Transition, 'inclusion' etc all have political ramification…

Transactivists try to conflate identifying as trans with gay marriage, in attempts to demonstrate the progressiveness of their cause, but the comparators are actually transracialism, trans-abledness, identifying as w/c etc.

The diagram shows the asymmetrical nature of such identifications. Identifying down is colonisation. Identifying up is impossible. The most you can do is improve your individual status relative to your class of origin, which leaves everyone else behind.

It also shows that the classes are occupied. If you identify as disabled, or as a woman, or as black, you are demanding access to spaces and facilities which were set aside for people based on a characteristic which you don't share.

How well tolerated this is gives us a clear insight into which oppressions are tolerated. We're rightly paying a lot more attention to racism, so Rachel Dolezal was fired by the NAACP. Other white women in the US who've tried this have been heavily criticised.

(Interestingly, transracial men don't get nearly as much attention, especially if they identify as women as well. There've been a few - I'm thinking of someone who decided they were a Filipino woman - but they're not dragged the way Dolezal was.)

We now have SNP hopefuls identifying as disabled because of the SNP's list policy; one with diabetes and one with Tourette's. I don't know the individuals' circumstances (and diabetes can certainly be disabling), but this sounds like a very 'inclusive' definition of disabled.

How does this affect disabled people? They have limited facilities. There are only so many disabled bays. Money for disability pensions has to be budgeted. What is the impact on all this if disability is an identity?

But the question isn't being asked. Who has power here?

Men identifying as women is, of course, brave and stunning. This is because society appears to be irredeemably sexist, not because there's any merit in their argument.
https://t.co/sTjvueE7ke

She's right. It cannot be a right to identify into a group you are not objectively a member of, because the boundaries of that group, which are what secure their group protections, are instantly voided. You have to create a separate target category. https://t.co/XkzCpxsjMl
— Caroline - Real Feminists XX \U0001f1ff\U0001f1e6 (@radicalhag) April 3, 2019

In all these cases, people in a marginalised group or class have managed to carve out some space in society, and are now being told they have to share it with people who are privileged relative to them because of 'inclusivity'. But the inclusivity is coerced.

This is colonisation, of course. If you doubt this, look at the groups whose identity claims are privileged over the rights of people in marginalised groups, with transwomen being the most egregious example.

Transwomen have been able to redefine the word 'woman' to suit them, and are well on the way to getting any objections declared legal hate speech. This is not because they're 'powerless'.

https://t.co/bTx4U6Hwd1

There are status differences among classes of women - race, sexuality, economic class - and they continually come up in feminism as things we have to be aware of and combat. Men don't care about low-status women - look at prostitutes, the various NGO food-for sex scandals etc.
— Caroline - Real Feminists XX \U0001f1ff\U0001f1e6 (@radicalhag) November 20, 2019

It seems to be indicative of a wider trend in social justice politics; showing your wokeness by taking over someone else's movement and claiming to stand for their liberation. Male 'feminists' do this all the time.

A lot of anti-racism politics seems to be about white performative guilt. And let's not get started on all the 'anarchists' and 'socialists' from well-off middle-class families...

This doesn't mean you can't criticise the class you come from, or want to leave it, or be dysphoric about it. It does mean that the people in the class you want to join have a say in the matter. If you demand inclusion/validation from them at their expense, you're a colonist.

Transition, 'inclusion' etc all have political ramifications. Instead of buying into the remarkably masculinist assumptions of queer theory that the dissolution of boundaries is always good, we should be examining them from the point of group power relations.

More from Politics

You May Also Like