Some ways of explaining the necessity of identity based struggles for the liberation of the working class:

1. We need a united working class in order to have the revolution. If we piss off women/poc/disabled people by being dicks to them, we divide the working class. Men can be expected to organize with women, women cannot be expected to stick around if they’re inundated with misogyny.

2. To put in another way, class is the central pillar, balanced in the center, supported by all other forms of oppression on all sides. The pressure of those oppressions keeps the central pillar in place and the pressure of their weight makes it impossible to pull it out, however if we knock out the supports, we can easily topple the central pillar.

3. To put it into a cute metaphor with mice and cake: Let’s say there are three groups of mice, one has a 7/8ths of a cake, one has 1/8th of a cake, and one has no cake.

The mice with no cake are like “Hey it’s pretty shitty we don’t get any cake”

And the mice with 7/8ths of the cake tell the mice with 1/8th of the cake “Well I mean you could divide it with them, but then you’d only get 1/16th of the cake then” and the mice with 1/8th are like “HELL NO” and attacks the mice with no cake.

And then sometimes one of the mice with 1/8th of the cake go to the mice without cake and go “you know if we joined together we could get those guys’ whole cake”

And the mice with no cake are like “…you won’t share your cake with us and you attacked us for asking for any cake at all so we don’t really trust you… maybe if you were less shitty to us?”

And then the 1/8th cake mouse accuses them of dividing the working class.

Also sometimes one of the 7/8ths cake mice is like “We should both give them 1/16th of the cake, I know it’s a huge sacrifice, but it’s the right thing to do” but it’s really just doing that to keep the 1/8th mice focused on making sure the mice with no cake don’t get any of their slice so that they don’t gang up with the mice with no cake and take the whole cake and divide it in half.

One of the reasons I think a feminism based in liberalism is doomed to fail is it’s entirely based on the good will of our oppressors, whereas with a leftist based feminism we have something to bargain with (I.e. You need a united working class for your liberation, thus your liberation is dependent on ours now stop being a sexist douche)

Class is the foundation on which all forms of oppression are built, but it’s really hard to demolish a foundation without demolishing the house on top of it first.

Identity Politics CAN Be Fine

Identity politics without class analysis tho… YIKES

I sometimes see women in political orgs

Who consciously or unconsciously push other women out while keeping an iron hold on the ‘arbiter of sexism’ position. I think they don’t want other women around cause then their policies and what not on that might be challenged by someone they can’t use their positionality against. Idk.

I’ve seen them especially (and they’re usually white ladies who come from student politics) getting sneaky and shovey trying to get rid of woc who won’t tow their line

Also People Are Really Upset By The Idea That All Categories Have Fuzzy Edges

Especially with like privilege based discourse, people want categories of people to have very tidy edges, but like privilege isn’t an on/off switch, it’s gradient, fuzzy at the edges, and I mean everything is fuzzy at the edges, like the category of planet, a human derived concept to distinguish some lumps of shit in space from other lumps of shit in space, may or may not include notable lump of shit in space, pluto. What’s a mammal and what isn’t. The line between brunette and blonde. What’s a fruit vs what’s a berry. Who qualifies as straight? How we define all the lines between categories are somewhat arbitrary and gradient. Which is not to say we shouldn’t discuss how different categories of people are treated because of the categories we’ve created, but we have to remember that the boundaries of social constructs are often hazier than we’d like to believe.

Like for example back to the who’s straight thing, in some cultures men who are attracted to both men and women and are the active partner in all their sexual relations are considered straight, and there’s been a big debate about asexuals, and whether bisexuals in het relationships are, or people of non-binary genders in het passing relationships are and believe me I’m not touching those arguments with a 400 foot pole, but I think what’s really important is to note that they’re being had because it goes to show that like where the boundaries of straightness are is fuzzy, and I mean I think it’s kind of important to think about what we mean by straight, straight to who, straight in what context? Because like how society guages your identity obviously affects how you get treated, and also like your own understanding of your identity affects how you react, and respond to social messages and IDK I guess this idea of privilege as a light switch that is either on or off just kind of bugs me because it’s such an over simplification, which isn’t to say that I think privilege isn’t a useful tool for discussing systemic shit, but that it’s important to remember that it’s a simplification, and like simplifications and arbitrary divisions are necessary to be able to talk about anything, but also that it’s important to remember that they are simplifications.