His “colleagues” complained
Ewan Somerville at the Telegraph on more gender Stalinism in academia:
“Far-Left” university bosses have been accused of forcing out their own diversity adviser after staff protested that criticism of transgender activism was “threatening”.
They’re not “far-left” though. We need a new moniker for this nonsense. Far-Identitarian perhaps. There’s nothing actually lefty about imposing fantasies on the world and punishing people who fail to believe the fantasies. Far-Incloosive. Far-Reality-Denying.
The equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) adviser at the University of Sheffield had been employed for more than two years working on LGBT+ inclusion and a race equality action plan.
No equality or inclusion for women though? Nothing? Not even a crumb?
But in October last year, his colleagues from a trade union complained to managers about him signing a “statement of solidarity” with Prof Kathleen Stock…
The anonymous staff in a trade union at the university, who described themselves as “senior LGBT+ champions”, said his signature – alongside 2,800 staff from other UK universities – was “particularly concerning given his role in EDI work at the university”.
In a letter, staff also protested that his Twitter account had questioned why Girlguiding was allowing trans girls as members…
Equality and inclusion just don’t cover women, sorry. Women don’t need equality and inclusion – women are the enemy, the bosses, the oppressors.
If we’re looking at belief systems that aren’t based in reality, gender ideology more closely resembles religious ideology, and we know where that falls on the political spectrum (solidly on the right). The intolerance for competing ideologies is also an obvious similarity. They both claim to want ‘inclusiveness’ when their real aim is conscription. It doesn’t look liberal at all, or lefty, but that’s the prevailing assumption.
I disagree. That’s precisely the behavior of communist dictatorships. Lysenkoism, anyone? As I’ve argued before, both right and left disown our excesses and attribute them to the other side. I got most of the way through college accepting as given that communism “had never really been tried”.
If a man has an overwhelming compulsion to wear dresses and act the way he thinks real women act, … well, most progressives were prepared to be open-minded. But then they invented the magical property of “gender” and all hell has broken loose. Convicted rapists with penises in women’s prisons. Children who don’t act like stereotypical boys or girls being medicalized and surgically altered. Young women with body issues, or who are victims of sexual abuse seeking to abandon womanhood for a possibly debilitating fantasy.
It seems things are coming to a head in the UK. It’s going to get louder and uglier before it’s over. And that Boston transgender clinic recently posted about … and trans-overreach in Canada, … North America is going to follow.
Nullius, I didn’t mean the left never does that, but that doing that isn’t “left.” People on the left do it of course, but it’s not part of what we mean by the distinction between left and right, politically as opposed to sociologically. To boil it down crudely, “left” = egalitarian, and identitarianism pushed to extremes has nothing to do with egalitarianism.
Ophelia, it was clear enough to me what you meant. I just think that focusing on the ends of a Leftist politics blinds one to its means. That is, we see the destination and forget the journey. We see the egalitarian intentionality of Leftism and handwave how to get there.
The world is full of status and power disparities, and to eliminate those disparities requires the exercise of power by those of status. Action within the constraints of egalitarianism (treating none as lesser or greater than oneself) is incapable of exerting the power over others necessary to bring about egalitarian conditions. Egalitarianism cannot bring itself about. Thus, a Leftist politics must necessarily incorporate some other non-egalitarian mechanism for changing the state of affairs obtaining in the world.
It’s a problem similar to that faced by radical pacifism or by any system requiring universal compliance. In some ways, it’s almost game theoretic. The more reliant on cooperation a strategy becomes and the more widely it spreads, the more advantageous defection becomes.
“Far Out”, maybe? Or “Far-T”
Those who push gender nonsense see trans people as analogous to gay people in a conservative world which tries to limit their free ability to be themselves because “that’s not how men (or women) ought to behave.” They genuinely seem to think the Gender Critical argument is roughly the same thing, an attempt to force other people to adopt THEIR way of looking at things. The motives, then, are those of the left — social equality and egalitarianism, with an elimination of hierarchy.
Since those who disagree are trying to impose on others, everything done against them is justified self-defense and a removal of unnecessary restrictions. The relentless theme is the Right to Self-Determination. Out of everyone’s way.
Liberals have always felt a tension between rational, scientific critique in the marketplace of ideas and “nobody should tell other people they’re wrong — they just think different than you.” The superficial justification for gender ideology is that it’s scientific and both the conservatives and GC are wrong — but the underlying assumption is that they’re wrong because they’re telling other people they’re wrong about that most sacred sanctuary: the self-determined Self.
Nullius, I agree with your statement:
This can be substantiated by looking at leftist theory, e.g. Marcuse, who states openly that a bias should be instituted in favor of leftist ideas, to contradict a naturally existing bias towards conservative ideas. So it’s true that leftism has a propensity towards identitarianism, at least as an intermediate stage in the progress towards equality.
On the other hand, there has also been a hijacking of leftist purpose at the means stage, on the part of capitalism. Identity politics has been coopted as a tax paid by the well-educated and well-established in order to continue pursuing the concentration of wealth unhindered. In this, a means stage of leftism has itself become one of the main antagonists of leftist ends.
Trans identitarianism – gender theology – benefits principally upper-class white men. They love to use the shield of poor brown people in, say, Brazil, as a justification for their extortion, but there is nothing whatsoever about that project that enhances equality between rich white trans men in America and mixed-race tranny prostitutes on the street in Rio.
Many other forms of identitarianism have been similarly perverted – affirmative action in American colleges principally benefits immigrants from Africa and middle-class black kids, while leaving the native-born impoverished behind. The left finds itself in frank conflict between those who seek to create a more egalitarian social system and those who seek to use their identity status for personal gain within the system as is. The latter are winning, not incidentally because it’s been so easy for capitalism to adapt to them. It’s just another form of rent-seeking.
But back to the question: are university bosses who force out lesbians and feminists for telling the truth “far-left?” All they’re doing is privileging one identity over another; they’re not doing any work whatsoever to bring about greater social equality. We call them “leftist” if we find the identity/means part of leftist praxis to be its most salient feature, and we don’t if we believe that working for social equality is leftism’s most salient feature. They are simultaneously examples of leftism and examples of its antithesis; they are emblematic of the failure of leftism.
Sastra @ 7 – That obsession with the mythical “self-determined Self” is one of the things I hate most about the ideology. It’s such nonsense, and so opposed to many core lefty values – it makes my teeth hurt.
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Ophelia: It’s definitely opposed to core liberal values. Sure, Liberalism is mostly left, but the Left isn’t mostly liberal.