Agreed that the war against Ukraine is the most important problem, because the illegal sock puppet Biden wants to send patriot missiles and AMERICAN TROOPS to Ukraine to man them. This is a direct escalation. The next steps are: 1) America hitting Russia, 2) Russia retaliating, and 3) nuclear war killing billions of people.
Also agreed that identity politics and anti-wokeness serve as a distraction.
Disagree that wokeness and cultural marxism are not real threats. I think they are second-tier threats, far far far far far after WWIII. But if you'd like to read a good book as to how wokism has contaminated society, here is one:
Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam Hardcover – August 17, 2021
I realize Caitlin is very far left, although I don't think she has ever really defined how that would work. I believe in free markets. I don't think we have them at all. I think we have fake everything:
Fake food (with chemicals)
Fake drugs (Pfizer)
Fake money (fiat currency)
Fake media (propaganda)
Fake elections
and fake pundits creating these distractions.
But when they are cutting off boys balls and chopping off girls breasts so some Satanic corporation can make about $7 million per victim, and mess up people psychologically for life, you can't say wokeness is undefinable and cultural marxism isn't a thing. That's called denial, and they treat that in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm still with all of the people here who think the number one problem in the world is the potential for nuclear war, which I am doing my best to help us avoid by talking with those I know, and writing my fake senators and fake representatives. You can say I am doing very little, but I am also open to your practical suggestions.
Keep in mind, the United States is a nation of over 300 million people. Under a thousand are on puberty blockers. It's a thousand too many.
But consider the airtime devoted to this 0.0003% versus - for instance - 48,000 on strike in California's colleges, quarter of a million nonviolent drug-related incarcerations not criminalised today, over 3 million evictions this year.
If we can keep due sense of proportion over allocating thinking time to the many problems of the day, rather than having it dictated by media, it'd be a great start.
It's not a thousand, it's over 4000 now and rising exponentially every year.
But it's the ideology creating that 4000 which I believe people are more concerned with. And the repressive effect it has on speech. People don't want their children being taught that gender (and sex) is something you can choose and change on a whim. It's absolute insanity.
And how about the large overlap between Autism and "gender dysphoria"?
On the political left wokeness often can be intolerant of the beliefs of others, as well as using it to proclaim one’s own superiority. I think that's what Elon Musk is referencing when he speaks against wokeism, and why it turns so many off. Basically it can become quite intolerant and offensive in it's position, and even physical. This is also true of many movements like that of climate change, and let me say, I certainly recognize the reality of climate change since it is a subject I taught. The recent display of what I call wokeness in action are the young women who through tomato juice at a van Gogh painting, Sunflowers, then glued themselves to the wall in the museum. Underlying their actions is an utter contempt for those who are what they would call climate change deniers, but in no way is this what you do to change people's minds on this subject.
Not only are they not real threats, they are mythical bogeymen.
There is no real money. It's childish and autistic to want to be ruled by shiny metal and scarcity. Either one is a mystification of command. The real problem is the wage system that allows people with money to give commands and have them respected.
If we're distilling the "problem" down to fundamentals, I think it's the unholy trinity of alienation, avarice and apathy that's keeping people in peonage.
that's right, as long as you understand it's still the rich people doing that, the same that finance both parties, for the same reasons. There's a wokeness threat, not a SJW threat from the poor souls that have food intentions with no forum to express them, so they have to settle for fake debates or shut up. As for cultural marxism, it originated in Chicago, together withe the most merciless libertarian economics, so "marxism" is the bait, while preserving power through economic injustice is the true objective. democrats are the youth wing of the republicans, they aren't even able to look scary; the worst they could find about the dizzy hillary was to make her look weird. most of the articles showing her as a monster don't even include her counter-intuitive picture. for the current conditions in us, the resolution of all problems can only be done economically at the left and politically "at the right", but only if you exclude the fake themes induced by some fake churches in order to get legitimacy when they had none; things like abortion, trans-homo-sexuality and such. These same themes that look extreme left in us are used in an extreme right manner, to support economic injustice, everywhere else.
"But when they are cutting off boys balls and chopping off girls breasts so some Satanic corporation can make about $7 million per victim..." Free markets for the win! Hip, Hip, Hooray!
Eating your landlord?? Good luck with that! .The rental housing market is being taken over by corporations in case you haven't noticed. You won't be able to get close enough to"eat" your landlord. You'll soon be crying for that good ole mom 'n pop landlord that you used to love to hate.
It gives freedom vs depending on a landlord who can take away as much of your income as he pleases, along with other "essential" needs all controlled by corporations
You missed the point. If the private property relation doesn't exist, corporations and elites, being made of property, CAN'T exist because the conditions for their existence don't hold.
I grew up in the system where the private property relation did not exist and everyone lived in government-owned housing. It's definitely better than being hostage to a private landlord, but still, nothing beats actually owning your dwelling
Curious and would like to hear more about the system in which you grew up. Thank you for pointing out that the chattering over small landlord vs large landlord vs government housing is all a distraction from the truly noble economic goal: ownership for as many as possible of their home, regardless of whether it's sfh or a trailer or a condo.
Whatever the system, if you don't own it, you are dependant on someone, be it a landlord or government. Government can restrict where you can live, what kind of housing, it can deprive you of it whenever it sees fit (building a new road or new residential block), it can limit how much land you can own, etc, etc. So no, ownership is the only way to be free (not without its downsides, but better than anything else)
As long as elites don't own anything either, what's to be sad about?
First, define "own". Like "marriage", the definition has shifted over time to whatever family order best suits the state's need to reproduce itself. In our era, capitalist ideology denies the very possibility of a distinction between personal property (one's possessions) and private property (one's exclusive rights over others), but we don't have to accept that conceit. No critic of capitalism is seriously objecting to personal property like toothbrushes and houses.
We live in a society in which -- from early childhood -- we everywhere perceive an endless perpetuation of Hollywood-quality fables about war and manhood, success and the acquisition of stuff, romantic love forever, and other equally horrendous bullshit. Where much of the populace still believes that society to be a meritocracy, while the grim reality is actually that of a celebritized mediocracy. What can one expect but delusion?
No, no, a thousand times no. In the anti Vietnam war movement, there were those who argued that struggles for civil rights, women’s rights and democratic rights more broadly were a distraction. Some argued that only efforts and actions directly opposing the war were worth while. That way of thinking was wrong then and it’s wrong now. Yes, fighting imperial propaganda and organizing against US imperial wars are of paramount importance. But…
Awareness, consciousness and willingness to fight are heightened in different people in different ways. Awareness for many is raised first by diving into the struggles that most touch them personally. More often than not, joining one fight on the side of the working class leads to willingness - even eagerness - to join other, bigger fights.
And a key point is this: gender ideology is manifestly a reactionary attack on women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, children’s health, rational thought, free speech and civil liberties - all issues of critical importance to the working class. Fighting to defend and extend these rights feeds directly into building working class solidarity and into the ability to mobilize against imperial war-making.
Women are told to accept men in their private spaces, rape shelters, prisons, sports teams and affirmative action programs if said men believe (or pretend to believe) they are women. Gays and lesbians are accused of bigotry if they prefer same sex partners rather than same “gender” partners (i.e., choosing partners based on their objective biology (sex) rather than their subjective self-perception (gender).) Children who reject sexist stereotypes are told they must be “trans” and are steered toward a lifetime of dependence on big pharma. Those speaking about these truths are censored and deplatformed. Every element of this benefits the powers that be while dividing and disorienting the working class.
Convincing people that men are actually women (and vice versa) is a handy step toward the kind of logical disorientation and abandonment of critical thinking necessary to getting people to accept that war is peace, free speech is harmful, “what’s good for General Motors is good for the country”, and many other dangerous, irrational precepts of capitalist ideology.
So why do some whose overall outlook is conservative oppose gender ideology? For the less powerful, this is nothing more than the normal contradictions one finds in individuals: conservative on some issues and progressive on others. Many of the more powerful only oppose gender ideology opportunistically, because the left has vacated the entire lane to them. If the left spoke up with a principled, unified voice, the right would not be able to use anti-wokeness as a trojan horse for their other issues and the oppression that gender ideology enables would be snatched from the arsenal of the ruling class. Misunderstanding this is a really, really big self own. For more see https://brucelesnick.substack.com/p/with-gender-ideology-the-left-is
1) I fight existential threats AND Gender Identity Ideology. I do both. It's not an either/or thing. In fact, it's a must-do-both-thing. (See 3 below on that.)
2)The damage from Gender Identity Ideology being forced on us all... is real and huge, and people won't ignore it, no matter how much you admonish us to do so. You think it's minor because you're not seeing most of it. Erasure has already happened, as all of us who are depublished, deplatformed, fired, assaulted at speaker's corners, and more can attest, but you don't see us. You join the travesty of pretending we don't exist and/or that we've got our knickers in a twist over nothing important... You need to open your eyes; read/hear what we say! When girls are having their healthy breasts amputated & kids are going on blockers and hormones that stymie brain/bone/organ maturation, parents and other caring people are simply not going to ignore that. (The #s are huge; those who claim otherwise in comments are wrong.) When women in prisons in the US share their cells with men-in-woman-face, people are not going to say, "Oh well, not important." Or "Oh well, I feel sorry for the women who've been raped already (numerous) and those yet to endure that fate, but I'm going to ignore it." (1000s of men want into women's prisons in U.S.) If you're child is taught absolute anti-science drivel at school that guts their ability to think critically and denies them a basic grasp of biology and even reality, you're not going to ignore it. See my new article on this: https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/the-anti-science-disaster-of-gender Bottom line, pontificate as much as you want Caitlin about what people should ignore; it ain't gonna happen.
3) There is a huge opportunity here to build a movement to demand system change. The people I now organize with, as the result of my decision to stand against the woke madness of Gender Ideology are working class, courageous, and concerned about all sorts of issues not just Gender. Many are indeed confused; they see socialism as the root of the Gender Cult, etc. But there's a reason for that. Most socialist organizations and many other groups on the Left are letting the Gender Madness spread, and even applauding it. The problem is not that some people are anti-woke; it's that so many are not, yourself included Caitlin. You are handing fascistic forces the future on a platter, because THEY talk sense on Gender Identity. And you ignore the reality of what's happening in its name.
You are wrong on this one, Caitlin. And it matters very much
Thank you Carol (& glad I found your substack). I read (most of) your article about the ridiculousness being taught in schools ... this especially resonates ~ "What’s happening in the schools is nothing short of Orwellian. Children learn that men are women, self-loathing is self-love, delivering children to life-long medical dependency and harm is compassion, telling the truth is hateful, and silencing those who question dogma is righteous. This primes them to bow their heads and comply with official dogma, no matter how nonsensical it is. It primes them to join authoritarian mobs that attack anyone who dissents."
Yes, and also primes them to believe that War is Peace, if that's what the powers that be say .. to believe how things are told to them instead of what is actually happening (ie billions of dollars for war when people are hungry here) ...
Teen Vogue, of course they are teaching children biology .. with the same competence as they gave medical advice all through covid ...
(And, apparently there are more genders than there are stars in the sky, at least according to this theater company, who still insist on vaccine passports - https://outfronttheatre.com/terms-to-know/ )
While it’s certainly true that most people do not understand what woke-ism is and that bad-faith right-wingers have profited off of the confusion, the actual problem of wokeness is quite serious. I feel that the same kinds of sophistry underlie both wokeness and regime hegemonism, and one can and must fight both at once. Caitlin is way off base here.
Interesting that a lot of the movements referred to in this article really took off after the 2008 Banking Crisis and a short period of protests against international banks and their structures. I wonder why.
I don't fully agree with your piece. You only talk about how right-wing people are anti-woke. One can oppose wokeness via other lenses, like a Marxist one. Take the leftist essay “Exiting the Vampire Castle”, about how leftist movements need to oppose wokeness as it is harmful to a socialist vision of class solidarity. Nothing right-wing about that.
So many disparate factions in America are against wokeness, all for different reasons: right wingers as you say, dirtbag-leftist/class-first leftists, libertarians, racial nationalists, religious fundamentalists, scientists that feel like they can no longer do science, rationalists, radfems, and so much more.
Systemic injustice exists, but pretending thst pronouns will make everything right is silly to the point of dishonest.
To give but one example- if large corporations would stop trying to prevent their employees from unionizing, the result would be a transfer of concrete material benefits to brown, and black, and yellow, and white working class people greater than all the diversity committees ever formed, all thebunisex bathrooms, and greater than all the tweets ever tweeted.
Which is precisely why they won't do it. Instead, we denounce Melvin as "literal Hitler" for asserting that there are only 26 genders, plus genders not yet discovered.
"pretending thst pronouns will make everything right" - they don't. They know it won't solve anything. They just know it's a perfect distraction to keep dummies occupied while the status quo is maintained.
Thank you for the excellent take down of the liberal-conservative alliance!
As I was considering the analysis, I wished there were a couple of forward looking statements about how those of us, who advocate for an openminded and radical egalitarian world, might envision a multidimensional perspective combining class, race, and gender together. My hunch is that if we scraped the Internet to see how many texts proactively managed to address the multidimensionality of exploitation (understood in the neo-Marxist sense as the extraction of surplus value by owners from wage labor), oppression (understood in the neo-Marxist sense of dehumanization in regard to other social relations), alienation, and commodification, we would get a very low score. If this is actually the case, what does it tell us about how socialization works? People are either disinclined to envision a multidimensional perspective or they are shaped to disaggregate the roles society asks them to play, or a combination of both including other modes of conformity. This is basically the fallacy of composition, attributing the cause of something to a part rather than the whole. While I am skeptical of systems theory, there are some intriguing approaches, such as paradox theory, that allow for multidimensionality to not always be entirely congruent.
But in my view, you are right on in calling out the ways in which identity politics have ended up as a channel for certain groups to bypass other groups. When we hear the mantra about inclusion, diversity, and equity, inclusion for some seems to take a back seat. When inclusion is left out, diversity and equity become exclusive to the in-group. In other words, those of us who are dehumanized, oppressed, and exploited are not fully free until all of us are free. That's why in my opinion MLK ended up gravitating toward anti-capitalism and democratic socialism.
I guess from a certain perspective, they can be labelled as befits a given world view. Whether we agree with classical Marxist analysis, or neo-Marxist analysis, or none of the above, it behooves us to consider class and labor in some way, shape, or form. Perhaps distinctions are ultimately irrelevant. Perhaps distinctions help us to unravel the cause and nature of social disease. Thanks for drawing attention to society's stinky parts!
The last thing we need is "intersectionality". We need identity politics to go away and everyone to unite around class concerns.
Anyone can read between the lines of this diatribe and can see you're woke af and aren't down to sacrifice your largely abstract privileges/gains for the material benefit of all.
"diversity and equity become exclusive to the in-group. In other words, those of us who are dehumanized, oppressed, and exploited are not fully free until all of us are free."
This is woke nonsense. Believing that people are oppressed/disadvantaged by virtue of being in a "minority". Even that qualifying pretext isn't required when it comes to women (who are a majority).
Which tangible policies are identity politics fighting for? Can you clue me in? And do they impact people as much as healthcare, housing, wages, prisons and the endless slew of material policies a class-based approach would prioritise?
I am primarily an environmentalist, as well as antiwar. I get fed up with conferences where everyone must name their pronouns, and with strategy sessions where all we can talk about is identity stuff, mostly buzzwords. On the other hand, It used to be the case that every protest or gathering was 99% white (I do live in a very white region) and I noticed that well-paid top positions in many organization were filled by males, while the people doing the day to day work were about 75% female. I've seen notable improvement in both those things, and we DO need to grow into a diverse, massive united movement to make change. We just can't afford to spend all out time talking about this when the world's on fire.
I think it's very true that this aspect of the culture wars, as well as others, is deliberately and carefully crafted by agents of the ruling class to distract us from the real war.
Great piece. HOWEVER, what gender ideology is doing to kids and women is material harm. Will you not speak on this? And DEI is being used to submerge class and class interests. It should be openly opposed for this. So ignoring “woke” seems fine when it is a vague complaint. In specific reality, it is hurting us.
You make some great points her, Caitlin. I've been guilty as anyone of feeding this beast. I belong to that second category of anti-wokesters you mentioned - I'm a Leftist who sees the Ruling Class stirring up a Culture War so they don't have to fight a Class War, and whenever I call it out my MSNBC Democrat friends accuse me of being an Alt Right Yahtzee.
I'm a comic book writer and right now American comics are being written for the Woke by the Woke... which is why nobody reads them (including the Woke) and Japanese comics outsell Marvel and DC 10 to 1. I've seen a medium I love passionately taken over by activists, so I have a personal stake in this squabble, but we should all take care not to add to the problem.
Nancy Fraser, Professor at the New School, explained exactly what's going on politically and culturally and named it "progressive Neoliberalism" - check out here analysis:(the first paper plays with the title of Ted Lowi's classic book)
It's a good thing that racism ended with the election of Obama and the removing of statues. And that's the problem with the current iteration of "woke": it focuses on cultural aesthetics while ignoring political rot, thereby serving, as others have noted, as a distraction, which, while orchestrated by puppet-masters in Washington and Silicon Valley, is an unwitting distraction among the populace, which is what makes it so insidious. The so-called 'woke' are eager to lick the jackboot of authoritarianism because it's stamped with their preferred personal pronouns, which clearly illustrates that to be 'woke' doesn't mean you're woke about everything -- in their case, not 'woke' to their own manipulation by opportunists. And people getting branded as 'bigots' and other irrelevant pejoratives for pointing this out further substantiates that the woke/anti-woke culture-war is just theater. Saying this doesn't mean I don't support the causes that 'woke' ostensibly stands for, because I do. It's just that my version of civil rights and human dignity includes everyone, not just those wearing rainbow hair and screaming at the top of their lungs. But like they say, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
If vacuous born-rich twerps wish to casually appropriate a dismissive buzz-phrase twisted by their inbred Afrikaans trauma; I'd suggest, "can't even be BOTHERED," "Oowee," "open a can of whoop-ass," “It’s so quiet in here you can hear a mouse piss on cotton.” "NOPE!" "Going to HELL in a hand basket," "It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to!"
Agreed that the war against Ukraine is the most important problem, because the illegal sock puppet Biden wants to send patriot missiles and AMERICAN TROOPS to Ukraine to man them. This is a direct escalation. The next steps are: 1) America hitting Russia, 2) Russia retaliating, and 3) nuclear war killing billions of people.
Also agreed that identity politics and anti-wokeness serve as a distraction.
Disagree that wokeness and cultural marxism are not real threats. I think they are second-tier threats, far far far far far after WWIII. But if you'd like to read a good book as to how wokism has contaminated society, here is one:
Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam Hardcover – August 17, 2021
by Vivek Ramaswamy (https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Inc-Corporate-Americas-Justice/dp/1546090789/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PXCVIKDATT0A&keywords=woke%2C+inc&qid=1671280461&sprefix=woke%2C+inc%2Caps%2C284&sr=8-1)
I realize Caitlin is very far left, although I don't think she has ever really defined how that would work. I believe in free markets. I don't think we have them at all. I think we have fake everything:
Fake food (with chemicals)
Fake drugs (Pfizer)
Fake money (fiat currency)
Fake media (propaganda)
Fake elections
and fake pundits creating these distractions.
But when they are cutting off boys balls and chopping off girls breasts so some Satanic corporation can make about $7 million per victim, and mess up people psychologically for life, you can't say wokeness is undefinable and cultural marxism isn't a thing. That's called denial, and they treat that in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'm still with all of the people here who think the number one problem in the world is the potential for nuclear war, which I am doing my best to help us avoid by talking with those I know, and writing my fake senators and fake representatives. You can say I am doing very little, but I am also open to your practical suggestions.
God bless you.
Keep in mind, the United States is a nation of over 300 million people. Under a thousand are on puberty blockers. It's a thousand too many.
But consider the airtime devoted to this 0.0003% versus - for instance - 48,000 on strike in California's colleges, quarter of a million nonviolent drug-related incarcerations not criminalised today, over 3 million evictions this year.
If we can keep due sense of proportion over allocating thinking time to the many problems of the day, rather than having it dictated by media, it'd be a great start.
It's not a thousand, it's over 4000 now and rising exponentially every year.
But it's the ideology creating that 4000 which I believe people are more concerned with. And the repressive effect it has on speech. People don't want their children being taught that gender (and sex) is something you can choose and change on a whim. It's absolute insanity.
And how about the large overlap between Autism and "gender dysphoria"?
On the political left wokeness often can be intolerant of the beliefs of others, as well as using it to proclaim one’s own superiority. I think that's what Elon Musk is referencing when he speaks against wokeism, and why it turns so many off. Basically it can become quite intolerant and offensive in it's position, and even physical. This is also true of many movements like that of climate change, and let me say, I certainly recognize the reality of climate change since it is a subject I taught. The recent display of what I call wokeness in action are the young women who through tomato juice at a van Gogh painting, Sunflowers, then glued themselves to the wall in the museum. Underlying their actions is an utter contempt for those who are what they would call climate change deniers, but in no way is this what you do to change people's minds on this subject.
Not only are they not real threats, they are mythical bogeymen.
There is no real money. It's childish and autistic to want to be ruled by shiny metal and scarcity. Either one is a mystification of command. The real problem is the wage system that allows people with money to give commands and have them respected.
If we're distilling the "problem" down to fundamentals, I think it's the unholy trinity of alienation, avarice and apathy that's keeping people in peonage.
ALIENATION: mistrust, cynicism, nihilism, anxiety, fear, subservience, insouciance, self-pity, absence of empathy.
AVARICE: selfishness, greed, envy, narcissism, dishonesty, grasping, self-indulgence, demanding, cowardly.
APATHY: laziness, antisocial, disinterested, addiction, impatience, superficial, unreliable, evasive, uncurious, disrespectful, rude, procrastinating, subservient.
Don't clap back at me, shitlib. Your emotional needs for others to believe in bullshit to make them easier to manipulate are all on you.
Why the hostile response? This looks entirely uncalled for.
that's right, as long as you understand it's still the rich people doing that, the same that finance both parties, for the same reasons. There's a wokeness threat, not a SJW threat from the poor souls that have food intentions with no forum to express them, so they have to settle for fake debates or shut up. As for cultural marxism, it originated in Chicago, together withe the most merciless libertarian economics, so "marxism" is the bait, while preserving power through economic injustice is the true objective. democrats are the youth wing of the republicans, they aren't even able to look scary; the worst they could find about the dizzy hillary was to make her look weird. most of the articles showing her as a monster don't even include her counter-intuitive picture. for the current conditions in us, the resolution of all problems can only be done economically at the left and politically "at the right", but only if you exclude the fake themes induced by some fake churches in order to get legitimacy when they had none; things like abortion, trans-homo-sexuality and such. These same themes that look extreme left in us are used in an extreme right manner, to support economic injustice, everywhere else.
"But when they are cutting off boys balls and chopping off girls breasts so some Satanic corporation can make about $7 million per victim..." Free markets for the win! Hip, Hip, Hooray!
What can be said, but Amen? The bumper sticker politics of my own neighborhood is chilling in this regard--from both sides.
Eating your landlord?? Good luck with that! .The rental housing market is being taken over by corporations in case you haven't noticed. You won't be able to get close enough to"eat" your landlord. You'll soon be crying for that good ole mom 'n pop landlord that you used to love to hate.
There is no inherent need for ownership or property. That's just a capitalist game.
It gives freedom vs depending on a landlord who can take away as much of your income as he pleases, along with other "essential" needs all controlled by corporations
You missed the point. If the private property relation doesn't exist, corporations and elites, being made of property, CAN'T exist because the conditions for their existence don't hold.
I grew up in the system where the private property relation did not exist and everyone lived in government-owned housing. It's definitely better than being hostage to a private landlord, but still, nothing beats actually owning your dwelling
Curious and would like to hear more about the system in which you grew up. Thank you for pointing out that the chattering over small landlord vs large landlord vs government housing is all a distraction from the truly noble economic goal: ownership for as many as possible of their home, regardless of whether it's sfh or a trailer or a condo.
Whatever the system, if you don't own it, you are dependant on someone, be it a landlord or government. Government can restrict where you can live, what kind of housing, it can deprive you of it whenever it sees fit (building a new road or new residential block), it can limit how much land you can own, etc, etc. So no, ownership is the only way to be free (not without its downsides, but better than anything else)
Does that mean you'll be happy with owning nothing?
As long as elites don't own anything either, what's to be sad about?
First, define "own". Like "marriage", the definition has shifted over time to whatever family order best suits the state's need to reproduce itself. In our era, capitalist ideology denies the very possibility of a distinction between personal property (one's possessions) and private property (one's exclusive rights over others), but we don't have to accept that conceit. No critic of capitalism is seriously objecting to personal property like toothbrushes and houses.
We live in a society in which -- from early childhood -- we everywhere perceive an endless perpetuation of Hollywood-quality fables about war and manhood, success and the acquisition of stuff, romantic love forever, and other equally horrendous bullshit. Where much of the populace still believes that society to be a meritocracy, while the grim reality is actually that of a celebritized mediocracy. What can one expect but delusion?
Don't forget Santa and the Tooth Fairy. ;-)
Somewhere in all this is the reality of things. Still a mystery though.
No, no, a thousand times no. In the anti Vietnam war movement, there were those who argued that struggles for civil rights, women’s rights and democratic rights more broadly were a distraction. Some argued that only efforts and actions directly opposing the war were worth while. That way of thinking was wrong then and it’s wrong now. Yes, fighting imperial propaganda and organizing against US imperial wars are of paramount importance. But…
Awareness, consciousness and willingness to fight are heightened in different people in different ways. Awareness for many is raised first by diving into the struggles that most touch them personally. More often than not, joining one fight on the side of the working class leads to willingness - even eagerness - to join other, bigger fights.
And a key point is this: gender ideology is manifestly a reactionary attack on women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, children’s health, rational thought, free speech and civil liberties - all issues of critical importance to the working class. Fighting to defend and extend these rights feeds directly into building working class solidarity and into the ability to mobilize against imperial war-making.
Women are told to accept men in their private spaces, rape shelters, prisons, sports teams and affirmative action programs if said men believe (or pretend to believe) they are women. Gays and lesbians are accused of bigotry if they prefer same sex partners rather than same “gender” partners (i.e., choosing partners based on their objective biology (sex) rather than their subjective self-perception (gender).) Children who reject sexist stereotypes are told they must be “trans” and are steered toward a lifetime of dependence on big pharma. Those speaking about these truths are censored and deplatformed. Every element of this benefits the powers that be while dividing and disorienting the working class.
Convincing people that men are actually women (and vice versa) is a handy step toward the kind of logical disorientation and abandonment of critical thinking necessary to getting people to accept that war is peace, free speech is harmful, “what’s good for General Motors is good for the country”, and many other dangerous, irrational precepts of capitalist ideology.
So why do some whose overall outlook is conservative oppose gender ideology? For the less powerful, this is nothing more than the normal contradictions one finds in individuals: conservative on some issues and progressive on others. Many of the more powerful only oppose gender ideology opportunistically, because the left has vacated the entire lane to them. If the left spoke up with a principled, unified voice, the right would not be able to use anti-wokeness as a trojan horse for their other issues and the oppression that gender ideology enables would be snatched from the arsenal of the ruling class. Misunderstanding this is a really, really big self own. For more see https://brucelesnick.substack.com/p/with-gender-ideology-the-left-is
You are missing so much, Caitlin!
1) I fight existential threats AND Gender Identity Ideology. I do both. It's not an either/or thing. In fact, it's a must-do-both-thing. (See 3 below on that.)
2)The damage from Gender Identity Ideology being forced on us all... is real and huge, and people won't ignore it, no matter how much you admonish us to do so. You think it's minor because you're not seeing most of it. Erasure has already happened, as all of us who are depublished, deplatformed, fired, assaulted at speaker's corners, and more can attest, but you don't see us. You join the travesty of pretending we don't exist and/or that we've got our knickers in a twist over nothing important... You need to open your eyes; read/hear what we say! When girls are having their healthy breasts amputated & kids are going on blockers and hormones that stymie brain/bone/organ maturation, parents and other caring people are simply not going to ignore that. (The #s are huge; those who claim otherwise in comments are wrong.) When women in prisons in the US share their cells with men-in-woman-face, people are not going to say, "Oh well, not important." Or "Oh well, I feel sorry for the women who've been raped already (numerous) and those yet to endure that fate, but I'm going to ignore it." (1000s of men want into women's prisons in U.S.) If you're child is taught absolute anti-science drivel at school that guts their ability to think critically and denies them a basic grasp of biology and even reality, you're not going to ignore it. See my new article on this: https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/the-anti-science-disaster-of-gender Bottom line, pontificate as much as you want Caitlin about what people should ignore; it ain't gonna happen.
3) There is a huge opportunity here to build a movement to demand system change. The people I now organize with, as the result of my decision to stand against the woke madness of Gender Ideology are working class, courageous, and concerned about all sorts of issues not just Gender. Many are indeed confused; they see socialism as the root of the Gender Cult, etc. But there's a reason for that. Most socialist organizations and many other groups on the Left are letting the Gender Madness spread, and even applauding it. The problem is not that some people are anti-woke; it's that so many are not, yourself included Caitlin. You are handing fascistic forces the future on a platter, because THEY talk sense on Gender Identity. And you ignore the reality of what's happening in its name.
You are wrong on this one, Caitlin. And it matters very much
Thank you Carol (& glad I found your substack). I read (most of) your article about the ridiculousness being taught in schools ... this especially resonates ~ "What’s happening in the schools is nothing short of Orwellian. Children learn that men are women, self-loathing is self-love, delivering children to life-long medical dependency and harm is compassion, telling the truth is hateful, and silencing those who question dogma is righteous. This primes them to bow their heads and comply with official dogma, no matter how nonsensical it is. It primes them to join authoritarian mobs that attack anyone who dissents."
Yes, and also primes them to believe that War is Peace, if that's what the powers that be say .. to believe how things are told to them instead of what is actually happening (ie billions of dollars for war when people are hungry here) ...
Teen Vogue, of course they are teaching children biology .. with the same competence as they gave medical advice all through covid ...
(And, apparently there are more genders than there are stars in the sky, at least according to this theater company, who still insist on vaccine passports - https://outfronttheatre.com/terms-to-know/ )
Yes, and more Yes.
While it’s certainly true that most people do not understand what woke-ism is and that bad-faith right-wingers have profited off of the confusion, the actual problem of wokeness is quite serious. I feel that the same kinds of sophistry underlie both wokeness and regime hegemonism, and one can and must fight both at once. Caitlin is way off base here.
Interesting that a lot of the movements referred to in this article really took off after the 2008 Banking Crisis and a short period of protests against international banks and their structures. I wonder why.
I don't fully agree with your piece. You only talk about how right-wing people are anti-woke. One can oppose wokeness via other lenses, like a Marxist one. Take the leftist essay “Exiting the Vampire Castle”, about how leftist movements need to oppose wokeness as it is harmful to a socialist vision of class solidarity. Nothing right-wing about that.
So many disparate factions in America are against wokeness, all for different reasons: right wingers as you say, dirtbag-leftist/class-first leftists, libertarians, racial nationalists, religious fundamentalists, scientists that feel like they can no longer do science, rationalists, radfems, and so much more.
Systemic injustice exists, but pretending thst pronouns will make everything right is silly to the point of dishonest.
To give but one example- if large corporations would stop trying to prevent their employees from unionizing, the result would be a transfer of concrete material benefits to brown, and black, and yellow, and white working class people greater than all the diversity committees ever formed, all thebunisex bathrooms, and greater than all the tweets ever tweeted.
Which is precisely why they won't do it. Instead, we denounce Melvin as "literal Hitler" for asserting that there are only 26 genders, plus genders not yet discovered.
"pretending thst pronouns will make everything right" - they don't. They know it won't solve anything. They just know it's a perfect distraction to keep dummies occupied while the status quo is maintained.
The people who run things know better. The virtue signalers, perhaps not so much.
More than distraction. It disconnects us from reality itself. From humans as sexually dimorphic species. https://jbilek.substack.com/p/gender-identity-a-corporate-fiction
For that matter, pretend that the 1/6 protesters, insurrectionists, whatever you want to call them, were to try to march into the NSA headquarters.
They'd be shot on sight, and nobody would dither waiting on orders from higher up.
Thank you for the excellent take down of the liberal-conservative alliance!
As I was considering the analysis, I wished there were a couple of forward looking statements about how those of us, who advocate for an openminded and radical egalitarian world, might envision a multidimensional perspective combining class, race, and gender together. My hunch is that if we scraped the Internet to see how many texts proactively managed to address the multidimensionality of exploitation (understood in the neo-Marxist sense as the extraction of surplus value by owners from wage labor), oppression (understood in the neo-Marxist sense of dehumanization in regard to other social relations), alienation, and commodification, we would get a very low score. If this is actually the case, what does it tell us about how socialization works? People are either disinclined to envision a multidimensional perspective or they are shaped to disaggregate the roles society asks them to play, or a combination of both including other modes of conformity. This is basically the fallacy of composition, attributing the cause of something to a part rather than the whole. While I am skeptical of systems theory, there are some intriguing approaches, such as paradox theory, that allow for multidimensionality to not always be entirely congruent.
But in my view, you are right on in calling out the ways in which identity politics have ended up as a channel for certain groups to bypass other groups. When we hear the mantra about inclusion, diversity, and equity, inclusion for some seems to take a back seat. When inclusion is left out, diversity and equity become exclusive to the in-group. In other words, those of us who are dehumanized, oppressed, and exploited are not fully free until all of us are free. That's why in my opinion MLK ended up gravitating toward anti-capitalism and democratic socialism.
Aren't those paleo-Marxist understandings?
I guess from a certain perspective, they can be labelled as befits a given world view. Whether we agree with classical Marxist analysis, or neo-Marxist analysis, or none of the above, it behooves us to consider class and labor in some way, shape, or form. Perhaps distinctions are ultimately irrelevant. Perhaps distinctions help us to unravel the cause and nature of social disease. Thanks for drawing attention to society's stinky parts!
The last thing we need is "intersectionality". We need identity politics to go away and everyone to unite around class concerns.
Anyone can read between the lines of this diatribe and can see you're woke af and aren't down to sacrifice your largely abstract privileges/gains for the material benefit of all.
"diversity and equity become exclusive to the in-group. In other words, those of us who are dehumanized, oppressed, and exploited are not fully free until all of us are free."
This is woke nonsense. Believing that people are oppressed/disadvantaged by virtue of being in a "minority". Even that qualifying pretext isn't required when it comes to women (who are a majority).
Which tangible policies are identity politics fighting for? Can you clue me in? And do they impact people as much as healthcare, housing, wages, prisons and the endless slew of material policies a class-based approach would prioritise?
I am primarily an environmentalist, as well as antiwar. I get fed up with conferences where everyone must name their pronouns, and with strategy sessions where all we can talk about is identity stuff, mostly buzzwords. On the other hand, It used to be the case that every protest or gathering was 99% white (I do live in a very white region) and I noticed that well-paid top positions in many organization were filled by males, while the people doing the day to day work were about 75% female. I've seen notable improvement in both those things, and we DO need to grow into a diverse, massive united movement to make change. We just can't afford to spend all out time talking about this when the world's on fire.
I think it's very true that this aspect of the culture wars, as well as others, is deliberately and carefully crafted by agents of the ruling class to distract us from the real war.
Great piece. HOWEVER, what gender ideology is doing to kids and women is material harm. Will you not speak on this? And DEI is being used to submerge class and class interests. It should be openly opposed for this. So ignoring “woke” seems fine when it is a vague complaint. In specific reality, it is hurting us.
You make some great points her, Caitlin. I've been guilty as anyone of feeding this beast. I belong to that second category of anti-wokesters you mentioned - I'm a Leftist who sees the Ruling Class stirring up a Culture War so they don't have to fight a Class War, and whenever I call it out my MSNBC Democrat friends accuse me of being an Alt Right Yahtzee.
I'm a comic book writer and right now American comics are being written for the Woke by the Woke... which is why nobody reads them (including the Woke) and Japanese comics outsell Marvel and DC 10 to 1. I've seen a medium I love passionately taken over by activists, so I have a personal stake in this squabble, but we should all take care not to add to the problem.
Nancy Fraser, Professor at the New School, explained exactly what's going on politically and culturally and named it "progressive Neoliberalism" - check out here analysis:(the first paper plays with the title of Ted Lowi's classic book)
The End Of Progressive Neoliberalism
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/progressive-neoliberalism-reactionary-populism-nancy-fraser
From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump—and Beyond
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/11/progressive-neoliberalism-trump-beyond/
It's a good thing that racism ended with the election of Obama and the removing of statues. And that's the problem with the current iteration of "woke": it focuses on cultural aesthetics while ignoring political rot, thereby serving, as others have noted, as a distraction, which, while orchestrated by puppet-masters in Washington and Silicon Valley, is an unwitting distraction among the populace, which is what makes it so insidious. The so-called 'woke' are eager to lick the jackboot of authoritarianism because it's stamped with their preferred personal pronouns, which clearly illustrates that to be 'woke' doesn't mean you're woke about everything -- in their case, not 'woke' to their own manipulation by opportunists. And people getting branded as 'bigots' and other irrelevant pejoratives for pointing this out further substantiates that the woke/anti-woke culture-war is just theater. Saying this doesn't mean I don't support the causes that 'woke' ostensibly stands for, because I do. It's just that my version of civil rights and human dignity includes everyone, not just those wearing rainbow hair and screaming at the top of their lungs. But like they say, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
If vacuous born-rich twerps wish to casually appropriate a dismissive buzz-phrase twisted by their inbred Afrikaans trauma; I'd suggest, "can't even be BOTHERED," "Oowee," "open a can of whoop-ass," “It’s so quiet in here you can hear a mouse piss on cotton.” "NOPE!" "Going to HELL in a hand basket," "It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to!"