Tag: lgbtq

Dear Mom…

2024-09-03 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

(CW: rape, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, emotional abuse, misogyny, homophobia, religious fundamentalism)

I know you’ll never see this letter. But I’ve got to write it anyway.

I have been deeply concerned about you since I left home nearly twenty years ago.

It’s about Dad. He has been the worst thing to happen to you in your sixty-two years of existence. You have thrown away your ambitions, your intellectual curiosity, your wit and humour, your very soul. You told me that you wanted to study forensic science, that you wanted to go into a law-focused undergraduate programme. Instead, you threw all that aside for Dad. Dad has brought pain, suffering, and alienation to the women in his life—and one man. My sister and I have pulled away from him, but you are still trapped in his net.

Bullet-point thoughts too short for independent posts

2023-12-06 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

… really, these could just be shitposts, but they’re too serious for that, so I’m combining them into a convenient bullet-pointed list.

Russia and Ukraine are both using cultural and ethnic minorities as scapegoats to keep the public in line. The Russians are notorious for systematically targeting LGBTQ+ people as a symbol of “Western decadence” and “extremism.” They’re also a convenient sacrificial lamb for the ultraconservative, rural Orthodox Christian voters that Putin depends on. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, are doing the same with ethnic Russians, as well as Russian-speaking Ukrainians and socialists who are critical of the government. Although some of these opponents are pro-Russian, not all are. To keep the support of the hardline nationalists, especially in the West, the central government will happily sacrifice these “superfluous Ukrainians.” I expect this from Russia, since its human-rights record has been spotty for a long time, but Ukraine’s actions disappoint me more because I expected better from a country that aspires to be more democratic than its former ruler. Being of Russian descent, speaking Russian, or preferring socialism over capitalism is not the same thing as supporting the Putin regime. (See also my comments about the Ukraine War being Russia’s proxy war against the West, and the own-goals by Ukraine and Russia.)
People who support terrorists are assholes? Who would’ve thought? I hate to say this, but I have seen more empathy and compassion from progressive Zionists than anti-Zionists or hardline Netanyahu supporters. Every day I continue to be dumbfounded at how cruel, vengeful and inhumane some anti-Zionists can be. I can’t side with anyone who’s being that cruel and vindictive. Not in an anodyne “why don’t we all just get along when the Israeli government is doing monstrous things” way, but the idea that it is morally acceptable to kill civilians or take hostages for being “settlers.” I know there are several anti-Zionisms, but I am talking about the people who support or do nothing but make apologies for Hamas. I shouldn’t expect humane behaviour or decency from anyone who actively supports a terrorist organisation. I have said this before and I will say it again: this isn’t Nelson Mandela. Mandela wanted to make a South Africa for everyone. His goal was not to kill everyone in sight and kick out non-Black South Africans. Hamas’s goal is to eliminate and destroy, not merely to liberate.
Western countries should drop sanctions against Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Not because anyone should approve of these countries’ practices (I certainly don’t, which is obvious to anyone who’s read this blog), but because the main people who suffer from these sanctions are ordinary Russians, North Koreans, and Iranians, not their leadership or oligarchs. Russia has enough global influence (and oil) to make up for the revenue lost from sanctions. The South African sanctions worked, but that’s probably because South Africa had historical ties to the West. American and British pressure worked. There’s no love lost between Iran/North Korea and the West, and the relationship between Russia and the West has been adversarial since at least 2014, after the Obama administration’s “Russian reset.”
Many Marxists can be reductive and dismissive about any relationship of dominance and oppression that isn’t economic, but their universalism is refreshing in a polarised society. I’d like to see a communism that keeps some of Marx’s ideas but makes them more expansive, easier to understand and responsive to today’s modern needs.
There’s a difference between being a supporter of human rights and being an identitarian woke-scold. In the first case, you acknowledge systemic oppression and want to rectify it. You do this by implementing policies that allow the historically oppressed group to be a full member of their society. It’s about including everyone, not acting at someone else’s expense. Identitarians, on the other hand, use real grievances to justify an eye-for-an-eye, dog-eat-dog, hyphenated-thing-to-reflect-violent-actions morality. Gandhi never said, “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind,” but it fits all the same. Social equity is not a zero-sum game. (This kind of violent “morality” is an own-goal by social justice activists… and I think that will be my next full post.)
FUCK HAMAS, FUCK PUTIN, FUCK ZELENSKY, FUCK NETANYAHU. (I couldn’t resist.)

On throwaway politics

2023-12-04 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

The world has seen an epidemic of throwaway politics over the past decade or so. What do I mean by “throwaway politics”? Throwaway politics is the practice of treating entire demographics as expendable, useless, superfluous. Throwaway people are second-class citizens, Others, subalterns. They are often ethnic, racial, religious, gender, or sexual minorities, but not always—for example, Black South Africans were throwaway majorities under apartheid.

Politicians and constituents who adopt throwaway politics are usually on the right, but the right doesn’t have a monopoly on the practice—consider left-wing Hamas supporters’ callous attitude towards Jews, or certain left-wing politicians, such as Sahra Wagenknecht, who vilify migrants to outflank their right-wing counterparts.

The demographic characteristics of throwaway residents may vary, but the underlying dynamics are the same: there are some people who are less equal than others. In Europe and European-influenced countries, typical throwaway people are often Muslims, immigrants from the “wrong” countries, refugees from the Middle East (who are typically Muslims), LGBTQ+ people, and occasionally Jews.

Once you’re a throwaway, nobody cares about your rights. You’re not worth listening to. You may as well not even exist. You are no longer deserving of empathy or consideration.

We know where this leads: the events of 1933–1945. Hitler’s primary target was Jewish people, but Jews were not the only throwaway Germans. Disabled people, dubbed “ballast existences,” were targeted through the Nazis’ Aktion T-4. So were the Roma. The Nazis didn’t care much for Russians, either. Queer and trans people were also fodder for Hitler’s hate machine.

Why the hell are exclusivist ideologies, or the remnants of exclusivist ideologies, given any credence in supposedly inclusive (most Western democracies) or anti-fascist (Russia) societies? We know where this can go. It’s not as though we’re in 1920 and had no record of an industrial-scale genocide. Hitler’s Germany is still in living memory. Why are TERFs’ arguments taken seriously, especially when their “sex-based rights” model is a few steps away from Kinder, Küche, Kirche? Why is the Russian government endlessly pursuing LGBTQ+ people and claiming to be “anti-fascist” when their attitudes towards the community are little different from those expressed by the Nazis? Why are Christian fundamentalists, whether American Protestant or Russian Orthodox, treated as a legitimate political constituency when the same liberal or progressive politicians see right through their Islamist counterparts? Why do American police officers disproportionately target Black people with violence? Why are US presidents calling neo-Nazis “very fine people” and calling for the “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”? Why is the new, modern, liberal, European government in Kiev treating ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers as fifth-column traitors, in a shadow of what the US government did and has done to Arab and Muslim Americans after 9/11 and now the Hamas attacks? Why is the Israeli government bombing Gaza instead of trying to live alongside the Palestinians? And why are supposedly “woke,” enlightened people claiming that every Israeli Jew is a throwaway person blocking Palestinians from their freedom?

A queer antinationalist on Ukraine and Russia

2023-12-02 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

I am queer. I am also a vehement antinationalist. These facts make it impossible for me to offer ideological support to either Moscow or Kiev.

Let’s start with the obvious one: the Putin regime. Russia has heightened its repression of LGBTQ+ people, including a new Supreme Court ruling that effectively outlaws pro-queer activism as “extremist.” LGBTQ+ activists face the risk of fines and imprisonment up to 12 years. Putin has already used these tactics against dissidents like Boris Kagarlitsky, Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza. Putin’s Russia tries to contrast itself with the “decadent” West with its persecution of LGBTQ+ people, even though our right-wing politicians hold views that are just as bad as Putin’s. Like western conservatives, Putin weaponises religion—in this case, the Eastern Orthodox Church, rather than evangelical Protestant denominations or the Roman Catholic Church—to impose an authoritarian social agenda. And I could go on about Russia’s other reactionary, repressive policies and laws, but there’s already ample coverage in CNN, the New York Times, NBC, The Guardian, etc.

Ukraine, for its part, is aggressively pursuing an ethnonationalist agenda that conflates Russian ethnicity and language with Putin’s vile regime. Even soldiers in the far-right, extreme nationalist Azov Battalion have been attacked for speaking Russian, primarily by the now-fired Lviv Polytechnic professor Iryna Farion, who used to be a member of the Nazi-adjacent Svoboda party (link in Russian). Nationalism has infected even otherwise progressive circles in Ukraine: according to the Kharkov-based anarchist group Assembly (link in Italian and English; English is on the bottom), many feminist and LGBTQ+ activists are closely tied with Ukraine’s nationalist movement. Instead of uniting the entirety of the Ukrainian people against the Russian state, the Ukrainian government and many of its supporters have chosen instead to create even more divisions. As I’ve said before, Kiev’s own-goals push people towards supporting Russia, even though it’s unlikely they’ll get any more freedom there than they do in Ukraine.

The situation is undoubtedly worse for people who find themselves ostracised from both sides—for example, I can’t even imagine what it feels like to be a queer leftist in occupied Eastern Ukraine (especially one who primarily speaks Russian) who runs the risk of being persecuted by Kiev or the Russian occupiers. Or for pro-Ukraine (or merely anti-war) Russians who want to leave the country: many of Russia’s European neighbours have closed the border; Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Poles distrust Russians, regardless of their support of Putin; and Putin’s dictatorial rule has made it impossible for them to stay home in Russia with the people they love the most. They’re being told that there is something inherently evil inside them for being from Russia, and they’re also being told that there’s something inherently wrong with them for opposing the Russian regime.

I can’t support either position. Both Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ repression and Ukraine’s ethnonationalism are incompatible with a functioning pluralist society. They imply that if you’re not an ethnic Ukrainian who speaks Ukrainian, you’re not a real Ukrainian, or that if you’re gay or bi or trans, you’re not a real Russian. If you’re not a nationalist, you’re not a real feminist. If you’re a leftist, you’re not a good Ukrainian. If you’re a liberal or progressive, you’re not a good Russian.

And once you’re no longer seen as a real member of your society, you’re open to persecution, since civil rights and liberties are reserved only for real people, not superfluous ones.

I don’t know what the right answer is, either to put a stop to Russia’s increasing repression or Ukraine’s nationalist obsessions. I don’t think anybody does, no matter how many thinkpieces are written, no matter how many declarations are made on TV, no matter how much people rant and rave on Telegram and Reddit and Twitter.

What I do know is that people are suffering, dying and praying for a better chance for themselves, their families, their friends and their communities. And neither Russia’s sexist repression nor Ukraine’s reactionary ethnic nationalism will bring their people the peace they so desperately deserve. You don’t want real liberation or justice if your goal is to make a new group of second-class citizens.

“Sex-based rights” is a misnomer hiding a reactionary agenda

2023-10-25 / The Woke Contrarian / 1 Comment

Instead of using a trans-inclusive definition of gender discrimination, conservatives and TERFs want to base claims of discrimination on assigned sex at birth, rather than gender identity or presentation. They call this “sex-based rights.”¹

The problem with this argument is that transphobia is a form of sex discrimination. By telling members of one assigned sex that they may not be referred to by pronouns that align with their gender identity, wear the clothing that suits their gender presentation, or that they cannot get treatment or surgeries that help alleviate gender dysphoria, they are practising sex-based discrimination. I’m not the only one to use this argument—the United States Supreme Court, not known for its progressivism, ruled in Bostock that homophobic and transphobic discrimination in the workplace were unconstitutional, since they targeted people for discrimination based on sex assigned at birth.

It is more accurate to call “sex-based rights” sex-based restrictions. Just as digital rights management is designed to restrict how people use and distribute computer files, the principle of sex-based rights is designed to restrict the range of gender expressions and identities based on one’s assigned sex. Supporters of DRM say they want to protect and empower copyright holders (typically large corporations). And supporters of sex-based restrictions say they want to protect and empower women.

But sex-based restrictions don’t empower or protect women. Instead, they are sumptuary laws harking back to the Victorian era. Or in contemporary society, the laws in theocratic Middle Eastern states like Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. These restrictions also reinforce the anti-feminist idea that one’s assigned sex at birth defines one’s moral character. That if you were assigned male, you are automatically a rapist and pervert, and if you were assigned female, you are a delicate flower in need of protecting. These are patriarchal stereotypes that merely reinforce the idea that men and women will never be equal.

Some feminists—the ones who believe in inculcating gender equity in future generations—focus on cultivating gentleness and compassion in men, and assertiveness and strength in women. Supporters of sex-based restrictions do not do that. Instead, they reinforce the idea men are strong, dominating and predatory, and women are delicate, weak and nurturing. This isn’t feminism. In fact, it’s quite the opposite—it is merely the inverse of patriarchal “values.”

Homophobia and transphobia are sexism. Neither should be welcome in a tolerant society.

(Come to think about it, the constant use of “sex” feels very old-fashioned, too—feminist activists started shifting towards “gender” fifty years ago. I prefer this not just for political reasons—“sex” is too easily confused with sexual intercourse.) ↩

Dear Marxists,

2023-10-22 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

…it is racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia and ableism that are distractions from the class struggle, not the drive to eliminate these prejudices. By dismissing—or in some cases, upholding—these hostilities, you make it possible for the ruling classes to drive women, queer people, immigrants and disabled people from socialism. “They’re no better than the conservatives, since they’ll also ban me from transitioning or marrying my partner.” “They’re no better than the current leaders, since they won’t care if I’m going to be killed by the police because they see members of my race as dangerous.” “I can’t get involved with this movement because they’re going to ban abortion and weaken domestic-violence laws.” The message, whether tacit or explicit, is that some proletarians (men, ethnic or racial majorities, straight and cis people) are worth more than others. And when it’s explicit, when you actively express racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia or any other non-class prejudice, you are just as divisive as the “Lean In” feminists or those who focus on racial injustice without considering socioeconomic inequality. Any movement that dehumanises me, that says I don’t deserve basic rights, that claims I’m inferior—why would I join your stupid revolution? It would be all the same to me, just as it would be all the same for a poor or working-class person in a society that has eliminated all non-class discrimination.

If you want to get rid of identity politics, then don’t excuse or perpetuate the social divisions that give rise to it.

’Once a foreigner, always a foreigner’: How transphobia in the UK looks like xenophobia

2023-10-03 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

The UK has gained the epithet ‘TERF Island’ for good reason: the Conservative government and its supposed opposition have launched a sustained attack on trans people’s right to self-determination since Boris Johnson took control of Downing St, and Rishi Sunak is probably even worse than his predecessors, including Liz Truss, whose premiership had the lifespan of a mayfly. I focus on the Tories here for expedience, but Labour are no improvement: the pusillanimous Blairite Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has simply parroted the Tories’ views with slightly less vitriol.

As nauseating and pervasive as it is, however, transphobia is only one of the prejudices the Tories have expressed and encouraged over the thirteen miserable years they have been in power, either on their own or in coalition. Disabled people, working-class people and job-seekers, and migrants have also been persecuted, vilified and dehumanised by the Tory regime.

There is no such thing as the “collective West”

2023-09-15 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

If I see the expression “collective West” in English-language articles, I tune out immediately, since I know that I’m going to encounter undiluted Kremlin propaganda, either from Russians or foreign admirers of the Putin regime, including tankies, vatniks, so-called libertarians, and ultraconservatives, and it often comes alongside disparaging attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people, feminists and others who challenge the patriarchy. For some, it reflects a hostility towards liberalism—that is, non-authoritarian politics, rather than the European sense of deregulated free markets or the American sense of barely-left-of-centre views. And for others, it is merely a catch-all term for the United States, NATO, the European Union, and possibly Australia and New Zealand alongside them.

But this unity is a myth—and Russian officials and propagandists know full well that there is no singular “Western consensus.”

Here’s why.

Trumpers, Tories, and TERFs—oh my!

Russian propaganda may portray Ukraine’s supporters as libertine, decadent states devoid of conservative “family values,” but this is not in keeping with these countries’ domestic policies. We’ll use four countries as examples: the United States, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Though I’ll be sticking to four countries, we could easily substitute France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, all of which have right-wing governments or nascent far-right movements.

United States

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of American politics knows about our extreme polarisation. The idea that this country is a free-for-all feminist and LGBTQ+ paradise is easily disproved by the spate of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-woman bills, laws and executive orders pushed through by doctrinaire Republican legislators, Supreme Court “justices” and state governors over the past two years. Our rights may have advanced in more progressive states like California, Massachusetts, and New York, but they have regressed in red states, including Texas, Missouri, and Florida.

Russian officials will find a lot in common with governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, all of whom have launched crusades against LGBTQ people, Black activists, and anyone else who challenges the established conservative order. And Donald Trump is back on the campaign trail, this time using culture-war issues like trans youth to keep his ultraconservative voters engaged—and ensure that he doesn’t lose support to DeSantis and other Republicans who appeal to Christian fundamentalists.

And although some “America First” Republicans (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene) have questioned the need to provide Kiev with more military support, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has approved multiple military-aid packages.

Poland

Poland, one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, is an extremely conservative Roman-Catholic-dominated country not known for its LGBTQ+ friendliness or feminist attitudes. It’s probably a hair away from Russia in this regard—the dictatorial repression may not be as extreme, but the conservative environment is still suffocating for queer Poles. The country even has “LGBT-free zones” (mostly in the south-east): something unthinkable even in the reddest of red states, at least not formally. There are liberal and progressive Poles, just there are liberal and progressive Russians and Italians, but they do not control the national government. Poland is considered one of the worst countries in the EU for LGBTQ+ people, and yet it works closely with Kiev in the anti-Putin war effort.

Italy

Italy is an unwavering supporter of Ukraine’s efforts to repel the Russian invasion. It is also led by Giorgia Meloni, who is the furthest-right Italian leader since Benito Mussolini. Her Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is an outgrowth of old-school fascist movements. Far-right politicians in other countries—for example, the leaders of Germany’s AfD and the French Rassemblement National (National Rally, formerly Front National)—have balked at providing Kiev more support, but Meloni is not among them.

Although Italy is a safer place for LGBTQ+ people than Russia or Hungary, it has the fewest legal protections or rights for LGBTQ+ people in Western Europe; it lags far behind countries like Germany, France, the UK and Spain, which have all legalised same-sex marriage, allow for legal transition, include hate-crimes protection, and more.

United Kingdom

The Conservative-led British government has consistently supported Ukraine throughout the full-scale invasion, but their support for Kiev in no way suggests that the country is as liberal or progressive as Russia claims it is—unless they mean “classical liberal,” rather than “non-authoritarian” or “social libertarian.” Some of the loudest pro-Ukraine media outlets are also some of the most conservative, especially the Daily Mail and Daily Express, along with the more genteel Times and Telegraph.

Although British politicians are comparatively less hostile toward queer and trans people than their Polish, Italian, or Russian counterparts, there has been an alarming rise of homophobic and transphobic rhetoric coming from both Tory and Labour politicians, as well as the press. Some Tories, such as Suella Braverman of the Home Office and the “Equalities” minister Kemi Badenoch, are especially hostile. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were not known for their social progressivism either. The days of David Cameron and Theresa May are long over. The UK, once listed as the most LGBTQ+-friendly country in Europe, no longer has that reputation—it has been slipping in the rankings over the past eight years.

It’s also important to remember that the UK has been the primary exporter of homophobia and transphobia. For example, the “anti-buggery” laws in African and Caribbean countries like Nigeria, Jamaica and Uganda are colonial leftovers that the locals now see as their traditional values. Before “muscular Christianity” arrived on the African continent, many cultures, such as the Igbo of what is now Nigeria, had more fluid views of gender.

Why the “collective West” charge is disingenuous

The Russians’ condemnation of the “collective West” has nothing to do with the political composition of NATO or EU states. It doesn’t have jack shit to do with LGBTQ+ rights or “moral decay.” It is just an excuse to legitimise its attempts to annex the entirety of Ukraine to the Russian state. No self-respecting leftist should use the “collective West” narrative; it’s merely self-serving Kremlin waffle.

In fact, American evangelicals have worked with Russian Orthodox fundamentalists to persecute queer and trans Russians. The media has covered Russia’s exploitation of our internal tensions for its own geostrategic interests—for example, the “Heart of Texas” and “Black Matters” Facebook groups that popped up during the 2016 election.

There is no such thing as the collective West—only countries that aren’t lining up to do Russia’s bidding.

LGBTQ+ organisations in Russia

2023-09-09 / The Woke Contrarian / 0 Comments

Despite the intense repression that LGBTQ+ Russians have suffered under Putin’s regime, there are still brave people out there fighting the good fight. Here are just a few (all links are in Russian, though some include English translations—I used machine translations for a lot of it, since my Russian isn’t great yet):

Centre-T is a Moscow-based organisation that provides social support, legal help, education, and more to trans people and their allies. They have resources for neurodivergent trans and nonbinary people, too!
The Russian LGBT Network (Российская ЛГБТ-сеть) provides emotional, psychological, legal, and community support to queer Russians across the country.
Delo LGBT+ (Дело ЛГБТ+/LGBT+ Affairs) is a legal advocacy agency that helps people across Russia.
Doxa is an online magazine that devotes a lot of its coverage to the struggles of LGBTQ+ Russians, though that’s not all: Doxa articles include content about creeping authoritarianism around the world, the war in Ukraine, mental health, bullying in schools, and more.
Holod (Холод, “Cold”) is similar to Doxa—a lot of LGBTQ+ content along with articles about politics and society.
SOS North Caucasus supports LGBTQ+ people in one of the most dangerous parts of Russia: Chechnya.
Quarteera, based in Germany, offers support to Russian-speakers, including Russians and Ukrainians. They have a great podcast miniseries, Queer Conversations (Квир-беседы, Kvir-besedy), that features queer people from Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and more. (I was able to get the gist of what they were saying—and it’s been great practice for my oral comprehension!)
Coming Out (Выход/Vykhod) is a nationwide advocacy and support organisation.

If you’re able to send money to Russian organisations, I would encourage you to do so. I can’t do that from over here—our sanctions have made that impossible—but they can use all the help they can get, especially in this hostile climate.

Why I hate both the “woke” and “anti-woke” movements

2023-07-01 / The Woke Contrarian / 1 Comment

Both woke and anti-woke activists are tiresome scolds who need to shut the fuck up and stop treating people as census designations rather than complex human beings. All they see is categories: Black, White, Male, Female, Gay, Straight, Trans, Non-Trans.

I am fed up with the woke movement. But I hate the anti-woke movement even more, and I think a lot of “wokism” is a reaction against the rise of far-right movements in America, Britain, Europe, and elsewhere.
Why do I hate these movements? Because both sides focus on what people are, rather than who they are.
Sexists (which includes homophobes and transphobes, not just misogynists) and racists treat their targets as something, rather than somebody. Race is a what; cultural expression is a who. Sex is a what; gender is a who. If you fixate on race and sex, rather than culture or gender, you are likely to make hasty generalisations that flatten the complexity of human experience. I don’t trust anyone who calls himself a “feminist” and uses sex as a way to define the righteous and the damned, and I don’t trust anyone who calls himself an “antiracist” and uses race as a dividing line between the sinners and the saints.
TERFs are not feminists by any reasonable definition. They are reactionary fascist-adjacent ideologues who are just as sexist as their conservative counterparts. Their mentality is “penis = evil,” which is just the inverse version of “vagina = irrational hysteric.” Ironically, some woke activists end up sounding like TERFs, though their focus seems to be more on skin colour.
You can be antiracist or culturally inclusive without making excuses for oppressive behaviour by marginalised groups. I abhor Islamophobia, but I’m not going to defend Islamism or any other form of religious extremism. Islamists, along with other religious fundamentalists, deserve to be marginalised because their views are incompatible with a functioning civil society. This is why I have no patience for leftists who go out of their way to defend right-wing fundamentalist states like Iran. They’ll rightly criticise evangelical Christian nutjobs but give a free pass to their Islamic fundamentalist counterparts who ban women from being educated or cut people’s heads off for being gay. Just because Muslims, whether liberal, moderate, or extreme, are a minority in Europe and the Americas doesn’t mean that fundamentalist Middle Eastern or African governments are beyond criticism.
Sometimes I want to read criticisms of the woke movement, but these criticisms tend to come alongside a heaping dose of racism and sexism, including hostility toward LGBTQ people, a dismissiveness toward people who have real grievances about racial discrimination, and other forms of intolerance. All I can think about is “they are so obsessed with what I am that I don’t think they’d even see me as a who, and they hate me just for that.”
When I read woke writing, I come across essentialist bullshit about how if you’re straight, white, male, American, Christian, British, European, or non-trans, you’re the devil. Bullshit. This is the right’s hateful rhetoric inverted as a form of purported self-protection. And all I can think about is “they are so obsessed with what I am that I don’t think they’d see me as a who if I belonged to a ‘privileged’ demographic. And because I’m ‘multiply marginalised,’ they love me just for that.”
It is virtually impossible for me to read anything in the media about racism or sexism without my skin crawling.
Classism is a common feature in both woke and anti-woke discourses. A lot of it looks like elites playing off each other, though I don’t mean that in a class-reductionist way.
Claiming that any group of people, including white people, are inherently evil because of their ancestry or skin colour is counterproductive, essentialist garbage that should be wiped out of any social justice movement.
If I excluded everybody but LGBTQ+ non-white people (I hate the expression “people of colour” and will not use it here) from my social circles, I wouldn’t have many people to talk to. Some of the most virulent prejudice I have experienced has come from members of my “own” race, including relatives.
Both woke and anti-woke activists make me feel like a what, rather than a who. The problem is that I’m the right what for the woke movement and the wrong what for the anti-woke movement. Either way, I’m something rather than somebody.
If I hate something or someone, it’s because of who they are, not what they are. Donald Trump is odious because of his beliefs, not because he’s a white man. Candace Owens is also repugnant, though she’s a black woman. When woke activists say “listen to black women,” do they also mean Candace Owens, or do they mean only those who are ideologically similar to them? When anti-woke activists say that they should be listened to, do they include members of the “wrong” demographics who agree with them, like Caitlyn Jenner or Blaire White?
I’m a grudging supporter of affirmative action because of my who-not-what orientation. Although I hate the idea of ranking people based on what they are, I also acknowledge that historical injustices should be combated.
Fighting racism and sexism is important. But that fight should be focused on humanising people, rather than using demographic categories as a sign of virtue.
I feel I have to be woke to protect myself. But at the same time, I’m sacrificing a lot of my authenticity. I can’t say what I want to say without being told that I’m making excuses for bad actors, even though I have the same goals—that people are treated fairly and kindly. That’s why I’m blogging about this stuff anonymously.
If you focus too much on what people are, rather than who people are, I have little respect for you or your movement.

I want to see a fairer, more equitable world. But I want to do that without all the bullshit I see from the woke movement, or the reactionary racism and sexism that have arisen both as a cause and as a consequence of it. I want to be somebody, not something. Is that too much to ask?

(I’ll talk more specifically about sexism and racism later, but this is a good overview of how I feel.)