Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

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Cirion Spellbinder
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Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

Post by Cirion Spellbinder »

Recently I went to sleep over at one of the colleges I got accepted to for an LGBT introduction event. One of the things I noticed was that identity politics and intersectionalism were the basis and of a lot of the thinks that were discussed and it was kind of assumed that you were on board with that.

Given that I want to date and that I disagree heavily with this sort of thing, what I should I do? Is this true for all college students? I have had a hard time persuading people like this on the internet because I usually am just labeled and discarded (even when I am nice). Any tips would be appreciated.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

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Faunalytics has a good article on the issue:

https://faunalytics.org/intersectional-advocacy-tends-to-bring-in-less-money/

If you treat it as intersectionality lite, you might be able to push a middle ground. If people don't accept that in light of the evidence, I'd just write them off as dogmatists until they grow up a bit.

Most of these people will grow out of extremism. I'm sure you'll be able to find people to date, there's a lot of diversity on campuses.
carnap
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Re: Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

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Why would you assume what happens at a LGBT event would define the entire college?
I'm here to exploit you schmucks into demonstrating the blatant anti-intellectualism in the vegan community and the reality of veganism. But I can do that with any user name.
Cirion Spellbinder
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Re: Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

Post by Cirion Spellbinder »

carnap wrote: Tue Apr 17, 2018 4:30 am Why would you assume what happens at a LGBT event would define the entire college?
I didn’t, that’s why I asked.
esquizofrenico
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Re: Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

Post by esquizofrenico »

Stanislaw Lem has a tale I like a lot in "The Star Diaries" in which Ijon Tichy infiltrates a planet of murderous robots by dressing with an empty robot carcass. Once he's there, the robo-police catches him almost immediately but they decide to spare his life on the condition that he doesn't scape and keeps pretending that he's a killing robot in front of the other robots. Ijon Tichy stays in the planet for several months, and eventually joins the robo-police and becomes a commissary. One day he discovers a human that has infiltrated the city by wearing a robot carcass, not wanting to kill him, but in fear of revealing himself as a human in front of the others robots in the police station, he spares his life on the condition of living in the city pretending to be a robot. Then Ijon becomes suspicious and decides to start detaining random robots and searching them. He then realizes that all the inhabitants of the robot city are humans wearing a robot carcass. All the robots died long ago due to lack of spare pieces, because of being commercially isolated, but none of the infiltrators had realized it.

What I mean with this is that I suspect that pretty much the same happens in many LGTB groups. It is assumed that every LGTB person must agree with identity politics and therefore none of its members are brave enough to raise the voice against it, out of fear as being singled out as the enemy. But I am sure that if you meet individual people in those meetings, they turn out to be much less dogmatic that what the whole group pretends to be. So you can probably make some friends even in those circles.
Cirion Spellbinder
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Re: Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

Post by Cirion Spellbinder »

esquizofrenico wrote: Wed Apr 18, 2018 2:14 amWhat I mean with this is that I suspect that pretty much the same happens in many LGTB groups. It is assumed that every LGTB person must agree with identity politics and therefore none of its members are brave enough to raise the voice against it, out of fear as being singled out as the enemy. But I am sure that if you meet individual people in those meetings, they turn out to be much less dogmatic that what the whole group pretends to be. So you can probably make some friends even in those circles.
That's a funny story, but is that advisable? There was one kid that was talking about the experience of using 4chan and how his parents accused him of being Alt-Right and people still talked to him, I guess. I also did speak out in their intersectionality discussion section and argued that income level is more important than a lot of identities in terms of oppression.
Cirion Spellbinder
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Re: Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

Post by Cirion Spellbinder »

Thank you, my dear sulfur lettuce bowl.
brimstoneSalad wrote:If you treat it as intersectionality lite, you might be able to push a middle ground. If people don't accept that in light of the evidence, I'd just write them off as dogmatists until they grow up a bit.
What is the middle ground?
brimstoneSalad wrote:Most of these people will grow out of extremism. I'm sure you'll be able to find people to date, there's a lot of diversity on campuses.
God, I hope so.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Cirion Spellbinder wrote: Wed Apr 18, 2018 4:46 pm
brimstoneSalad wrote:If you treat it as intersectionality lite, you might be able to push a middle ground. If people don't accept that in light of the evidence, I'd just write them off as dogmatists until they grow up a bit.
What is the middle ground?
The intersectionality lite that article explains.

Single issue campaigns, but try not to be a total asshole to other issues... like that PETA whale poster.
Cirion Spellbinder
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Re: Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

Post by Cirion Spellbinder »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Wed Apr 18, 2018 6:47 pmThe intersectionality lite that article explains.
The article is written by someone sympathetic to other aspects of identity politics and I think that sympathy is implicit to this intersectionality lite. Do you mean to be sympathetic with these causes or just human issues in general?
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Dealing with identity politics / intersectionalism

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Cirion Spellbinder wrote: Fri Apr 20, 2018 10:20 pm
brimstoneSalad wrote: Wed Apr 18, 2018 6:47 pmThe intersectionality lite that article explains.
The article is written by someone sympathetic to other aspects of identity politics and I think that sympathy is implicit to this intersectionality lite. Do you mean to be sympathetic with these causes or just human issues in general?
The point is that no matter how sympathetic you are, it doesn't make sense to force these issues together because it harms your activism.

And from the other side no matter how unsympathetic you are it doesn't make sense to say things trashing people so openly (like PETAs whale thing), because again it harms your activism (this time with bad PR).

The sympathetic and unsympathetic should be able to meet somewhere in the middle and recognize raw pragmatism.
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