Apologies in advance for typos. Most of you know that I am disabled and that is having an impact on my cognitive abilities at this time. Please see my pinned tweet about the nature of this substack, it’s primarily designed to be a place for my memes, not an actual blog-which I am ill-equipped to do. Also, I intend to edit this and update the memes with a change of watermark shortly.
Thank you
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Anyone engaged in the internal politics of gender identity ideology is aware that there are people of the left, right, and center who are doing so for various reasons. Some of our motivations are the same, some of them differ.
My own politics are left of center and my arguments are heavily influenced by my philosophical training and left leaning beliefs. That said, I am followed by (online) and follow people from all walks of life and from across the political spectrum.
The purpose in mentioning so often that I am a leftist and that the left is being harmed by gender identity ideology isn’t to turn non-leftists away. The purpose is to show other leftists that gender identity ideology is not compatible with our stated values (and in what ways it is not compatible), and that it hurts our parties and electoral goals. I support non-leftists fighting gender identity ideology, but I also beleive that because the left wing parties, organizations, and grass roots are infected by this ideology it is important to fight to return them to sanity. Thus when I tweet about #takebacktheLEFT, I am not exclusively talking to leftists. I am talking to centrists and right leaning people want a functioning party to the left of them that offers opposition and debate based on ideas, not drivel. I don’t think anyone other than cultists and extreme partisans benefit from having one side of the political spectrum so completely incapacitated by such harmful and bizarre ideology. If that’s what you want, we are on the same side in my opinion.
If you are not left wing and you don’t appreciate this approach, I understand but will not be dissuaded. My memes about the incompatibility of Marxism and gender identity have offended a number of followers who are anti-Marx. The purpose of these memes is not to convince moderates to become more Marxist, it’s to make the performative Marxists aware of the incompatibility (from their own stated point of view) and injustice of rebranding men as women. I mention the values that they themselves claim to hold as being important: autonomy, social justice, colonization, and how they themselves violate these values. As for my own stand on Marxism, I see both pros and cons to the analysis but have no agenda about convincing anyone about it’s merits or values. I only care that those who are drawn to it’s arguments cannot see how it conflicts with what they are promoting. They aren’t helping anyone and they are bringing their own parties into disrepute and destroying the work that they should care about (as socialists) such as poverty. Whether you support these people in their pursuit of social justice or not, surely you would agree they would accomplish more by working on poverty than on imaginary gender identities.
Likewise, I often mention the hypocrisy of white, male social justice warriors who pretend to be champions of diversity while championing the rebranding of mostly other white men.
Some followers have been offended about what they perceive to be an attack on white men. I understand the concern. I do. As a white, middle class woman who had moderate affluence before I became disabled (and now have NOTHING to my name because of disability), I understand the debate about “white privilege” and what talking about it does and doesn’t accomplish. I agree that it can be problematic, depending on the time or place. However, the attack is designed to be on the hypocrisy of the woke-white-men who constantly bring up race themselves. I myself am less concerned about race than they are, and I am not especially anti-male. (I AM anti woke male, however.)
You can take it or leave it. I get it. These images are harsh. I don’t make them in order to please everyone, and I don’t make them in order to seek feedback about how people “feel” about them. They are snapshots of arguments and points of view, and their accuracy and relevance depends on the conversation they are being added to.
They were designed to provoke fellow leftists into seeing their hypocrisy and they sometimes work. One of my most effective images was a hideous meme with 3 spelling errors about the white men taking over women’s marches. A white man was offended and tagged in Martina Navratilova. That meme lead to a conversation in which I told her that intact males were competing as women in Olympic sports. She didn’t know this and got educated on it. While she has waffled on the issue since then (trying to support compromises that many of us disagree with), the conversation -and the awareness it raised- was important.
That is the purpose of these memes. With or without typos. With or without questionable graphics.
I DO beleive that as long as the left promotes this agenda, it deserves criticism. I also know that it will lose elections as a result, which will have a palpable negative impact on people like me, living on disability benefits in a bad economy with a housing crisis.
It is what it is. These people must be held account for the negative impact they are having on our parties and potentially on elections. It’s not the people being critical that are to blame, it’s the ideologues destroying our parties that are to blame. That destruction is hurting everyone in society.
Importantly, we should not HAVE to appeal to people’s desire to have their parties viable in order to compel them to reconsider support for gender identity ideology. It’s a shame that the negative impact on women, children, dysphoric people, LGBs and society is not enough. However, some people are so captured by partisan politcs that they will be influenced by being made aware that they are forcing people to leave their parties in droves. At this time, neither the grass roots nor the parties beleive that will really happen. However, every time an election or seat is lost in which this ideology played a role in that loss, they should be made aware of it and made to see that their own connection to the loss.
A few words on Elon Musk. He promised to reinstate all of the accounts banned for hate speech this week. So far he hasn’t done so. I am disappointed, because I thought he meant what he said and I was prepared to beleive in him despite our vastly different politics. I have since found out that he supports transhumanism. I wonder if, despite being anti-woke, he has been convinced that gender identity ideology intersects with his other interests.
Only time will tell.