Across the red line: does identity politics cause more problems than it solves?

Quite.

I just notice a lot of similar tactics employed by the TRAs that I recognise from watching social justice types try and disrupt/no platform opposing speakers - often the alt right.

I don't identify with either side tbh, but the whole ' reporting you to your employer' tactic, fir example,"was frequently used by feminists and the left ('SJWs' etc) long before it was picked up by TRAs.

In any case, I don't think anyone says that feminism or even 3rd wave feminism caused identity politics. It's more that 3rd wave feminism in many ways was formed out of the identity politics perspective.

Bicker, Adolphus Reed sounds interesting. Are there any works of his you would particularly recommend?

Also, thank you OP for introducing me to Across the Red Line. It's a fascinating programme.

• "I firmly believe that identity politics (a key tenet of 3rd wave feminism) is largely accountable for the whole TRA situation we're experiencing lately."

• "Gosh, MRAs blaming women for everything. Gosh we've never heard this before, like, ever."

Sorry but I agree with the first statement. There is absolutely no doubt that liberal feminism is strongly involved in pushing intersectionality and thus (gender) identity politics. Do you honestly disagree with that? This doesn't imply that men haven't subverted it and abuse it, but to pretend it isn't at fault at all is dangerous, as it ignored reality.

Bickerin

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense.

I think some men call themselves feminists because they have been told that if they support women, they ought to be feminists. Why make assumptions based on so little information.

I'd second the recommendation to read Reed, but it's been my experience that talking about his ideas gets you called a racist, unless you make it clear he's a black man - and sometimes even then.

I didn't mention that incel's size.

I assume all men who wear 'this is what a feminist looks like' is doing it to try and get laid because all other attempts have failed.

Are you insinuating that fat men are incels? I can only imagine the outrage if somebody were to suggest on here that most feminists are fat.

Still laughing that the picture of an incel in a 'feminist t-shirt' is clear evidence that men can be feminists.

Oh my days. What a time to be alive.

I agree. Beautifully summarised Bickering.
Reed is great. When I first encountered identity politics as an entrenched problem and saw that it was incompatible with solidarity movements, Reed really helped confirm my fears.

relativism results in the equation of scientific theory to religious belief.

I will be asking someone if that display is appropriate and correct next week!

I’ll see what I can pull together. Adolph Reed, in the US, long time civil rights activist, is very good on the differences in practice.

Thanks, Warrior!

And we are in a world of hurt if postmodern relativism results in the equation of scientific theory to religious belief.

I continually find it odd that people who understand the binary of 1s and 0s, however arranged, deny the binary nature of Xs and Ys, however arranged.

Bickering can you publish these posts somewhere please? Bitesized bickering in battle on identity politics. They're really helpful. I've copied to my R0 inspired collection of links for future cognitive dissonance wars.

Great posts bicker!

Maybe I should start teaching it in my bio classes..

I wandered past a school display the other day that had world religions and beliefs with various stories and noticed they'd included the Big Bang. Which is a new on on me. I guess flat earth probably also has a place now on the curriculum...

Maybe I should start teaching it in my bio classes..

Because of this change at university level, contemporary liberal feminists know next to nothing about the theory, political practices, or history of second wave radical feminism. It’s simply not taught.

Sounds like a bit of a 'no true Scotsman' argument tbh.

As for the world outside MN it agreeing that men can be feminists, a large reason for that is the fact that almost every “feminist” media outlet, including Jezebel, Everyday Feminism, and Bustle, are owned by men, just as every university Women’s Studies department in the 1990s was relabeled Gender Studies and taken over by men.

Men have acted as a fifth column within feminist politics and turned it away from the politics that actually brought about ALL of the liberating and supportive legal changes that contemporary Western women avail themselves of and that are now — strange coincidence! — being threatened or unwound.

Liberal feminism — actually neoliberal Thatcherite feminism now with a postmodern twist — is identity politics.

Radical feminism is not identity but CLASS politics.

In CLASS politics, there are 3 big axes of exploitation based on position wrt one’s labour and resources:

Economic class, where workers sell their labour and the fruits of that are profit taken by the ownership class.

Sex class, where women are the means of reproducing the necessary workers and the fruits of whose sexual, domestic, and reproductive labour are taken by men.

Race/ethnicity class, where, depending on location, people of a certain race or ethnicity are maintained as a reserve pool of labour to be employed or not depending upon need and whose land or natural resources are taken or colonized by those of the dominant race/ethnicity.

Identity politics are neoliberal because they give primacy to the individual over the class and the marketplace over the commonweal, and they are postmodern because they privilege subjective experience over material reality.

Further, identity politics conflates various hierarchies into one word “privilege” whereas class politics teases apart the difference between exploitation/oppression, discrimination, and disadvantage.

Neither does this gentleman.

Sadly, the world outside of mumsnet doesn't agree.

*The large number of male feminists are equally to blame8

There is no such thing as a male feminist. Hope that helps.

Gosh, MRAs blaming women for everything. Gosh we've never heard this before, like, ever.

The large number of male feminists are equally to blame.

I don't think it can really be argued that feminism doesn't feature in identity politics.

Yes. I know I keep harping on but Ben Elton's Identity Crisis book highlights this perfectly.

Kat I heard him on loose ends recently talking about this, sounds good.

Racism is the belief that race exists and is deterministic of character/ability/value etc.

This is a good description and is the exact same thought process that beliefs in ladybrains come from.

Populations differ physiologically and there are times when that matters, particularly in medicine, but physiological differences do not say anything at all about character, or preferences, or intellectual abilities. For reasons that have always escaped me a large proportion of people are incapable of separating factual, biological difference from ephemeral differences in feeling/character/preference. This is true of racists, sexists and extreme identarians alike.