Class and racial dynamics in Academia... and gender identity ideology
please note this is a first draft still being edited for typos. Updated and corrected versions will appear on the site.
It’s an interesting thing that in the many years I have been doing this work, i have occasionally, (and only occasionally) faced complaints from white men who are angry about me pointing out that gender ideology is mostly an affluent, western world, academic-class, white movement that benefits men.
The last time someone piped up about that (using his sock puppet), he complained about a writing in which I didn’t mention race or ethnicity at all but had a snapshot of this meme included.
I really don’t know what to tell these dudes, because I am not convinced that this perpetuates white hate. I am white, and I know better than most people that being white does not always come with privilege. I was born with invisible disabilities that seriously adversely impact my life. And because of autism and other cognitive problems, I present like one of those people you don’t want to sit next to on the bus. Because of my disability, nobody sees and rewards my whiteness. In fact, I am often PUNISHED for being white when I apply for illegal or menial jobs, the only jobs I can get people to give me-because they know that I am more likely to know labour laws than the illegal immigrants they hire from India or the Philippines for dollars under minimum wage. It’s like being white makes me overqualified. Of course, I don’t blame these demographics, it’s simply the case that they are known to be in a vulnerable position that allows them to be exploited in Canada and that' isn’t their fault.
I also agree that the white working class is treated like garbage in North America.
But here’s the point, and it’s an important one. The hate directed at them is usually from the white, affluent, academic class narcissists who are pictured in the meme. Zinnia (Zack) below epitomizes this. (Zack is a charming trans activist)
There is a reason why it’s fair and reasonable to point out that it’s the white academic class that are promoting women’s erasure, LGB colonization, and white hate, and it isn’t because white people are bad.
It’s because it is these same people who beleive that they are championing diversity. It is because it is often white women in acadmics promoting the idea that mostly white men in dresses are diversity and they call this black feminism because a single black feminist talked about how different aspects of oppression (race, sex, etc…) can make things worse for some people who face multiple disadvantages in society.
The people on the left who claim are addicted to the illusion that they are promoting diversity need to be made aware that by their own understanding of power dynamics, they are engaged in rebranding the people they believe are the the most privilege (powerful, affluent, mostly white men), taking away from real people who need advocacy … women and LGBs of all ethnicities. And also while they ignore disabled and working class people of all ethnicities including white and underprivileged.
The hypocrisy of the people who claim that knowing sexes are real is “white feminism” or that sex is a white colonial concept need to looks at what really are ideologies promoted by bored affluent people, mostly white who have nothing else to do but
manufacture artificial diversity and oppression.
This brings me to another point. Colonization. This seems to be a trigger word for a number of people and I know why. Accusations that Canadian and US settlers are colonizers who deserve to have their churches burned down IS triggering.
Do I believe that we are colonizers? Yes, I believe that Europeans colonized north America and it adversely impacted the populations here. I also believe that that was a normal part of history and that because we have been here for generations we are no longer settlers we are not guilty for our ancestors settling here. I don’t believe that we owe people guilt for that. I don’t believe that we owe black people the right to star as Anne Boleyn in historic films in order to remedy the fact that blacks were unseen or used as comedy in the past. I think that there have been useful instances of affirmative action that promoted unseen or abused demographics to positions where they were not undermined by racism. But I also agree that the performative and shame-them politics of DEI are wrong and unhelpful. There are poor white people being displaced by affluent minorities in racial quotas on the basis of race, and that isn’t progress. The far left, again, generally the affluent white people who hate working class white and poor people will roll their eyes and say that doesn’t matter. But to an individual who can’t attend their state university that they worked their asses off to get admission but are denied because they are white and don’t meet quota points do matter.
In short, I agree that DEI and “diversity” polices that try to shame white people for being white or having historic advantages in wrong. They are punitive and divisive and they don’t solve problems.
But I also think that pointing out that the white hate often comes coming from white academics trying to appear progressive is rampant hypocrisy is necessary. I also think that pointing out how the diversity systems they are promoting
\
are ones that encourage those same white men to rebrand as minorities to combat the system. When they do so, it is most often poor minority women are among those most displaced. Nobody who claims to be righting sexual and racial injustice can call this progress.
Take it or leave it.
One of the reasons I do this work is to return the left to sanity. Part of that conversation requires that we face our hypocrisy. The bourgeois, affluent and privileged people who are promoting fake diversity are by their own definition promoting the people they hate. If they think that affluent white men are the problem they need to be made aware that those are the people who are benefiting from the lie that men can be women and that straight people can be LGB.
There is nothing wrong with being white, but there IS something with claiming to be a champion of diversity and minorities while applauding white people making up new, superficial or colonizing labels for themselves and to declare themselves marginalized.
And again, the people who remain the most oppressed are ignored in this scheme are of all ethnicities and are ignored or used as props by the men and women of this movement. The poor and disabled
of all backgrounds are not a sexy diversity demographic to champion except when academics are trying to guilt trip people by crying “ableism” on our behalf for some minor slight like using the word crazy.
My own affluent neo-identity trustee lives in luxury in hipster Toronto while I languish in unclean and unsafe conditions barely unable to meet basic hygiene standards. Not wanting to get her hand dirty with “dour” and depressing details, she sits on a small sum of money that might prevent me from dying of neglect. It’s ironic that I a virtual non-drinker might die of liver cirrhosis from trying to manage parasites with topical Benzyl Alcohol being absorbed at toxic levels because I can’t get access to clean bedding, housing or a gp and because I can’t advocate for myself. But that’s a bummer, a downer, and must not be mentioned.
The they/thems must look away from the truly tragic and the truly disenfranchised. I hope they think about this when they tell someone to refer to them as they/them and they see that person flinch at how not-safe and how not-included that makes them feel.
Only a few of them will get this and stop it. And it will be those who are confronted by their hypocrisy and feel it.
It will take a big person to do the right thing rather than defend their indefensible, entitled and disaffecting behavior.
Will they/them rise to it? Most will slink away and pretend they weren’t involved in promoting this nonsense. They will quietly retire their pronoun demands and move on to the next social justice fad as approved of by their partner and friends and their narcissistic needs.
Whatever comes next, it’s not likely that that next step will be doing the thankless and un-fun work of tending to ill dsiabled family members who are not pleasant to deal with simply because it needs to be done.
Jazz Hands for being a change maker!
I