Something has always rubbed me the wrong way about identity politics, and it's not just the fact that it's inherently racist, sexist, or bigoted and prizes skin-deep identifiers as more important than a person's personality, skills, drive, and ambitions.
What always bothered me about identity politics is that there's actually very little in the way of identity involved.
Identity to the left doesn't mean anything close to individualism. Your name might be "John Smith," a 35-year-old white man who came from Wyoming, born to a family of mechanics, and your hobbies may include collecting old Coke bottles and poetry, but none of that matters to the left except for "white" and "male."
Identity is, for the left, not an individual's many traits that form the person, but an identifier that allows them to put you in a box. This is, honestly, the only use for identity the Democrats have, because if there's one thing that would actually get in their way, it's an embrace of individuality and singular identity.
Yet, even with the identities the left considers important, you'll notice a blatant disrespect for the boxes.
My colleague Becky Noble recently penned an article where she reported how Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, said he was mulling over terminating the Pentagon's relationship with "The Scouts," formerly known as The Boy Scouts:
For the past one hundred years, the U.S. military has been one of the most essential supporters of The Boy Scouts of America, now known as Scouting America. But that may be about to change. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is preparing to cut all ties between the military and Scouting America. The reason: Hegseth says that the organization has ceased to be a merit-based one, and now the goal is to "attack boy-friendly spaces."
Hegseth went on to say that "The organization once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt no longer supports the future of American boys." And in a draft memo to Congress, condemned Scouting for becoming "genderless," and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). He added that Scouting has gotten away from the mission to "cultivate masculine values."
The "male" identity has been a huge problem for the left for some time, as it sees masculinity as dangerous... as well it should. If you're looking to take over a civilization through radicalized ideas, you have to ultimately go through men willing to lay down their lives to protect it and not die in the process yourself. They cast masculinity, and men in general, as oppressive.
Thus, boys-only spaces had to go, because the last thing the left wants is for young men to identify as masculine. "Inclusivity" was the "moral" reason they were going to push girls into masculine spaces, thinking that they could blur that identity by introducing femininity.
But don't think women and girls are off the hook. The left isn't a fan of femininity either, considering it to be weak and oppressed as a result of that weakness. In an effort to nebulize that identity, they started pushing men into women's locker rooms who identify as women, the ultimate confusion of the male/female dynamic.
Identity means everything and nothing to the left. It is important so long as it's useful, and even hated identities can be useful. That's the magic of identity politics: it can be used to create oppressors and the oppressed, and if played right, you can create oppressed groups out of nowhere.
Any identity can be useful in some capacity, but the one identity that will never mean a thing to them is who you are as a person. You can fit into every identity box the left considers "protected," but if you, as an individual, don't go along with their plan in a uniform way, then all your boxed identities don't matter.
Your personal identity, the thing that makes you, you, is the only identity they can't use with any reliability. The only one that truly matters is the one they hate the most, and that, I think, is one of the most disgusting, missed parts about identity politics. You are sacrificed and replaced by characteristics that are literally skin-deep. There's something incredibly sinister about that.
It's my honest hope that we put away identity politics as a society and evolve away from it, not just because it breeds racism and sexism, destroys opportunities and limits advancement, but because it's one of the greatest insults to a person who was lovingly and fearfully made.
