I’m trying to make sense of what is going and what the alternative could be to the current state of affairs but I don’t have the background in the theory or the different approaches so am looking for other people’s views or any links to articles which would help make sense of it.
The obvious problem with identity politics is that you can identify as anything you want – in particular, white, middle class, heterosexual men without any kind of dysphoria can identify as trans, female and a lesbian. This is then combined with the entitlement of privileged men and the tendency of people to defer to/prioritise them as the men they still subconsciously see them as meaning they actually have far more impact than anyone who was genuinely a member of multiple oppressed groups would ever have. Although they haven’t been able to add transracial to their list of characteristics, the ubiquitous ‘white feminism’ accusation is also repeatedly used by white males to silence women.
I can see a potential backlash against identity politics but the alternative is presented as being to stop discussing and addressing the oppression experienced by particular groups. If this happens, these men will slope back to being white, straight men and it is the people who are genuinely members of minority groups who will again suffer.
What is the alternative? I’ve heard people on the left (including people who are gender critical) talking about a class-based analysis of oppression - and that this can include an analysis of women as a class (and therefore presumably other groups such as ethnic minorities as a class). Is the main difference between this and identity politics that it is based on material reality rather than just being able to pick an identity or are there other differences in the approach?
It’s also made me think about a couple of friends of mine, both black lesbians. Friend A has been involved for many years with a small group for black lesbians, which she finds valuable as a minority within a minority. Friend B (in a different part of the country) has been involved in an LGBT group/organisation which is very much ‘inclusive’, ‘centring’ about a dozen different varieties of trans in everything they do and very much into identity politics. Friend B has since left this group and said her reason was the identity politics – They had special groups and events for black and ethnic minority lesbians and she felt the way it operated was ‘dividing’ lesbians when she wanted to meet with all lesbians, be united, share our common experiences etc.
At first I thought that Friend A and Friend B just had different viewpoints and wanted different things but now I’m wondering if Friend B’s experience in her group was very different from Friend A’s ie Friend A’s group was established by black lesbians and precedes all the current identity politics stuff whereas Friend B’s group is very much in the thick of identity politics (and the people running the main group are white and I think the idea of having separate ‘women of colour’ events may have come from them).
I myself have been involved in LGBT groups for a very long time (but no longer) and thought (and still think) that it is valuable to be able to meet, support each other and campaign on issues affecting us as a group – but sometime over the years it just morphed into this toxic, identity politics shitshow. The obvious issue is the extension of the trans umbrella but I’m just trying to work out if there are other characteristics of the new identity politics which are unhelpful and what a positive approach to addressing the oppression of different minority groups is?