Thanks for this piece. Angst about feminist divisions (see the curt comment just now from Helen Dale) has emerged and is real: there was a rupture in the 1980s between second and third wave feminsms. With the latter came Queer Theory and the anti-realism of the postmodern turn, championed in the latter version (especially by Gayle Rubin …
Thanks for this piece. Angst about feminist divisions (see the curt comment just now from Helen Dale) has emerged and is real: there was a rupture in the 1980s between second and third wave feminsms. With the latter came Queer Theory and the anti-realism of the postmodern turn, championed in the latter version (especially by Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler). Trans ideology represents the most egregious and divisive social trend since the postmodern turn, with an enmeshment with American individualism and the rise of New Social Movements. Equality was thereafter was displaced by diversity and we are all now suffering the consequences. For this reason, any serious analysis of the challenge posed by trans ideology has to also unpick the weakness more geneally of identity politics. One resource to do this is from critical realism and its four planar social being framework. The first plane is the natural world (a man cannot be turned into a woman anymore than lead can be turned into gold). The second plane is relationality (the preoccupation with ingroup/outgroup reasoning, as a hallmark of all forms of identity politics). In this case the neologism of 'cis' was invented for this finger pointing purpose. The third is our embedding social and economic strutures. In this case of relevance is patriarchy and the interest work of 'affirmative' therapists, endocrinologists and cosmetic surgeons (not forgetting drug company profits). The fourth is the sacralisation of our unique experience (the pros and cons of 'lived experience' or epistemological privilege). All four are important to understand-identity politics creates fornms of reductionism that overly-dwell on planes 2 and 4, leaving the material reality of our biology and our particular social and economic structures backgrounded or ignored. Traditional sloganising about right and left do not work in the case of identity politics, as they are valorised, for different reasons, across the political spectrum. This recalls other political trends, such as eugenics at the turn of the 20th century. I have explored all this and more in my book Identity Politics: Where Did It All Go Wrong? (Phoenix Books, 2022).
Thanks for this piece. Angst about feminist divisions (see the curt comment just now from Helen Dale) has emerged and is real: there was a rupture in the 1980s between second and third wave feminsms. With the latter came Queer Theory and the anti-realism of the postmodern turn, championed in the latter version (especially by Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler). Trans ideology represents the most egregious and divisive social trend since the postmodern turn, with an enmeshment with American individualism and the rise of New Social Movements. Equality was thereafter was displaced by diversity and we are all now suffering the consequences. For this reason, any serious analysis of the challenge posed by trans ideology has to also unpick the weakness more geneally of identity politics. One resource to do this is from critical realism and its four planar social being framework. The first plane is the natural world (a man cannot be turned into a woman anymore than lead can be turned into gold). The second plane is relationality (the preoccupation with ingroup/outgroup reasoning, as a hallmark of all forms of identity politics). In this case the neologism of 'cis' was invented for this finger pointing purpose. The third is our embedding social and economic strutures. In this case of relevance is patriarchy and the interest work of 'affirmative' therapists, endocrinologists and cosmetic surgeons (not forgetting drug company profits). The fourth is the sacralisation of our unique experience (the pros and cons of 'lived experience' or epistemological privilege). All four are important to understand-identity politics creates fornms of reductionism that overly-dwell on planes 2 and 4, leaving the material reality of our biology and our particular social and economic structures backgrounded or ignored. Traditional sloganising about right and left do not work in the case of identity politics, as they are valorised, for different reasons, across the political spectrum. This recalls other political trends, such as eugenics at the turn of the 20th century. I have explored all this and more in my book Identity Politics: Where Did It All Go Wrong? (Phoenix Books, 2022).
"a man cannot be turned into a woman anymore than lead can be turned into gold" :-)