The Poverty of Identity Politics

Okay right thanks, appreciate the clarification. I think this is a problem with online discussion positions get hardened on either side.

I think this is one of the reasons it's a shame that the bookfair crew wouldn't meet with me to discuss what happened, ditto Past Tense.

Like Cooked says, perhaps there is some sort of communication issue behind some of this problem, which does appear to be generational, with pretty much all of us under 40 (apart from Craftwork it seems) on one side of the debate and most people 50 and up on the other?

So to understand where you are coming from I would appreciate if you could explain why you defended Craftwork's comments from people who on the surface have the same view as you? If you don't want to discuss in public happy to chat over a private message instead, and will keep the discussion confidential so feel free to send me a PM. All the best

I think this is probably right. Since about 2014/15-ish I've spent a lot of time looking at recent alt-right, MRA/rape-apologism, neo-reactionary, evopsych, and TERF arguments and counter-arguments (and some of their predecessors), a lot of this discovered/highlighted via social media. Without having done this, certain references would definitely go over my head.

Which brings us to this:

You didn't mention these comments, I'm not sure if that's because you missed them in what is a long thread, or that you read them and didn't read them as transphobic. I'm going to quote as minimally as possible (apologies to people who would prefer not to read these again), and link so you can see the full context.

1. "Of course, one would think that, as libertarians, you would support the freedom of conscience of a staff member to refuse [the imposition of] queer ideology that [gender is a choice].

https://libcom.org/forums/theory/poverty-identity-politics-21052018?page...

2.

https://libcom.org/forums/theory/poverty-identity-politics-21052018?page...

vs.

3.

4.

https://libcom.org/forums/theory/poverty-identity-politics-21052018?page...

I can explain why I think these are transphobic if it helps, but interested in how Cooked reads these.

I think the way Craftwork has been treated on this thread has been pretty much emblematic of everything that is wrong with the 'milieu' around 'identity politics' (a term that is as vague in definition as it is as a philosophy). His actual arguments were completely ignored and turned into anti-trans hate speech, ridiculed etc. his actual point was perfectly legitimate even if the choice of terms was problematic (although I might be wrong but is this not a legitimate terms for a certain branch in academia?

Either way I just thought that point should be made.

Mike I did miss them and as R Totale pointed out they are much more clearly problematic.

1. I'm not sure how to read it but a reaction: I don't think ideas or even discussions around wether gender is a choice should be illegal or even direct action opposed by communists. I do however strongly support direct action opposition to bullying and purposeful mislabeling of people. I also would support workplace rules against this form of harassment. Personally the question if gender is a choice isn't so interesting. I wouldn't question someones gender self identification, it makes no sense to me to do so.

2. I agree with his point that you can't immediately know someones gender but this applies to some cis people as well. It makes no sense except to deny trans people.

Edit: got i wrong with the numbers!

3. Bollocks

4. I'd say they are all different. On the individual level there is generally a difference as some people transition later in life. This 'choice' to transition makes it different. But I don't see the relevance of the rest of the stuff.

Well I'll be honest I think this is an over-simplification. Apologies if I'm mis-representing people's arguments/positions here, but even if specific people on this thread don't fit into the following two categories, I've definitely seen this more broadly:

Craftwork is clearly familiar to at least some extent with contemporary arguments around gender, and afaict explicitly rejects the right (did I say right???) of people to self-identify, not by throwing out slurs but cloaked in arguments about authoritarianism, sexual di-morphism or whatever.

Several other people appear not to be familiar with all those arguments of the past few years and longer, and therefore see this as a heated debate, on which perhaps they don't want to firmly take a side and don't feel 100% comfortable in their own position. And they'd also rather talk about something else, like strikes. So they personally would want to be accommodating to someone's self-identification, but have trouble balancing that with the ability of people to 'discuss issues openly without being attacked' and similar and the general way that discussions play out.

A lot of people end up in that second category on all kinds of issues, and it usually takes quite a lot of effort to get to the point where you can adequately address the first category. You first need to get comfortable with the substance/history of the argument and the ways its expressed.

At least for me figuring things out like "trans ideology is against biology" was a load of crap took a bit of time to sort through:

Year 8 biology (at least how I was taught) doesn't accommodate the existence of either trans or intersex people, but the endocrine society does https://www.endocrine.org/advocacy/priorities-and-positions/transgender-.... I don't feel like I have any kind of solid grasp on endocrinology, but I can read that statement and see "it's complicated, and no-one fully understands how this all works yet", then compare that to "bodies are sexually dimorphic" and see that the latter is a crude scientism/'common sense' which doesn't match reality and relies on a false biological essentialism.

Also I don't feel very confident on gender abolitionist type arguments particularly, I found https://wearetherabl.wordpress.com/2016/07/22/falling-star-countering-ge... useful, and also found both 'gender nihilism' and a couple of critiques of it useful (the author has done a follow-up, although that seemed to have its own problems too). The main thing with that is understanding that there are several different and sometimes conflicting approaches, some are compatible, some aren't. But also that none of those conflcting approaches involve refusing to use preferred pronouns or harassing people when they go to the toilet.

But then 15 years ago I would not remotely have understood https://libcom.org/library/companion-david-harveys-companion-marxs-capit... either, and might have wondered why people were coming down so hard on the reading guide dude. Now I know David Harvey is fucking terrible and I'm incredibly happy they wrote that critique.

Mike we went to different schools it seems I was taught with lots of human and animal examples just how much of a greyscale sex is. How the visible organs develop from tissue. How some people change etc.

So I think this is an example of how in one comment someone can just present themselves as "I'm a communist opposed to neoliberal identity politics" and then hours later be openly transphobic and effectively support workplace harassment. This does not mean that everyone in the former category is also in the latter, but I would really hope that people see this, and think about how they might be able to be a bit clearer next time this comes up - when a lot of people in the latter category know they can hide behind 'a critique of identity politics' and will get a lot of support for it still.

I think I'd agree with this, however in general discussions are not actually about this at all, it's used as a proxy for far more material issues.

On this last one, it means things like being able to use the toilet of your choice without facing harassment, or being able to talk at a womens' event without harassment (Munroe Bergdorf this week, ignoring that people invited Bernie Sanders to give a Womens March speech and many other examples). The 'gender is not a choice' argument often boils down to this when it comes down to it. Again, this took me some time to figure out what the fuck was going on.

Yes I read it as "you can't know anyone's gender, but you can know their sex, and the two are always equivalent".

I don't know about this, the concept of 'passing' has existed for a long time especially in the US and people (but only the subset for who this was a possibility) would make some kind of choice whether to pass or not. There's been some recent discussion about how Lucy Parsons both self-identified and was identified by the capitalist press, for example here: https://www.aaihs.org/searching-for-lucy-parsons-a-racial-riddle/. So saying that race is an inherent biological characteristic is just wrong - not just in the sense of race being socially constructed but also that mixed race people were considered black in the US via the one drop rule. Intersex people don't get a choice when they're assigned at birth either. I agree that gender vs. race comparisons are generally bad though.

I agree it's terrible when people's actual arguments are ignored and are mis-represented or ridiculed instead, but you've picked an interesting example to defend from this.

It’s quite straightforward, pointing out that claiming that HR equality bullshit is equivalent to radical queer politics is wild homophobic and transphobic nonsense is meany abuse, whereas insinuating that your critics want to fuck cats is rational comminist discourse.

I mean, obviously.

It’s almost like all this wailing and gnashing of teeth about how nasty all these idpol people are is really just a bunch of misogynists and transphobes losing their shit because they might be pulled up on their misogyny and transphobia or something.

Edit to add: downvoters, tell me why I’m wrong you cowards

Well when folk say anti trans hate speech they are the ones making it harder to have meaningful discussion.
Oddly enough as a trans person getting misgendered all the time, getting denied access to essential healthcare, getting harassed in public and when using bathrooms changing rooms etc and the fear of such happening mskes it much harder to engage in "pure class struggle". Nevermind that a study yesterday suggested that nearly half of employers in the UK are unsure if they would hire a trans person. So hard to do workplace organising when its even harder to get a job...
And god would be fab if more employers had trans equality policies which currently very very few do. Frankly the more influence Queer ideology has on hr the better. Such may be reforms but such gained by opressed folk from below is important in building the power and unity of the class.

Extremely well said Sawa.

Very much this and I feel like it ties back into a really excellent post by Jura back on page 9 of this thread (#248), especially this bit:

If trans people (or women or PoC or disabled people or etc. etc.) are consistently pushed out and rejected by our “comrades” in the workers movement, then it really shouldn’t surprise anybody that the result is many turning away from what should be their natural home in the workers movement and relying on the limited measure of protection offered by HR policies. I’m not saying this is a good thing by any means, but it is a consequence of hostility within the movement. It’s the anti-idpol people who are “dividing the class” a lot of the time and perhaps they should reflect on that instead of doubling down.

Is British anarchism in 2018 really "the workers movement" anyway? Is there actually a workers movement to speak of?

In any case, it seems like there is all this finger-pointing about which subsection of the working class is the one *really* "dividing the class", and which divisions are just a "natural consequence" of that, but what difference does it make? The working class is divided into a million pieces. The way forward from that seems to be to learn how to engage people with shitty-but-common ideas rather than pointing fingers and throwing your (generic "your"; not you specifically) hands up in the air.

double post

Eh, there are some positive examples to point to in terms of workplace activity, a lot of which are pretty closely documented on the news section of this site, and the bits of anarchism that are worth paying attention to are largely part of that to some extent. Really it’s a bit of a semantic sideline though, since my main point is that I’m not willing to put up with being shit on by my supposed comrades.

I think there’s a distinction to be made between having some bad ideas or using some outdated language when it comes to gender and/or sexuality and, say, accusing LGBTQ+ folks of collaborating with HR to make you sad or distributing leaflets at anarchist events claiming that trans people generally are out to get lesbians. Like believe it or not, most of us exist in the same world as everybody else and manage to get through the day without throttling every person who says something ignorant or offensive, few trans people would be found outside of the prison system otherwise.

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You didn't just mention sexual dimorphism, you invoked it to assert this:

However physiological aspects of dimorphism in humans (upper body strength, height, voice pitch etc.) are on a spectrum. Men are on average taller than women, but there are 5'3" men and 6'2" women. Similarly with singing voice, contralto and counter-tenor are about the same range.

These both relate to aspects of physiology which you can't see in a workplace so have nothing to do with your original point?

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to add to this

the entire blog post is worth reading https://sugarandslugs.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/sex-differences/

Craftwork, appreciate your coming back to the thread to expand on your comments.

Okay so if we relate this more specifically to your original comment, what about workers deliberately mis-gendering colleagues? (As in my view this is clearly a form of verbal abuse)

If you wouldn't support colleagues doing that who then got disciplined, doesn't that mean you're in the same boat as us? As in, according to your logic, you are supporting HR departments over workers with the "wrong" views?

NB none of us are talking about thought crime. I would be surprised if there were any incidences of workers being disciplined simply for holding bigoted views, whereas I'm aware of huge numbers of incidences of racist/sexist workers/managers etc abusing and harassing women, workers of colour, LGBT+ workers etc and not having any consequences at all.

So not 'obvious', then. More of a heuristic that works most of the time.

Given trans people are estimated at ~1% of the population, and intersex people are also estimated at ~1% of the population, that is a significantly narrower percentage of the population than your 90% estimate.

So that would affect perceptions then, and your estimated 90+% success rate might be lower for trans people on HRT. Again since you can't know if someone is on HRT, you don't know whether their appearance is affected by it or not (and it goes without saying, there are cis women on HRT too).

From that link:

edited to add: on this point:

This is traditionally under-reported though and still not particularly well understood:

The belief that Homo sapiens is absolutely dimorphic with the respect to sex chromosome composition, gonadal structure, hormone levels, and the structure of the internal genital duct systems and external genitalia, derives from the platonic ideal that for each sex there is a single, universally correct developmental pathway and outcome. We surveyed the medical literature from 1955 to the present for studies of the frequency of deviation from the ideal male or female. We conclude that this frequency may be as high as 2% of live births. The frequency of individuals receiving “corrective” genital surgery, however, probably runs between 1 and 2 per 1,000 live births (0.1–0.2%).

From the abstract for this study.

So more than has been recognised until quite recently, with many people not being identified at birth.

And this is where we get back to ridiculous statements like this:

People don't object to discussing biology, they object to this crude school-debate-club throwing out statements like 'humans are sexually dimorphic' to justify the idea that non-binary gender is 'against biology' in order to exclude trans women from womanhood. Then on top of this, dragging things into a discussion on biological justifications for binary gender distracts from issues like offering solidarity to trans women facing abuse at work, and takes a massive amount of effort to debunk. It really reminds me of all the 'race realists' and evolutionary psychologists banging on about hereditable IQ, with the same deflection of criticism that 'the left can't deal with science lol'.

Either way there's a good piece here on the relationships between the issues that intersex and trans people face (written by an intersex person) and how 'gender critical feminism' is not helpful for either group, despite the fact that they may be 'critical of gender'.

I don't think people need to be interested in this stuff to 'not be transphobic', but reading up on it a bit has helped me to understand how contemporary anti-trans arguments are deployed.

Steven's question to Craftwork in #443 seems reasonable on the face of it but.... as soon as you get into this kind of detail without any actual personal example of it happening and any of the other real time background in an actual workplace involving a mix of people with varying degrees of views and day to day relationships it gets tricky. I only mention this because of Steven's NB comment at the end. Why? because I have personal experience in the past as a junior manager in a local authority of the active monitoring of workers personal use of the works E-mail system to discipline a whole group of workers for 'inappropriate' use of language in the course of what would otherwise pass as mostly inoffensive joking. That disciplinary process that I refused to take part in could have resulted in sacking of some and did result in the downgrading of some individuals. Now I wouldn't have liked some of the 'joking' and might have contested some of it but we are talking here about workers who mostly got on well with each other without any individual being 'abused'. Invoking this level of discipline by the employer and their willing agents was way over the top. There are matters of degree in all these issues in practice and they are not always easily answered on some abstract basis of ones political principles, not to mention the employers abuse of a whole range of disciplinary codes to just offload troublesome individuals. Relying on employers 'Human?' Resources departments in real time situations with real humans is not recommended.

That's kind of my point. I don't like speaking in purely abstract concepts. To get what someone actually means I think you need to bring it into real-world practical examples.

So in terms of this "imposition of queer ideology" on workers, there are real-world examples of academics being fired for deliberately mis-gendering their students. And I do not think those academics are worthy of support, so I don't care if HR "impose queer ideology" by sacking these bigots.

I wouldn't disagree with you here. I personally have represented my fellow workers who have made "inappropriate" comments or emails, and often management go over the top in disciplining people about a number of issues, especially if they don't like someone. However the only practical example of the sort of thing Craftwork is referring to that I'm aware of, in the real world, are about people deliberately mis-gendering colleagues or service users. And I think doing this to someone is specific and bigoted personal abuse. Someone who does this I don't care what happens to them.

Taking another real-world example, Helen Steel clearly has bigoted views about trans people and deliberately misgenders them on her social media accounts and in public appearances. But she hasn't been fired from her public sector job. However if she started abusing a trans colleague or service user and mis-gendering them then she probably would get disciplined or fired, and I wouldn't try to organise strike action to defend her (unless she apologised and completely renounced the bigoted behaviour, because I do think people can change and deserve 2nd chances).

Here's a specific example, from this week:

Christian teacher refused to use preferred first names of trans kids (which were on all school documentation etc. and required both parental consent and a doctors letter) or their correct pronouns, was threatened with the sack, tendered resignation (iirc as some kind of bluff) then his resignation was accepted: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/06/11/a-teacher-re...

You can look at this as being the school board vs. the teacher, but you could also (correctly) look at it as being the teacher vs. the kids and their parents. Looks like he made a deal with the school where he could use the kid's last names, which was not popular with the kids.

Again the question is not "do you report the teacher to HR", it is "do you support the teacher against both HR and their trans students" - since if they get reinstated without being required to treat their students properly it's back to misgendering or weird workarounds again.

And I've linked to it before on these threads, but the NRV strike where Target employees went out on strike to try to get a store manager removed - amongst the complaints were sexual harassment and misgendering. I'm sure he was removed by 'HR' but he would also probably had hire and fire power within the store.

Again, this doesn't really stand-up to basic scrutiny.

Employees trying to talk about racial and gender issues at Google talked about an organised group of employees directing harassment against them: https://www.wired.com/story/the-dirty-war-over-diversity-inside-google/ including doxing via far-right sites like Breitbart and Vox day:

Separately, Google employees have recently been refusing to work on military contracts for 'PC liberals with power (Google execs)'and succeeded in getting a government defence contract cancelled.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/google-engineers-refu...

But it's all about PC liberal Google execs vs. lone crank James Damore eh?

So just to be clear I am not defending Craftwork's earlier reference to ''imposition of queer ideology'' in the context of problems in our dealing with 'Human resources' departments at work. I am simply pointing out that the real world of real people is more complex in practice than might appear on the surface. I suggest that quoting second-hand 'examples' and expecting 'yes' and 'no' answers from individuals who are not privy to all the material conditions behind those examples is no way to conduct an online discussion here. Beyond that I am trying to make people understand that a fixation on ''mis-gendering' is just part of a much much wider and more complex problem when it comes down to how we as workers deal with each other and develop practical collective solidarity against the power of employers and their agents that does not compromise those same principles.

Just to be clear I'm only talking about "mis-gendering" because that is the specific example Craftwork gave.

Although I think there is a more general issue, that many anarchists/revolutionaries view transphobia in a way which is qualitatively different from how they view other types of discrimination like homophobia or racism, in that some either support it (à la Helen Steel), some tolerate it within their ranks (à la bookfair collective), and some have written material which suggests that they believe that people who criticise it are a bigger problem than those who are subjected to (à la ACG/ICC).