Excellent Essay: The End of Traditional Civil Rights? [Kaufman]

[arranbubonicplague]

The whole piece is excellent and thought-provoking and disturbing. Did I mention insightful and spot-on? And Deeply, Deeply Worrying?

Until about five minutes ago, everyone knew what a lesbian is, namely a homosexual woman. According to contemporary gender identity theory, however, a woman is anyone who identifies as such, even if the person in question has a complete compliment of male reproductive organs, the result being that ‘woman’ becomes a sexually heterogeneous category and same-sex attraction becomes same-gender attraction.

The gay and lesbian civil rights movement was all about promoting the moral and legal prerogatives of those with same-sex attractions, pursuing same-sex relationships. The battles were hard fought, with incremental victories scored across the 1970’s, ‘80s, and ‘90’s, but in the United States, in 2015, the motherlode of all victories was won with the legalization of same-sex marriage, across all fifty states. It was a watershed moment for American civil rights, akin to women attaining the right to vote and the desegregation of American schools.

But it all was to be reversed, in the historical equivalent of a split-second.

Oh, arran, don‘t be such a teaser. Link or full copy!

theelectricagora.com/2018/12/10/the-end-of-traditional-civil-rights/

Gah. I'm in a ghastly hotel for work and it's scrambling my brains - apologies.

Yes, yes! It is most excellent and insightful and worrying.

Professor Kathleen Stock shared it on twitter.

theelectricagora.com/2018/12/10/the-end-of-traditional-civil-rights/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Ok, thanks! I kept refreshing and refreshing (cause it sounded really interesting) - nothing.
So I thought, maybe you forgot?!?

The After Ellen post that Prof Stock has shared is alarming albeit well-written:

Baltimore celebrated Pride. Our streets were swathed in pink and blue. For every one rainbow banner I saw, there were trans flags surrounding it. Corporate sponsorships oozed heteronormativity...

Nothing was lesbian-only. On the contrary, some events were explicitly lesbian-exclusionary.

The Baltimore Trans Alliance sponsored a dance called “Queer Qrush” that was a “safe space” but which advertised that “exclusionary” lesbians would be “hung (sic) by their necks” if we dared to attend.

www.afterellen.com/general-news/568221-how-i-became-the-most-hated-lesbian-in-baltimore

I think it’s fair to say that taken to its logical conclusion and stripped of all of its civil rights trappings, contemporary identificationism is essentially a form of liberal utopianism, for it denies that material realities place us into groups, the rights and prerogatives of which may need to be fought for in civil and political society, and insists instead that the only groups to which we belong are those of our choosing and that the only realities impinging upon those choices are those existing within the consciousness of each individual. Ultimately, this is a rejection of the very basis on which the need for civil rights movements rests, with the only remaining “cause” being that of getting people to accept other peoples’ self-identifications.

Yes exactly. Very good indeed.

I love him for saying it's hyper-individualist. Because it is. No challenge to extant power structures whatsoever. Which is why the posh kids love it.

I love him for saying it's hyper-individualist. Because it is. No challenge to extant power structures whatsoever

I feel it's the 2018 version of Exiting the Vampire Castle that Mark Fisher would have written if he had survived and had seen recent events play out alongside all of the left political shifts.

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/mark-fisher/exiting-vampire-castle

Thanks arran, interesting read

The Baltimore Trans Alliance sponsored a dance called “Queer Qrush” that was a “safe space” but which advertised that “exclusionary” lesbians would be “hung (sic) by their necks” if we dared to attend.

Yep. Screenshot:

https://twitter.com/sugaredpeas/status/1003318288238202881?s=20

Screenshot

In the bowels of Christ (to borrow a phrase) do these people never catch sight of themselves in a mirror or wake around 4a.m. and reflect, What was I thinking? In what universe is that sort of language and implicit violence OK? Is my moral compass so unwavering that I'm completely certain that I'm not bringing in a form of totalitarianism that is remarkably similar to old school totalitarianism?

JFC what Julia Beck was put through

I feel it's the 2018 version of Exiting the Vampire Castle that Mark Fisher would have written if he had survived and had seen recent events play out alongside all of the left political shifts.

Yes. RIP, k-punk.

Kaufman talks about how civil rights movements are based on the material realities shared by a group of people:

In short, the material realities of certain groups of people – skin color, sex, sexual orientation – were used as a way of denying the members of those groups the rights and prerogatives that are the principle fruit of the Enlightenment and of modernity, and the relevant civil rights movements arose around those material groupings, in order to make the case that such material realities are fully consistent with our equal moral dignity and worth and with our having an equal place in the modern polis. They did not deny that the relevant material realities exist, but rather, that they have any legitimate moral or political valence in a modern, democratic society.

And about the impact the current genderist ideology has on that:

If one follows the logic of contemporary gender-identificationism, according to which there literally are scores upon scores of self-identified genders, then there really aren’t any men or women or anything else, but only self-defined individuals. Apply this logic to race or ethnicity and one gets the same result, and it becomes hard to see what a civil rights movement, as traditionally conceived, would be about. I think it’s fair to say that taken to its logical conclusion and stripped of all of its civil rights trappings, contemporary identificationism is essentially a form of liberal utopianism, for it denies that material realities place us into groups, the rights and prerogatives of which may need to be fought for in civil and political society, and insists instead that the only groups to which we belong are those of our choosing and that the only realities impinging upon those choices are those existing within the consciousness of each individual. Ultimately, this is a rejection of the very basis on which the need for civil rights movements rests, with the only remaining “cause” being that of getting people to accept other peoples’ self-identifications.

If identity trumps all, even material reality, then there is no need for civil rights movements. If we are literally what we identify as, then those facing second-class citizen status are there because of how they identify, not because their sex, skin color, or sexual orientation marks them as part of a group considered lesser.

Also, those who are part of a group who faces prejudice and discrimination because of their material reality have no justification for organizing a fight for their rights based on their shared characteristic because not all those who share those characteristics identify with that group. And some people who do not share those characteritistics do identify as part of the group, and they must be counted as part of the group, because identity trumps reality.

So the idea of a civil rights movement becomes ridiculous and meaningless from that point of view.

It really does scare the ever-loving crap out of me.

those facing second-class citizen status are there because of how they identify, not because their sex, skin color, or sexual orientation marks them as part of a group considered lesser

The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate
God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. Nothing progressive about this movement at all.

do these people never catch sight of themselves in a mirror or wake around 4a.m. and reflect,

To borrow a phrase from Lang, self awareness isn't exactly "a defining feature of the movement".

I'm working on a large equality analysis at a university. I'm going to quote identificationism to the diversity and inclusion team and explain that we can only produce analysis based on the views of the liberal elite now, and not on the material reality of any group.

It really does scare the ever-loving crap out of me.

I can't begin to calculate how many generations of people this malign individual and collective narcissism might damage. And the revision of all of the hard won civil rights.

It's not even a Thermidorian reaction as it's typically understood within history. Because the self-declared PoMo uber-radical Butlerian regime is the imminent conservative, totalitarian regime that will undo all of these civil and social gains.

For historians of revolutionary movements, the term Thermidor has come to mean the phase in some revolutions when power slips from the hands of the original revolutionary leadership and a radical regime is replaced by a more conservative regime, sometimes to the point where the political pendulum may swing back towards something resembling a pre-revolutionary state.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermidorian_Reaction

I sometimes wonder which will be worse: this dreadful movement or the inevitable backlash against it?

Thank you Arran excellent and insightful piece.