I am glad that broader society is finally understanding what ahead of his time George Wallace was trying to say - the area at the back of the bus is reserved as a safe space for Black folks.
(True fact - George Wallace won his last two elections with an overwhelming majority of the Black vote. He would not have been elected without them .. it was his most reliable and loyal constituency at the end - something never mentioned by the main stream national press .. not even at the time. Just to say life is not a narrative.).
What you may also consider is the cessation of the language of violence in these conversations. “Safe spaces” imply that any mixed spaces are inherently “unsafe,” which just reinforces this paranoiac urgency to be free from violence when there, generally speaking, isn’t any present.
The idea that any of my area’s gay clubs are “unsafe” for anybody is patently absurd. Anybody being rough, let alone actually violent, will be promptly ejected by large security guards or other patrons.
Using this life or death language is a huge part of the problem, and this illusion that these spaces are solving literal violence is why they get away with this shit, never mind the fact that it’s pure fantasy.
Are marginalized people sometimes abused or killed? Yes, no one is denying that. Is it so pervasive that anyone of a non-normative identity should dart from safe space to safe space like awnings in a thunderstorm? Absolutely, empirically not. The numbers are in, “actual” violence, distinct from say, online harassment, is vanishingly rare.
So stop shackling yourselves to this absurd narrative of extreme victimhood. Not only is it disingenuous and deeply offensive to the millions of people in other countries who are enslaved, persecuted, jailed, beaten, thrown off rooftops, set on fire, castrated, etc. But it makes life a permanent prison.
I don’t wish to be rude, but I wish you were aware of how exhausting and useless it sounds to define yourself by “gender expression” (ie, clothing and haircuts), let alone to arrange one’s social life around it.
Don’t you see you’ve been duped by capitalism? You no longer define yourself by what you ARE or what you DO, but rather by consumer items like clothing, hair products, gendered toiletries, and makeup. These products, which you buy for money, now constitute your identity, rather than your internal self (which is free). The fact that capitalism now passes this type of consumerism off as progressive and woke is nothing short of amazing.
If this is directed at me, I’m not sure where you read that I define myself by my haircut. I’m as susceptible to the materialist and self-reflective tendencies under modernity as anyone else born in the last several centuries, but my personal and social lives are much richer than that. Moving away from identity politics has resulted in my placing a whole lot less value in the esthetic choices I and those around me make, in favour of paying attention to the being and the doing you’re talking about. It’s been great—I highly recommend it.
“My gender expression is fluid, and I’ve gone through periods of time where I am comfortable in makeup and dresses. For the last several years, however, I’ve been rocking button-ups and barber’s cuts.”
You define an apparently important part of yourself (your “gender expression”) according to whether you have a short haircut, whether you wear makeup or not, and what clothes you prefer. Of course this doesn’t define you ENTIRELY, but you don’t seem to realize how important you’ve made this: the existence of a “gender identity” is assumed, which then must be expressed outwardly as “gender expression” (which requires purchase of the correct consumer products and services to perform adequately). You don’t seem to have examined this yet, is all I’m saying.
Re: "When ...the left shows them nothing but contempt, the alt-right is in a perfect position to recruit them." You know what else is perfectly positioned to recruit them? Liberalism, broadly speaking. Sanity. Decency. Leftism, Conservatism, etc.
True, but when people have lost all their friends and social support (as often happens after a cancellation in queer circles) they are often desperate and lonely and are therefore vulnerable to love bombing and recruitment by other cult-like groups.
Indeed, shunned, isolated individuals are more vulnerable to cult-like recruiting tactics and we'd expect to find such tactics deployed by more "extreme" groups. However, to my understanding the alt-right seems like it would be a poor fit for most actually "queer" people, because most alt-right people are not accepting of or are even antagonistic to "queer identities". Now, if a person presenting as "queer" is in fact generally seeking a way forward for self-expression and identity but who might pivot away from expressing this through "gender", then folding into an alt-right movement seems more feasible. This person may find acceptance of feeling out of place and just "different" channeled through the politics of that movement. But this could also happen via engagement with religion or with non-identity (traditional?) leftist movements. Or radical environmentalism. Or something else.
True to some extent, but “queerness” as is it is expressed by a lot of young people today (perhaps the majority) is a nebulous concept that doesn’t relate to unchangeable things like same-sex sexual attraction. You can declare yourself “queer” these days for being demiromantic, asexual, attracted to a non-binary person, even for being into kink. It’s more a political statement than anything to do with being non-heterosexual.
I say this because a “queer” identity like that can easily be shucked off if it no longer suits a person’s politics and aims (unlike actual homosexuality, which doesn’t change). A heterosexual that formerly considered themselves “queer” is likely to drop the label without a second thought when they fall in with another crowd.
You’re ignoring the much larger majority of left-leaning people who are excoriated for suggesting things as innocuous as “female inmates should not be imprisoned with trans-identified male sex offenders” or “children should not be castrated.” It’s costing “The Left,” speaking intentionally broadly, millions upon millions of Allies who refuse this extremism. And so they have to throw in with the likes of Matt Walsh because there is no room for somebody who says “Men who were convicted for raping women who now identify as women have no place in women’s prison” in the Left as envisioned by thousands of very vocal activists. It’s stifling, alienating, and toxic, and the proof is in the pudding — people are quitting liberalism because of this distinctly illiberal subculture.
This is great. Something related to this I've been thinking about that you speak to a bit with the bowling night : does someone have to be unsafe for people to not like them? If no, would that bother us less? I wonder if the language of "this is a BIPOC safe space" adds such gravity in some situations where it's not as deep, like if people simply want to have an all-Black pool party. If you just don't like hanging out with men, or white people, or straight people, etc. I find that much less my (or anyone's) business than if there is political reasoning.
This is a good point! A lot of what bothers me is the essentializing: the idea that white people, or men, are inherently dangerous or bad. When I was at the height of my social justice zealotry, I thought it was oppressive to have any preferences at all, which now feels rather silly. Perhaps these are some of the undesirable consequences of declaring that the personal is always political, and vice versa.
So well said again Kier. I’m interested in what this means for the future of identity based politics- is it time that we started to base our lives around a shared humanity rather than what separates us? This is far too simplistic of course- but it seems to me that we should be opposed to all kinds of repression and disadvantage - according to people’s real life situations rather than according to whether or not we can tick various identity boxes. Anything else is kind of bound to result in injustice. Surely?
I think you're onto something important here—finding common ground and working together has surely had better outcomes than dividing into smaller and smaller factions. Solidarity does not have to involve assimilation; a diversity of perspectives, within a group that fosters mutual respect and has a commonly agreed-upon goal, is an asset.
"In order for this to work, we will need to treat one another as adults"
Yes, yes, yes. In progressive (and non-progressive) spaces I often see so much smug and un-self-aware condescension that it makes me grind my teeth.
I remember one discussion in which someone pedantically explained how the use of the word "tribe" should be reserved only for First Nations-related uses, and that all other uses were colonialism and white supremacy. When someone pointed out, "Hey, I am Jewish and we do that all of the time", the pedant hemmed, hawwed, and then finally allowed that Jewish people were allowed to use the word, assuming they used it ONLY in reference to each other. I was utterly flabbergasted, and I had to just about hold my jaw shut to prevent myself from saying, "Are you aware that other people exist, or do you live entirely in your own head?"
Of course, the synthesis here is that Jews *are* a tribal First Nation (just not of the Americas). Not that we should stop everyone using the word for anything else, but... sometimes similarities are meaningful.
I'd love to throw out (rather, put in the recycling) the ever-lengthening list of words that are unspeakably oppressive. There are so many local and cultural contexts that affect how words are used, and most words have multiple definitions anyway. I think it's fair to respectfully challenge someone's usage if they're writing or speaking in a public forum—but to ban words that are not slurs altogether seems shortsighted, not to mention wildly condescending and often Americentric.
The arrogance of making rules about other people’s identity and how they are allowed to express it is almost funny- it would be funny if it wasn’t something that happens constantly and has real life consequences.
The antisemitism that we have seen in recent times because of the doctrine of ‘whiteness’ is real. It’s almost unbelievable that we have let ourselves get into a situation where Jewish people are not welcome at an anti-Nazi rally because they aren’t ‘people of colour’. (I’m not making this up).
I completely believe that, because I have seen an increasing amount of anti-Semitism in the progressive spaces in which I move. I noticed this first in Pride events, where participants were expected to have a pro-Palestine position, which confused me. What does that have to do with Pride, I asked myself, but kept quiet. Then I saw pro-Palestine folks using language against pro-Israel people that was the same kind of George-Soros-secretly-pulls-the-strings stuff you usually hear only from right-wingers. That kind of talk is poison, so when I hear it I have stopped being quiet.
Sorry it’s been a while - just realised that I forgot to answer this. I first came across it in a book called ‘Puff Piece’ (or perhaps his previous one ‘Depends what you mean by extremist’ - both mainstream books by a favourite journalist called John Safran. He reports on race, culture and religion, and has done for decades now. He Jewish and very pale and white. He has also done a lot of investigative journalism about white supremacists so covers rallies with Nazis vs others - he describes the incident in his book but also describes it in this video interview from about 22:30
he was told to get out of an anti racism rally because ‘anti-racism doesn’t need any more white people to speak on its behalf’
Can I ask roughly where this dance club was?
It was in Vancouver, Canada.
I am glad that broader society is finally understanding what ahead of his time George Wallace was trying to say - the area at the back of the bus is reserved as a safe space for Black folks.
(True fact - George Wallace won his last two elections with an overwhelming majority of the Black vote. He would not have been elected without them .. it was his most reliable and loyal constituency at the end - something never mentioned by the main stream national press .. not even at the time. Just to say life is not a narrative.).
My shorthand for this is "conduct not category."
What you may also consider is the cessation of the language of violence in these conversations. “Safe spaces” imply that any mixed spaces are inherently “unsafe,” which just reinforces this paranoiac urgency to be free from violence when there, generally speaking, isn’t any present.
The idea that any of my area’s gay clubs are “unsafe” for anybody is patently absurd. Anybody being rough, let alone actually violent, will be promptly ejected by large security guards or other patrons.
Using this life or death language is a huge part of the problem, and this illusion that these spaces are solving literal violence is why they get away with this shit, never mind the fact that it’s pure fantasy.
Are marginalized people sometimes abused or killed? Yes, no one is denying that. Is it so pervasive that anyone of a non-normative identity should dart from safe space to safe space like awnings in a thunderstorm? Absolutely, empirically not. The numbers are in, “actual” violence, distinct from say, online harassment, is vanishingly rare.
So stop shackling yourselves to this absurd narrative of extreme victimhood. Not only is it disingenuous and deeply offensive to the millions of people in other countries who are enslaved, persecuted, jailed, beaten, thrown off rooftops, set on fire, castrated, etc. But it makes life a permanent prison.
No one can be happy like that.
Well said!
Thanks Kier, glad you’re opening up this needed discourse!
I don’t wish to be rude, but I wish you were aware of how exhausting and useless it sounds to define yourself by “gender expression” (ie, clothing and haircuts), let alone to arrange one’s social life around it.
Don’t you see you’ve been duped by capitalism? You no longer define yourself by what you ARE or what you DO, but rather by consumer items like clothing, hair products, gendered toiletries, and makeup. These products, which you buy for money, now constitute your identity, rather than your internal self (which is free). The fact that capitalism now passes this type of consumerism off as progressive and woke is nothing short of amazing.
If this is directed at me, I’m not sure where you read that I define myself by my haircut. I’m as susceptible to the materialist and self-reflective tendencies under modernity as anyone else born in the last several centuries, but my personal and social lives are much richer than that. Moving away from identity politics has resulted in my placing a whole lot less value in the esthetic choices I and those around me make, in favour of paying attention to the being and the doing you’re talking about. It’s been great—I highly recommend it.
“My gender expression is fluid, and I’ve gone through periods of time where I am comfortable in makeup and dresses. For the last several years, however, I’ve been rocking button-ups and barber’s cuts.”
You define an apparently important part of yourself (your “gender expression”) according to whether you have a short haircut, whether you wear makeup or not, and what clothes you prefer. Of course this doesn’t define you ENTIRELY, but you don’t seem to realize how important you’ve made this: the existence of a “gender identity” is assumed, which then must be expressed outwardly as “gender expression” (which requires purchase of the correct consumer products and services to perform adequately). You don’t seem to have examined this yet, is all I’m saying.
Re: "When ...the left shows them nothing but contempt, the alt-right is in a perfect position to recruit them." You know what else is perfectly positioned to recruit them? Liberalism, broadly speaking. Sanity. Decency. Leftism, Conservatism, etc.
True, but when people have lost all their friends and social support (as often happens after a cancellation in queer circles) they are often desperate and lonely and are therefore vulnerable to love bombing and recruitment by other cult-like groups.
Indeed, shunned, isolated individuals are more vulnerable to cult-like recruiting tactics and we'd expect to find such tactics deployed by more "extreme" groups. However, to my understanding the alt-right seems like it would be a poor fit for most actually "queer" people, because most alt-right people are not accepting of or are even antagonistic to "queer identities". Now, if a person presenting as "queer" is in fact generally seeking a way forward for self-expression and identity but who might pivot away from expressing this through "gender", then folding into an alt-right movement seems more feasible. This person may find acceptance of feeling out of place and just "different" channeled through the politics of that movement. But this could also happen via engagement with religion or with non-identity (traditional?) leftist movements. Or radical environmentalism. Or something else.
True to some extent, but “queerness” as is it is expressed by a lot of young people today (perhaps the majority) is a nebulous concept that doesn’t relate to unchangeable things like same-sex sexual attraction. You can declare yourself “queer” these days for being demiromantic, asexual, attracted to a non-binary person, even for being into kink. It’s more a political statement than anything to do with being non-heterosexual.
I say this because a “queer” identity like that can easily be shucked off if it no longer suits a person’s politics and aims (unlike actual homosexuality, which doesn’t change). A heterosexual that formerly considered themselves “queer” is likely to drop the label without a second thought when they fall in with another crowd.
You’re ignoring the much larger majority of left-leaning people who are excoriated for suggesting things as innocuous as “female inmates should not be imprisoned with trans-identified male sex offenders” or “children should not be castrated.” It’s costing “The Left,” speaking intentionally broadly, millions upon millions of Allies who refuse this extremism. And so they have to throw in with the likes of Matt Walsh because there is no room for somebody who says “Men who were convicted for raping women who now identify as women have no place in women’s prison” in the Left as envisioned by thousands of very vocal activists. It’s stifling, alienating, and toxic, and the proof is in the pudding — people are quitting liberalism because of this distinctly illiberal subculture.
Also a good point! I wrote that line because I’ve noticed that many people move from one high-demand group to another.
Good point!
This is great. Something related to this I've been thinking about that you speak to a bit with the bowling night : does someone have to be unsafe for people to not like them? If no, would that bother us less? I wonder if the language of "this is a BIPOC safe space" adds such gravity in some situations where it's not as deep, like if people simply want to have an all-Black pool party. If you just don't like hanging out with men, or white people, or straight people, etc. I find that much less my (or anyone's) business than if there is political reasoning.
This is a good point! A lot of what bothers me is the essentializing: the idea that white people, or men, are inherently dangerous or bad. When I was at the height of my social justice zealotry, I thought it was oppressive to have any preferences at all, which now feels rather silly. Perhaps these are some of the undesirable consequences of declaring that the personal is always political, and vice versa.
So well said again Kier. I’m interested in what this means for the future of identity based politics- is it time that we started to base our lives around a shared humanity rather than what separates us? This is far too simplistic of course- but it seems to me that we should be opposed to all kinds of repression and disadvantage - according to people’s real life situations rather than according to whether or not we can tick various identity boxes. Anything else is kind of bound to result in injustice. Surely?
I think you're onto something important here—finding common ground and working together has surely had better outcomes than dividing into smaller and smaller factions. Solidarity does not have to involve assimilation; a diversity of perspectives, within a group that fosters mutual respect and has a commonly agreed-upon goal, is an asset.
"In order for this to work, we will need to treat one another as adults"
Yes, yes, yes. In progressive (and non-progressive) spaces I often see so much smug and un-self-aware condescension that it makes me grind my teeth.
I remember one discussion in which someone pedantically explained how the use of the word "tribe" should be reserved only for First Nations-related uses, and that all other uses were colonialism and white supremacy. When someone pointed out, "Hey, I am Jewish and we do that all of the time", the pedant hemmed, hawwed, and then finally allowed that Jewish people were allowed to use the word, assuming they used it ONLY in reference to each other. I was utterly flabbergasted, and I had to just about hold my jaw shut to prevent myself from saying, "Are you aware that other people exist, or do you live entirely in your own head?"
Of course, the synthesis here is that Jews *are* a tribal First Nation (just not of the Americas). Not that we should stop everyone using the word for anything else, but... sometimes similarities are meaningful.
I'd love to throw out (rather, put in the recycling) the ever-lengthening list of words that are unspeakably oppressive. There are so many local and cultural contexts that affect how words are used, and most words have multiple definitions anyway. I think it's fair to respectfully challenge someone's usage if they're writing or speaking in a public forum—but to ban words that are not slurs altogether seems shortsighted, not to mention wildly condescending and often Americentric.
Well said.
The arrogance of making rules about other people’s identity and how they are allowed to express it is almost funny- it would be funny if it wasn’t something that happens constantly and has real life consequences.
The antisemitism that we have seen in recent times because of the doctrine of ‘whiteness’ is real. It’s almost unbelievable that we have let ourselves get into a situation where Jewish people are not welcome at an anti-Nazi rally because they aren’t ‘people of colour’. (I’m not making this up).
I completely believe that, because I have seen an increasing amount of anti-Semitism in the progressive spaces in which I move. I noticed this first in Pride events, where participants were expected to have a pro-Palestine position, which confused me. What does that have to do with Pride, I asked myself, but kept quiet. Then I saw pro-Palestine folks using language against pro-Israel people that was the same kind of George-Soros-secretly-pulls-the-strings stuff you usually hear only from right-wingers. That kind of talk is poison, so when I hear it I have stopped being quiet.
Wow, imagine thinking the Nazis chiefly targeted BIPOCs. Total appropriation of Jewish and Roma history.
Holy moly—do you have any links or screenshots you could send me regarding that event? That's some next level identity policing.
Sorry- forgot to mention this was a specifically anti-Nazi rally
Sorry it’s been a while - just realised that I forgot to answer this. I first came across it in a book called ‘Puff Piece’ (or perhaps his previous one ‘Depends what you mean by extremist’ - both mainstream books by a favourite journalist called John Safran. He reports on race, culture and religion, and has done for decades now. He Jewish and very pale and white. He has also done a lot of investigative journalism about white supremacists so covers rallies with Nazis vs others - he describes the incident in his book but also describes it in this video interview from about 22:30
he was told to get out of an anti racism rally because ‘anti-racism doesn’t need any more white people to speak on its behalf’
https://youtu.beZlL_NU3FN3csi=DswE4mFIa5mjNV5r