One of the major shortcomings of liberalism is the way it treats racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice as character flaws rather than inevitable superstructural manifestations of the systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. It shifts the moral failing onto the individual and away from society as a whole, so systemic inequality can continue to exist as long as we crucify the occasional bigot for show.
One of the major shortcomings of liberalism is the way it treats racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice as character flaws rather than inevitable superstructural manifestations of the systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. It shifts the moral failing onto the individual and away from society as a whole, so systemic inequality can continue to exist as long as we crucify the occasional bigot for show.
“There’s a kind of self-righteousness to the ultra-left that is hard for me to stomach.”
—
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Reminds me of this:
When people publicly rage about perceived injustices that don’t affect them personally, we tend to assume this expression is rooted in altruism—a “disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.” But new research suggests that professing such third-party concern—what social scientists refer to as “moral outrage"—is often a function of self-interest, wielded to assuage feelings of personal culpability for societal harms or reinforce (to the self and others) one’s own status as a Very Good Person.
I dislike how trans activists, genderists, and liberals
frame their politics as a matter of “commonsense morality” where agreeing with
them is supposed to be proof of being a “decent human being”. With that sort of
moralized political framework, oppositional attempts to critically examine and
challenge their politics is used as “proof” of their opposition being morally
callous, morally depraved or morally lacking. It’s not that their opposition
lacks morals and human decency, it’s that their opposition has different moral,
ethical, and political priorities and analyses that does not involve submitting
or conforming to trans/genderist delusions, decontextualized ultra-individualistic
liberal choice politics, or postmodern post-structural gender/queer theories.
It’s amazing that people only a decade or so younger than myself are so unaware how conservative they really are. But hey if you call it “progressive” it must be!
And yeah surprise! Even though I play on the regressive left’s tendency to depict feminists who don’t play nice as nasty old boomers I’m in my 30′s. So from my life experience it’s like the 80′s was the start of the conservative backlash I was too young to understand, the 90′s our youthful endeavors were wallowing in disenfranchisement and apathy, and the 00′s and 10′s are like some sort of post-apocalyptic nightmare where the youth has no understanding of what came before and nothing concrete to lay the foundation of their culture on.
It’s very telling that people decide to be nasty transphobes under the guise of protecting lesbians. People make mistakes, and I really hope that you eventually make up for your shitty behavior.
So is this just generic libfem speechifying or did you actually read the exchange. Does it not bother you at all that Cher was against her daughter being a lesbian but okay with her daughter being a straight man?
People make mistakes? McKinnon sure wasn’t forgiven or is it only transactivist allowed to make mistakes?
It’s like they came in and tries arguing with the wall calling it transphobic and we are over here talking about the backlash against feminism.
Thanks for your perspective @auntiewanda. Can we hear more about your experiences growing up during the conservative anti feminist backlash and elaborate what you mean by ”post-apocalyptic nightmare where the youth has no understanding of what
came before and nothing concrete to lay the foundation of their culture
on the dsytopian”?
Like I said I was really too young to understand what was happening during the Reagan and Bush #1 presidencies, but even though I was more concerned with playing with blocks and drooling on myself during the Reagan administration I know now that I’ve been suffering the consequences my entire life. It put into motion the crumbling behemoth of the capitalist oligarchy we’re stuck with in the US today.
In the 90′s we bounced back a bit, there was a huge push toward gender neutrality in toys, this idea that women’s lib had overcome the biggest hurdles and now it was time to focus on the smaller social equities, and gay rights was picking up speed.
Unlike the 60′s and 70′s and 80′s though our rebellions were kind of petty, looking back on it now. We shed the coke-induced neon of the 80′s and stopped washing our hair, started wearing ripped jeans and ugly colors, and we hovered between being X-Treme™
and going against The Man™
by being apathetic and not holding with that boring, unimportant adult stuff. Pretty sure the 90′s introduced the idea of the “depressed teenager” as well. Considering the way our society is breaking down, what with the generation before us expecting us to function culturally and financially exactly as they did while they undermined most of that system before we were even toilet trained or born, it’s not surprising depression is common.
Now keep in mind I was a teenager for most of the 90′s so I can’t much speak for people who were in their 20′s during that time.
And then after the early 2000′s what with our cultural trauma and starting a bunch of wars under false pretenses (many of which are still on-going and people seem to forget, like it’s become myth) something happened. I’m not really sure what or when the cultural zeitgeist shifted to this post-modern safe space regressing in sexist and racist attitudes while considering oneself to be progressive thing.
It’s easy to blame excessive helicopter parenting, the attitude that all children need to feel like they’re special and learning to cope with conflict being nonexistent leading to a generation that thinks disagreement with their views on anything is a personal insult.
But the 90′s into the early 00′s was the era that epitomized consumerism tying to identity. That you “expressed yourself” with the brands you bought and the styles of clothes you wore, which were also tied to brands. And maybe we were too up our own asses in the 90′s that all major social ills had been conquered, to the point where people still want to say sexism and racism aren’t problems anymore even as they progressively get worse in the US. It’s eerily Orwellian.
On the flip side you see younger people who are ostensibly anti-racist but only seem to express their “intersectionality” with cringe-inducing Noble Savage narratives. Or people who will decry sexism and product gendering one day and praise narratives where a child has been declared mentally the opposite sex due to their preferences for gendered products the next. People use gay rights as a metaphor for their struggle with anything without actually appreciating the accomplishments of and the very real need for the movement. And now they’re actually co-opting it, stapling new letters on all the time.
So basically despite what I said I can’t pinpoint exactly when this change occurred. I think I slept through the apocalypse.
Liberalism, firstly, can mean a couple of different thing. There are a couple of “types of liberalism”, though I don’t like any of them:
Traditionally it is the ideology of individual freedom that emerged in the 17th Century. It preached democratic government, constitutionalism, equal legal rights and free markets. Liberalism views every individual as a totally free and isolated entity which is capable of making rational decisions. This is the basis of the liberal view of freedom, which is simply the freedom to do what you want without hurting others. Liberalism in this classic sense doesn’t really have a structuralist understanding of oppression and the ultimate form of freedom for liberalism is freedom of choice. If you have choice, then you are free.
However, liberalism has taken a different formulation in more modern times. Liberalism has come to denote a centre-left political position which is essentially a mix of classical liberalism and social democracy. They espouse classic reformism, arguing that it is through social reforms that we can achieve a just society, without attempting to go beyond capitalism. They are embodied in the Democrats.
What is wrong with liberalism:
Its hypocritical. Because of its consistent inability to critique social structure as it actually exists, liberalism usually uses “progressive” rhetoric to cover up imperialism and capitalism. This can include “progressive advertising” all the way up to “humanitarian intervention”.
It doesn’t critique the structure of society and defends capitalist property relations. It is not enough to fight for a friendly, more green, humane capitalism. Capitalism in its very DNA is contradictory to human development, it needs to be destroyed, not reformed. Liberalism cannot transcend capitalism.
It calls for individualistic forms of social change. Liberalism will often point to “voting with your dollars” and other forms of consumer activism, encouraging one to buy green or “fair trade” rather than engage in protest or other forms of mass struggle.
Because it doesn’t understand social structures, it will often try and argue that the oppressor and the oppressed “just need to get along” or “negotiate”, because they ignore power imbalances. They find violence repulsive in the abstract, and end up condemning the violence of the oppressed while remaining silence of the violence of the oppressor.
In the end, they believe in working within the system. But when you do that, you don’t change the system, the system changes you.
Liberalism is one of prime ideologies of capitalism and consistently defends capitalist property relations. It must be overcome.
Pat of what makes liberals so fucking annoying is that they basically only care about whatever oppressed group is the newest.
Like they basically just flat out abandoned gay people when trans rights started to get the spotlight because most of them just do whatever they think makes them the most progressive. It’s not a matter of actually caring about the people, it’s a matter of lending your support to whichever group is currently the popular one to support
Celtyradfem 