Liberal idpol only serves the interests of the bourgeois members of the oppressive communities it professes to “help”.

You cannot be “for the gays” if you make the lives of the homeless worse. LGBTQ are significantly over-represented when it comes to experiencing homelessness and facing other associated dangers like sexual abuse, drug abuse etc.

This is a trend present in all aspects of society - social oppression of all kinds (sexual, gender, racial, religious) is worse for the economically downtrodden (which are the vast majority) and this obfuscation of the class dynamic only helps the already most well-off in those communities.

Class reductionism definitely exists and it’s wrong - social problems won’t disappear even if economic inequality does. But ending the class struggle will help 90% of the socially oppressed unlike liberal idpol which only helps the affluent (in any material way).

PS - As I was writing this, I had a realisation of what this looks like in practice. China is a socially conservative country - the media is more heteronormative, patriarchal etc. than the American one (which itself wasn’t anything great a decade ago). But over the past 20ish years, the real wages of people in China has gone up 4-5 times. I’m willing to bet that this has improved the lives of all kinds of minorities in China far more than American idpol has.

  • Pezevenk [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Right but you realise you are now arguing for a completely different position. You started off saying Russia is a far less patriarchal society. Now your position is that is the fault of the west that it is like that. Like, I'm not 100% comfortable with assigning every bad thing that can happen to any country ever as the singular fault of Americans as if there is nothing internal going on and the rest of the world is just mindless pawns of the US with no agency but you are mostly right in that. But again, it's not what anyone here was arguing about. It's like you are always trying to convince someone the west is bad at all costs. Yes, I know, I 100% agree, you don't have to try and convince me. But this doesn't mean that Russia or Iran or whatever are less patriarchal societies than western ones. That is simply not true. I'm not debating the merits of the west or something..