I just think it's a problem with the discourse where a universally-applicable concept like identity politics is reduced to a reactionary buzzword by those who don't seem to acknowledge that they themselves not only have their own identity politics but are invested in maintaining and enforcing them despite being openly disdainful of the concept itself.
If you think "identity politics" is just a "buzzword" that is "universally applicable," then I'm certain you've misunderstood the term.
Identity politics is a description of the tendency to describe people in terms of groups, rather than individuals, as well as the assumptions made about their circumstances, beliefs, and motivations based on which groups they belong to. Basically, using the groups people belong to as some kind of dispositive shorthand for who they are.
What you seem to be doing is treating any rejection of your proposed changes as an endorsement of the status quo and everything that's resulted from it. That simply doesn't follow, and wouldn't be an expression of identity politics even if it did.
I understand that just because a person belongs to certain generally privileged groups doesn't mean that they themselves are necessarily privileged
Given that you understand this, does it follow that you understand why someone would bristle at using those groups as shorthand for privilege, let alone as the basis for determining who should or shouldn't get priority or special treatment to rectify it?
If reducing people to groups is dehumanising, then I'd contend (ironic as it sounds) that wishy-washy "we're all human" sentiment is also, in its own way, dehumanising due to how it implicitly treats the differences between human beings as obstacles that have to be overcome in order for people to see one another as human.
The obvious difference is that defining people based on their group is inherently and unavoidably dehumanizing, whereas the dehumanization you're contending is indirect and speculative.
Obviously, it's really easy to contend all sorts of contradictions if you're willing to layer uncharitable speculation on top of what people are saying. But if you don't want to just be fruitlessly insulting them or getting cheers from people who already agree with you, at some point you need to argue from a shared premise. And that means actually making a good faith effort to understand how a reasonable person might take the other side.
It's not like this is the first Hollywood project about a trans person, though - movies and TV shows that used cis actors have been drawing awards and general acclaim for years now, but that recognition is coming from predominantly cis people who by their very nature have a limited perspective on the matter and aren't guaranteed to know what does or doesn't count as good trans representation (which is why even Oscar-winning roles like Leto's can still draw criticism for playing into negative trans stereotypes). Hell, Boys Don't Cry is almost 20 years old now so this isn't exactly a new thing. Factor in the "cross-dresser" angle that this movie was going to use and it's all but clear that the people behind this movie were not particularly interested in providing genuinely positive/respectful trans representation in the first place, so this was much more liable to continue a regressive trend than anything (and defies your whole enemy-of-the-good line by not even being good). It is a nuanced situation and all (even A Fantastic Woman, an Oscar-winning film that actually does star a trans woman, has drawn its own distinct criticism from trans people), but I would think that this particular facet would be one of the easier ones to grasp.
These arguments are starting to contradict one another. On one hand, trans people are horrendously underrepresented, right? On the other hand, when someone uses that fact to advocate for the film, suddenly that's downplayed and it's "not like this is the first." But the fact that you listed just a few examples over decades (and that they were the same ones most people would think of if asked to list examples of these kinds of films) pretty clearly speaks to how few there have been.
Anyway, the relevant point is that this is a legit question, enough that I don't think someone can pretend to be clearly or directly advocating for trans people by derailing the film. And I'll note that none of the above addresses what I mentioned earlier, about trans people who are upset by the mere insinuation that there's a difference at all between women and trans women.
If we have something many trans people don't necessarily agree with, and which won't necessarily help them in the long run, it's hard to see how someone who put their welfare as their top priority would feel comfortable fighting on behalf of it, given the uncertainty of those things. It seems more like it's just another front in the culture war, fought out of reflex. Like determining which side of the battlefield you belong on based on seeing which kind of people are already lined up where.
I wonder what heading the concept of cis people lobbying for trans people to not take the role for fear of typecasting falls under.
Dunno, but that's another question. The salient point is that the comparison between a suggestion and its response isn't valid. Someone bowing to cultural peer pressure on behalf of some sub-group is not the same as "peer pressure"
not to do that, because the former is an argument not to do something and the latter is an argument that people should decide whether or not to do it on their own. Calling that "pressure" is like saying someone "forced" you to be free.
And as with that, the problem is that doing just that ultimately comes across as an incomplete solution.
If you think the validity of a standard should be based on whether or not it helps you win a particular cultural fight, I guess. But that's a pretty bad way to form cultural norms.
In the particular context of this topic, the "noxious idea" has been "drawn out and exposed" multiple times in this thread and do you know what's happened? Most people agree with it, or at the very least don't care enough to actively disagree with it.
What "noxious idea" have people been agreeing with, exactly? The idea that it's not necessarily a travesty to have a non-trans actor play a trans person in a film? The idea that people shouldn't be able to use certain accusations and words as if they were spells that need only to be uttered to gain power over the accused?
Seems like the problem here is not that people are cheering on awful ideas, but that any disagreeable idea can be labeled awful. There should be a lot of daylight between "ideas I don't agree with" and "noxious ideas." If there's not, then something has gone very wrong, ideologically.
You can't always rely on people to automatically recognise bad ideas as bad because they may very well agree or at least be able to rationalise said ideas through their own perspective
Well, yeah, this is pretty much exactly what I just said, where I mentioned that you can't judge the overall effectiveness of political civility based on just "did I win the argument?" or "did I convince the people I was talking to?"
Literally none of the arguments for free speech or civility or even democracy itself are "people always get it right," and there's no system or behavior that will make them get it right, either, so I'm not sure why you think this is an objection. All good systems of government or cultural reinforcement are about failing gracefully, and how to correct mistakes over time.
(just look at all the people turning this into an excuse to complain about freedom of speech or whatever as if the famous cis movie star needs her rights defended more than the marginalised community).
That's not how rights work. And this is a really good illustration of what I mentioned earlier:
As far as I can tell, there are different rules for one group or another depending on whether or not they're a minority group, or otherwise deemed a protected class by some non-specific, mostly self-chosen group of activists and advocates.
I'd like to think that I've given people about as strong and respectful argument as they all individually deserve - I'll do full paragraphs for people who actually seem interested in a proper discussion, but people spitting vacuous bile get blunt retorts (and even then I'll still actually make an effort to point out the fault in their post rather than resort to basic insults). These people start off escalated, but it's me who gets questioned - I can only assume it's because you don't want me to lower myself to their level.
You have, in the past, complained both of people not addressing your arguments, and of me addressing yours rather than others, so I'm not really clear on what you want out of any of this. Ideally, we'd just have a conversation without you parsing my motivations for having it or trying to audit who I pay attention to.
Anyway, there are lots of reasons I'm replying to you right now and not other people, but one of the bigger ones is that I think our disagreements are more fundamental, and intelligent people willing to question fundamental rights are ultimately a lot more dangerous (however well-meaning) than thoughtless bigots, which we've always had and probably always will have, but which we can't be rid of without making things a lot worse.
That's what I suspect most of this boils down to: seeing bigotry (with an increasingly broad, diluted, and unforgiving definition, no less) as some kind of existential threat that justifies curtailing even fundamental rights, if necessary. With "if necessary" being similarly diluted to effectively mean "any time my side doesn't win a cultural argument quickly enough."
Neither does the "do nothing" posture, especially not in this case.
Imagine my relief to have literally never advocated a "do nothing" posture, then. See earlier reference to the status quo and how the rejection of a proposal does not imply endorsement of the things it purports to fix.
Then what's the point of having rep?
Giving people a way to express support for an idea without just fruitlessly repeating it, mainly.
Regardless, I disagree with the implication this question is based on, since I just looked up the most-repped posts in the thread and the ones at the very top are pretty substantive.
Closed Thread
That was too damn funny, because it's so true!
