{"id":12067,"date":"2022-08-15T16:26:57","date_gmt":"2022-08-15T06:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=12067"},"modified":"2022-08-15T16:26:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T06:26:57","slug":"the-conflict-over-privilege-and-disadvantage-in-leftist-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/15\/the-conflict-over-privilege-and-disadvantage-in-leftist-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"The conflict over privilege and disadvantage in leftist politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest in a series of intra-left conflicts turns on the decision to bar male athletes from competition in the female category in both swimming and rugby league \u2013 regardless of their gender identity or gender expression.<\/span><\/p>\n

This issue has been in the Australian public consciousness since the recent election, due to the public vilification of Liberal candidate Katherine Deves, who had previously run the organisation Save Women\u2019s Sport, campaigning for the right to single-sex sport for women. Sport is just one part of a much bigger picture arising out of clashing approaches to sex and gender.<\/span><\/p>\n

Australia protects disadvantaged groups in a way that is \u2018symmetrical\u2019 \u2013 meaning, covers everyone. Our anti-discrimination and equal opportunity law protect \u2018race\u2019, not \u2018indigenous people\u2019; \u2018sex\u2019, not \u2018female people\u2019. It also protects \u2018gender identity\u2019, and symmetry means this is a protection for everyone, trans and otherwise. \u2018Cis\u2019 is the word some use for otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n

In itself, the concept \u2018cis\u2019 may be innocuous. But in combination with some of the orthodoxies of the left today, it has been used to suppress knowledge of conflicts of interest with other minority groups, and to position existing rights struggles as resolved, when they are far from being that.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of these orthodoxies is that those who are \u2018privileged\u2019 must defer to those who are disadvantaged. When it comes to gender identity, \u2018cis\u2019 names the privileged, \u2018trans\u2019 the disadvantaged.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still. There is a world of difference between being privileged in one respect, and being privileged full stop.<\/span> A \u2018cis\u2019 person might well be disadvantaged relative to other protected attributes. For example, the person might suffer racial discrimination, age discrimination, and sex discrimination (might be indigenous, elderly, and female). A trans person might be <\/span>advantaged <\/span><\/i>relative to other protected attributes. For example, the person might suffer <\/span>no<\/span><\/i> racial, age, or sex discrimination (might be white, young, and male).<\/span><\/p>\n

Sport is just one part of a much bigger picture arising out of clashing approaches to sex and gender.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Leftist politics today obscures these nuances. Consider an \u2018evenly matched pair\u2019 when it comes to privilege\/disadvantage. A black man and a white woman begin a political discussion: <\/span>he <\/span><\/i>wants to talk about racism; <\/span>she <\/span><\/i>wants to talk about sexism. Should we simply declare one \u2018privileged\u2019 and the other \u2018disadvantaged\u2019, and tell the one to be quiet and listen? Which one? And what when some disadvantaged groups are taken more seriously than others?<\/span><\/p>\n

With these distinctions in hand, we\u2019re in a better position to understand one of the fiercest debates happening on the left today, one which started inside feminism but has since spilled out into the mainstream. That is the debate between allegedly \u2018trans-inclusive\u2019 and allegedly \u2018trans-exclusive\u2019 feminists. I say \u2018allegedly\u2019 because neither excludes trans people <\/span>per se<\/span><\/i>. Let\u2019s instead relabel these groups \u2018team gender-identity\u2019 and \u2018team gender-critical\u2019, so as to not prejudge the issue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Team gender-identity think that gender identity is very important, and a lot more important than sex, if there is even such a thing as sex. For that reason, they think that anything previously determined on the basis of sex should now be determined on the basis of gender identity. Women\u2019s sport, then, is for a mixed-sex group of people who identify as women. Ditto women-only services, like rape and domestic violence recovery groups, and women-only provisions, like scholarships.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Among <\/span><\/i>these \u2018women\u2019, some are privileged relative to a further trait, gender identity, while others are disadvantaged. Because the privileged ought to defer to the disadvantaged, we arrive at a position in which \u2018cis\u2019 women contesting the inclusion of \u2018trans\u2019 women \u2013 whether in a single domain like sport, or multiple domains \u2013 is seen as a morally bad, like wealthy women excluding women with disabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Team gender-critical think that sex is very important, and a lot more important than gender identity, if there is even such a thing as gender identity (they don\u2019t think <\/span>they <\/span><\/i>have gender identities). They think they are just female (sex), and have been treated differently on that basis.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no issue of privilege and disadvantage between \u2018cis\u2019 and trans women<\/span> here, because trans women are not female. There is<\/span> instead a question of privilege between females when it comes to gender identity, because trans men and female nonbinary people have a gender identity, and \u2018cis\u2019 women don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The point: neither group of feminists is excluding trans people. Each is including different groups of trans people because each group has different basic commitments when it comes to sex and gender.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fight for equal rights for female people has not yet been won. Calling them \u2018privileged\u2019 suggests that it has, and that the focus should now shift to more specific intersections between multiple minority groups. Calling them \u2018cis\u2019 obscures the fact that these apparently privileged women have an attribute that the apparently disadvantaged group lack, namely femaleness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The trans woman and the \u2018cis\u2019 woman are<\/span> also<\/span> an \u2018evenly matched pair\u2019: one disadvantaged in virtue of sex, the other in virtue of gender identity. <\/span>Both<\/span><\/i> types of disadvantage are important, and we need to work against both, not erase one in order to work against the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you wish to republish this original article, please attribute to\u00a0<\/i><\/b>Rationale<\/i><\/b><\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/b>Click here<\/i><\/b><\/a>\u00a0to find out more about republishing\u00a0<\/i><\/b>under Creative Commons.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Photo by Joel Muniz<\/a>\u00a0<\/i><\/b>on Unsplash.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest in a series of intra-left conflicts turns on the decision to bar male athletes from competition in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":564,"featured_media":12073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[436,437],"coauthors":[435],"class_list":["post-12067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law-politics","tag-feminism","tag-gender-issues"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/564"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12067"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12072,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12067\/revisions\/12072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12067"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}