You know you can be on the left without falling into the trap of identity politics. Many (most) of us that consider ourselves leftists also find liberals annoying, and liberalism is not the highest ideal of the left as common notions in the US would have you believe.
Look Trump is a uniquely awful candidate, but why should I be associated with liberals? I’m a Jewish man. In liberal culture sexism towards men is normalized and antisemitism is normalized.
There’s nothing stopping me from just coming up with my own philosophy while treating both liberal and conservative culture with skepticism. While right now that’s gonna be more on the liberal side, I don’t see why I should associate myself with people who normalize toxic behavior towards people of my religion/gender. That’s basically asking to be next on the target list.
I always bring up the ethical non monogamy because it’s the most objectively insane thing. It’s so obviously toxic and unfair. It would soon obviously be considered emotional abuse if genders were reversed. Yet the more liberal someone is, the more they’ll suggest I’m sexist for having an issue with that behavior.
Look, I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with you. I recognize that I do not have all the answers and I think it’s both damaging and a waste of time to bicker about who or what is and isn’t “sexist”.
All I’m saying is that liberalism and the left are not the same thing or even really all that amenable to each other, and identity politics are largely a distraction from more important issues. There’s a whole Wikipedia article that sums up various criticisms of it from a few different perspectives.
You are right, liberals are wrong about a lot of things and easily fall for ploys which only serve to divide us from each other. Choosing not to associate with liberals or to have more nuanced opinions in the face of their bickering does not mean that you have to be conservative or that conservatism is the only other thing left on the table. It’s a false dichotomy.
I get where you’re coming from, but I think you misread my original post. I said more conservative.
Pretend the temperature is 0 degrees outside. The next week, it is thirty degrees warmer. Someone would be 100 percent correct in saying that it’s much warmer today than yesterday. However it would still be objectively cold.
That is what I am saying. I’m not conservative, but I am more conservative. I don’t see myself belonging to either group.
I also live in a liberal area of the country. I don’t really have to worry about running into someone who says homosexuality is a sin or a woman who isn’t white and pure on her wedding day is a whore. On the other hand I do run into women blatantly hate men or will leverage tolerance rhetoric to gaslight and cheat on their partners.
Right, and what I’m saying is that disagreeing with liberals does not make you more conservative than them. You can be further left than liberals, or even aligned with them, and choose not partake in identity politics at all or only do so from a broader context. For example, you may instead advocate to fix the things that those identity politics and division are often a symptom of.
Per delduthling - It’s very possible to be a fully fledged socialist demanding structural economic change who also recognizes that oppression on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality are intertwined with capitalist power structures. The project of “woke capitalism” can never make good on its promises of liberation.
But I relent. Perhaps you mean more conservative on a personal or sexual level that you wouldn’t try to enforce on others. A level entirely separate from your politics. That kind of self determination would still be an ideal of the left though imo; you have the right to choose your own lifestyle as long as it doesn’t cause harm to others.
What you’re saying makes sense in theory, but I don’t think it makes sense in practice. The word that has defined politics since the mid 2010s is intersectionalism. There simply isn’t any sort of genuine political lane for, say, a socialist who hates #girlboss culture. I’ve actually watched the video you sent me and while I appreciate it, the opinion is rather niche. There isn’t really a corresponding political faction or identity to really latch on to.
I also personally haven’t experienced this lack of intersectionalism when I “touched grass”. In general there is such a tight coupling of all things political to the point where you can do things like guess someone’s opinion on the middle east by how they feel about bat roosts in suburban areas. To be fair, that has faded significantly since immediately post covid. However, it’s still strongly present. There simply aren’t people I meet in real life who espouse those kind of unique political values.
At the end of the day, I’m sort of in a rut. I can avoid certain people who behave in what I define as a toxic manner, but I can’t really avoid all of this toxicity in the context of modern society. Identity politics coding is everywhere, and on some level I need to “pick a side”.
I didn’t link a video lol and your own political circles revolving around intersectionalism does not mean that is all there is; I think there’s been a lot of manipulation in the media to make it center of mind because it gets clicks and serves to distract; but if you want that badly to be conservative and make judgement calls on people individually that extend to their entire sex instead of holding more nuanced opinions about issues that can be solved systemically then go for it, I can’t stop you.
Identity politics coding is everywhere, and on some level I need to “pick a side”.
No, you don’t. That’s what I’ve been telling you. Who cares if it’s niche. It’s better than giving up on all your other values and saying you’re conservative or “more” conservative than liberal just so you can bicker about which sex is more oppressed than the other. Maybe you’ll be the person that makes someone else see the light if you do the work to better contextualize what you’re trying to say, and then your ideology is that slight amount less niche.
You know you can be on the left without falling into the trap of identity politics. Many (most) of us that consider ourselves leftists also find liberals annoying, and liberalism is not the highest ideal of the left as common notions in the US would have you believe.
Look Trump is a uniquely awful candidate, but why should I be associated with liberals? I’m a Jewish man. In liberal culture sexism towards men is normalized and antisemitism is normalized.
There’s nothing stopping me from just coming up with my own philosophy while treating both liberal and conservative culture with skepticism. While right now that’s gonna be more on the liberal side, I don’t see why I should associate myself with people who normalize toxic behavior towards people of my religion/gender. That’s basically asking to be next on the target list.
I always bring up the ethical non monogamy because it’s the most objectively insane thing. It’s so obviously toxic and unfair. It would soon obviously be considered emotional abuse if genders were reversed. Yet the more liberal someone is, the more they’ll suggest I’m sexist for having an issue with that behavior.
Look, I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with you. I recognize that I do not have all the answers and I think it’s both damaging and a waste of time to bicker about who or what is and isn’t “sexist”.
All I’m saying is that liberalism and the left are not the same thing or even really all that amenable to each other, and identity politics are largely a distraction from more important issues. There’s a whole Wikipedia article that sums up various criticisms of it from a few different perspectives.
You are right, liberals are wrong about a lot of things and easily fall for ploys which only serve to divide us from each other. Choosing not to associate with liberals or to have more nuanced opinions in the face of their bickering does not mean that you have to be conservative or that conservatism is the only other thing left on the table. It’s a false dichotomy.
I get where you’re coming from, but I think you misread my original post. I said more conservative.
Pretend the temperature is 0 degrees outside. The next week, it is thirty degrees warmer. Someone would be 100 percent correct in saying that it’s much warmer today than yesterday. However it would still be objectively cold.
That is what I am saying. I’m not conservative, but I am more conservative. I don’t see myself belonging to either group.
I also live in a liberal area of the country. I don’t really have to worry about running into someone who says homosexuality is a sin or a woman who isn’t white and pure on her wedding day is a whore. On the other hand I do run into women blatantly hate men or will leverage tolerance rhetoric to gaslight and cheat on their partners.
Right, and what I’m saying is that disagreeing with liberals does not make you more conservative than them. You can be further left than liberals, or even aligned with them, and choose not partake in identity politics at all or only do so from a broader context. For example, you may instead advocate to fix the things that those identity politics and division are often a symptom of.
Per delduthling - It’s very possible to be a fully fledged socialist demanding structural economic change who also recognizes that oppression on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality are intertwined with capitalist power structures. The project of “woke capitalism” can never make good on its promises of liberation.
I found this to be a pretty thoughtful article on the topic, Meet the Anti-Woke Left
But I relent. Perhaps you mean more conservative on a personal or sexual level that you wouldn’t try to enforce on others. A level entirely separate from your politics. That kind of self determination would still be an ideal of the left though imo; you have the right to choose your own lifestyle as long as it doesn’t cause harm to others.
What you’re saying makes sense in theory, but I don’t think it makes sense in practice. The word that has defined politics since the mid 2010s is intersectionalism. There simply isn’t any sort of genuine political lane for, say, a socialist who hates #girlboss culture. I’ve actually watched the video you sent me and while I appreciate it, the opinion is rather niche. There isn’t really a corresponding political faction or identity to really latch on to.
I also personally haven’t experienced this lack of intersectionalism when I “touched grass”. In general there is such a tight coupling of all things political to the point where you can do things like guess someone’s opinion on the middle east by how they feel about bat roosts in suburban areas. To be fair, that has faded significantly since immediately post covid. However, it’s still strongly present. There simply aren’t people I meet in real life who espouse those kind of unique political values.
At the end of the day, I’m sort of in a rut. I can avoid certain people who behave in what I define as a toxic manner, but I can’t really avoid all of this toxicity in the context of modern society. Identity politics coding is everywhere, and on some level I need to “pick a side”.
I didn’t link a video lol and your own political circles revolving around intersectionalism does not mean that is all there is; I think there’s been a lot of manipulation in the media to make it center of mind because it gets clicks and serves to distract; but if you want that badly to be conservative and make judgement calls on people individually that extend to their entire sex instead of holding more nuanced opinions about issues that can be solved systemically then go for it, I can’t stop you.
No, you don’t. That’s what I’ve been telling you. Who cares if it’s niche. It’s better than giving up on all your other values and saying you’re conservative or “more” conservative than liberal just so you can bicker about which sex is more oppressed than the other. Maybe you’ll be the person that makes someone else see the light if you do the work to better contextualize what you’re trying to say, and then your ideology is that slight amount less niche.