Something that emerges in the Democratic Party circular firing squad, where everyone insists upon their own righteousness and blames someone else for Kamala Harris’ loss in the presidential election, and in which, by the way, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Lebanon is never mentioned,[1] is that my idea of the left is different from that which is now under attack.
My idea of the left includes concern for the poor, for workers, and for the old—something too often noticeably absent from the discourse I see on social media as white people, whether rich or poor, are uniformly categorized as “privileged” and old people are dismissed with “OK Boomer.”
The idea of the left that is now taking a lot of blame is that which embraces identity politics, especially concern for transgender people. It more often than not ignores class inequality. It more often than not ignores ageism. It often even gives short shrift to racism. It’s an extreme example of what Scott Sernau criticized as some people’s exclusive objections to the forms of social inequality that afflict themselves.[2] It sometimes even denies that other forms of social inequality are of any importance whatsoever.
This goes far beyond pronouns. For example: “Punching left, of course, is more easily said than done, as Congressman Seth Moulton learned over the weekend when he spoke to The New York Times with unusual honesty about trans athletes playing in women’s and girls sports. ‘I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.’ One of Moulton’s staffers resigned in protest, and he was condemned by the head of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. At the same time, in polls, large majorities of the country agree with Moulton’s take.”[3]
That, of course, elides the, I think, even more inflammatory aspect of restrooms, in which people thought to be male use female restrooms. But in general, in a society largely organized around a gender binary, in which transgender people are not fully and often not at all accepted in their self-perceived identities, there has been little to no answer to the problem of gendered spaces. And often none at all for transgender folks needing to use a restroom.
If, to use Mouton’s example, we allow transgender females to play in sports with biological females,[4] does this not undermine the entire idea of sex-segregated sports? Another example: A couple doors down from the Starbucks nearest where I now live is a manicure shop where, of course, women are the usual clientele. One of the people who performs those manicures is a man.
If we are not discriminating by sex, then yes, of course, a man should be able to work in such a place. But the point of a gendered space is that women can interact with other women in a relatively safe space and that men can interact with other men in a relatively safe space, each free from the judgments and entanglements that seem to naturally follow from the presence of the “opposite sex.” I have wondered how that plays out in that manicure shop with a male worker: Are the women in that establishment, whether as workers or customers, comfortable? Or do they feel inhibited with a man within earshot?
Then there are accusations, which I assume to be false, of transgender ideological indoctrination in public schools. But again on social media, I have certainly seen “jokes” directed against “cis heterosexual men” that take the same rhetorical form as the “ethnic jokes” (often against Poles or Italians) of my childhood that even my racist grandfather warned me against. It seems in some circles you must be gay or transgender, preferably both, to be “cool.”
All this, even where false and inflammatory, was guaranteed to generate a backlash and the righteousness which has dismissed these issues as “transphobic” has astonished me even as I really haven’t thought all that much about it and certainly have failed to recognize that it was even all that significant an issue.
I don’t think Harris or the Democrats are at fault here. The truth is that as a society, we have failed to address these issues. Too often we concede a conservative Christian claim that their god created men and women when that same god also “created” biological intersex people and when so many feel for whatever reason that they do not fit into that binary. Or, again much too often, we simply ignore the issue altogether. These are the hallmarks of an ideology: We do not even recognize exceptions to our rules.
[1] John Heilemann, “The Post-Harris Blamescape & Dem Reckoning Tea Leaves,” Puck, November 10, 2024, https://puck.news/the-post-harris-loss-blamescape-democrat-reckoning-tea-leaves/
[2] Scott Sernau, Worlds Apart: Social Inequalities in a Global Economy, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2006).
[3] Peter Hamby, “The Missing Resistance & The Tao of Rahm,” Puck, November 11, 2024, https://puck.news/the-missing-resistance-the-tao-of-rahm-emanuel/
[4] Peter Hamby, “The Missing Resistance & The Tao of Rahm,” Puck, November 11, 2024, https://puck.news/the-missing-resistance-the-tao-of-rahm-emanuel/