Package Deal Ideology! Instant Wraparound Identities - No Questions Asked
So, I think it's safe to say we've all seen the profiles - a BLM frame, a bio which lists antifascism and anarcho communism. A rainbow flag, with that uncompromising fist in pink, blue and grey. "Anticapitalist!" they squeal. "Eat the rich!" "Punch Nazis!" "Fuck your binary!"
Oh yes indeedy. It's a raw, rare fury fired in the furnaces of authenticity, fuck you very much. No pissing around here - these are the Che Guevaras of the digital age, the rainbow taliban, the cynical, seen-too-much revolutionary guards of 'I got so much political outrage!' Like kittens they slumber on meme groups and Twitter, before rising like lion- well, you get the idea...
These are the defenders of the vulnerable, the oppressed. They got all the compassion in the world. Except, not the uppity, not the entitled. Not those already catered for.
Ok, what I mean is women. Not the fucking women. There's a deep resentment of real-life feminism, that which deals in fact and material analysis, that which centres women. They think they might be Marxist, but believe that someone's self-identified gender outweighs that of material reality, i.e. sex.
A few years ago, when the slapped-arse face of Jordan Peterson hovered on the new horizon, he called these people 'postmodernist Marxists'. He rightly got called out for trying to merge two inherently incompatible philosophies. It is impossible to bat for queer theory (entirely conceived within the realms of post-structuralism and postmodernism) and Marxism simultaneously, at least without considerable and constant contradiction and a fascinating 'logic'.
Marxism is based on this thing called materialism, looking at the manifestation of exploitation within the economic realm which we are all subject to, sorting us into classes of empowered and exploited. Whereas, postmodernist theory tells us there is no objective truth, no rightful boundaries or categorical fact. Power is everywhere - open your eyes!
Quite seriously, for the queer theorist there are no acts which are objectively right or wrong, the enemy is oppression, and sexual transgression is a liberating response to oppression.
No, rape is not an act of violence of itself; that comes from the cultural norms which tell us that sex can happen only within certain parameters and between two partners of opposite sex in the marital bed; that children cannot enjoy sexual encounters with adults, an offence against children and those who love them.
We build it up with our tales and moralising judgements, stripping all agency from the 'victim' who is bound by self-fulfilling profesy of damage and shame, along with the 'perpetrator', who's humanity is revoked.
It is, the queer theorist contends, never considered that the victim has been made ex post fasto. Nor the 'criminal' is in fact the victim of a savage heteronormative punishment that demands its arbitrary rules be adhered to. This damned system...
It troubles me pretty deeply to now understand that Peterson was correct. It's not that it is actually possible to fuse the two, they understand the praxis of neither, but it's a sort of pick 'n mix bag of edgy-sounding slogans, pre-scripted responses and statements. They constantly use queer theory without even knowing it and they make sure to dress that window up with some marxist credentials.
It's a package deal ideology, made from inconsistent, clashing narratives but that's ok, cos conversation doesn't go far enough to discover these.
Slogans over analysis!
Chants 👏 are 👏 better 👏 than 👏 individual 👏 thought 👏
Dress up liberalist, corporate supported ideology, but stick an anarchy A and a few references to the bourgeois on it.
Take antifa, a movement formed of the working class as they directly combatted fascism on Cable Street, the incredibly brave Antifaschistiche Aktion of the Weimar republic and those courageous souls who fought Franco and Mussolini, adopt their language, aesthetic and banners to go and scream abuse at left wing, feminist women who object to having males with exposed cocks in women only spaces. Threaten them into secrecy, fear-paralysis, doublethink. All the while evading real threats, demanding victim status as a shield, using the police to file hate incidents but swearing ACAB, becoming the drones of esoteric academia who would turn on them as soon as their ideas represent the norm.
The contradictions are never unearthed, because they have never needed to go deeper into it. Starting with an education that is geared towards knowing the answer but not truly understanding and a strict, rarely articulated university policy of no-cat-shall-meet-pigeon, it's become very shallow out there.
Think James Caspian and his censored attempt to study detransition, and the published and applauded grievance studies. These are people who are primed for presentation over content, conformity and peace over confrontation and praxis, and their social media profiles are their own little shop windows, perfectly situated logos and labels for the current zeitgeist. As such, the display is fragile and highly contrived: the billowing scarves stuck as if in motion are actually formed with mangled coat hangers, the central focus can change smoothly and with no interference from external forces. Any external force - questions, a breeze, could flatten it all. Carefully shielded, it is limited by imagination alone. An ever-telling story of political aesthetic.
DO NOT TOUCH THE DISPLAY
So maybe a crap, superficial and swift compare / contrast with Marxist theorem and queer theory is in keeping here:
Keeping the proletariat on their knees with assumed moral and intellectual superiority, and violent, paternalist control of the means of production and profits the workers create might well be the most successful policy in social control - if you're desperate through hunger, fear, addiction, your ability to plan ahead, withhold gratification, is almost entirely stolen from your muddy prole hands: you are ALWAYS looking for the scraps, the get-me-through-today perks, scanning the floor for dropped change. What you can't really do is look at your oppressors eye to eye and confront the boot on your neck. Not without straying thoughts and shame-filled stomach rumbling. This is a heirachy and people are endowed with power by nepotism. You are at the bottom, as ordained. It will ultimately unravel, but until that time you're where you are due to a system of privilege, ownership, exploitation.
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Above: Dead Smarmy Fuck laments the lack of solidarity for certain males to be women. This is unrelated to a passion for misogyny or flaccid oestro-junk.
Styled by; US imperialist luxury values. Gun; Republican-donating multinational. Beard; model's own
From the perspective of queer theory, nothing is manifest or true. Is that boot really on your neck, or is this a performance? Is it really you with the power, holding back the safeword? The narratives we live by can be deconstructed much in the way society has constructed them. Boundaries are illusion that force social norms upon us which tend to be the real axes of power, and the queer, by definition the un-usual, the transgressive and underdog are the truly crushed under foot.
And this makes some sense, it's often the minorities who bear the brunt of outrages against humanity. It's just about where we draw the line between the odd, the unfairly discriminated against, and the downright abusive and obscene.
Here is another incompatible philosophy to subscribe to alongside queer theory; feminism. Well, feminism that centres on females, which is what feminism does. Queer theory serves the powerful in their whims and fetishes. It is not on the side of women who seek boundaries.
Are we to side with the largely unwitting statements in line with queer theory that an internal feeling of gender dysphoria trumps biological sex, that women can in fact have penises and prostates and some people are born into the wrong body? Or perhaps that the violence experienced by women and children is consequential to their being maintained as an other, a different, weaker brand of human requiring segregation which exoticises their bodies from the gaze of those who might 'attack' them; or do we start in material reality with some hard foundations, of categorical class and a materialist analysis?
Is it not integral to our existence that we examine our roles from our physical, economic and social standing, that the subjective interpretation of others will never be reliable, never be objective or provably true? Can we as observers make the judgement on what is or is not an unequal power dynamic?
Are our categories meaningful or is it these which oppress us? Do you have any goal in sight or is this a struggle of constantly identifying the un-usual to champion
via queer theory?
Who knows, the delicious control of submitting (or being seen to submit) could be the ultimate liberation. Maybe it is your exertion of power that keeps you morally upstanding in your own little clique, your opponent indisputably the devil to all. Maybe it's you who maintains this whole charade.
Freedom from decision and midlife crises, in fact it is the ultimate joy; to be held in the gaze of another; no existential doom headed your way, you can cheer at your survival thus far, possibly even while knowing it's not quite as it seems.
So are women really oppressed, or has it long been a dance, an act of release from the pressures of responsibility? You, in your illogically defined category of sex get the constant flux of privilege and sacrifice among your peers, knowing really you could overturn the powers-that-be if you just restructure your perceptions, language and interplay? Did you ever realise how archaic and regressive those parameters you draw around yourself really are? You have demarcated these borders and huddle together in safety and exclusivity with the consent of society, like first class passengers, as you inadvertently betray the real privilege - your celebrated victimhood.
Aren't you lucky, with your power to invoke obsession and jealousy, your identifying class and privilege, your ability to manipulate those with money and status? Where you have sorority and the power to destroy a man on words alone, drive him insane and walk away without a mark to your basic, unremarkable name?
And what for the petit bourgeois: the liberal feminist with no real-life experience of manifest oppression, who is feted as smart, pretty and intersectionally woke? Or even the white, middle class, adult male who is actually the most marginalised if we look at internal self perception alone?
Above our petty squabbles of finite resources and rigid thinking, they hope to change the world with language, for the words we use directly affects the world we live in. To deconstruct and reassemble a reality, you begin with discourse. It's a little like unrepentant child sex offender R Kelly, 'if I can see it, then I can be it', or Noel Edmonds and his game-show of Shrodingers' cat; to ask the universe, think positively and believe. So you look at the discourse of these interactions and you examine where the breach has been committed.
But let's get real here. I'm no Marxist, I couldn't claim enough knowledge to take that as a stance. What I am interested in is the constant appropriation of edgy sounding politics that are used so completely dishonestly.
Being anti fascist would require some real awareness of what fascism is, for a start. Note: authoritarian attempts to control speech because some words may be difficult to stomach is not it. To demand your orthodoxy reign supreme when you point blank refuse to engage in any conversation, literally trying to crush any sentiment you disapprove of based on fallacious ideas of your intense vulnerability is not it. Choosing the moment in which you reject other ideas as fascist, dangerous, murderous, that's something which requires consideration. Mindlessly chanting along with slogans you don't understand, demanding others fall into line, is pretty scary stuff. Keep your head. It may be important at some point.
Fascism begins with women. A protection racket of chivalry. If these women are now with penises, it's an interesting twist but it doesn't change the game. The death marches are still gonna come, and yeah, who cares when it's your enemy? Especially enemies with such tedious, crypto-fash ideas like there are material, profound distinctions between the sexes? Definitely they should get the wall, that's the right thing, yeah?
From what I can deduce, we have a highly sensitive, confused and fearful population which is being very successfully funnelled into online genres, in a way which resembles music affiliations, youth movements before. The need to find an indentifying group is natural: we do it in adolescence and young adulthood as a way to break away from our parents, to shock and repulse them, to assert our individuality without irony of all our proud allegiances.
But let's keep our heads, and prize the ability to think with individuality. Being radical was never an anthem of the drones. Don't be so willing to spout the mantras you're instructed to - it won't keep you safe forever, it really is visibly inauthentic and without a safeword, that boot might be deep-throating you soon.
May the Farce be with You, You Spoilt, Trembling Cowards.
Links, because obviously, to the paedo-advocacy of Queer Theorists
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307660876_The_Age_of_Consent_and_the_Ending_of_Queer_Theory
