It takes a long time for most of us to work out what ‘identity politics’ is, and why it matters. The main reason it’s important is that it can completely blind-side people seeking socialism. It can and does lead them into aggressively supporting what are in effect right wing, individualist ideas. In short, it’s another horribly successful way of splintering the left.
“My gang”
Look at it this way – if you believe in ‘a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ you’ll be more than happy to go along and support trade union actions when the unions are battling for a fair deal for workers. You won’t worry yourself if there are people on that same picket line who disagree with you on other policies. You’re all there to support fair pay. That’s how solidary works.
But if you believe in the supremacy of identity, if you become ‘an ally’ of a particular identity group, it becomes your bounden duty to stand with them whatever they’re doing – even if it’s against your own politics and experience. It also becomes your duty to shun anyone who questions that identity group, even if they’re calling for solidarity on issues vital to socialism. It also becomes your duty to accept, even to pretend to believe, that a person is what they say they are if they are in the group you have identified with.
That way lies barbarism and, as the more critical thinking academics have been pointing out for some time, identity politics will logically lead us to a position where everyone is standing in a ‘group’ of one, defending their unique identity rather than being sufficiently confident of their own existence to recognise their commonality with others, and work co-operatively.
The end game
Today is a very embarrassing day for one school in our country. A child came to school claiming to be a cat. The teacher, who like many of their generation, have been trained by organisations such as Stonewall to believe that a person’s self-declared identity is an integral part of them, and that to question it does them serious harm.
What we hear in this sneaked out recording is a teacher who thinks they’re defending a child’s identity calling other kids ‘despicable’ because they’re holding out for logic and science.
Click here to read the story from LBC
Dear teacher, I get that you’ve been backed into a corner. I get that you’re trying to do right by that kid, but it is not essential to go along with a child’s fantasy. It is however harmful to call kids ‘despicable’ for trying to get at the truth. You said that because you were panicking, didn’t you. That’s what happens when you try to argue for a nonsense. Those kids are seeking logic, and commonality of experience. Defend them too, please.
If your enemy says something that’s true, stop arguing for a minute
I hate agreeing with Tories as much as any self-respecting lefty does but you have to defend truth wherever you find it. Identity politics tells you you must always disagree with the people you’ve agreed are bad, and agree with the people you’ve agreed are good. Sanity says that people are complex, not uniquely good or bad but ever changing, ever learning. Please stay alert and courageous and think about this…
Recently, the EHRC set out to clarify our UK Equality Act, stating that where ‘sex’ is mentioned in the Act it means – er – sex. Many people who had wandered a long way down the identity politics path were shocked, believing the EHRC was rescinding trans people’s rights. They are not. Sex has always meant sex. If you go look at the Act, you’ll find it logically and sensibly has a set of exemptions for the protected characteristics, and that one of them is ‘sex’. This does not harm trans people, because there is also one for ‘gender reassignment’, which bestows all the same rights on trans people that everyone has under the Act.
Unfortunately, a generation brought up under the rule of organisations like Stonewall just can’t get their heads round this. Feminists call them ‘sex deniers’, because they are determined (along with Judith Butler) to stand with the in-crowd’s view that we have never really known what sex is. Look – even the humanists are at it…
Click here to read JL’s write up of the story in Graham Linehan’s newsletter.
… this is identity politics gone mad and, if you think it’s just silly culture wars, if you haven’t grasped yet the harm that it’s doing, please consider the sufferings of that teacher, near to panic trying to persuade the class they must believe that one of their number is a cat, and the kids who, whilst striving for a logic based reality, get told they are ‘despicable’.
If you’re a lefty, please equally urgently consider the fact that one of the major divisions we’re suffering from lately is that many people, formerly of the left, are completely immersed in identity politics now, and are not only concerning themselves too much with pronouns and ‘transwomen are women’ and so on, they are refusing to work with anyone who says – or has ever said – that sex is real, that you can’t actually change sex and (****!) won’t stand up for the idea that people can suddenly become cats.
Solidarity and commonality
Please let’s show identity politics the door before it does any more harm. Let’s be proper, materialist socialists, with a politics based on evidence-based analysis of sex, race and class. That’s the thinking that gave us the Equality Act and the anti-racism movement. That’s the thinking that ensures that we look after all minorities with decency and respect – in other words, it’s actually the thinking that trans people (however sold on gender ideology they are), as well as women and girls (however radical feminist they may be) need us to apply.
That’s because socialism and solidarity are for everyone, whereas post-modern, neoliberal phenomena like identity politics are individualistic and destructive.
***UPDATE***
Re that school story:
Piers Morgan and such like people had a field day, The London Economic have gone to the trouble of ‘confirming’ it didn’t happen (because the school said so). If you’re in the area, I suggest you do what I did – talk to the kids, talk to the parents. We need private lobby groups that teach identity politics out of our schools.
********************
Dear Reader,
Times are hard, and so the articles on this site are freely available but if you are able to support my work by making a donation, I am very grateful.
Cheers,
Kay
********************
Kay Green 