Speak for yourself
Aziz Ansari is the latest guy to be career-raped by that pussy-hat wearing ogre we call #metoo. Plenty (most?) of these assholes deserve their fate, although with Ansari the case isn’t quite so clear. His predicament is funny, however, given his previous declaration that he was a feminist, and therefore an adherent of the ideology that is in the process of destroying him. His paeans to the faith were delivered with the manner of winsome condescension that comes so easily to progressive American celebrities:
I remember seeing this at this time, and wanting to stop the video, step into the screen and explain the situation. Let’s go through this for the millionth fucking time – Politics is about power; feminism is a political movement. So, no, feminism is not just egalitarianism; if it was, that’s what it would be called. Feminism is a movement for the advancement of women. Good for them! In purely political terms, the point of feminism is to arrange the world for the benefit of women and to expand and deepen that benefit where it is already the case.
Of course they say it’s about egalitarianism, you idiot – ideologues are salespeople, and like any other salespeople, they tell you the key to all of life’s problems is a further application of their product. But it’s not as though at feminist HQ they have whiteboard listing areas where women are under-represented, with each getting struck off as female representation hits exactly 50%. Men and Women have a certain biological interdependence but that doesn’t mean that we want or need the same thing in all situations. You can support feminist goals or projects where it’s reasonable to do so and where your interests are aligned but you yourself are not a feminist and you shouldn’t want to be. It’s not for us; it’s for them. Get used to that dichotomy.
If you were to corner Aziz now, and ask him if he has changed his mind about feminism, what would he say? I would guess “No”. As a Muslim of Indian descent it makes sense for him to continue to call himself a feminist even after his ritual shaming, because his true alignment is to an ideology of which feminism is only one thread. Intersectionality is a sticky web and sometimes you’re the spider, sometimes the fly; there will be occasions when some feminist will need to bow and scrape to Muslims for having offended their place in the hierarchy and Aziz might even participate in her scolding. So he’ll be ok, maybe – objectively, the occasional humiliation is worth it for the price of being a member of the coalition of the ascendant.
So the important lesson here is not for Indian-American Muslims, but for people like you – you know who you are. This is the age of identity. Multiple western countries have discarded as racist the idea of an implicit master-culture to which all others are subordinate. The most logical political strategy in this environment is to acknowledge your particular identities and explicitly pursue their ends with people like you.
Conversely, there are two strategies that guarantee political irrelevance – the first is to decide you are an individual, and anti-collectivist, a free-floating political unit and not a member of any group or representative of any identity. To do so is to be a sole-trader in a world where everyone else is in a union. The second is to believe that it is morally wrong for people of your type to take your own side in an argument; that you a member of the only group whose interests are inherently illegitimate, must remain unspoken, and can never inform your actions. People like you do both of those things. You’re the only people who do. You need to stop it.
You don’t like the implications and neither do I. You don’t want to quit your job to found the Straight White Guy political party, and I’m not asking you to do that. What I am asking you to do is to recognise that we find ourselves in a time where identity is a kind of key that allows you to participate in culture and politics. Whatever you do, you can’t afford to do an Aziz and embrace an identity like feminism, or individualism, or multiculturalism, because in doing so you use the key to lock yourself outside the city walls, away from the negotiating table with someone else in your seat. You don’t like it – but this is the world they made, and now we have to live in it. That means becoming incrementally more comfortable saying what you do and don’t like, what you will and won’t accept based on a consciously acknowledged identity. It also means being willing to see yourself and people like you as the protagonist of your own story. What if it was reasonable to see things from my own perspective? What if I was to prioritise the interests of people like me? What if I wasn’t the bad guy? I say this with regret, not glee – but from here on out your politics have to be about you. Time to speak for yourself.
