-and-out fascist, and yet John Quiggin’s posts have basically become his personal playground. How is this cool?

There is a horror at finding myself – as a gender critical feminist – adjacent to arguments like Likbez’s @1 that I think puts the fear of God in me. So I feel compelled to write a comment, though I usually just observe the conversation here.

Likbez @1 is, I think, similar to those people who would pop up in conversations about gay rights in the 90’s and say, “What about this man, who had sex with 300 strangers in one week,” as an example of “gay rights extremism.” The difference I notice here is that there is no longer any concern, on the conservative or progressive side of the argument, with prurient interest. We glibly discuss the most private details of a child’s life and body, and it’s incumbent on everyone involved to either hash out the details while condemning, or hash out the details while celebrating.

I * do * think a child accessing sterilising medical and surgical treatments for the purposes of gender affirmation is extreme (and to me it’s no less extreme when that child has a supportive family around them). Another useful parallel might be the conversations we had about whether it was respectability politics to not include “bareback” subcultures in gay pride. But again, even there, we had a stable liberal position which could acknowledge the subculture / without / having to condemn or celebrate it.

I wonder if it isn’t the gay marriage debate that has evacuated that liberal posture. Well might a social conservative answer a question about the decriminalisation of sex between men by saying, “You can engage in x, y, or z sexual practice, but don’t expect me to like it,” and it’s not really remarkable – why would I expect or require a stranger to / like / the sex I have?! But when it’s said about marriage there is something mean about it – marriages, or at least weddings, are by definition the communal celebration of a sexual relationship.

Can we as a liberal society tolerate the miserliness of refusal to celebrate gay marriages? And if we can’t, what do we do with this blurring of public and private, this need to endorse and celebrate what is done by strangers (even the compulsion to have a clear formed opinion on all the private activities of strangers).

– I wonder if there isn’t a further connection with the anxieties of young people, a need for the approval of strangers.

***

“Instead of being accepted as one element of a diverse community, the formerly dominant group becomes the object of hostility and derision. The signs of that are certainly evident, particularly in relation to the culture wars around religion.”

I immediately thought John was talking about Catholics. For centuries, where Catholics have lived as a minority in predominantly Protestant and Anglican societies, they have been exposed to all the bigotry and mistreatment we associate with minority status. But this has had no effect on the institution of the Catholic church, or its hegemony in Catholic societies (and even Catholic communities in protestant / Anglican societies).
(On reflection, I’m not sure that’s what JQ is referring to at all).

[Blast, apologies to the OP, but could you accept this instead of my previous post, I made a HTML tag error which makes it seem as though one of Stephen’s statements is actually mine.]

Stephen @ 56

“Good questions. I’m not sure there is a necessity for a default identity and dominant groups; I merely observe that in most if not all stable, long-lived societies there has been such. If you can think of exceptions, they would be very interesting.”

As I’m not an expert in the area, I’m probably not a good person to ask. If we assume the observation is true, however, while it may be interesting I don’t see that it is particularly helpful.If the number of attempts were zero then that doesn’t really tell you anything about if it would work or not.

For example, from my understanding monarchies were the “default” organisational structure for a long time – and one can imagine someone who lived during those eras saying – correctly – that most if not all stable, long-lived societies were monarchies. I hope you’d agree that that wouldn’t really tell us much about if it is the only, or indeed even best way of organising a society?

In short, I think that while your observation may or may not be true (I’m afraid I lack the evidence to make any claims one way or another), I don’t think it really gets us any closer to understanding whether or not a default identity and/or dominant group are a) necessary, b) useful, and c) beneficial.

As for the default identity including sexuality: I’m not sure it’s necessary, just that it mostly goes that way.

Again, I’m not an expert, but my understanding is that the male/female binary is a) not necessarily biologically supported (from asking biologists) and b) may in fact not be the default identity (I believe there are examples outside of western culture, in the Philippines, Mexico, etc.). Of course, I am not an expert (I believe you’ve already said your not either?) so perhaps it would be better to ask someone who is?

I have trouble in imagining a society in which the default identity does not exclude bestiality or trandgenderism (not that I’m equating the two).

Out of interest, why did you include bestiality alongside being transgender? I don’t see that it is helpful or clarifying in any way – bestiality is about what you have sexual intercourse with (and implies a problematic lack of consent), while being transgender is (as the name helpfully implies!) about your personal gender identity (which is not about preferences regarding sexual intercourse, and does not have the problematic consent issue), so these would seem to be very different categories.

[Moreover, as a helpful future tip, perhaps if you want to avoid fully any doubts people might have about whether or not you are equating these two things, but you feel it is useful to include a form of sexual attraction, why not pick homosexuality, bisexuality, etc. instead?]

Perhaps I am a bit odd in this respect, but if you ask me to imagine a “default” English person, I don’t think I could. It may be a failure of my imagination, but I would think of the people I know who are English, and I don’t think there is enough commonality for me to make an assessment. I suspect (though I don’t have evidence) that if there is such a thing as a default identity, it is probably most similar to a stereotype. And, as far as I can tell, stereotypes are a) generally not excessively helpful to accuracy and b) vary from area to area and region to region.

Moreover, I would think that “dominant culture” is something that can change (as the OP implies). For example, homosexuality was illegal until fairly recently (if I recall correctly England and Wales: 1960s, Scotland and Ireland 1980s), but I think that now the number of people who would support recriminalizing it is pretty small. The dominant culture which was hostile to homosexuality is now – at the very least – indifferent, if not actively absorbing it. While I certainly wouldn’t suggest homophobia is a thing of the past, perhaps in future eras (assuming we don’t wipe ourselves out due to our incompetence at handling looming crises) people objecting to homosexuality will be thought of as odd and irrelevant – changing the dominant culture still further. Is it not possible, then, that such a thing could happen with transgender identities?

In short, with respect, I’m not sure what you (or I) can imagine is particularly relevant.

Well, I wasn’t going to bring it up, but now we’re here…

Rightwing trolls or troll-like posters like likbez don’t focus on transgender activism by accident. It’s the ne plus ultra of identity politics gone wrong: it seems superficially reasonable, by association with LGB liberation movements, but its claims are irreconcilable with long-standing goals of other movements usually found on the left (particularly many kinds of feminism); it demands the use of language that makes it difficult or impossible to express disagreement and harrasses, threatens and deplatforms people who refuse to submit; it is relentlessly, viciously misogynistic. And when otherwise sympathetic people get a glimpse into the nastier side of trans activism and who exactly it is protecting (the Dana Rivers, the Karen Whites, the Jessica Yanivs, etc. etc.), and especially what its goals mean for women and girls – the stuff that the activists try with all their might to stop feminists drawing attention to – they tend to begin to regard it as completely bonkers. Which is of course one reason why all dissent must be silenced before it can spread.

It’s the perfect wedge, and the trolls know.

Likbez @ 60

Here are my problems with your post at 60. I hope you will at least consider this, and perhaps re-evaluate what you are saying and how you are saying it.

” With this quote I think we reached the point in this discussion when it might be appropriate to discuss the appropriate scope of repression for deviant minority groups when their demands conflict with the larger society or more powerful groups ethics and cultural norms.

“deviant minority groups”. OK, so Mormons? Or were they not the deviant minority group you were thinking of? You see, that’s one of the fundamental problems with your assertions – you are unable or unwilling to offer any clear ideas as to how you come to decide the term and who it applies to. You seem to operate on what you personally feel comfortable with – which is not a particularly useful starting point.

The usual “woke” argumentation is very weak in issues outlined below and opposite arguments have a real weight: I would repression of the minority groups start with pedophiles and financial oligarchy especially vulture funds leadership such as Romney, Paul Singer, etc. But this is just me.

Funnily enough, people pushing for transgender awareness are not pro-paedophile. I know that you seem to struggle with understanding this (or, indeed, anything judging by your inability to reason), but paedophilia = having sex with children; being transgender = taking on a gender identity in-keeping with your internal model and different to that assigned at birth. The key difference there, and bear with me as apparently you find this very complex, is that one group are raping children, the other isn’t. Try repeating this a few times in the mirror – I am optimistic you will eventually get it.

”IMHO insatiable “demanding” and proselyting of transgender identity already brought us very close to a strong corporate and community backlash against transgender rights and by extension LGBT rights as a whole.”

You know, people said the same thing about gay rights. And you know what was interesting? It turns out the whole “line to far” was that they existed. Given you haven’t really made any attempt to explain why you think “personal medical decision” is functionally extremism, I am not overly confident in your ability to determine what constitutes “too much” demanding.

“Of course transgender folk is just minor, expendable pawn in a bigger game of Dem Party identity politics, but still.”

Yes, because the Democratic party of America basically rules Europe. That was sarcasm, by the way. I did point out before that making US based judgements and assessments without considering how it fits into the global phenomena makes you look ignorant. Apparently you don’t think that that was a point worth considering.

”Many Christian parents now prohibit their children to join Scouts of America and their fears and not unfounded ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/04/24/boy-scouts-face-hundreds-new-sexual-abuse-claims/3547991002/ )”

This is why I am having a very hard job considering you someone who is arguing in good faith right now.

Undiscovering America. It’s too late for that, I think. The muddying of the waters, i.e. post-historical tribalism, can’t obscure the fact that the underlying conflict is between our individual and our collective identity(ies). It doesn’t really matter whether the collective is family, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sports team. If we aren’t, as individuals, the ultimate arbiters of our own allegiances, and if the collective(s) we belong to, either by accident, affinity, or choice, are unwilling to give up on the project of defining us without asking us what we prefer, then our present conflicts will continue, and in all likelihood get nastier as the stakes in our-post hierarchical, post-literate universe rise ever higher.

Seren Rose @ 67

I’ve no wish to tell you “this is how you should think”, and am open to having a dialogue with anyone who is interested in doing so (it helps me refine my position or, when I am wrong, to re-evaluate my premises). I hope, therefore, you’ll be will to indulge me a little when I make the following comments – I would, if you are interested, value your thoughts (though I don’t wish to make demands on your time).

I don’t particularly enjoy discussing anyone’s private details – I generally prefer it if private lives can remain private – and certainly would hope I don’t do so glibly. Unfortunately, when there is a discussion about whether or not a person should be permitted to make a private decision, sometimes it is necessary to discuss the facts surrounding the case. I would state, however, that to me it is important that as much anonymity as possible is afforded the individual, and as little of the details are discussed as necessary. Do you think that that is unreasonable?

My first comments were regarding Likbez’s first link. To me, it is not only the first mentioned, but also the most clear cut. Someone who is 17 wishes to transition, their mother (who they have alleged was abusive, whom they left 2 years ago) objects. Given that the individual seems to have made well-reasoned comments, their mother does not seem to be well-placed to make any evaluations (or indeed make any decisions regarding their child), and I have no reason to think they are unable to make an assessment regarding their own gender, I don’t see any reason to object. Do you think there is?

Hopefully you’ll agree that I have managed to avoid discussing them or their body too much. If not, I’d certainly appreciate it if you pointed out where I’ve erred – this is not sarcasm, I genuinely want to do better.

You appear to have considerable concerns regarding Likbez’s second link. You know what – so do I. It isn’t quite as portrayed – further reading indicates that what was proposed was a reversible treatment with no surgery, which allays some of the concerns – but I agree that “what age can someone make a reasonable decision regarding their gender” is a good discussion to have. As is, “what is the best way to handle this”, and “how do we ensure that people are afforded freedom proporitionate with their maturity and responsibility”. However, I would want such a discussion to involve evidence (not specific details of people, but anonymised scientific evidence), logical arguments, and conclusions which come as close as possible to achieving the best decision. I hope you would agree that that is a good approach?

Now, I am not an expert. However, as far as I can tell, the people who study this for a living seem to say that biology and gender are far more complex that traditional models allow for. That being the case, it does not seem unreasonable to change these models. After all, if you are worried about the effects of peer-pressure on children, I would think that being forced into an identity which causes you incredible discomfort (or even feelings of dissonance) is probably not good for their long term health. For example, trying to force people who are homosexual to be heterosexual does not seem to have been good for them, or for society. I imagine, as a gender critical feminist, you can think of similar examples of the harm resulting from women being forced into roles far better than I.

In short, my position is that people should be afforded the maximum reasonable ability to make their personal decisions. In cases where there are concerns regarding their ability to do so, I am fine with society coming to an evidence based conclusion about where to draw the line. This will, as always, lead to some inherent unfairness (our systems are “one-size-fits-all” and this will inherently lead to some people being let down), but hopefully we can make our society as fair as possible. And, continue to refine.

If you think I am being unreasonable, unnecessarily prurient, or am on a path which is detrimental, I would certainly appreciate your pointing it out to me – I am always keen to do better.

CM@64:

the history is pretty clear: the class-based movements cane first, and they failed to make any progress toward (or even care about) the rights of these oppressed groups. […] Also, many of these movements explicitly recognize the importance of intersectionality — why else would you see feminists and gay rights groups so heavily involved in immigrant rights?

Well, since you’re all about fairness and avoiding double standards… let’s compare contemporaneous movements. How much did abolitionists help alleviate the oppression of women? How much did suffragettes fight segregation? Did the LGBTQ rights movement include BTQ for most of its history? Did any of these historical movements fight against ablism? How much did they achieve WRT immigrant rights, indigenous rights, and the rights of minority religions? Or are you comparing very, VERY recent developments in these movements with historical class identity movements? I’d point out, BTW, that it’s very disputable whether gender/racial right movements came after class identity movements – both are far older than their recent (to say nothing of modern) forms. And throughout the history of all of these, there have been not just unhelpful but actively repressive elements in all of them. Yet you’re only comparing contemporary intersectional essentialist identity politics to historical class identity politics… why is that? Especially when modern class identity politics are also influenced by intersectional thinking and ally themselves with more than than just class-based movements even if they prioritize class. Yet here we have you telling us that socioeconomic status is not an identity – that the idea of identity becomes meaningless if we consider it as such. That has a very particular and somewhat suspicious look.

The point of everything you TL;DR’d in order to lecture me about How Things REALLY Are again was not that you’re a hypocrite – it’s instead how very telling it is that you don’t simply want to de-prioritize the idea of economically-oriented reform, but de-legitimize the very idea of it. It’s appalling to see you invoke intersectionality in this context; are you so come-lately to it that you don’t know its history before it was housebroken? A common early criticism of intersectionality was that it placed too much focus on just three intersecting identities: gender, race, and, yes, class. The subsequent trend to view intersectionality as a thing distinct from class identity is a development that looks an awful lot like institutional co-opting as former outsiders addressing an insurgent critique of distorted elite analysis made peace with the academic hierarchy, got tenure, and mysteriously lost their impetus to challenge privilege based on wealth, education, profession, or social status. What you’ve done here has unintentionally been extremely instructive in terms of what OP discusses; you’re providing a case study of a privileged minority arguing against perspectives that do not conform to the dominant default culture in order to protect the deference you feel due, and the dominance of the hierarchy which entitles you to that deference.

(One thing I’d add to tie the idea of class identity politics to the discussion here is that contemporary upper class resistance to it vs. comparative upper class acceptance of essentialist identity politics fits well into the zero-sum vs. positive-sum distinction made by Peter Dorman. Class identity movements seek to flatten the socio-economic hierarchy via wealth redistribution, progessive taxation, increased democratization of political processes, etc. Essentialist identity movements do not directly threaten the hierarchy that entrenches the rich as dominant and professionals as deferred to – it changes the pool of available candidates within the heirarchy, which may lead to individuals or sub-groups resisting if they feel unable or unwilling to compete with individuals previously below them on other hierarchies, but more diversity in the C-suites is not an existential threat to the upper class.)

TBH, likbez seems to be regurgitating typical transphobic arguments. Linking to homophobic hate groups does not enhance his position.
He/she clearly does not think that trans people have any rights that he is obligated to honor.
On the other hand, seems to expect that we are obligated to respect his bigotry.

John Quiggin @ 84

On reflection, I believe I should apologise for contributing for the derailment – not the first time I’ve helped sidetrack a thread, but I will try to do better in future and be a bit more restrained before jumping down a rabbit hole. CT is a pretty tolerant place regarding ramblings, but it isn’t fair to go off topic at such length – either to you or the other comentators. William S Berry probably said it best, and I should have heeded the advice.

I think, out of a desire to avoid detracting from your original points, I will refrain from commenting on this thread and leave my (layperson) thoughts regarding gender identity for a post which actually relates to that.

For what its worth, you have my sincere apologies. I hope the ideas and lively discussion regarding the OP continue – I found the topic raised intersting.

Orange Watch @ 79:

Oy, it looks like you’ve made my point for me. Let me recap:

(1) Aubergine pointed out that some of these identity groups tend to absolutely privilege pursuit of their group’s goals over the pursuit of a broader class-based agenda

(2) I agreed that this was the case, and that it was only natural, because (a) historically broad class-based movements have done zilch for oppressed minorities and interest groups, and (b) indeed, to a great extent, for many of the kinds of physical oppression faced by minorities, women, and LGBT folks, the oppressors are well-represented in the proletariat also.

In short, the only way any of these groups got their very real concerns about the conditions of their labor and life addressed, was by speaking up for themselves.

(3) To this your argument was first that these groups don’t work toward a class-based agenda, and now that there’s no evidence in history that they have worked to support each other, either. [As if the latter matters; I never argued that class-based movements -should- support (e.g.) gay rights: I noted that they DID NOT, and hence it made sense that gay rights groups FOCUSED on gay rights. Notwithstanding, in recent years these interest groups DO support each other.]

(4) Throughout, you’ve focused on the economic issues, and denigrated the issues that drove these groups into being:

To pull this back more closely to the subject of OP, your pile of unexamined privilege looks an awful lot like you’re uncritically accepting the highly-educated/rich/socially & professionally networked/managerial-professional-executive workers’ (i.e., upper class) “default” cultural perspective, and are insisting that failure to see it is deviant and immoral

What can I say? You’re making my point for me. If you can’t see that the goals #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, ACT-UP and others are important, even though they’re not economic, well, is it any surprise they refuse to subordinate them to your goals?

[What “unexamined privilege” do you speak of? Do you mean the right to be attacked by my entire high school PE class for being gay (I was not — I was instead brown, and knew to keep my adolescent urges as silent as the grave I did not want to end up in). Is it the “unexamined privilege” of one of my closest college friends, who grew up in Texas and came out literally the first week of school in New York State? [because he knew how dangerous it was to be gay in Texas]? Is that the unexamined privilege you speak of? Maybe you should be clearer about what you mean.]

(5) You also argue that I’m looking into deep prehistory with my argument that class-based movements have been worthless when it comes to (e.g.) feminism and anti-racism. But y’know, we don’t have to look to deep prehistory: it’s well-known that Bernie Sanders’ campaign was a hotbed of sexual harrassment (and who-knows-what worse?), and he was sufficiently clueless on matters of race that Black Lives Matter had to school him onstage. And he still didn’t learn. I don’t want to go too far with this, because eventually it seems (so far, only seems ….) that he’s getting better. But really, is it any wonder that some people of color are skeptical? And this isn’t “history” — this is last cycle.

(6) near the end you write:

The point of everything you TL;DR’d in order to lecture me about How Things REALLY Are again was not that you’re a hypocrite – it’s instead how very telling it is that you don’t simply want to de-prioritize the idea of economically-oriented reform, but de-legitimize the very idea of it.

There are two things wrong with this:

(a) Just because Greta Thunberg got up in front of the UN and talked only about climate change, doesn’t mean that she doesn’t care about gay righs. But she’s got a platform, and she’s gotta choose what she promotes. You’re basically arguing that unless she ALSO argues (and at some level, focuses on) the class struggle, she’s a capitalist stooge.

(b) But worse, it seems you can’t imagine that (for instance) I care about both anti-racism AND ALSO about economic redistribution. I mean, I care about gay rights, and I’m not gay. [I care about defeating misogyny, but then I have a mother, so that can’t possibly count *grin*] Members of these identity groups are ALSO poor, and they care about remedying that TOO. I mean, the idea that somehow groups focused on the rights of black Americans, don’t care about economic issues …. is risible. I recall a feminist pointing out that the right to physical safety is an economic issue: if you cannot be safe in your person while working, coming to-and-fro, you are fundamentally handicapped in your economic life.

So nobody’s deprioritizing economically-oriented reform here. What we’ve noticed though, is that women, people of color, LGBT people, get pushed to the bottom every time, and we’re pretty committed to making sure that it doesn’t happen next time.

(7) You mentioned “able-ism”. Gee I wonder if we’ll find that unions were big forces behind the ADA, or we’ll find out that it was mostly due to the disabled themselves kicking up a huge ruckus.

(8) One last thing: throughout your comments, there’s been a consistent subtext, that these “interest groups” are really about securing more rights for already-privileged members of these minorities. It is as if the only feminists are Sheryl Sandberg; the only members of Black Lives Matter are Robert Johnson (founder of BET) and the only LGBT activist is David Geffen. It seems plain that you think that these interest groups’ goals are more “acceptable” to corporations and the rich, than the class-centric goals of a economic justice movement.

Black Lives Matter isn’t just fighting for economic rights: they’re fighting for the right to not be executed in the street. #MeToo is fighting for the right to not be physically assaulted as a pre-condition of employment. Gay people are fighting for the right to live their lives in peace, and not under the constant threat of a beatdown due to “gay panic”.

These aren’t inconsiderable, and the idea that somehow they’re less important than economic rights is offensive.

And one last thing: again, it seems like you think that the right of a well-educated woman or black man to have a good job on the same terms as a white man, is less important than lifting up all the poor people. It is as if you’re saying

Do you remember what LBJ said?

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Do you see the similarity with your rhetoric? You’re arguing that the effect of these interest groups is to aid entry of members of these minorities into the rich class, and per se this is bad.

Orange Watch @ 81:

One thing I’d add to tie the idea of class identity politics to the discussion here is that contemporary upper class resistance to it vs. comparative upper class acceptance of essentialist identity politics fits well into the zero-sum vs. positive-sum distinction made by Peter Dorman.

I should have included this in my (interminable) comment. This is a great example of how you’re characterizing these identity groups as being acceptable to the upper class. As if BLM or #MeToo are acceptable to the upper class.

JQ: To get back to the criticism of identity politics from the left, consider what would happen if your original post was made in a less sedate, more idpol-friendly forum. Nobody would be engaging with the arguments you’ve made, which at least some commenters on this thread have been doing. Instead, they’d be focussing on you, working out which classes of privilege you enjoy – particularly racial, gender-based and (dis)ability-based privileges – so that they can attack you from those directions in the knowledge that any response from you would be considered an expression of privilege, and thus subject to further criticism.

Since this post is pretty unobjectionable you might get away with it, but I can see at least a couple of angles of attack in the first line (“Warning: Amateur sociological/political analysis ahead”): if you’re an “amateur”, why are you speaking instead of listening to the people who have direct personal experience of [whatever marginalised identity]?, and why does this analysis need to come from you when you could be making space for someone less privileged to give their own, more valuable analysis?

Now, sometimes people really are blinded by the advantages of their own position, and say dumb stuff as a result, and deserve to be criticised for it. But eventually people get tired of being told to shut up and listen every time they try to say something, and just quietly drift away (if they aren’t banished first). I’ve seen this happen in various online places that used to be left-leaning but pluralistic, but are now bubbles spiralling into ever more extreme rhetoric that never has to justify itself because nobody is left to question it.

This kind of thing has always happened, of course, but the internet seems to make it worse, and it’s this tendency that is the target of most leftist critique.

faustusnotes @ 70

I’m responding to you because I’m also a gender critical feminist: talking about “excluding a minority from public spaces” is dishonest; it sounds as though feminists are trying to prevent trans people from strolling through parks. What we’re trying to prevent is single-sex spaces being turned into mixed-sex spaces, because we know that males, as the dominant sex class, have the power in those spaces.

Speaking of overlapping politics, does it bother you that both trans advocates and conservative Christians believe in the female brain, the womanly soul and/or women’s feminine essence?

@orange watch 79

It seems to me that in this thread there is a lot of confusion about the idea of identity and groups, and your comment doubles down with the idea that economic class is an identity.

First from a old fart Marxist point of view, you are mixing up base (the economic structure, the relationship with the means of production) with superstructure (blue collar identity). These two are not the same thing, the same way sex (a biological fact) is not the same as gender (a cultural thing). Only gender is a matter of identity, biological sex cannot be, precisely because it is not a cultural thing. For similar reasons class proper is not the same as identities based more or less on class.

Second, however you want to put it high education at best makes you upper middle class, not ruling class (although many people of the ruling class also have high education, but they aren’t ruling class because of this). This again is the old (19th century) distinction by Max Weber between classe and ceto, I use the Italian words because they both translate as “class” in English damn you anglophones. I recently chatted with a friend who has a degree in statistics who confirmed that this is still a taught as a bread and butter distinction in statistics, at least in Italy.

Finally there is a big distinction between identities and the often (but not always) different moral assumptions that go with that on the one hand, and on the other the way these identities are used in terms of political marketing, that is something different and mostly make sense in democracies, but not for example in an argument about colonialism where identities still exist but the political situation is totally different.

Finally, the problem is that with each identity or set of identities comes a set of moral values. Now if we see morals as coming from identities but identities as a natural thing, we enter in a world of moral relativism where only the identity group who cries louder can manage to force its values on others.
This is in fact the implicit idea in right wing populism, and the reason they sometimes seem to think that political might makes right.
But in reality:
1) identities are not a natural thing at all, for example gender identities depend on forms of the family that are obviously historical and linked to economic structures, so is the low education blue collar identity;
2) many disequalities are objective and we can measure them, for example we know that economic inequality increased in recent decades.

So on the whole I think it is possible to make a case about objectively more egalitarian (and therefore better) sets of values and identity.

I’ve become amused that majority-white, majority male spaces avoid talk of “racism” while being appalled at state violence, and avoid talk of “feminism,” “sexism,” or “misogyny” while being appalled at sexual immorality by men, all while posing as the sole defenders of what they gladly call “identity politics.”

People who say allowing women to vote belongs to “the private sphere” can’t be taken seriously.

An alternative take on what “identity politics” might mean:

A style of politics in which people are people are divided – for the purposes of political organization – on the basis of a small number of characteristics, which initially appear to be relative hard to change and easy to determine. Further, such groups are treated as if they were homogeneous, with a shared political interest.

But:

a) Such characteristics are typically not mutually exclusive. A political group that is “homongenous” wrt to one characteristic may well contain members that differ in some other politically relevant characteristic, with consequent divergence of political objectives. eg. “woman” contains both “white women” and “black women”. cf. bell hooks

b) Who is a member of the group and who isn’t often turns out to be more vexed than it might initially appear. There exist people of mixed race, people with intersex conditions, transgendered people, white momen who have grown up in a household with African-American step-siblings (cf. Rachel Dolezau), etc. etc. A noted feature of “identity politics” is people getting very, very upset about the existence of a small number of borderline cases whose political group membership is being argued.

soru @ 100:

I think this gets to the heart of the matter: the very thin definition of the word ‘economics’ held by certain liberals, mostly referring to the precise timing of the next stock market boom/bust cycle.

Also, who gets to divide up the spoils.

All issues of physical security, of reproductive autonomy, of sexual autonomy, are economic issues, because if you can’t control your body, control your private life, without fear of being raped, killed, beaten, fired, then you’re not going to be able to fully participate in economic life.

The feminist philosophers have known this for a long time, as have black civil rights activists. It’s a source of some sadness, that clearly many “class-centric leftists” can’t even bring themselves to *acknowledge* this.

It’s also quite disappointing, that people like Orange Watch argue that this sort of idpol is buying into the priorities of the rich, when …. it’s obvious that black people in America are wildly poorer than white people. I mean, you’d think that economic redress for black Americans would be a *priority* for these redistributionist crusaders; you’d think they’d know their history and know that previous movements didn’t do right by black Americans, and make it a *priority* to get it right this time.

You’d think that Orange Watch would be writing about reparations; instead, we get (in effect) his complaint that reparations would reward Oprah Winfrey and Robert L. Johnson.

Similarly, it is well-established that sexual harrassment (and worse) is everywhere on the job ladder: that poor women are just as harrassed as rich women, and that those poor women have *less* (not more) ability to resist when the job depends on sleeping with the boss. And again, previous mass movements did *nothing* to address this. Yet, Orange Watch doesn’t prioritize this at all.

It’s clear that he, Aubergine, and others Really. Don’t. Care. Do. U?

SusanC @ 99:

A style of politics in which people are people are divided – for the purposes of political organization – on the basis of a small number of characteristics, which initially appear to be relative hard to change and easy to determine.

I would take issue with this on two grounds:
(1) idpol doesn’t demand that a person have certain characteristics in order to be in a particular idpol group: I support gay rights, and BLM, and yet I am neither gay nor black (though pretty damn brown, so maybe that’s why? henghhhh!?!) I support women’s rights, and yet I’m a male.
(2) idpol doesn’t divide people.

Identity politics unites decent people and divides them from white supremacy.

Here’s a different formulation: a style of politics in which people form groups that each pursue the redress of wrongs towards, and the rights of, particular groups of people who can be identified by a small number of characteristics, which initially appear to be relatively hard to change and easy to determine.

Who is a member of the group and who isn’t often turns out to be more vexed than it might initially appear. …. A noted feature of “identity politics” is people getting very, very upset about the existence of a small number of borderline cases

I’m not black. But it’s kind of obvious even to me, why black Americans might get a little bothered by Rachel Dolezal. Black people can “pass” as white, at risk to their lives. White people can “pass” as black, at risk of being ridiculed everywhere they go. It’s like Atwood’s “men fear women will laugh at them; women fear men will kill them.”

Chetan Murthy:

It’s clear that he, Aubergine, and others Really. Don’t. Care. Do. U?

What? You seem to have misread my comments, maybe because we are working from different understandings of what “identity politics” is.

(1) idpol doesn’t demand that a person have certain characteristics in order to be in a particular idpol group: I support gay rights, and BLM, and yet I am neither gay nor black (though pretty damn brown, so maybe that’s why? henghhhh!?!) I support women’s rights, and yet I’m a male.
(2) idpol doesn’t divide people.

Yeah, this is not what I am talking about at all (also, I’m not in the US, and I don’t know too much about how these movements work there). I would put it like this:

(1) To be in any particular idpol group you must share the identity. If you don’t you might, at best, be considered an “ally”, which puts you under permanent suspicion and allows any group-member to require you to justify your presence at any time.
(2) This tends to be very divisive, at least in my experience, because “allies” get bored of the mandatory self-criticism and drift away; when enough of them do, the definition of the identity becomes narrower and a new set of people near the edge become acceptable targets.

A group that doesn’t share these characteristics isn’t the kind of “identity politics” I was talking about.

faustusnotes:

I’m sorry that women who might be mistaken for men are occasionally received with hostility in places like bathrooms, but the solution is not to eliminate single-sex spaces by allowing in anyone who doesn’t identify as a man. We wouldn’t be so touchy if we didn’t have good reason to fear men.

What are the fundamental differences between men and women, unrelated to biological sex, that you believe in?

Which dimension of my identity is to be salient in idpol terms? And who has the power/authority to make that decision?

Is this about how groups determine their own boundaries, or are those boundaries chosen for them by others?

It seems to me that this is about power, and where power is concerned I see only three questions:

What are the sources of power?
How do I get control over them?
Once I have control over them, how do I keep it?

‘it’s kind of obvious even to me, why black Americans might get a little bothered by Rachel Dolezal’ (CM, 103)
Dolezals are rare: she made a major effort to be as black as possible, and passing as black means you lose lots of your privileges.
More common are lily-white ‘Indians’ who suffer no loss of privilege and make no effort to join or contribute to any Native American community.

@ J-D

I don’t know which sites Aubergine is referring to, but I remember Shakesville being put on lockdown years ago, with Melissa spelling out how she expected commenters to react to each post and which types of comments were allowed. Her blog, her choice, but it became much less worth reading. This is a good summary.

About the bathroom issue: we don’t currently have guards at the doors because we can rely on most people to obey the rules. If someone who appears male does enter a women-only bathroom, he can be challenged. Someone can fetch an employee or a security guard, if necessary. This might end up being messy, but the alternative is to make all bathrooms gender-neutral so that women can enjoy worrying about spycams and assault.

In your scenario, the police officer could ask to check an ID to determine whether you were male or female, though that’s less effective now that we have ID based on completely meaningless self-identification. I say completely meaningless because none of the males-who-don’t-identify-as-men whom I’ve met irl have been different from a million cis men, expect perhaps in having even more confidence than left-leaning cis men in telling women what to do.

Chetan Murthy @106:

We seem to be talking about different things: you seem to be talking about how people should react to identity politics in general; I’m talking about how, in my experience, they actually do react to a particular style of idpol rhetoric. Maybe in a better world people would joyfully embrace all opportunities for self-criticism, but we don’t seem to live in that world. (Also, I never mentioned class, and I wasn’t really thinking about the “it’s all about class” argument, which I think is very culture-specific and probably works better in, say, the UK than the US. I haven’t been to either of those places, though, so I may be wrong.)

J-D @ 110

Citation, please.

All I can offer is my own experience (as I said, “I’ve seen this happen…”). I’m not sure how one would even go about researching this in a way that could be cited, to be honest.

J-D @ 108

As far as my personal observations go (which isn’t very far, and there may well be a lot that I’m missing), when people use public toilets, nobody checks on them: I mean, nobody checks that the people using the women’s toilets are women and nobody checks that the people using the men’s toilets are men. It’s not clear to me whether your position is that there should be checks. If it is, it’s not clear to me who would conduct those checks, or how they’d check, or whether the checks would be universal for all users or at random or only when prompted in some way.

In addition to what Anvil said @113, one benefit of being able to make general assumptions about who does and who does not belong in various spaces is that when these assumptions are broken, it is an immediate indication that something is wrong and that the space is not safe. That is one benefit of having sex-specific spaces like changerooms, toilets etc. even if there is no guard posted outside checking IDs – if a male is present in a space for females (and it is almost always obvious when they are; people are very good at clocking sex), it is a very clear signal.

For example: if I was the father of a young girl (say, 6 or 7) who was just starting to use the female toilets and changerooms by herself, I would probably like to be able to tell her that there should not be any men there, and that if there are, she should leave. Making all female spaces open for anyone except non-trans males would make that meaningless. Do you see?

(This was discussed in <a href="https://crookedtimber.org/2019/09/23/three-thoughts-on-the-debate-between-gender-critical-feminists-and-the-advocates-of-strong-transgender-rights/&quot; title="another post" a little while ago.)

I should add that my experience of identity politics has included seeing arguments like the above dismissed as bigoted hatred and treated as grounds for banishment (especially when made by women), which has definitely affected my view of online Twitter-style idpol.

Anvil

I’m sorry if I failed to make my meaning sufficiently clear.

I don’t know which sites Aubergine is referring to, but I remember Shakesville being put on lockdown years ago, with Melissa spelling out how she expected commenters to react to each post and which types of comments were allowed. Her blog, her choice, but it became much less worth reading. This is a good summary.

Thank you for linking to the summary, which I read with interest. However, I can’t find in that summary a description of Shakesville ‘spiralling into ever more extreme rhetoric’ (the words Aubergine used).

About the bathroom issue: we don’t currently have guards at the doors because we can rely on most people to obey the rules. If someone who appears male does enter a women-only bathroom, he can be challenged. Someone can fetch an employee or a security guard, if necessary. This might end up being messy, but the alternative is to make all bathrooms gender-neutral so that women can enjoy worrying about spycams and assault.

In your scenario, the police officer could ask to check an ID to determine whether you were male or female, though that’s less effective now that we have ID based on completely meaningless self-identification. I say completely meaningless because none of the males-who-don’t-identify-as-men whom I’ve met irl have been different from a million cis men, expect perhaps in having even more confidence than left-leaning cis men in telling women what to do.

In my earlier comment I wrote

It’s not clear to me whether your position is that there should be checks. If it is, it’s not clear to me who would conduct those checks, or how they’d check, or whether the checks would be universal for all users or at random or only when prompted in some way.

In case that did not make my enquiry clear enough, I am going to enlarge on it in the hope that at a greater length I may be able to make my meaning clearer.

In my earlier comment, I wrote that it’s not clear whether the checks (under your proposal) would be universal for all users or at random or only when prompted in some way. It’s not clear to me from your response whether you are proposing that a check should take place whenever somebody entering a women-only bathroom appears to be male, and if that is what you mean it’s still not entirely clear because to me it’s not clear what the answer is to the question ‘appears to whom to be male?’: is it to be anybody present who can require a check if the person to be checked appears to that observer to be male, or is it to be that only people from some stipulated category can require a check if the person to be checked appears to that stipulated person to be male?

In my earlier comment I wrote that it wasn’t clear who (under your proposal) would conduct the checks. From your response it still isn’t clear to me whether you are proposing that the checks be conducted by anybody present who takes on the function of making a challenge or whether you are proposing that the checks be conducted by a person from some stipulated category. In your response you refer to ‘an employee or a security guard’. In my experience, some public toilets are located in places where there are security guards (as there are, for example, in some shopping malls) and some are located in places such as restaurants where there are generally no security guards but there are other employees, but some public toilets are located in place such as public parks where there are typically neither security guards nor other employees present.

In my earlier comment I wrote that it wasn’t clear to me how (under your proposal) the checks would be conducted. It still isn’t clear to me: in particular, it isn’t clear to me whether you are proposing that the method of checking should be to ask for the production of identification. When I need to produce identification, like many people I generally rely on my driver’s licence, which I normally have with me (even when I’m not driving). However, a New South Wales driver’s licence does not indicate whether the bearer is female or male. Sometimes at work I use my employee ID card, which I also normally have with me (even when I’m not at work), but that too does not indicate whether the bearer is female or male. My daughter doesn’t have a driver’s licence or an employee ID card: I don’t know whether she routinely carries any form of identification at all.

There’s multiple questions there to which I can imagine multiple answers and therefore I can come up with multiple scenarios: I don’t know whether any of them is the one you are proposing, but no matter which one I think about I can’t tell whether you would be satisfied. Just for one example: I can imagine that you observe, entering a women’s toilet in a public park, somebody who appears to you to be male; I can imagine you summoning a police officer to deal with the situation; I can imagine the police offer requesting the production of ID; I can imagine the person challenged saying, ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any on me’. What would you want the police officer to do then?

Finally, from your response it is not clear to me whether you are suggesting that the risk of spycams and/or the risk of assault is greater in unisex bathrooms than in women-only bathrooms and if you are making that suggestion it is not clear to me what the basis for it is.

EB@96:

3. How do we feel about groups who are in some senses marginalized, but that within their own community, express dominance in harmful ways against some members of their group or against some members of other groups?

Typically those groups include considerable argumentation, at least those groups in the generally progressive side. That was, I think, one of the major causes of the third wave feminist movement to give but one obvious example. There’s also common patterns of uneasy alliance between lesbian and gay groups caused by sexism from the gay side… although they sometimes resolve that with a common dislike of bisexuals (almost always those who identify as such more often than those who behave that way).

This is why, for example, Julian Assange makes a poor rallying figure for civil liberties concerns… not every progressive feels comfortable claiming that journalists should be free to commit rape.

Anvil, my post makes very clear that unless you and all your mates are very very good at identifying natal women, the overwhelming majority of people you harass in bathrooms will be natal women. We don’t know what proportion of the population is transgender but we do know it’s very small, and the smaller the proportion of transgender women the more natal women you have to harass in order to kick out one transgender woman. We’re talking ratios of 4:1 or 5:1 here, at least. This isn’t something I’m imagining or making up: it’s a well known and well established fact about systems of discrimination. The fact that none of you gender “critical” feminists have bothered to figure out how your bathroom exclusion laws will work in practice or who they will actually effect should serve as a pretty sobering warning to you that you don’t know what kind of damage you’re going to do with your obsessions.

As an example of this, look at your response to J-D’s question:

the police officer could ask to check an ID to determine whether you were male or female

What happens if this person doesn’t have ID? Then the police officer is going to have to check, and under your definition of natal women, this means a genital check. This is your feminist policy: mandatory genital checks. Saudi Arabia much? Not to mention this ludicrous idea of having to carry id to use the bathroom. Or the fact that in the majority of cases it won’t be a police officer doing the checking, it’ll be some white Becky’s jock boyfriend, called into the bathroom to harass a natal woman who doesn’t present as feminine enough to satisfy Becky.

The gender critical feminist world’s reaction to Caster Semenya should tell us all we need to know about who will be the real victims of the policy: non-feminine women, disabled women, non-white women and butch-presenting lesbians will be regularly harassed in bathrooms because of your terror of transgender people you have never met, who just need somewhere safe to take a dump.

It’s ironic that in a thread about identity politics, we have someone cropping up to attack the supposed idpol of transgender rights, with a solution that requires everyone to have a document that specifies their identity, and a system of harassment of anyone who doesn’t openly conform to a rigid set of ideals for the physical representation of that identity. While simultaneously demanding everyone admit that there are no essential differences between the identities! It’s a terrible, evil mess you’ve created for yourself.

Aubergine @ 115:

We seem to be talking about different things: you seem to be talking about how people should react to identity politics in general; I’m talking about how, in my experience, they actually do react to a particular style of idpol rhetoric.

Let me restate your position: “There are lots of people who don’t believe they’re misogynists, but in fact are misogynists; we should adjust our rhetoric to not make them feel badly.” [mutatis mutandis racism, homophobia, etc]

I will note that I was certainly in that camp (thought I was a feminist, wasn’t really), and perhaps I still am. But at least, I’m trying, and at least I engaged in that self-criticism. You could make your argument on a tactical basis (“if we anger these (self-deluding) racists, they’ll become outright racists, and that’s even worse”) but I don’t see any other decent basis for not calling out their awful attitudes, and certainly there’s no other basis for coddling their poor widdle sensitive feelings.

Bluntly put, nobody took such care for Trayvon Martin’s feelings, or Sandra Bland’s feelings, so why should we care about these particular moral basket cases?

J-D @ 122

You wrote about ‘… various online places … spiralling into ever more extreme rhetoric …’ Therefore, what I was (and am) requesting was (and is) some examples (or at least one) of spirals of ever more extreme rhetoric and the online places where you have encountered them.

One example is metafilter. See threads like , with its absurd comparisons to Nazis, neo-Nazis, “quislings”, etc., its occasional dehumanising rhetoric and its endless strawmanning of The Enemy (gender-critical feminists); they would regard me as nazi-adjacent based on my posts in this thread alone. Any comment disagreeing with the groupthink is immediately deleted, although the moderators also seem to have started deleting the threats of physical violence against “TERFs” that used to be posted regularly, which is nice, and pushes the site back along the spiral a bit.

…but again, I think you’ve misread me. I’m talking about the left purging its own members for trivial thoughtcrimes, not the kind of people who excuse what happened in those cases. Unlike, say, pH, I’m not too troubled by “the levels of bigotry, hatred, and intolerance expressed towards MAGA people in general”, for example.

@123 “why should we care about these particular moral basket cases?”

This is a rhetorical question I suppose, and I daresay you will not be interested in my answer. But the answer is: because we live in democracies where the route to power (without which we can do nothing meaningful to address these injustices) involves winning over a majority of people, not sending them away with a flea in their ear for failing our ideological purity tests. Remorseless, relentless self-criticism may well be a tonic for the individual soul, but it’s too harsh regimin for most folk.

We (for values of “we”) are losing the current culture war. That’s hard for some of us to accept, because it’s hateful, but also because it feels wrong: after all, “we” won, at least within certain tolerances of the word win, the previous three culture wars: civil rights, women’s rights and gay/lesbian rights. Not that everything is perfect for people of colour, women and gay people of course, but for the democratic majority, outwith hard-core fortresses of extremism, those were battles that shifted the way most people thought about these issues. It has sometimes occurred to me that the passionate commitment of non-trans liberals to trans-rights mediates, at least in some cases, a sense of belatedness for people who weren’t of the generation to fight those three righteous fights and who are now looking for a contemporary equivalent. But people of colour are the majority, globally speaking; women are half the whole population and even if gay people only make up 5-10% of the population that still aggregates into a very significant population, size-wise. As noted upthread it’s not clear what proportion of the general population are trans, but it’s assuredly not large. I’d argue that means fighting for trans rights dictates a different set of approaches: setting winnable goals. Just speaking strategically (rather than in terms of right-and-wrong) I don’t see that the current scorched-earth intensities are doing that.

” this is an egregiously appalling statement.”

It accurately describes the position of some of the “free Assange” people I’ve seen in Sydney. They are quite explicit that the rape charges do not matter even if they were proved because Assange is a journalist and must be free to commit journalism wherever and however he likes. You don’t have to like having those people helping your progressive cause, but they’re there and they’re pretty darn visible.

You’re right that Chelsea Manning doesn’t seem to have the same level of support, at least in Sydney, and I have no idea why.

I don’t follow these cases much because it’s not my cause. The people turn up to stuff I’m at for other reasons and wave their signs saying “fake rape charges” and so on at (most recently) the International Day for Indigenous People but then so do the 25 different socialist factions and the equally interchangeable 12 different christian sects. Meanwhile I’m there with my XR sign and my FIRE shirt because IMO there’s a clear link between indig issues and environmental ones (FIRE = Fighting In Resistance Equally)

Just for one example: I can imagine that you observe, entering a women’s toilet in a public park, somebody who appears to you to be male; I can imagine you summoning a police officer to deal with the situation; I can imagine the police offer requesting the production of ID; I can imagine the person challenged saying, ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any on me’. What would you want the police officer to do then?

I would not actually summon a police officer, but this hypothetical officer could say, “Okay, bring one next time,” and take it from there. Park staff would be made aware of a repeat offender.

You and faustusnotes both seem to take the position that because enforcing a law might be troublesome, that law shouldn’t exist. How do you think access to women’s changing rooms, women’s gyms, women’s clubs, women’s sports teams, and women’s shelters should be regulated? Do you simply believe that we have no right to exclude males from anything?

The gender critical feminist world’s reaction to Caster Semenya should tell us all we need to know about who will be the real victims of the policy: non-feminine women, disabled women, non-white women and butch-presenting lesbians will be regularly harassed in bathrooms because of your terror of transgender people you have never met, who just need somewhere safe to take a dump.

What’s funny about this is that non-feminine women and butch lesbians are probably more strongly represented among gender critical feminists than any other subgroup. Also, I’ve never read a feminist–radical or not–analysis of Caster Semenya’s situation that wasn’t sympathetic. Her sex testing was not initiated by feminists. We’re concerned with people like Rachel McKinnon.

Kiwana @ 130:

Let me restate your position: “There are lots of people are not misogynists, but who we like to call misogynists; since any possible negative reaction from them shows that they are not only misogynists, but *fragile* misogynists, we are always right”.

Why, no. Lots of people who think of themselves as feminists, aren’t feminists at all. I was one of those, and perhaps I still am. I can describe point-by-point the ways in which I was not a feminist, even though I thought I was. And similarly, lots of people who don’t think of themselves as racist, in fact -are- racists. I was one of those too, and perhaps I still am.

‘ We’re concerned with people like Rachel McKinnon.’

Why?

Students Afraid to Ask Questions…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qLjQyQVWc0

At the 8:00 minute mark, the university lecturers describe the silence that descends in classrooms when discussions such as this come up – using real life examples. As in “how do you feel when…?” Young people don’t have the life experience to stand tall and withstand accusations of “racist, racist scum, fascist, white nationalist” which are part and parcel of the ‘discussions’ on any CT thread on any topic, at any time. Some folks, sadly, evidently get-off on implying that others aren’t really concerned about rape.

The consequences of these form of discourse here at CT are dire. Yes, even on a silly thread populated by the usual suspects on a blog few read. Because many here have the ability to influence countless others, as teachers, lecturers etc. Some may feel that the ‘conservative’ claim that students today are afraid to engage in good faith debates (not just sing with the choir) on topics of race, etc., well, because, or because ‘that’s a right-wing talking point.’

They’re right, reporting that students are afraid to speak or write freely at universities is often and loudly discussed in non-choir circles, and given that something like 90 plus percent of US academics support Dems, it’s unlikely that the 90 plus percent ever hear of their students’ fears except as ‘right-wing talking points’ and so dismiss reports of fears as such.

What are the stakes? Real debate suffers because people who seriously disagree with the premises and parameters of the debates aren’t engaged in the discussion. How well does that work in real life – where every major foreign policy ‘expert’ believes that pro-democracy interventions justify military action and regime change? In domestic policy, conditions are slightly better, not because the 90 percent are keener to listen, but because minority parents demanding alternatives to failed public schools and programs are now migrating to the GOP, and charter schools.

Discussing trans-tolerance and bathrooms when 80-90 percent of a cohort of high-students are functionally illiterate borders on the obscene. What about regular folks denied access to schools for their kids in 2020? We’re willing to tolerate that inequality, it seems. How about middle-class cocaine abuse, buying illegal drugs from people who massacre villages? Well, liberals sigh, what can be done?

Many believe we need to be more intolerant of attacks on free speech and we need to do more to protect children in schools and at homes from the ravages of widely-accepted abuses. Democrats/social democrats are running out of solutions. Have you noticed?

All that’s missing from Labour in the UK, or the Democrats in the US are winning candidates and solutions that make sense to voters. Which is perhaps why we spend so much time focusing on the ‘really important’ issues.

Happy 2020

@Hidari

Because, in most sports, women can’t compete against men and win. This is why they’ve fought to establish leagues of their own. The fastest female runners may be faster than most men, but they are not faster than the best men. There’s a reason that only male sprinters have beaten the 10 second barrier for the 100 meter dash, and that male cyclists take about ten percent less time to complete races than female cyclists. If sports weren’t segregated by sex, women would largely vanish from professional sports. Allowing male athletes to compete on the basis of gender identity makes as much sense as allowing a 200 pound wrestler to compete in the lowest weight class because he identifies as a small person.

Apart from fairness, one of the reasons women value female-only spaces is because it provides them with a chance to escape from men and boys. This is particularly true of high school girls. At my German school, physical education classes were divided by sex. While it startled me at first, I soon came to appreciate it.

J-D @ 132

Your exact words were ‘I would probably like to be able to tell her’. Now, if faustusnotes (or somebody else) sees a problem with your doing something, that doesn’t render you unable to do it. I would say that if (some) parents tell their children something, and if (some) other people see a problem with those parents doing so, it is still correct to say that (whatever it was the parents told their children) it was something the parents were able to do.

Do you honestly not understand that figure of speech? I would like to be able to tell people that they shouldn’t worry because there are sane adults in charge of US foreign policy at the moment, and nobody would try to stop me if I did, but that wouldn’t make my statement correct or useful.

faustusnotes @ 138

You also now have hand-waved away the problem for butch-presenting lesbians, and the gender critical feminist treatment of Caster Semenya.

Caster Semenya is intersex (as was revealed when the International Association of Athletics Federations released a policy that applied to her and clearly identified her specific intersex condition), and the long-standing issue of intersex people in women’s sport is not at all the same as the new issue of males in women’s sport, as much as trans rights activists love to confuse people by conflating the two.

You haven’t thought through the consequence of your policy, and when presented with solid evidence and clear logic, you just refuse to budge. This is because your prejudice against trans people is much stronger than your desire to protect natal women, and it shows.

You still haven’t grappled with the problems with your argument that were pointed out the last time you brought it up. But I’ll try to simplify the main one.

Consider two alternative premises:

Premise A: Women have the right to female-only spaces (including toilets, changerooms, shelters for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, etc.).

Premise B: Women do not have the right to female-only spaces. While some women would like to be able to exclude males from certain spaces (as above), the interest of some males in accessing those spaces is paramount. Questioning that male interest is a form of bigotry.

If one accepts B, then one may also accept your argument. Since women have no right to female-only spaces, and even the act of claiming that right is harmful, they can reasonably be blamed for the consequences of them requesting those spaces and attempting to exclude males from them (the consequences being the false positives you mention).

On the other hand, A suggests that the fault lies with the males who are creating the expectation that males are likely to be present in female-only spaces.

Since gender-critical feminists obviously accept A and reject B, they have no reason to be convinced by your argument. Neither does anyone else who accepts A. And using your argument to add support to Premise B, as you do, is begging the question. Agreed?

Anyway, back on topic (or closer to it): I’ve realised why likbez started this thread (@1) with the apparently strange gambit of linking to the Christian Post and Newspunch (wikipedia: “NewsPunch is a Los Angeles-based fake news website known for spreading conspiracy theories and political misinformation peddling fake news, mixed in with real news stories…NewsPunch has published false stories, including … [f]alse claims that Justin Trudeau was the love child of Fidel Castro”). This achieves a number of things:

– it immediately sets the tone of thread by focusing on the idpol wedge issue of trans rights vs women’s rights,
– it invites readers to associate gender-critical feminist arguments with conservative propaganda and fake news,
– it feeds the trans activists’ ever-growing persecution complex.

If likbez isn’t being paid for this, he should be!

Aubergine, I’m well aware of the existence of premise A and premise B. I’m not taking issue with whether you genuinely believe premise A or premise B or whether they have any valid basis in feminism, philosophy or astrology or anything else. I’m simply pointing out that any attempt to enforce premise A will lead to the harassment of the women you claim to want to protect, that this is inevitable and there is no avoiding it. I have given specific concrete examples (with pictures!) of the consequences of enforcing premise A the way you want. Both you and Anvil simply don’t want to talk about what actually happens when you enforce your exclusionary principles. You have some vague handwavey ideals, but you refuse to grapple with the practical implications of your policies. Until you do, you’re just being irresponsible.

I’m also well aware of what the actual issue was in the case of Semenya. However I gave evidence (a link to a gender critical feminist reddit) of GCFs treating Semenya as a trans woman (not intersex), no doubt because of racism. I would point you to Kathleen Stock’s tweets on the matter, and the disgusting replies, but in between writing for Quilette and defending an actual fascist she has found time to delete all the tweets she wrote about Semenya. Probably because they revealed just a little too much about what she really thinks of intersex people …

I’m not going to go back into the weeds of this conversation; I was sick for the better part of the last week and was all too glad to not get in arguments on line for a few days. However:

CM@87:
What “unexamined privilege” do you speak of? […] Maybe you should be clearer about what you mean.

The unexamined privilege of being able to uproot your life and move to another region where you do not, per your prior comments, suffer from significant discrimination or marginalization – while not only failing to suffer materially for doing so, but also by your above account, apparently improving your standard of living. This should be clear. Perhaps if you “don’t see class” it’s difficult, but it really should not be.

I’d also note that just because I don’t weaponize my identities nor brandish them for epistemological street cred doesn’t mean I belong to the cultural default identity. As someone else who suffered abuse and persecution according to marginalized essentialist identities correctly and incorrectly ascribed to me while growing up in the rural US, your invocation of this to give yourself credibility does not add any particular authority to your opinions. Especially, again, when you fail to examine what role your socio-economic privilege played in allowing you remove yourself from those circumstances in a relatively painless manner.

CM@101:
It’s clear that he, Aubergine, and others Really. Don’t. Care. Do. U?

This is not the first time I’ve seen CM assume the gender of someone they disagree with so they can lazily lump them into tidy, well-defined idpol pigeonholes. I’d love if it was the last. This is, along with much of the rest of their comments in this thread, excellent evidence towards Kiwanda@130 being accurate in rephrasing them as wanting to be able to equate everyone they disagree with as being essentially the same (cf their evocation of Melania here).