A bit of an editorializing title, I know. And I’m a little drunk, I might read this tomorrow and see it form another angle and question myself into oblivion.

But I was reflecting, Is the categorization of sexuality, ideological beliefs, hobbies (I’m a cinephile, I’m a gamer, I’m ‘x’ thing that defines my whole identity), a result of the dominance of the liberal world we live in?
We are taught to think about the world from a young age in terms of good and evil, wrong and right, marvel villains vs marvel heroes… Binary, simple, childish thought, but as the contradictions of our world get more extreme, we’re forced to expand our understanding the world and form a wider perspective of what makes up our reality (or simply bury our heads into a sandpit), be it by simply creating more categories to fit onto our narrow worldview or by accepting the immortal science of dialectical materialism (based).
Thoughts?

  • Andrzej3K [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    6·
    1 day ago

    There’s definitely a ‘divide and conquer’ aspect to it imho — you’ll notice that ‘working class’ never makes it into the list of liberal ‘identities’, apart from as shorthand for ‘low-information reactionary’ — but you have to be careful, because people often use ‘class first’ politics as a fig leaf for actual reactionary positions.

    It’s something I’ve wrestled with a lot over the years, and what I’ve settled on is:

    • Class must come first. The prime ‘identity’ must be ‘worker’
    • But this should cash out as e.g. “I believe that workers have the right to express their gender identity however they damned well please.”
    • And the concept of work needs to be expanded beyond that which is rewarded under capitalism: caring for children is work, living with disability is work etc