TERFs: Executed via Circular Firing Squad

"Under Thatcher and then Blair and continuing up until our contemporary moment, the working class has seen its culture slowly and progressively destroyed," Deirdre O'Neill writes in this Medium article, and she's not happy about it. I can't say I blame her so far. I'm not happy about it either.

One of the consequences of the massive changes that have taken place in working class life over the last forty years of neo liberalism has been the erasure of class-consciousness and the loss of the language of class as an analytical framework within which to articulate and make sense of those changes.

Couldn't agree more. The article gives an account of how the left abandoned material, working class concerns in favor of cultural and identity based issues of greater concern to a careerist academic middle class that is generally accurate. It's also worth noting, however, that there was not, for a time, much choice of which way the leftist parties of the developed world should go. This was a long, painful and complicated process, so it's worth going over it again, in point form:

• Disillusion with Marxian socialism and materialism setting in on the post WW2 left, as the tyrannical nature of Stalin's U.S.S.R becomes known.
• The emergence of critical theory and the new left. The third world abroad and minorities at home are cast in the role once reserved for the industrial proletariat.
• The increasingly international business environment leading to what we came to call globalization. Mid to low skill level jobs that depended on union representation and a sophisticated regulatory welfare state to maintain a middle class lifestyle were among the first to be lost to the third world.
• Automation also proceeded apace in this time.
• Resulting in a decline in the political clout exercised by the unionized blue collar working class, itself became more conservative as a result of attaining a middle class level of existence after WW2. 
• These factors allowed the likes of Reagan and Thatcher to come to power in the US and UK, and they adopted policies that further weakened the power of organized labor. 
• Leftist governments such as those of François Mitterrand in France were forced to backpedal on social democratic reform due to the threat of capital flight and investment strike, which were becoming bigger clubs in the hands of the rich and powerful, and this trend would only increase into the internet age.
• Corporate media would lay the blame for this investment strike and capital flight on the flawed and anachronistic ideologies of the center left parties, and whip up popular backlash against social democratic ideas. Electorates now do corporate power's dirty work for it, urging leftist parties to get with the program and enact business friendly neoliberal policies, and in so doing giving those neoliberal policies a thin but very useful veneer of democratic legitimacy. 
• Communism unraveling in the U.S.S.R and its satellites, and the People's Republic of China embracing market reforms, discrediting socialism in the mainstream.
• New social movements emphasizing identity gradually becoming more mainstream in the late 20th century.
• Declining birth rates resulting in western governments relying on increased levels of immigration to top up population growth.
• Large numbers of women, people of color and immigrants entering the workforce swelling its numbers, further weakening labor's bargaining power, but also serving as a new basis of support for center left political parties.
• The shift to a more managerial role in the global economy results in increased emphasis on higher education in the western world as the key to a middle class lifestyle, while blue collar labor declines. A university degree, once the pedigree of the upper crust, now becomes the mainstay of the middle class.
• Concomitant with this is the identity based new social movements finding their stronghold in academia, concluding a long shift away from economics and towards culture in a western left disillusioned with the obvious flaws and failings of the so-called communist world.
• Abandoned by the "left", the working class becomes vulnerable to political exploitation from the right, which appeals to their resentments towards cultural elites but shifts their anger towards scapegoats - immigrants, minorities and the like, to gain their votes. Once in office, the right then abandons cultural populism in favor of economic neoliberalism. 

The upshot of all of this is that the leftist political parties of the first world shifted from the unionized blue collar working class to educated cosmopolitan urban knowledge workers as their basis of support, and they really didn't have much choice if they wanted to stay relevant in electoral politics. From the early 1980s onward, it simply wasn't possible to win an election on a socialist or social democratic platform in most developed nations. It's as simple as that. Sorry. I don't like it either, but that's the way it was, and in many places continues to be. Social democracy is struggling world wide, with few exceptions. One of these exceptions being, of all places, the USA, where Bernie Sanders has galvanized considerable support for a social democratic platform. 

Did the moneyed classes capitalize on their newfound advantages over the working class? Certainly. But was it all part of a conspiracy to destroy the working class right from the get go? I doubt it. In a way, that's really the damning thing about capitalism. It's destructiveness is so unintentional. Capital follows the path of least resistance and maximal profit by its nature. Conspiracy is not only unnecessary, but often counterproductive.

Which brings us to the second thrust of Deirdre's article, summed up in this passage:

In the light of this its difficult not to consider the rapid rise of transgender ideology and its concomitant activism enthusiastically embraced by the middle class left, to be connected to the dismantling of radical politics over the last 40 years and the demoralization and feelings of defeat it has engendered.

From here, the article veers into "TERF" or trans-exclusionary radical feminist territory. While I sympathize with some if its criticisms of "transgender ideology" the problem I see with the older 2nd wave TERF brand of radical / socialist feminism is that they opened the door to all of the metapolitical tactics that the transgender ideologues are now using on them. That the intersectional transgender movement would upset the TERFs has more than a whiff of karmic justice to it. The transgender activists have not only beaten the TERFs at their own game, they've beaten the TERFs at the very game the TERFs wrote the rules for.

That's gotta hurt.

Let's take a closer look.

Transgender activism has presented the privileged with an opportunity to ignore questions of class inequality while at the same time allowing some the opportunity to perform a superficial radicalism and progressiveness.

This was radical feminism from the 1960s onwards. Shooting down the romantic overtures of the male of the species took on the moral and cultural gravitas of a revolutionary act against tyrannical power in the ego drenched minds of pseudo intellectual women and their male lapdogs from the 1980s onwards, at least as far as most mainstream media was concerned. A lot easier than unionizing the local supermarket, I suppose. If society is going to legitimize any demographic's favorite activity as an act of glorified transgression against supposedly illegitimate power structures, who wouldn't jump at the chance if it was their group that would be so privileged?

The transgender movement demands a rejection of biological reality. There is something very terrifyingly fragile about our commitment to reasoned debate if we can so nonchalantly cast aside facts such as our biological constitution.

TERFs were looking on much of gender as being no more than a social construct going back to the 1960s. Many such feminists went as far as to claim that heterosexuality itself was little more than a creation of the patriarchy designed to objectify and oppress women, and would dismiss all arguments to the contrary appealing to evolution and biology as mere apologetics for male power and privilege.

Funny how it's okay to handwave realities we don't like when we're the ones in the privileged position of being able to call others out on their privilege. When it's us who are supposedly privileged, that's when it's different. That's when the Anita Sarkeesians of this world suddenly start understanding where the Carl Benjamins of this world have been coming from all this time.

There has been a glaring refusal on the part of the left to come to terms with the question of transgenderism and its impact on women and by women I mean people who belong to the sex class that has ovaries and is able to give birth.

There has been a glaring refusal on the part of the left to come to terms with the twin and intersecting questions of feminism and neoliberalism and their impact on men and by men I mean people who belong to the sex that has testicles and are able to impregnate women. A "left" consisting of a bunch of infighting identity based movements drawing their lines of concern only up to the point where their own "marginalized" identities can be deployed for political and social advantage is not a left that can successfully push back against global neoliberal hegemony.

The levels of groupthink necessary to keep this ship afloat, the self censorship, the intimidation, the blatant dishonesty, the denial of debate with howls of ‘transphobia’ point to a left in deep crisis.

You don't say! Just replace howls of transphobia with howls of racism and howls of misogyny and I think you get the picture. Back in the 1990s, liberal feminists along the lines of Christina Hoff Sommers, Camille Paglia and Cathy Young were describing the radical feminist women's studies classrooms in very similar terms. You can guess how well they were, and continue to be, received in feminist circles.

Are we starting to notice a pattern here?

The middle class dominated left has abandoned its obligation to critically engage, to clarify and to lead on the political issues of the day. Instead it has simply accepted the terms of the debate put forward by the trans militants (including their really basic conflation of sex and gender). This failure is rooted in the left’s acceptance of identity politics with its assumption that how a group (or the primary definers within a group) articulates its oppression is the last word in the matter.

This is called Standpoint theory and was a central element in radical feminist ideology almost right from its inception, and the source of much of its authoritarian and antinomian character. Implicitly up into the 1980s, explicitly since then.  Related to this is the notion of a vanguard party or movement taking it upon itself to define who is and isn't part of the charmed circle they've taken it upon themselves to represent, and decide unilaterally what the group's interests are, on behalf of the entire group. This has been standard practice on the regressive authoritarian left going all the way back to Lenin.

The decision of liberal academia to acquiesce to the demands of the standpoint feminists and deligitimize any and all criticism of women's studies as misogyny, criticism of critical race theory/black studies as racism and so on has been a dagger to the heart of every good and noble aspiration that the political left has had over the last several decades. Centuries even. The damage that this has done has been absolutely incalculable. At the very least, it's laid the foundations for all of the excesses of current year SJW culture. And it wasn't done to appease the transgender activists. It was done to appease the second wave feminists in academia during the 1970s and 80s.

The closing down of the complexities of this discussion with the mantra ‘transwomen are women’ is profoundly undemocratic. In a properly functioning democracy the concerns of everyone would be included in an open and transparent discussion.

The concerns of everyone would be included in an open, transparent discussion? Would this include men's rights activists, typically brushed off as misogynists? Would this include that segment of the working class opposed to high levels of immigration, typically handwaved as racists? Would this include feminists who are not women of color? Typically brushed off as white feminists? Would this include cisgender heterosexual black males, sometimes brushed off as "hoteps" or as "the white people of black people?" Would this include white cisgender homosexual males, who are branded as misogynistic for doing exactly what TERFs think white cisgender females should be doing: rejecting the opposite sex for sexual and romantic partnership? Does it include the white male class conscious working class, the "brocialists" so called?  Does it include the original alt-left; race conscious white socialists? We wouldn't want to leave anybody out now, would we?

I think we all know what Deirdre's answer to all of those questions would be.

While I agree that stratifying people in accordance to how "marginalized" they are is incredibly counterproductive and completely contrary to the notions of inclusivity and equality that the social justice crowd so loves to pay lip service to, once again we can hardly lay the blame for this at the feet of the recent wave of transgender activism. Welcome to the world non-black, non-women and non-queer leftists have been living in ever since the summer of love, Deirdre. I'm pretty sure I can guess your response. Some sort of sneer about really giving a shit about the privileged class. Well then, forgive me if I don't give a shit about whatever frustrations you've suffered at the hands of the transgender activists. So much for solidarity, or an injury to one being an injury to all, I guess.

Instead, critical thinking is relabeled ‘transphobia’, even basic facts are now apparently a sign of Trump leaning tendencies (thereby ensuring that the Right will own this issue, because the left cannot sensibly discuss it). Rather than fighting for us all to transition to a fairer more equal society, the social justice warriors focus on the right of men to adopt the stereotypes that most women have long ago rejected.

Once again, this pandora's box was flung open by the 1960s and 70s wave of radical feminism, and this now apparent sense of indignity and having been cheated by transgender activists utilizing all the same methods reveals just how arrogant and bloated with a sense of entitlement feminism's 2nd wave really was. Who decided what "stereotypes" were "outdated" and that any defense of traditional notions of femininity and masculinity, even if voluntarily adopted instead of socially mandated - was indicative of far right politicial leaning? What are we to make of women who are frustrated with being shamed out of activities deemed too traditionally feminine, such as being stay at home moms, getting married or having romantic relationships with men? Your frustration with being silenced by transgender activists is understandable, Deirdre, but what about all the people who had to be silenced so that your brand of misandrist radical feminism could become hegemonic in academia and most media?

Contrary to current year perspectives, the academy of the mid 1970s onward wasn't some stronghold of ideological pluralism and sexual license that we've only very recently lost. Rather, it was the anti heterosex radical feminists who had seized the commanding heights of politically correct discussion, and they were saying to male liberals all the same things this article accuses transgender activists of saying to TERFs. A decade prior, the 2nd wave radfems had done the same thing to the 1960s new left. When the male radicals of the time accused the feminists of distracting from and derailing class based politics, I'm sure we can all guess how sympathetic the radfems of the time were.

Welcome to the Revolution

Hell, it may not even have really begun there. The new left had supplanted the old by sidelining the blue collar proletariat in favor of the third world and ethnic minorities. The old left had supplanted the classical liberals by sidelining the property owning bourgeoisie in favor of the industrial workers, the classical liberals sidelined the aristocracy and the clergy, and so on. With but little exaggeration, we can trace this back all the way to the signing of the Magna Carta.

All of this points to the fatal flaw at the heart of the direction the left has gone in almost since its inception. A politics based on the oppression olympics, so called, is doomed to fail. Sooner or later, you meet someone more oppressed than you, and the moral force with which you've been pressing your claims against those higher up the social hierarchy than yourself now compel you to yield to those pressing claims against you from below.  We need a better approach. We need a comprehensive theory of liberation applicable to all, rather than a ceaseless dialectic of oppressed and oppressor, a dialectic that promises revolution, but only seems to deliver a circular firing squad.

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Beyond Feminist vs. MRA

Opinion: The Alt-Left should be neither feminist nor for men's rights. It should be for good relationships between the sexes.

It's a familiar story for anyone who's been online for any length of time. A discussion starts over a gender or feminism related topic.  There've been plenty of these lately since the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal broke in Hollywood and the me too hashtag campaign, so there's no shortage of examples to choose from.  There's nothing unique about these conversations, however.  They've been taking place on social media since Facebook and Twitter first launched, and were commonplace on bulletin boards long before anyone knew what a comments section was.  The basic conversation hasn't changed much in the decades since Al Gore invented the internet. <grin>  A typical conversation will go something like this.

Feminist: Men rape and harass women. <subtext> That's why men suck and women should reject them.

MRA: But not all men.  <subtext> But not me.  That should give me an advantage in the mating game with women, should it not?

Feminist: But only men.  Plus patriarchy, power, privilege, rape culture, etc. <subtext> Not so fast, buster!  You're part of the segment of the population that does the most rape and who benefits from rape, and are therefore not so innocent as you'd like to believe.  And therefore suck no less and are no less deserving of rejection.

MRA: But what about false accusations? What about women who sexually assault men? <subtext> This nullifies the advantage you claimed in your previous statement.  Therefore, women should more readily accept and sleep with us.  I mean me!

It's never long before a conversation like this breaks down, and school yard level copypasta insults break out.  "Boo hoo!  Teh poor menz!" "Enjoy your cats!" So on and so on.  It'll inevitably come down to one or both sides being ugly, living in their parent's basements and being unable to get laid. This is due to the fact that the surface conversation is never nearly as important as the subtext that continually underlies conflicts over gender theory and its real world implications.

The unstated but nonetheless omnipresent axioms that are revealed when any kind of deconstructive analysis is applied to such discussions are that male power is expressed through sexual conquest of the female, and that female power is expressed through sexual rejection of the male.  All else is ancillary.  Which is largely why pro and anti feminists talk past one another and at one another far, far more than with one another.  The legitimate issues raised by either side fall by the wayside because they're obviously being weaponized to one or the other of those two ultimate effects.  The real purpose for bringing up rape, harassment, divorce, child support or any other issue, at least in online discussion, is to lower the value of one gender relative to the other, for the ultimate purpose of making sex either easier (in favor of men) or harder (in favor of women) to attain.

There's just one problem with this paradigm, however.  It doesn't work.  It's not making anyone happy.  It's based in a glaringly flawed assessment of human nature, and is much more rooted in ego than in reason or human empathy.  Men are not going to be rejected into sympathizing with women's concerns.  They go their own way instead, doubtlessly with the intent of bringing those pesky, uppity women to heel.  No dice: women are angrier now than ever.  Who'd have guessed?  The result is that heterosexual activity has been driven into a kind of moral black market, wherein most people actually do it at some point or another, but also have to conceal it, rationalize it or engage in it under some kind of false pretenses much of the time to avoid social censure. "An Ashtray With a no Smoking Sign," as Slavoj Zizek recently described the emerging rules of sexuality.  No wonder bad behavior abounds.

It's time to smarten up, people.  Get out of the grade school mentality.  Let's at least try and hit puberty, okay internet?  Human nature is not especially complicated.  We tend to simmer down when we feel that our concerns are being heard and taken somewhat seriously, even if disagreed with in some ways.  The natural response of people when faced with a lecturing, condescending tone is to get defensive, not to open one's heart or mind.  This is true however legitimate the surface grievance actually is or is not.  Which isn't to say you accept bullshit uncontested.  Rather, let your assessment of what's bullshit and what isn't depend on honest appraisal, which you can't get without listening and understanding.

Whatever your claim to victimhood, past or present, however poorly you were treated as a child or in your past relationships, other people, even the opposite sex, will not accept your shitty and abusive behavior. Not indefinitely, at any rate.  However much you feel entitled to it.  Two wrongs don't make a right.  This is something we feel instinctively, if not intellectually.  It stops mattering who started it, or who inflicted or suffered the greater suffering after a point.  Neither women nor men will accept the other's claim to morally superior status based on previous victimhood and grievance, even if real.  

It is easy to say that we should set our fragile egos aside and listen seriously to the other side when they lay out their grievances and issues.  This is true.  But when the other side does not expect this of themselves, even the most legitimate gripe becomes tainted by the ultimately self-serving purpose to which it is put.  The kinds of behavior displayed by feminists and MRAs alike in most internet discussions between the two would be emotionally abusive were they done in real life, and increasingly these kinds of relationship dynamics are spilling out of cyberspace and into the real world.  It is no wonder that growing numbers of people, especially the young, are eschewing relationships with the opposite sex all together, and claiming to be happier doing so.

And that's fine for some individuals.  If you're happier going it alone, and I think some people are naturally disposed this way, have at it.  But that'll be a disaster for society as a whole.  Fewer lasting successful marriages and long term relationships (LTRs) are poised to cause all kinds of problems down the road.  Demographic and economic dependency ratios are bound to get worse, and socially destabilizing levels of mass immigration will need to be employed to compensate for falling birth rates.   Frustrated romantic and sexual drives will find expression in other, usually more antisocial ways, from mounting political or religious extremism to mental health problems and increased cynicism.  Even many, though not all, of those who claim to be happier being single are not so much once you scratch the surface. A certain regret often, though not always, presents itself. And why not? Humans were not hardwired to live alone and not pass on their genes to future generations. A society losing its capacity for love and empathy is not one we should aspire to be a part of.  

So here's a proposal.  The alt-left should be neither feminist nor MRA.  Not exclusively. We should be instead for healthy and good relationship dynamics, be they platonic, romantic or erotic.  We should listen to the concerns of both sides and sort the valid and legitimate grievances from the entitled whining and vapid boasting.  It should not be a concern of the alt-left which of the two has the more legitimate grievances and is therefore more deserving.  Ten years and God knows how many flame wars into the social media age later, we should know by now that ideological partisanship and competitive victimhood isn't actually helping anybody. It's driving a spiral of mutual frustration that is causing increased polarization and extremism. 

Even if one gender really does have it worse than the other by a wide margin, our approach should be one of mutual listening and empathy, not one of grievance and vengeance.  This is not to say that we can't prioritize some issues over others or that wrongdoers can't be called out and exposed to such sanction and censure as their actions warrant. But it should never be an ego stroking exercise.  Even if you've had it worse or your sex or gender has been on the receiving end of injustice.  The world doesn't owe you anything, whatever you may think.  Success, be it alone or in partnership, derives from responsibility, not entitlement.

So if you're single or attached, male or female, here are some things you can do vis-a-vis the opposite sex to improve the situation.  And in case you are wondering, this is over twenty years of relationship success (I've been with my present wife since 1995) and a decade of every mistake imaginable leading up to it, talking.  There's much I learned the hard way:

• Listen.  Nothing is more effective at defusing anger.
• Do not stereotype the opposite sex unironically or for non-comedic purposes.
• Stop with the vain, stupid games. Crushing some young man or woman's confidence in him/herself won't bring down the patriarchy or gynocentrism, and it doesn't make you strong or independent.  It makes you an asshole, be you male or female. 
• Do not participate in discussions that tend to descend into pissing contests of competitive victimhood, and clearly state this.  Ask instead, "what do you want?"  That's a powerful question that can very effectively shut down entitled whiners with weaponized grievances.
• You are owed nothing.  Approach all relationships with the opposite sex, or with anyone, with that in mind.  This is not to say that you should tolerate shit and abuse. Don't. But don't expect to be put on a pedestal either.
• Do not have as an expectation from an ideal partner a trait you do not have or can not match.  Half of our problems stem from 6's thinking they're actually good matches for 10's, so to speak. Do not expect a prince if you're not a princess, or vice versa.  And assess yourself honestly to save a lot of trouble.
• Live a good life outside of a relationship context.  This signifies that you will not be dead weight but instead a net asset in other people's lives.  No one wants a needy dependent.
• Trust must come before any kind of relationship intimacy, be it physical or emotional.  Always. Take it upon yourself to earn rather than demand trust.  Decide at what point your efforts are in vain and when to move on.
• Do not expect from a relationship partner anything that you can do for yourself.  Relationship success thrives best when free of contrived obligations and expectations.  Otherwise resentments creep in and do damage.
• Do not be afraid to point out the <subtextual> elements and their underlying axioms (see above for examples) in gendered discussions, but do so only if the person you're discussing things with becomes obstinate, obtuse or clearly hostile.  The underlying pettiness and stupidity become readily apparent when brought to light.
• Likewise, if need be, remind people that two wrongs don't make a right.  Plus, no man was ever rejected, nagged, scolded or castrated into liking and respecting women.  No woman was ever convinced by rational argument or else likewise rejected, scolded or shamed into liking men.  People don't work that way.  Don't hesitate to point this out.
• Make your disdain for passive aggressiveness clear, if need be.
• If people insist on dominating conversations with socially destabilizing displays of rudeness, sarcasm or hostility, do not be afraid to call them out on it and exclude them from further social activities.  If you moderate or administer an online or social media space, you have a special responsibility here.  Trolls thrive on the emotionally destabilizing effect that their refusal to be decent and reasonable people has.  Do not tolerate it and ban them at once.
• Admit that the opposite sex doesn't always have it easy.  Try to replace resentment with walking in the other man or woman's shoes, as the case may be. This isn't to say it's equally bad on both sides, all the time.  Occasionally people will need to be told to stop whining.
• Do not attribute to malice what can be attributed to clumsiness or ignorance without evidence. This is especially true with flirtation, flattery or the like.

And above all ...

• Get the f**k off the internet every once and awhile.  Yeah, I know.  It's hard.  But there are numerous dynamics that contribute to the internet being a relatively uncivil place where your faith in humanity can easily go to die.  Meet people in the real world from time to time.  They're usually (though not always) not what they appear to be when seen as just a social media profile.

So that in mind, get out there and see the world, dear reader!

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Is Intersectionality Actually Conservative?

Identity politics are about ego. They're not even really about politics in any meaningful sense. Feminists claiming that "white men have been the perpetrators of most of the largest massacres in contemporary American history" or the like are really claiming "women are morally superior to men" and are contributing nothing genuinely meaningful to political discourse.  

Okay, so males are statistically more violent than females, at least according to most statistics on crime.  What, precisely, is anyone to do about this, except gloat (if they're women) or feel shame to fuel feminist egos (if they're men)?  You'll notice that if alt-rightists gloat about statistics that suggest higher per-capita levels of black as opposed to white violent crime, they're awful racists.  And perhaps they are.  But what makes profiling one group acceptable but not another?  The same tired old "centuries of structural inequality" or "power plus prejudice" canards that regressive leftists use to rationalize and justify every double standard that's politically convenient for them?

Well, it's all fun and games until the tables are turned on white women by black women, or trans or homosexual women, who then make the same claims against their white feminist and heterosexual counterparts.  Black and gay men are likewise lambasted for their male privilege. 

This is why support vs. opposition for politics like this is so neatly carved along gender lines.  As a recent article I've seen puts it, "Brocialism vs. Feminism" is defined by a fairly straight forward gender divide.  

Intersectionality is a classic "race to the bottom" kind of scenario. Eventually, the game is won by whomever has the complete slate of marginalized identities. Few people will end up on top of this hierarchy of weaponized victimhood.  But what precisely do they win? In my years of following and studying this movement, I still don't know. Were I to up and cede here and now that I am "privileged" vis-a-vis women, minorities, etc ... then what?

Intersectional feminism thus seems, quite ironically, like quite a conservative political and social force to me. Suspiciously conservative, in fact.  It mostly consists of admonitions of the supposedly marginalized against the privileged.  Where do these downtrodden feminists get access to such consistently sympathetic media if they’re so “marginalized”, I wonder? 

I see almost no advocacy of measurable or implementable policy in explicitly intersectional feminist media.  This most likely since actually tackling inequality in any meaningful sense would necessarily entail economic policy and class analysis from a materialist perspective. The analysis would have to get into political economy, relations of production and so on, and this form of analysis constitutes a mortal threat to identity based privilege theories, and the egos those theories stroke.

To say nothing of the media conglomerates and the increasingly privatized system of higher education that push intersectional feminist narratives.  I find it unlikely that these venerable corporate institutions would promote an ideology that presented a real threat to the real power structures that define and govern 1st world capitalist societies.  It would be much more useful for them to promote a faux leftism that sets the middle and working classes against each other along racial and gender lines.  The 99% become much easier to manage that way.  Divide and rule: a tradition as old as civilization itself.

Put this another way: if the major global power institutions: the governments of the great superpowers, the boards of directors of multinational corporations, and so on, were exclusively female, or exclusively black or third world people, would the manner of their operations or governance change? Would the bottom line cease being, well, the bottom line?

As the examples of Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher (among others), and Obama indicate, I think it's likely - not certain but likely - that they wouldn't change much, if at all.  Feminists are right about one thing: being male is no prerequisite for maximizing shareholder value.

None of which is to say that discrimination against women or minorities is at all a good thing, or even that these groups do not have problems that they suffer from disproportionately compared to their white male counterparts.  But as eager as intersectional feminists are to exploit these realities for the purposes of establishing dominance hierarchy based on victimhood, mum’s quite often the word when it comes to implementable policy proposals to redress these grievances.

 

You’d almost suspect that deep down, the talking heads at Salon, HuffPost, the Guardian and sundry other outlets that shill for intersectional identity politics don’t even want to see the issues redressed.  Why would they, when they can exploit their marginalized status to guilt white males into shelling out for dates, or the like?  As if they weren’t already.  It certainly never fails to attract the views to their newsblogs that are so useful for drawing in those all important advertising dollars.  Knowledge of how the media actually works is never wasted.

The emphasis on race and gender identity prevalent on the left is no doubt appreciated by those of the lower economic classes who have the economic difficulty in their lives compounded by very real racial and sexual discrimination.  I'm sure they'd also appreciate very real relief from their economic woes, but we don't tend to hear much about that except from "brocialists."

The emphasis on race and gender identity prevalent on the left is also no doubt appreciated the middle class segments of the female and ethnic minority populations, who are given someone to look down on and scapegoat in the form of the white male. I'd also suggest that it is also appreciated in the halls of corporate and state power, that escape institutional scrutiny from a left now held hostage by its middle class feminist constituents, eager to dismiss concerns about political economy as so much toxic masculinity.