Anyone up to speed with the Lindsay Shepherd case (the Canadian TA)?

[ConfessionsOfTeenageDramaQueen]

For those who aren't Lindsay is a 20-something TA at a Canadian University. Last November she was teaching a class on pronouns and, during the class, showed a 5 minute clip of a debate (that had been broadcast on Canadian TV) that featured a panel of speakers discussing gender pronouns in the context of trans issues.

The panel consisted of a few people including a trans-man, and Jordan Peterson.

After the class a student mentioned the clip to someone who reported it to the local LGBT group on campus who complained to the faculty who hauled her into a disciplinary meeting, which she had the presence of mind to record.

The meeting is 40 minutes long but I implore you to listen: not only does it give an insight into the Orwellian mindset of these two male professors, but their comments are absolutely dripping with sexism:

I'd be interested to know what others make of this case.

Marxism saw the world through an oppressor vs oppressed lens. The oppressed were those who had no choice but to sell their labour to those who owned the means of production (their oppressors). The goal of Marxism was to overthrow this economic order and replace it with a new power hierarchy where the leaders of the revolution would be at the top. All the working class had to do was act as a class and follow their leaders, anyone who didn’t do this was a counter revolutionary and unpersoned. In practice pitting one group against another lead to failure and the death of millions wherever and whenever it was tried. These who complain about cultural Marxism believe Marxism is back repackaged as identity politics complete with a hierarchy of privilege and oppression instead of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeois. Liberal newspapers help perpetuate this belief when they publish articles describing trans rights as a class struggle.

Yes, I also think people generally assume the left will be ‘better at’ this stuff because it is ‘meant to be’ their remit according to cultural ideas about what left and right are.

Also, entirely separate to any of these modern issues, academia has a long history of appalling and regressive attitudes and contrary to the modern view (academia should be progressive) academia has been a fundamental cog in the wheel; providing credibility and legitimacy to orthodox thought/political agendas.

So this is not really a new thing....

Well no Bamc ‘cultural marxism’ can be an insult from radical Marxists to liberal Marxists who follow the Frankfurt model (broadly the professors could be accused of using their teaching in this way). It could be an expression of belief in a conspiracy theory regarding Jewish marxism. It could be an expression of dissatisfaction with a particular group or behaviour and an appeal (through the use of an identifying term) to inclusion in a different group....

That’s why I asked what was meant by it in the context of this discussion.

Adria Joel says about 2 lines in the audio, mainly to parrot with which line of the university's code Shepherd reportedly contravened.

Bearing in mind her actual job title is "acting manager of gender violence prevention" I highly doubt she thinks she did anything wrong.

I would also love to see this go to trial.

And Bamc is spot on with the definition of cultural Marxism.

It's why the radical trans activist lobby (see how carefully I'm choosing my words there?) continuously scream "harm" "suicide" "literal violence" - because it makes them victims and by default women the oppressors, despite that being completely ludicrous.

It's driven by identity politics (see also "intersectionalty") but the goal is to scream "victim" the loudest because that automatically makes you the sympathetic party.

It is applied to everything: every conflict, every argument. That is why the Guardian sneer at Peterson's claims of a neo-Marxist conspiracy but it is actually happening.

Re the urban dictionary link prawn, the whole thing is just a brilliant illustration of the dynamic of ridding discussion of any analysis and instead centring it around insult based one upmanship.

‘Cultural marxism’ as an insult to call up echoes of ‘reds under the bed’ as a tactic to delegitimise the person rather than unpick the ideas, response is ‘conspiracy theory’ not because those making the accusation believe they are talking to people who believe in the conspiracy theory or they are interested in unpacking that theory but because they want to smear them as anti-semites in order to ‘win’.

Note those characterised as ‘the real left’ are characterised as such because they use the chosen term of the opposing group to condemn those who are ‘meant to be’ part of ‘their own group’ so earning support and legitimising language.

Obviously there is a lot about this which is understandable but it’s replaced the discussion of ideas.

@offred. I gave you the only definition of cultural Marxism that I know of or have ever heard. This doesn’t mean I think you are wrong. Just that the one I gave is the only one I know. Two things I find interesting and similar between old Marxism and new identity politics are:

1. Demands for equality rather than equality of opportunity. People cannot be both free to make their own life choices and all have equal outcomes. I don’t want to have to bear the consequences of anyone else’s life choices and I don’t expect anyone else to have to beat the consequences of mine.
2. Marxism didn’t make people equal, the leaders of these revolutions were always more equal than others. The leaders of Identity politics seem to aim to turn the tables of oppression, not do away with it. Leaders like Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King always wanted to stop oppression, not merely change who the victims were. Identity politics in my opinion is therefore not a struggle for civil rights.

That’s fine Bamc, I don’t think you are trying to state disbelief!

I do think that in the second point (and an earlier post) you conflate communism and totalitarianism.

The first point I do not think is a coherent explanation of what is meant by equality, it’s a common interpretation of equality and it has been so in reality but it is a bit of a stretch to attribute that to equality itself.

You might enjoy this short video by joe Klein;

*has been used in practice....

Rather than ‘in reality’ 🤦🏻‍♀️

Communism IS totalitarian and collectivist. It shakes out that way every. Single. Time. It pretty much only functions well if run in smaller communities where everyone knows one another, otherwise it scales incredibly badly. The fact that Marxism/Communism intuits as a pretty sensible and fair system is part of what makes it so dangerous.

However I recognise it’s not the only show in town re: totalitarianism and collectivism. The far right and far left become practically indistinguishable at the extremes. The main difference is anyone who sits on the right has to fight a constant rearguard action to disavow any and all bad actors on the extremes. The left however can slap down Mao’s little red book in the houses of fucking parliament and not much is made of it. If someone slapped down Mein Kampf all hell would (rightly!) break loose. The left writes itself a pass for its extremes.

Also how Corbyn will never really condemn the Venezuelan govt despite having prosletyzing about it for years. The whole problem the left has is it needs a magic grandad to make it work, and I say grandad specifically as it’s never a grandmother! As feminism really only is useful for the left as a stick to beat right wing men with. Note Jess Phillips rhetoric over Tory mp’s sexual harrassment vs Brendan Cox actually having his hand round women’s necks for a recent example.

There are arseholes and angels on both the right and the left and a fair mix of people who are a mixture. The wiser amongst us don’t differentiate based on political affiliation but treat people as individuals. Tonnes of people will disregard all I say simply because I have MRA in my username, but actually that’s partly why it’s there as people who would automatically disregard me tend to filter themselves out.

I don’t completely disregard feminism as your points on trans issues and sexual violence are pretty much incontrovertible. I’m less on board when it gets to identity politics and hailndmaidening to the left, which is usually just handing more power to men who think they should be in charge.

Oh and your right about prostitution and probably right about porn as well.

Oh yes, it is clearly true that the examples of communist states have employed totalitarianism. A discussion regarding the relationship of communism to totalitarianism in practice and theory regarding whether communism can be separated from totalitarianism in practice is not quite the same discussion as communism being inherently totalitarian or making a criticism of communism as a belief based on the totalitarianism of communist regimes.

My ideology is not communist btw.

I don’t think that it is as simple as the left having a pass and the right having to constantly justify. People have higher expectations re the left than the right. The reality is there is a level of scrutiny and sanction being applied across society to everyone’s identity characteristics that is proportional to how much in the public eye they are. I suspect everyone feels scrutinised TBH.

I also don’t like this ‘pressure to condemn’ stuff either, it’s identity politics. What would be the purpose in forcing corbyn to condemn Venezuela? Wouldn’t you rather it was possible for him to speak honestly about what he thinks so that in our democratic system people could base votes on reality rather than compliance with orthodox thought?

John McDonell is an idiot but he is one person, not ‘the left’ and he is not ‘far left’ either. People who really are ‘far left’ would never join the Labour Party which is a socialist Democratic Party.

Behaviour in the commons is culturally problematic IMO.

I think it is interesting that the Labour Party has been made responsible for doing right by all the many equalities issues. The women thing I find particularly strange since the labour movement has historically been a men’s rights movement.

Given that whenever we’ve tried that experiment every time it goes down in spectacular flames with countless dead, less actual equality and more poverty you’ll forgive me for fighting against it tooth and nail every step of the way? In the same way I’d fight against collectivist far right extremist systems, just to be clear.

I’m willing to swing a bit to the left on health and education, everything else I’ll be a free market capitalist thank you very much, although not I might add because the ideology gives me the warm and fuzzies, but simply because it’s track record is far less bloody and actually allows for more liberty relative to everything else.

Caveat I think the current state sponsored crony capitalism is pretty ridiculous, and I’m not as learned as you obvs are but Mary Wollstonecraft’s proto-feminism isn’t just compatible to classical liberalism it’s essential to it, as was Thomas Paine’s arguments for the emancipation of and enfranchisement of slaves.

If we should tinker with any system to make it fairer and better it should be liberalism (classic).

I’m not putting forth arguments in favour of communism.

Your own personal position regarding how states are best run, as you have explained it here, seems entirely logical, coherent and consistent (IMO anyway ).

It also is a real person’s real position.

The identity politics stuff, which I find so problematic is the stuff you’ve felt compelled to defend yourself against when you made the qualifying statement re crony capitalism and when I felt I needed to qualify that I am not aligned with communism or making arguments in favour of it. When people are having to defend themselves against accusations of ‘wrongthink’ because one incident of perceived ‘wrongthink’ can result in their lives being ruined by a mob then it’s a bad state of affairs for ideas.

And we’ve all been guilty of ‘oh so you’re that kind of person’, we’ve all been guilty of crossing the boundary between observational judgement and value judgement and in getting caught up in an argument but this is something materially different.

Identity politics has become the actual ideal. It has been used to bastardise and distort many many things and to turn them into things they never were... that’s the Orwellian part...

It is combined in academia with ‘the language of authority’ (I call it ‘bullshit with confidence’) and this is why academic institutions have become so problematic, but simply because there is more left wing crap in universities does not mean the right wing crap is any less problematic IMO.

I can assure you no one who actually has lived under a communist regime (including my family) would ever want to return to one in a million years.

I’m not suggesting anyone does.

I am not a communist. I am not aligned ideologically with communism. I am not suggesting communism is the best system. I am not advancing any arguments in favour of communism.

Mentioning the existence of something, discussing it, does not amount to promotion of it...

That’s the same approach that is being applied to Lindsay.

There are particular standards re what ideas are acceptable and what ideas are not and if the existence of unacceptable ideas is made known and people don’t roundly condemn them then they are to be re-educated re right and wrong views.

The difference is the right don’t have quite the stranglehold on academia that the left does currently, so I think it’s an apples and oranges comparison. That isn’t to say that the right would behave any differently were they to embody the current cultural zeitgeist, but they aren’t the current clear and present danger. I believe many years ago a physicist submitted a paper that argued the laws of physic were sexist contstructs of the patriarchy in a deliberate parody. As he predicted it got peer reviewed and approved. Which just goes to show how far back the rot goes.

We've discussed before here how identity politics is actually a manifestation of neoliberalism. I doubt those pomo Laurier academics would describe themselves as any kind of Marxist in a million years. "Cultural Marxist" is an invention of the right.
Orthodox Marxists I know privately tell me identity politics is a load of old shite. But they keep their heads down about it for the same reason the rest of us do - they're afraid of witch hunting, and that they're trying to recruit from the rest of the left so need to appear hip and up to date.
It's all such a mess.

MRA, I did say that re academia and left wing population (this is particularly in humanities). Specifically in relation to Lindsay Shepherd this is an example of the left’s version of it. The point I was trying to make is that the narrative that it is specifically a problem with the left, it’s ‘cultural marxism’, SJWs etc is, IMO, the right’s version of the same crap. This identity politics personalisation stuff has become the model.

I would argue that ‘cultural marxist’ is and example of how identity politics bullshit is obfuscating meaning.

Offred I saw it explained by some right-winger as someone who heartily embraced the aspect of Marxism that destroys family life and family roles, inherent ones like woman=mother (SAHM) etc. So the accusation of "cultural Marxist" is perhaps quite apt for transgender ideology in that it claims to be leftwing but it's not interested in any of the economically liberatory aspects of socialist revolution. Instead it (in cahoots with the GAYS) destroys the Christian fabric or whatever.
I would call it Cultural Maoism, really, as Marxism became totalitarian in practice but it was never Marx's intention.

It’s still not really a discussion of ideas... it’s often an attempt to signal that you ‘rightthink’ to your group by using buzzwords, and to condemn ‘wrongthinkers’ without ever actually setting out your own ideas or tackling those of the ‘wrongthinker’.

And don’t get me wrong, I am not claiming that it is ‘a problem’ with ‘the right’. I’m trying to say that the discussion of ideas by everyone is being suppressed by this identity based tribalism by the culture in the mainstream.

People now feel they have to preface with ‘As a uni lecturer/mum of two/nhs doctor’ everytime they make a point because ‘lived experience’. People now have to ‘talk to someone from x group’, people now have to qualify discussions where the meaning is clear that they ‘dont support xyz’....

In all these things there are, at heart, some sound ideas; knowing what you are talking about, being careful about being the ‘good person who stands by’ but the way in which it is expected is centring identity in such that it never actually achieves the legitimate aims but actually just suppresses ideas.

People seem to be reading my mentioning of communism on this thread without the condemnation that is designed to signal I am not promoting it, as me needing an education about ‘how bad communism is’. Those are the rules now, unless you make the required ‘Stalin is evil, people under communist states suffered hugely’ then mentioning the existence of communism justifies suspicion of ‘wrong think’, sometimes it justifies sanctions for wrongthink.

If I then discuss Obama’s peace prize and Trump’s progress with North Korea without making the required statements of ‘being totally opposed to awful trump’ then people will follow a similar process of suspecting I have revealed myself as a trump supporter and therefore a wrong thinker and therefore responsible for xyz...

On the other hand I have never met a single person who subscribes to any ideology in totality. Real people’s real views are much more nuanced than that. This focus on identity is therefore, IMO, likely to be about highly superficial social signalling re belonging.

The effect I think on people’s lives because of it I think is appalling and it has almost completely eradicated the ability to discuss ideas.

Part of that is it makes it hard to use terms usefully with meaning because the culture has made them into insults to identity.

Even the phrase ‘using x term in that way devalues the meaning of x term’ has been hijacked for social signalling purposes rather than meaning...

It makes it very difficult to have a discussion about ideas...

So please don’t think I’m making an argument against the use of the term ‘cultural marxism’ (or other terms) I don’t think the right way to unpick this stuff is to say ‘oh that term shouldn’t be used because x’. I just usually like to clarify with the person using it what their meaning is and since we are all subject to this culture I understand everyone falls into this kind of shorthand signalling stuff based on ideology.

OJ is working class/gay/a leftie, JP is a professor/middle class/white man etc etc... this is not about contextualising anymore, it’s about legitimisation based on having ‘the right’ or ‘the wrong’ identity as a prerequisite to discussion of ideas.