Identity/Politics
I’ve been doing some loose catching up here and there as I try to reincorporate other people’s blogs into my daily reading regimen (I’d stepped away from that a few months ago, I assume during the several month break I took from blogging itself), and I wanted to say a couple of things about Manu’s thoughts on identity from about a month back.
It’s also why I find broad group definitions so annoying. Lumping together potentially billions of people using arbitrary traits as the dividing line is such a lazy way to look at the richness of human diversity and experience.
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And also yes, I am a “white cis male working in tech” as if that’s a useful definition to use. The moment you started using these definitions, you lost me. Not because I’m offended by them, but because it saddens me to see the complete annihilation of individuality which is what makes us uniquely interesting.
I’ve simultaneously several disparate trains of thought here, although I believe they also are linked inextricably together.
All of what Manu says above of course is true on an individual level, although it’s also true that whatever one’s individual nature one also exists within one society or another, within one culture or another, in which one of more of these individual traits implicate you in a wider fabric of advantage and power or in one of their opposite and absence. There is personal identity but also the inevitably political context in which it exists.
In a world where, for instance, the overwhelmingly white cis male (American) tech industry is tripping over itself in its lunge toward fascism, it’s true that just being a white cis male in tech isn’t inherently dispositive of anything in particular, but it also means that for better or worse there’s going to be some critique of our current political milieu that’s going to make some people want to shout, “Not all white cis men in tech!”
The thing is, though, no one seriously making critiques based upon problematic political power actually thinks all of this kind of person, that kind of person, or the other kind of person somehow is at fault or unfairly favored. Are all white cis men in tech a problem? No. Is the fact that oligarchic-cum-fascist tech is overwhelmingly white, cis, and male relevant? It is.
People grouped based on the hue of their body—seriously? In 2025? People grouped together based on their gender and/or sexuality—as if all lesbians, gays, or trans are the same. The list of these broad generalizations is endless.
Context matters, as does whether we are talking about punching up or punching down. Sure, not all gays, lesbians, or trans people are the same—it’s just that as an aggregate they are (if varyingly even within this frame) more disadvantaged, more minoritized, and more normatively underprivileged than some other populations, and because they are discriminated against as a group, sometimes it’s necessary to refer to them as a group in defense and protection of them.
(None of which is to suggest that Manu doesn’t understand all of this. It’s just that I rankle at any whiff of #NotAllMen, because it provides cover to some other people’s pretty distracting and problematic nonsense.)
The end goal and ultimate aim of political generalization, or at least that which aims to punch up rather than down, very much in fact is to ensure as much freedom as possible for any individual to live as that individual sees sit, with the dignity, uniqueness, and worth inherent just in being alive. We don’t yet live in a world made solely by the content of our character.
We need to see each other as individuals and see each other’s individuality, but the only way to get to the point where each individual actually is sufficiently free to enact and embody that individuality is to take note of the political generalizations which punch down, and not take too strong an offense if in the meantime the reaction superficially appears to cause us some personal collateral damage.