I really have trouble with what is called identity politics. It is too simplistic and I think this can really facilitate intellectual laziness. For example, we all know how much racial profiling has been in the news lately. So has mental illness. So, if we are going to go with identity politics, then of course we are going to think of people of colour as occupying one category, and persons who are black, indigenous, Asian, brown, etcetera, as each occupying their own subcategories. Likewise LGBTQetc., with gay men, lesbians, and trans people each inhabiting their own subcategory. It is also neat and clean. Easy-peasy. We are protected from having to think. The disabled have their own category, as do the mentally ill, as do the poor, and last but not least, as also do women. All of those categories, of course, overlap. We have queer people who might also be poor, or people of colour, or mentally ill, and we have mentally ill people who might also be women, and you get the picture.
Socially categorizing persons according to their visible differences is simply a form of politically correct, post modernist apartheid. By doing this we are forgetting the one, important and precious factor that binds and unites us all together: OUR SHARED AND COLLECTIVE HUMANITY!!!!! That's right, Gentle Reader, all in upper case capitals and with exclamation points, just so you won't happen to forget. That is what the rest of us all have in common with the socially sanctioned enemy of our times, the cis binary heterosexual white male. The enemy. But also human beings, who happen to make up, if not the majority, then a very substantial minority of our human demographic. I am not making any apology here for them, by the way, and I acknowledge here that a lot of the social and historical problems we have to live with are largely thanks to straight white males.
By the same token, I am not about to buy into the fatuous and male-bashing nonsense of Canadian journalist Sally Armstrong, when during her CBC Massey Lectures this month, "Power Shift, the Longest Revolution" she kept tumbling back into that kind of lazy thinking where she was trying to whitewash male-bashing with thoughtful presentations about both genders (though methinks there are more than two!) working together for the advancement of women. Meanwhile, she simply indulged in the usual anti-male hate-mongering for which second wave feminists are famous. However, if you were to listen to Margaret McMillan, a woman who just seems to be a much better skilled thinker, talking about gender and history and war and violence, it is all far more nuanced. According to Ms. McMillan, more women in power is not going to make the world a more peaceful place and one has only to think of the violent and blood-letting legacies of such leaders, all women, as Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and others, and one will find that their gender did nothing at all to mitigate the war-likeness and policies of institutional violence of any of their countries, and they actually appeared quite enthusiastic at promoting war and violence as measures for advancing the state. And even though, like many of you, I also regret that Hillary Clinton lost her bid for the US presidency to the execrable Dump, while she was Secretary of State she fully promoted the bombing of innocent civilians in Libya.
Gentle Reader, before you dust off your song sheets for Kumbaya, please take note. Replacing patriarchy with matriarchy is going to do absolute squat for making the world a more peaceful place. Women do not contain an inborn magic or inherited mana that makes them morally superior to men. The problem has not been patriarchy. The problem has been power and the way it is used and abused. Men in positions of power are hideous, ugly, violent, selfish and completely psychopathic. So are women, when they have that kind of power. It isn't about gender, it is about human weakness and our lack of ethics and moral compass.
For those of you questioning my credentials, in other pages I have already identified as a non cis, non binary male, poor, queer, asexual, androgynous...and a feminist. I was also raised by a physically violent mother, so please don't presume to educate me about male violence! Here's an example, from just last Wednesday, of just how things can overlap. I was sitting in a cafe on Commercial Drive, happily working on a drawing in my sketchbook. Seated nearby was a young white male (presumably cis binary, but who only knows, and I wasn't about to ask!). He did appear poor and to be living with a mental illness, as he just sat alone at the table staring blankly into space. I was needing to leave my table to use the washroom, but given the indifferent staff in this coffee shop (Continental Coffee, go there at your risk), I felt nervous about leaving my art materials and other possessions unprotected. I wasn't expecting this guy to steal from me, but I know in my own professional experience with economically marginalized people, and with mental health challenges, that theft can be a common problem, and I wasn't wanting to set myself up. A young black man came in and sat down at the table between us. We said hi to each other and as he was taking out his laptop I asked him to watch my belongs for me while I was in the washroom, and he gladly complied.
Now this picture is full of irony, when you think of how many persons of colour get racially profiled as potential thieves and criminals. But I don't racialize people. On the other hand, neither am I about to judge mentally ill people (I am a mental health worker, by the way), or poor people as thieves. However, I tend to go with my gut, with my intuition, and sometimes one has to make unpleasant decisions in order to err on the side of safety. Still, all three of us are biological males, and for different reasons, and perhaps some similar ones, we are all also socially marginalized. We are all in the same boat and we really have to start thinking up and devising ways of working together instead of demonizing one another. Maybe not so easy, but it has to be done.
No comments:
Post a Comment