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Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

kabbes said:
Well, that’s kind of stirring the pot. But this thread sprung out of discussion surrounding transgender rights, some of whose campaigns do seem rather to have that flavour. Hence the response of some women who are concerned that their own right to self-determination may be coming under threat as a consequence. I offer no opinion here as to the rights and wrongs of each side, but it is a good example of ID politics based rights campaigning.
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...and it includes great examples of really toxic and damaging activism.
 
lazythursday said:
Perhaps this is where I come unstuck. I completely understand the clash of rights issue when it comes to transgender (and don't want to drag this thread into all that). But I don't understand why trans activists activities are to necessarily be dismissed as identity politics either. There's no reason why you couldn't have a class analysis and also be in favour of, say, the changes to the Gender Recognition Act and be fighting for that.
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I agree. And without going too far down that route, the clash of rights issue is also not necessarily what I would class as idp. These things become idp when they're done badly, as shown imo by the worst excesses on both sides of that divide.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I agree. And without going too far down that route, the clash of rights issue is also not necessarily what I would class as idp. These things become idp when they're done badly, as shown imo by the worst excesses on both sides of that divide.
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OK this makes sense to me, but is quite different from redsquirrel 's suggestion that it's about a political framework, not about behaviours.
 
lazythursday said:
OK this makes sense to me, but is quite different from redsquirrel 's suggestion that it's about a political framework, not about behaviours.
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I'm not saying that you can't find examples of shitty behaviour coming out of identitypolitics, but rather that it's not just about shitty "behaviours" as ska argues. For me there is a clear conflict between identitypoltics and class politics. That conflict remains even when I might work alongside those with identitypolitics.
 
I still don't entirely understand how trans activists with a class analysis should now proceed in order to avoid identitypolitics. Should they focus more on where their struggle intersects with class, eg access to healthcare, housing, etc? What is it they should stop doing?
 
lazythursday said:
I still don't entirely understand how trans activists with a class analysis should now proceed in order to avoid identitypolitics. Should they focus more on where their struggle intersects with class, eg access to healthcare, housing, etc? What is it they should stop doing?
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Crudely:

ID Pol: Trans people are oppressed because Cis people oppress them. Cis people need to stop being bad people and check their privilege and not oppress trans people anymore.
Class analysis: Trans people are oppressed because capital finds it useful to divide people along binary gender lines and trans challenges the gender binary and the power that capital has to use that gender binary to divide and rule us.

This obviously leads to very different outcomes in terms of focus and action. Someone following IDPol would support a trans capitalist as someone not oppressing trans people, whereas a marxist would see the structural role they play in capital as the means/method (?) of oppression, and the trans nature of the capitalist does not remove their role in oppressing. Similarly a cis working class person is not necessarily oppressing a trans person (they can be of course through transphobic actions, but not purely by nature of their cis identity) but for an idpol viewpoint they are by virtue of their cis nature.

avoiding idpol is about avoiding the individualist, agency driven, liberal ideology, not about the specific issues that are addressed or how they are addressed. When placed in comparison to marxist class analysis the key thing here is that class analysis is a communal, structure focused, socialist ideology.
You want change then for idpol it's about the individual changing ("check your privilege" = educate yourself, always with liberals the issue is ignorance the answer is education - no structural analysis at all); for marxist it's about the relationship between the working and capitalist classes. Ultimately for some the full change can only happen in the transformative process of revolution (which comes purely from the contradictions of capitalism generated by the class structure), which is the purest expression of this idea. For most change can come within capitalism but that change happens from pressure on capital to accede to the demands of the working class, which absolutely can include ending all the identity based oppressions.

edit: If you have a class analysis you will not, by definition, be following IDPol, as IDPol explicitly rejects class analysis.
 
There's a documentary on netflix about discrimination against lgbt in russia. It's really sad. They try to organise lgbt social events and end up with protesters mobbing the meeting to shut it down. The worst thing was that the city counsellor was leading these protests, calling lgbt people unnatural and stuff. I thought the lgbt community was really brave in the ways they protested this abuse, putting themselves at risk of violence and imprisonment to stand up for their rights.

I never thought that was identity politics. Within that context, working and middle class lgbt people were being oppressed due to their common lgbt identities. To me that's not idpol that's a valid struggle against systematic/structural abuse which can find common cause across class divides. Totally different to fracturing solidarity by separating into discrete identity groups.

I did have to have a good think about how that fits in, and not totally sure I've gotten it right in my analysis, but it just feels clearly different.
 
BigTom said:
Trans people are oppressed because capital finds it useful to divide people along binary gender lines and trans challenges the gender binary and the power that capital has to use that gender binary to divide and rule us.
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So unless that (all the points in there) are clear to all involved and all agree on it they are by default doing id politics?
 
bimble said:
So unless that (all the points in there) are clear to all involved and all agree on it they are by default doing id politics?
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Put crudely, doesn't something become identity politics when you need to know a person's identity before you can pass judgement on their politics? Before you can assess what is being said, you need to know who is saying it.

That is not to say that everyone's experience is equally valid - if you live at the sharp end of a particular prejudice, your experience of it in particular needs to be heard. But that doesn't mean your analysis of that experience is necessarily right or to be supported - it may need to be opposed.
 
bimble said:
So unless that (all the points in there) are clear to all involved and all agree on it they are by default doing id politics?
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No, IDPol is not a default. IDPol is a specific ideological framework that people adopt. To some extent it has become a default because of how it has been pursued by mainstream politicians over the past 30 years but it's not a default at all and there are probably an infinity of different positions that could be taken around trans oppression which are neither marxist class analysis nor IDPol. Crudely IDPol will be doing what i said in the sentence above the one you quoted. Other positions also exist which are neither, such as the christian right denial of trans people entirely.

Besides it's not like every marxist will agree on all the points anyway, there can be disagreement within a class analysis framework and I would no way claim the crude sentence there as encompassing the whole of a class analysis of trans oppression.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Put crudely, doesn't something become identity politics when you need to know a person's identity before you can pass judgement on their politics? Before you can assess what is being said, you need to know who is saying it.

That is not to say that everyone's experience is equally valid - if you live at the sharp end of a particular prejudice, your experience of it in particular needs to be heard. But that doesn't mean your analysis of that experience is necessarily right or to be supported - it may need to be opposed.
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Yes, good point. One of the IDPol failure stories I can give here relates to this totally. In a discussion about the EDL specifically and anti-racism generally, someone said I shouldn't speak because I'm white and therefore haven't experienced racism and shouldn't have a voice in this discussion. I informed them that I was of Jewish heritage and asked if he felt that Jewish people had no experience of racism and shouldn't have a voice in a discussion about racism. He then changed completely and not only was I allowed to speak but what I had to say became really important to them. One of the stranger things about this discussion is that I was only contributing some information about what had/hadn't worked in the past with NF/BNP and really not trying to direct the discussion about what we should be doing now about EDL. Like my experience in anti-racist actions had no relevance because I'm white, now they do because I'm technically Jewish.

Of course I've not personally experienced any racism (except the weird reverse racism that I've found from the occasional Jewish person who would act very differently - in a positive way - to me once they know I'm technically Jewish) and don't really dispute that I am white (certainly I benefit from white privilege in the context in which I live at the moment) but it demonstrated to me the superficial nature of IDPol and really hits the nail on the head with what you've said here.

(This was in real life, not on facebook or anywhere - ime this stuff transcends social media, though it's far worse there)
 
What does "doing ID politics" even mean? I've not seen anyone critical of identitypolitics using such a turn of phrase. You no more "do ID politics" than you "do socialist politics".
 
I do totally recognise what's being said above, about the 'authenticity' / authority of a persons voice because they fit in this or that category being massively overvalued, and conversely someone's ideas dismissed because they're not a member of whatever oppressed group.It really goes nowhere that stuff, because conversation becomes impossible, I get that.
 
redsquirrel said:
What does "doing ID politics" even mean? I've not seen anyone critical of identitypolitics using such a turn of phrase. You no more "do ID politics" than you "do socialist politics".
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I just took it to mean someone taking political actions which proponents of ID Politics would take or using/following the ideological basis of idpol to inform their actions. Problem with the first one is that many of the actions that IDPol leads you to are not much different to those that a class analysis would, so the second tends to be better for seeing the differences and locating people/groups within particular frameworks.

Politics is definitely something you "do" so I don't see a problem with describing people "doing" a particular form of politics, other than that it is always awkward to define a form of politics so tightly that you can include everyone you want and exclude only those you don't want from that particular form you are seeking to describe.

ofc you can "do" politics without being consciously informed by a particular position or framework, most people do most of the time, very few if any people are really arriving at their politics through a purely ideological framework.
and ofc politics is everywhere and even when you are not "doing politics", what you are doing is (or at least can be) political.

Not sure what I mean to be saying in this post tbh, other than that I didn't have a problem with Bimble's phrasing there and feel like I understood what she meant when she said that.
 
I don't know because I've no idea what you mean by "doing X politics". People take actions, people have views, those actions/views may be consistent with a particular viewpoint or they may not. I take part in a strike because I believe that advances that politics that I support but I wouldn't say that standing on a picket line is "doing socialism". That just seems garbled to me.:confused:
 
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redsquirrel said:
I don't know because I've no idea what you mean by "doing X politics". People take actions, people have views, those actions/views may be consistent with a particular viewpoint or they may not. I take part in a strike because I believe that advances that politics that I support but I wouldn't say that standing on a picket line is "doing socialism". That just seems garbled to me.:confused:
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I'm not sure I agree with you on this, or your earlier point which seemed to imply that IDPol is only an ideology; I think it's also closely and uniquely associated with a set of behaviours.
 
I think the terminology isn't really very helpful. Clearly there will always be political struggles that take place around identity. To most people who not well schooled in political theory this is 'identity politics' even if it has a class analysis or not, or whether it avoids or includes some of the behaviours and liberal thinking that have plagued some of these movements. Shouldn't this be about doing identity politics in a better (class based) way, not holding up 'identity politics' as something bad? Because it makes those of us who have been involved in anti-racism or gay rights movements etc feel as though perhaps there's a backlash going on, or that somehow by fighting against section 28 back in the 80s we're partly responsible for some upper-middle class woman screaming 'check your privilege' at a working class bloke. Or at least there needs to be a new way of describing minority-rights politics that means the identity politics term can be reserved for a very specific way of thinking and acting.
 
lazythursday said:
I think the terminology isn't really very helpful. Clearly there will always be political struggles that take place around identity. To most people who not well schooled in political theory this is 'identity politics' even if it has a class analysis or not, or whether it avoids or includes some of the behaviours and liberal thinking that have plagued some of these movements. Shouldn't this be about doing identity politics in a better (class based) way, not holding up 'identity politics' as something bad? Because it makes those of us who have been involved in anti-racism or gay rights movements etc feel as though perhaps there's a backlash going on, or that somehow by fighting against section 28 back in the 80s we're partly responsible for some upper-middle class woman screaming 'check your privilege' at a working class bloke. Or at least there needs to be a new way of describing minority-rights politics that means the identity politics term can be reserved for a very specific way of thinking and acting.
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I think that's why danny la rouge ran the words together in his op, and why me and others have used idpol.
 
Does this have to descend to these kinds of arguments? The nature of projection is that it's unconscious i.e we don't know we're doing it. We all do it. A
Athos said:
I'm not sure I agree with you on this, or your earlier point which seemed to imply that IDPol is only an ideology; I think it's also closely and uniquely associated with a set of behaviours.
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What do you mean by uniquely associated with a set of behaviours? And how would that come about?
 
AllEternalsHeck said:
Not sure we're talking about the same thing. I wouldn't be so presumptuous to ask you to educate me about your sexuality. I've been shouted down with 'not my job to educate you' just for making a counterpoint to a statement such as 'fuck all straights'. I literally disagreed that was a useful way of looking at things and was told it's not our job to explain this, if you don't understand then fuck off and read about our oppression.
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Surely a statement like 'Fuck all straights' or 'fuck all -----' is just being abusive? Statements like this have been quoted on this thread, does this sort of thing happen a lot? - was this in the context of a politcal meeting?
 
redsquirrel said:
How can you "do identitypolitics in a class based way"? That supposes that they aren't incompatible at a fundamental level.
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I'm making a point about terminology. Of course identitypolitics as defined by Danny is incompatible with class politics, but political action around identity issues is not. I don't think that most people will easily distinguish between 'identity politics' and any struggle against racism, homophobia, etc. I think that lack of clarity and understanding has helped drive plenty of arguments on these boards.
 
lazythursday said:
I'm making a point about terminology. Of course identitypolitics as defined by Danny is incompatible with class politics, but political action around identity issues is not.
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But surely by defining things as identity issues you are accepting the central ideas of identitypolitics.

I don't agree that this is a terminology issue, it's a political one. It's like when people try and insist that liberalism and socialism are not in conflict, it's nonsense. We have a conflict between different political ideologies.
 
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lazythursday said:
OK - so I understand broadly, what class politics are, and I think I understand, broadly, what Danny means by identitypolitics. What perhaps I'm not clear on is when say, anti-racist political action is a good thing, and when it has crossed over into identitypolitics. Now I suppose you could say that it depends on the political analysis that has inspired the action but that's not always clear.

What I've noticed on urban in particular is that the term identity politics tends to get thrown around in response to any argument that involves a minority group (especially transgender rights, but not exclusively). Those of us who have had to fight for our rights as members of minorities over the past few decades are understandably wary about this tendency. I find the online excesses of identitypolitics as Danny describes deeply frustrating and for me, class always comes first... but that can't mean abandoning fights for equality either. It's a baby and bathwater question, and I'm not sure how to tell the difference.
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Well said.

Analysis seems to be the stuff of academics, though movements and actions do grow out of it - what has always mattered to me was action : how could we change things, how could we challenge the status quo. I've always been interested in the politics but it was the actions we took that mattered. We fought for rights and freedoms that are taken for granted now.

Class politics hasn't been at the centre of the fight for womens and lgbt rights - because the issues of oppression applied to all classes. My activism generally didn't put class first, it put women and queer people first - but supporting each other and solidarity was always vital. I don't feel much solidarity either from some posters who think they have the one and only 'correct' analsys and the rest of us were/are doing it all wrong. I don't really know what to make of some of the online 'excesses' described on this thread either.
 
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