What follows is a bit of ramble around the edges of a rather messy ideological battleground. I've covered a lot of the ground in earlier posts but some points are so important, they bear repeating.
The forces that advance and protect global corporate capitalism set about routing its main enemy, the old red left, by destroying its collectives, corrupting its political parties, and denying the existence of universalist, class-based theories.
They also replenished their armoury of divert and divide tactics.
Neo-liberalism's promotion of hyper-individualism and aspirational culture – we can / must be the best possible versions of our unique selves – was so successful because it was grafted onto older ideologies that posit the existence of an immutable and unique individual soul or spirit housed within a mutable (mortal) body.
In its most alienated and harmful expressions, the physical body is reduced to a "meat sack" or "flesh suit" inhabited and "piloted" by the "authentic self".
The left of neo-liberalism (the system-adjusters) – already enthralled by identity and emergent queer politics – seized on gender identity as its cause du jour, as did parts of the wider left which, in other respects, are anti-capitalist.
The odd alliances and enmities that have flowed from all this are a neo-liberal spin doctor's dream, and have become arguably one of the most effective diverters and dividers we've yet seen.
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The new wave of feminism that was energised by opposition to gender identity ideology and praxis is now in the throes of a major sectarian schism between a loose coalition of socialist feminists – from social democrats to communists – and a loose coalition of liberal and radical feminists aided by an growing horde of opportunist right-wing blokes, which has just one target in its sights – transwomen or, in the gender critical nomenclature, trans-identifying males.
Sometimes a strategic response to a single issue serves to galvanise and to unite a broader movement, pulling people into political activism on a wider front. However, that might not be progressive activism – and it can sometimes be the antithesis of it.
In the absence of the strong organisational and theoretical frameworks that are needed to hold progressive movements together, instead of a focus on a single issue serving to pull people into wider progressive activism, it can as easily lead to them being pulled into wider reactionary activism.
The dangers of a narrow focus on a single issue and the sorts of political opportunism that can accompany it, was illustrated when some gender critical women in NZ promoted right-wing libertarian, David Seymour's scaremongering and tub-thumping about the Labour Government’s repeal of the infamous and discredited "Three Strikes" legislation.
His cynical and opportunist appeal to the law and order brigade was used to inflate the bogey man of a specific threat to women via a claimed mass release of sex offenders.
The women responsible for promoting this were either right-wingers cynically aiming to use the new wave of women's rights activism as a platform, or they were so focussed on a narrow goal, they failed to see the wider political picture.
There are gender critical feminists who’ve never taken any notice of, for example, the class and ethnic skewing of the female prison population, but who became incensed over the housing of male-bodied trans prisoners in female prisons.
Their sex-based prisoner rights' activism goes only as far as stopping that one sort of potential harm to female prisoners, and does not address or want to change the socio-economic underpinnings of wider prison policy with its disproportionate adverse effects on the poor and on people of colour, both female and male.
Women who said nothing about the adverse effects of neo-liberal economic policy on health care provision, now rail about the presence of transwomen both as patients and health care workers. Many had and have little to say and are prepared to do less about the impacts of low quality or non-existent health care on all members of impoverished communities, especially women and kids.
The same with sport; people who never said a word about the sexism and the pay and status differentials in the world of commercialised sport, are up in arms about the inclusion of male bodied trans people in female categories.
Arguably the most emotive of these linked issues is paediatric transition. Many of the people who rage about the adverse effects on children of gender ideology and its associated medicalised care paradigm – have little or nothing to say about the thousands of children under the age of five who die every single day, most from easily preventable causes.
Few voices were or are raised to express horror about that death toll, let alone demand and fight for the structural changes needed to end it, while the relatively small number of kids affected by gender identity medical protocols in the affluent world is held up as the pre-eminent child protection issue of the era.
Paediatric transition is of course hugely important but the medical “advances” that have both enabled and profited from the transgender wave were made in the context of the prior immense growth of medicine for profit.
The underlying ethos and the influence of medicine for profit serves to corrupt medical ethics, and it has a grossly disproportionate impact on the poor, caused both by the inability to pay for access to medical care and by the diversion of medical services into the provision of various forms of appearance enhancement, for example.
This development in commercialised medicine preceded the rise of gender identity ideology, including gender affirming paediatric medical protocols, and arguably was a necessary precondition for it.
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I've said before that I see this more as a battle between social conservatism and social transgressivism than a simple left/right division.
Tendencies towards social conservatism, in the sense of an attachment to, and respect for traditional social and moral norms, and social trangressivism, in the sense of disrupting or changing those norms – cut across all social and economic boundaries. There are politically left wing social conservatives and politically right wing social transgressives. Also, people may be socially conservative on some issues and socially transgressive on others.
Very simplistically, the conservative pole helps maintain a necessary degree of social stability and cohesion – especially with regard to the unwritten social contract; the other is necessary for change and innovation.
A healthy society keeps a balance because if the two poles are not held in tension, they will start to pull towards extremes. Social conservatism acting as a brake on change can energise a counter-reaction which pulls societal norms towards the social transgressive pole. Push too far in that direction and social conservatism will start to pull back.
Neo-liberalism, with its profit at any cost monetarist ideology, weakened left wing progressive movements by undermining both their organisational bases, and the theoretical-intellectual frameworks which give the movements political coherence and resilience. It also continued an older tradition of fomenting sectarianism, which is the kiss of death for progressive movements, especially when sects centre around a cult of personality – in the digital era, cults of celebrity.
Neo-liberalism has put cults of celebrity on steroids and "democratised" them via social media such that a huge range of people can become "famous" and some sort of "influencer" – having their ego boosted, promoting or undermining a cause, making money ...or all of the above.
The single biggest question mark over gender identity politics for me was always the speed with, and extent to which global corporates and corporate-friendly governments, institutions, and NGOs etc embraced it.
The reasons for that are complex – partly market-driven, partly ideological.
Gender identity with its precursor, the denial of sex dimorphism, once it was pulled to the extremes of “I feel I am, therefore I literally am” was always going to galvanise opposition among social conservatives. Not all of these people are political conservatives but when confronted with an issue that goes beyond their personal or political pale, they may be pulled into alliances with the political right, and even the far-right.
The fact that so many on the white left stood alongside the corporate establishment as it embraced gender identity, and then went far beyond it by attacking anyone, women especially, who refused to toe the gender identity line, is a measure of how thoroughly gutted the left in the west is.
These attacks on anti-gender identity feminists preceded the rise of sections of the gender critical movement which are prepared to ally with the far right on this one issue, and arguably helped propel a lot of those women into the right's waiting arms.
One could be forgiven for thinking that amongst the ranks of the white left were some people who deliberately fomented that division, tapping into a vein of unreconstructed sexism and latent or internalised misogyny amongst enough on the broad left to create an activist groundswell.
A motley mix of flip floppers, political cowards, and opportunists followed the activists onto what was declared to be the zenith of the moral and political high ground. Some of them are now straggling down under the cover of darkness leaving the hard core defenders, still convinced they’re firmly on the right side of history.
Meanwhile the forces that would actually "annihilate" women or queer people (as opposed to the angry rhetoric of a woman who shoots from the lip) are gathering force and momentum.
The big question is, at what point will the corporate world decide that gender identity has ceased to be a political and economic opportunity, and become a threat.
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