If I understand the current western leftist scene currently, the big contemporary theories are Privilege Theory and by extension, Intersectionality. These seem to be inherently linked to Identity Politics. What are the main criticisms against these two? Any articles/texts or even capped effortposts talking about these?
Privilege Theory/Intersectionality
Juan Allen
Other urls found in this thread:
Chase Robinson
Here's a pretty solid article on the subject:
jacobinmag.com
Dominic Cox
The problem I have with intersectionality is that it treats oppression as something in a vacuum. For example, let's say you have a black, disabled, poor woman - according to intersectionality, she gets discriminated not as a black, not as a disabled, not as a poor, but as a disabled poor black woman as a whole, a category different from a disabled white woman, etc. - so if you now have a rich disabled black woman, she gets discriminated against as a disabled rich woman, which abandons materialism, because class is the underlying precondition for discrimination.
Discrimination of blacks, for example, are a result of the shift in the justification for slavery. Before chattel sllavery, only non-Christians could become slaves, so once blacks took on Christianity, they invented racism as a justification. How these kind of oppressions intermingle with sexism or ableism or whatever, is kind of irrelevant, because culture is in a constant shift as material conditions develop, but these material conditions don't seem to play any role with intersectional types. They never come up with a good analysis as to why somebody gets discriminated in the first place, and they invent "catergories" of oppression, which leads in the end to the most cancerous types of identity politics and oppression olympics.
Ian Rogers
Ahem Agreed with your point, though I assume you meant "AFTER chattel slavery".
Luke Nguyen
Intersectional "feminism" is an oxymoron.
Feminists cannot pretend to (allegedly) care about men's rights, LGBT+, race and whathever while they are focusing almost exclusively about their rights. That's like MRAs and egalitarianism; they are both mutually exclusive.
Intersectionality is a bourgeois ideology to divide the working class. Isn't if funny the overwhelming majority of feminists are liberal, against guns and opposed to revolution? It's almost as if they're class cucks.
Either way, fuck the women's rights movements; who gives a shit about them? Brocialists of the world unite!
Elijah Peterson
as a trans person myself I think intersectionality is counterrevolutionary and "feminism" is short sighted at best and an enemy of socialism at worse. First of all I think it could be useful to distinguish the three sittuations in which the activity of these type of movement focus, namely discrimination by law, discrimination based on prejudice of the common opinion and situations of malaise of their social category.
Discrimination by law, for example women in muslim countries, can be seen by some people as a goal that makes these movement "worth". While I admit that it can make these categories have a better life, it is only short sighted. The thing is that yes, in the short term it makes people lives better, but it should be seen as a spin off of the battle for socialism at most, since achievement of socialism would have meant enormously better conditions for the oppressed category anyway. For example the civil right movements cancelled discriminating laws, but niggers still see poverty and other problems and this is the fault of capitalism, not of racism, and making a better legislation without pushing for socialism doesn't really goes to the root of the problem.
Common prejudice discrimination under socialism would be less powerful since it would not affect cetain type of relations, and so here too the fight is almost vain if it not framed in a socialist view. For example under socialism there would be no boss that does not hire me for being trans, so really again fighting for these kind of goals is short sighted.
Last there is the situations, for example when the feminist say in the government there shoulde be 50%women and 50% men. This type of strategy underlines the stupidity and the counterrevolutionary character of intersectionalism. It's stupid because it tries to ignore the main problems of capitalist society. For example: companies of x country has no trans people in them, so of course there is a lot of unemployed tras and they suffer. So the government appoints that y% of the people of the company should be trans. Only someone that doesn't pay attention to capitalism would be surprised by the mounting reaction to this measure among common people: by taking a marginalized category in you are driving out other people since companies are not some kind of charity foundation like liberals like to think.
But there is more. Once abolished the legislative problem, since capitalism discharges its contradiction on the main population, someone always suffer from it and intersectionality basically reduce its activity to constantly tweak capitalist problems in a desperate search for muh equality. No surprise that MRA and willful cuckold movements sprang up: men has real problems in which they fare far worse than women (job deaths, addiction, loneliness, homelessness, ecc) and so every identitarian group tries to tweak things in its favour. This is profoundly counterrevolutionary since it means diluting class struggle and neutralize it. I think that while some struggles like women in the ME can be accepted as short term battles that make some people lives much better (but still HAVE to be framed under socialism), the intersectional theory must be completely abandoned and no place should be made for "social equality" goals in communist building projects, there is no equality under capitalism full stop and socialism is the most important thing, the rest is only myopic feelgood shit.
David Gomez
An Intersectionalist would go on to say that's why it supplements socialism. A theory being incomplete isn't a hard criticism.
I'm asking for arguments, not hot opinions.
Ian Flores
They declare that power and oppression are tied to the cultural relationships between arbitrarily defined identity groups, which they justify by flagrantly misusing statistics. It is the exact same bad logic that the Zig Forumstards use. To both of them disproportionate representation of identity groups constitutes positive proof of some tangental hypothesis, the superior/inferior relationship of one ill-defimed group to its opposite. That shit is the cancer that killed discourse.
Xavier Morgan
The word 'privilege' itself implies an elevated group position that people should be knocked down from instead of an ideal position that everyone should be elevated to. You can call me idealist but that linguistic framework effects how people will perceive and act upon these ideas, to say nothing of how much it reveals about the psychology of the people who invented and promote the idea. It's a perfect demonstration of Kaczynski's description of the modern SJW left, specifically, their envy and hatred for anything successful, and an adolescent compulsion to rebel and destroy rather than build or even just achieve any kind of real ideological end.
Kayden Rivera
Where do welfare queens fall on that scale?
They neither own means of production, nor do they have to sell their labor power.
Camden Fisher
Same place as criminals, NEETs, homeless, retirees, and even self-employed: Outside it, they are lumpen.
Such people are rare and usually temporary, so they have little effect on most economies.
Josiah Lee
Isn't the goal of communism being able to live without having to do any work? It sounds like they've already achieved it.
Chase Jenkins
The goal of communist economic is to have people share the work load and have work become a universal condition instead of something to be hated or loved.
Adrian Flores
They are not as rare as they used to be owing to the death spiral of layoffs and decresed consumption. It will be interesting to see how the bourgeoisie will try to keep a lid on the mushrooming lumpen-proletariat. It will probably be another gigantic war.
Jaxon Baker
They are, with few exceptions, in temporary, highly precarious positions, and in a parasitic relationship with those still inside the class system.
The goal of communism is a sustainable system in which the entire population can exist free of any class system.
Connor Wood
Hell no. It's about getting the full value of what you make in a society where basic necessities are freely available.
Zachary Morris
It sounds like they're living the communist dream, then.
Jose King
Except for the whole "not bing able to make anything" part. Inb4 HURRstart a business
Adrian Robinson
What's stopping them? They've got all the time in the world.
Michael Mitchell
And none of the actual things that they need to make anything–the means of production.
Christopher Adams
So build them.
"means of production" don't just magically arise out of nowhere.
Hunter Baker
Yes, of course! The poor can build their own forges, tools, and machines from the resources and raw materials that they possess using their engineering education on the land that they own. I mean, everyone has everything they need to make anything, right?
Tyler Adams
Well, he can either trade stuff for what excess products he needs, or save up his free money (like everyone else does) in order to purchase the materials.
You're close to getting it, but at the same time so very far away. Try expanding your mind a little more, and think about things over a slightly longer period of time than "boo hoo, I'm 18 and I'm not allowed to play with their stuff."
Christopher Gomez
why spend so much energy on all the particular struggles when capitalism affects everyone and takes a general form
Parker Hughes
What stuff does he have to trade? Protip: only his labor power Enough to buy land, equipment and materials? Hell, if he has all that shit, then he would not be poor in the first place!
I want to live in your magical land where working class people are not stuck in debt for life and make so much money that they can squirrel it away for some time in the near future (somewhere it doesn't rapidly depreciate) when they can turn it into capital and herpdederp a business.
Brother, your dumb ass ain't even in the same ballpark.
Adam Jenkins
I'm really curious what the hell him, his parents, his grandparents, and everyone else in his family have been doing this entire time.
Sure. You don't really need much to start producing SOMETHING. People do it literally all the time.
I thought the point wasn't to turn it into "capital", it was merely to make something. What are you, some kind of capitalist?
Leo Foster
Working! Or being jobless and impoverished. Either way, they have little more than debt. Are you under the impression that the people of the working class begin life with land and an inheritance? This isn't a sixties sitcom.
The hell you don't. Start-up costs for any new enterprise with even a modicum of a chance for success (it is still overwhelmingly likely to fail) run into six figures. Who the fuck has that? Working people are incredibly lucky if they have any figure in savings that needs a comma.
People without huge piles of capital and enough financial security to risk what they have don't.
It wouldn't be if we were not subject to a capitalist economy, but guess what?
Cameron Rogers
fuck off
Ayden Sullivan
Capitalism was far from the first form of unjust hierarchy. It takes a more general form than that even; i.e. domination of human over human, and overthrowing the current economic system does not necessarily entail the end of all forms of unjustified domination.
Lincoln Parker
Your ideal society is one where you don't have to do a single thing whatsoever, but get to live in luxury for free anyway.
I don't think a single person here believes that you would totally be a successful, dedicated farmer, and that the only thing that's holding you back is "porky".
Landon Murphy
The real blackpill on intersectionality is that it fails on its own terms as well not really being all that facilitative to class struggle for ironically similar reasons to why anti idpol leftists are often very inconsistent about opposing all idpol. Intersectional feminists often times really don't give nearly as much of a fuck about others idpols as they claim, rather they just use those as vehicles in order to get special privileges from the bourgeois state for roasties. Thats why metoo and all this moral panic bullshit has been really successful and other popular left/liberal idpol movements largely haven't. Its not a stretch to say that intersectional feminists really don't give a fuck about hoodniggas getting shot up by cops, and considering how they often outwardly view men who don't conform to sexual/gender norms as evul perverts/entitled or whatever bullshit its not a stretch to say they don't give a fuck about "GSMs" for the most part either. What you take from this is up to you though, really you should just be following your self interest since nobody likely gives a fuck if you live or die, you shouldn't either in regards to them
Evan Fisher
There's people who came from greater poverty than you and who didn't have the economy all figured out like you, who have become massively wealthy. What then, is your excuse?
It's not a matter of caring, it's mores, it's super ego.
Gavin Rivera
It's not as silly as applying Calvinism to lotto winners, but >implying that being rich means you're part of some stratum of übermensch is retarded.
Lucas Green
Why can't you people ever acknowledge that you aren't the know-it-all's you claim to be because you read a book or two, that you actually know very little about markets compared to people whose grasp of them earned them fortunes?
You can still say that it isn't fair, that it's wrong, that there should be socialism, but now you're just acting like the 14 year old who after reading atlas shrugs found out he's not a millionaire because of collectivism.
Austin Flores
Maybe you should actually try reading something, like Marx's "Capital" before you continue making ignorant statements, you classcuck.
Samuel Roberts
Talent is certainly well correlated to moderate success, but beyond that, striking it rich is basically down to pure luck.
Aaron Perez
Well who knows, perhaps you will be lucky enough to find a highly successful business on the street one day, from which moment you can just lay back and let the cash role in.
Luis Moore
is bullshit and they don't care about it. Like pic-related, if they were "intersectional" then feminists would talk about sexism and racism in the justice system. But because their intersectionality is bullshit they not only ignore the gender statistics but they even call you misogynistic for bringing them up.
And obviously that puts a big hole in privilege theory too. They aren't interested in actual privilege, because pic-related is female privilege but they'll never acknowledge that.
Dylan Nelson
What? I'm not a capitalist.
Just look at all the self-made billionaires out there who started with nothing! Anyone can do it. And yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Thomas Thomas
The goal of communism is to abolish class distinctions and own the means of production collectively, for people to work to their ability and get according to their need. Note here that it says ability, not "willingness", because freeloaders will both not be allowed as well as the fact that work in its characteristic will be so fundamentally changed that work will not be a chore so much as just something you like to do. Today we have to take breaks from work. We should not have to take breaks from work to recover, it should be enjoyable, we can make it so.
Also this goes for all of society, with your logic capitalists have achieved communism because they, a tiny tiny minority, doesnt have to work.
Bentley Thomas
honest question:
how do you feel about legislation?
imo we should help people by spreading awareness on transgender suicide, and should be wary of social pressure ("my 4 year old son is pan-bi-transexualkin"), pumping children randomly full of heavy chemicals that permanently change the body and mind isn't a simple ethical matter
Dylan Thomas
to be fair, their do acknowledge it, but different:
the academic "explanation" is that patriarchy causes men to be niggers, and if they were "feminist men" then we would live in utopia with 0 crime because behavioral genetics dont real
Lucas Fisher
I think that, regarding transgenderism, the legislation should be focused on two main points. The first is making the change of official "gender" easy, in the end it's not a really important matter for the general public but it would in my opinion increase the quality of life for transgenders. But it should be flat out banned the HRT/whatever type of sex change of minors imho. They are too easy to manipulate and this increases, I think, the chance for bad consequences; it could be good for example for trans minors to be followed in therapy to really understand if its a case, when the minor grows up, that needs gender reassignment.
I have to admit that I am not on track with a lot of typical trans points. Imho its a mental ilness, in the end what's gender dysphoria if not your brain being fucked up? Whats an illness if not a malaise that makes a person unable to live normally? Honestly if there was a pill that made the trans go away I'd take it without a second thought.
In my opinion the encouragement of acceptability of trans people its a tricky matter. The fact is plain simple, a great lot of people severely dislike transexuals and wish to ostracise them. I fear that "spreading public awareness" would result in thinking that "muh transgenders are psycho slaves of satanic communist shadow gov" or whatever. Not that this isn't already happening on a level.
Anyway imho people should be made aware of a lot of different but true facts about transexuals that would, I think, make them less paranoiac and hateful, for example that they are an extremely small percentage of population, that they are more subject to suicide bullying etc. But there is also the problem, in my opinion unsolvable under capitalism, of the inability for a lot of trans people to meet aestethical criteria of real women under capitalism. I feel that under capitalism really is among a lot of people the idea that relationships are a sort of "exchange", and for some of them the thought of trans women is like that of a counterfeit product, and as such condemned because of "dishonesty" even more than the poor quality of the product itself.
Aaron Garcia
whew, someone started late
Dylan Rodriguez
I have not started and have no intention of doing it. The psychological burden is just too heavy, and the discrimination too strong. I would prefer a 100 times to transition late in a friendly place than early in an unfriendly one.
Luke Morales
Why can't you just start and hide it until you are comfortable and in a friendly environment
Caleb Ortiz
Hide where? I have a life to live. I would be more hurt to have frictions with my family and friends over this and have problems in my daily environment than how I am now, yeah gender disphoria sucks but I have places to go, stuff to do and people to meet and it's really just better to not transition.
Ryder Evans
Post legs
Jeremiah Ramirez
But user what if I said you could take hrt *and* not disappoint your family or whatever. You seem to think it's one or the other for some reason?
Jason Ward
Well… do you know the people I live with better than I do?
Henry Morales
Maybe I'm being naive but like you could just take it in secret
Chase Hall
I have a hard time thinking anyone "wants" to be, say, a septic tank cleaner. People clean septic tanks because after a few years, they can own their own business doing it and make millions of dollars. How does communism account for jobs that inherently suck, and require monetary compensation as an incentive?
Jeremiah Reed
the suicide rate stays the same even when in lgbtqiaawtfbbq cities. Leftism should not contaminate itself with tranny politics.
Jason Garcia
Probably the same as jury duty: If you want access to septic pump service, you're required to sign up for the septic pump lotto. When your number comes up, you're trained for and run the vacuum truck for some time.
Hunter Walker
Feminism is a cancer that killed the left. The past election where a DemSoc lost to a "First Woman President" corporatist because >MUH VAGINA and anybody who supported anything close to actual leftism was denounced as a woman-hating "Bernie bro" is the perfect example for the modern state of the Left
Hillary Clinton unironically claimed that the justice system discriminated against women and pledged to have sexist justice reform so women would get lighter sentences. And feminists cheered her for it. If we're going to put up with idpol can't it at least be in the right side?
Charles Cruz
They don't. A lot of horrible jobs also require a great deal of training to know what you're doing without completely screwing up the job, even if they don't require a degree or anything. The only way you could get that to reasonably work is if forced all to people in gulgas to do the "NOT FUN" work, effectively creating a new slave class.
Wyatt Ross
Hillary won because Hillary rigged the primaries since it was #herturn.
I sure can't wait for the trump/hillary rematch in 2020!
Oliver Jenkins
Will she even live that long?
Will George Soros infuse her with his reptilian blood to prolong her lifespan until 2020?
Julian Myers
They are identity politics
Brandon White
don't worry, it will be like the ussr and china where your entire life will be decided by a few tests.
Jason Hall
Feminism did not set all the debates up for when nobody would be watching. Feminism did not alter the ballots in every state that foolishly lacks a paper trail. Feminism did not collect millions from Goldman-Sachs and the rest of the financial industry. Feminism did not astroturf the living hell out of the internet in the run-up to the election, although it definitely helped there. That was all the Democratic Party.
That said, feminism is complete shit. Just don't let that take the blame for what the bankers and their stooges do.
Leo Ramirez
Consider what a bad job is and what things make it bad. Most jobs that we call shit jobs now are only shitty because of low pay and working conditions. Ironically, sewage workers now often sit on their jobs for as long as they can, because the pay and benefits tend to be nice, especially for the engineers. Trash collection is the same way. They are dirty jobs, but they are not bad jobs.
Aaron Cruz
so we have a job nobody wants to do. fortunately we now have a socialist society where things are made according to need - and since there is a thing that needs doing and yet people don't want to, it is in our common interest to find ways to work around that, by technological, social or planning advances in those fields. suddenly there is a strong incentive for investing in self-cleaning or highly-automated septic tank maintenance design and technology.
this as opposed to a capitalist society, where the profit motive and the relatively large reserve army of labour even for disliked jobs like septic tank maintenance keeps the wages down, meaning there is no incentive to invest in minimising the labour spent doing it.
Jackson Smith
OP here from
thanks for answering
Anthony Morgan
I say yes but I do not think I can make assumptions about the social reality of those countries since I know little about them.
First of all i think it isn't inherently capitalist. Eugenetics under capitalism however I think would be a total disaster, I can imagine shit like indian landlords forcing their workers into eugenetics plans to have their children stupid or some other insane shit.
In general I think eugenetics are a tricky field that while should not be rejected altoghether it should be treated with care. As a rule of thumb wouldn't it be good to have only options offered by institutions and little freedom of choice? sounds bad said like this but what I mean is: you could choose eugenetic options like not having a crippled or retard child but you couldn't wake up and think "well I wanna fuck up my child, let's do this!" If you know what I mean. I am too ignorant to have a strong opinion about this and this is mainly speculation but I think "soft" eugenetics for the short term future under communism (who knows, maybe in FALC we'll engeneer ourselves to be gangster computer gods) could be fine.
Jack White
The Democrats are a feminist party. Hillary Clinton is a feminist. Barack Obama is a feminist. Most Democrat leaders are feminists. Ask yourself if the DNC would have been openly biased against a black lesbian woman in favor of a cishet white male corporatist. SJW identity politics run the Democrats and the only reason they felt comfortable being that biased was because Bernie was a white male.
Zachary Nelson
...
Jason Gutierrez
No, the Democrats are a bankers' party that spouts empty feminist talking points, just like the Republicans are a bankers' party that spouts empty Protestant talking points.
Asher Baker
I just realized this shit is a differently worded "clean your room." The privilege checking is precisely the same sentiment of solving problems at an individual level rather than a systemic one. The only real difference is in what personal traits are considered virtues or vices, which individualist utopia is envisioned. Fuck, it's so obvious.
Carson Baker
It will never not piss me off that that transpeople, who account for 0.4% of the population, have managed to sideline politics, especially leftist politics, as effectively as they have, just so they can convince people to accept their neurological anomaly, or how gays managed to the same over a fucking government document.
Adrian Bell
Combat Feminism.
Asher Hernandez
Pic-related. The only reason the Dems are able to be a bankers' party is because they pander to feminism, and they used feminism to kill Bernie Sanders.
Dem supporters care more about hating men than they do about big banks.
William Sanchez
No they didn't. They used Diebold voting machines, a bought and paid for party apparatus, and SuperPACs full of bankers' millions to kill Sanders.