My brother and I grew up liberal. It’s hard not to when you’re raised by two Jewish mothers and spend your formative years watching your family’s rights being systematically eroded by the Bush administration and the wave of conservative politicians who took it upon themselves to delegitimize LGBT families. The arrival of the Obama administration was a very happy day in our house. We were sure that the morality policing, denial of facts, and stifling of free speech were at an end. But that’s not what happened.
Instead, it’s 2017, and in order to be taken seriously in any liberal or progressive circle, you must start with identifying yourself. This can take several forms. Identifying yourself by your race, your gender identity, your sexual orientation, or all of the above – or conversely, identifying the ways in which any of the above identities grants you privilege. If this were simply a tool for discovering people more like yourself so you can form a community and share your experiences, that would be fine, but it isn’t just that. Rather, this process of identifying serves to determine who can speak to a particular issue, and who can’t. Obviously, in certain arenas, there are people whose voices should be given more weight than others. Unfortunately, this concept has given way in liberal circles to the idea that, on some or most of the issues central to the progressive movement, certain people shouldn’t be allowed to speak at all.
I’ve encountered this in my own life when it comes to my identity as a Jewish woman. Right now, Jewish people are under attack in the United States and worldwide due to our religion. This isn’t exactly new. It’s been going on since long before I was born, and it’ll doubtless continue long after I’m dead. But the progressive movement doesn’t believe that Jewish people suffer religious hatred, despite a string of anti-Semitic threats that have escalated since the election of the 45th president. According to the progressive movements, only Muslims face religious intolerance in the United States, and therefore, Muslims should have the final word – and sometimes, the only word – on religious oppression in the Western world.
The problem here is that, instead of valuing ideas and critical thinking, the progressive movement has taken to valuing identity and personal experience above all else. This leads to some logical fallacies becoming widely accepted among progressives despite having holes big enough to drive a bus through. For example, if a white, upper-class sex worker in the Western world states that she finds sex work to be empowering, progressives translate this to mean that sex work as a whole is empowering, and that anyone who says otherwise is anti-sex work and “whorephobic.” Of course, this focus on one sex worker’s personal experience means that progressives ignore hundreds of other sex workers coming from less privileged backgrounds who find sex work to be painful and dehumanizing. One person’s personal experience is not enough to outweigh the general trend and function of a particular concept in society.
Interestingly enough, progressives deride this sort of personal experience logic when it comes from people they disagree with. For instance, if a white person says that, due to their economic status, they don’t feel particularly privileged in society, progressives are quick to point out how one person’s personal experience doesn’t erase the experiences of nonwhite people and the various forms of racism our society has perpetrated against them. This is correct. However, ask a progressive to apply that same logic to the concept of makeup as an empowerment tool and you’ll be called anti-feminist quicker than you can say “I voted for Clinton.” Conservatives often accuse progressives of being willing to sacrifice one person – typically a white, Christian man – for the good of many. Instead, progressives have chosen to sacrifice many to elevate the personal experience of one.
I still believe in the core tenants of progressivism. But if the 2016 presidential election has taught me anything, it’s that the push toward the personal has drastically weakened our position. Our beliefs can and should be personal. But the policies and objectives we put forward can’t be. I’m tired of having to produce my oppression card every time I want to have a discussion. I’m tired of reminding people that their experience isn’t everyone else’s and being shouted down. And I’m tired of losing elections to people who think humans rode dinosaurs and that the polar ice caps are melting just because. Progressivism has a problem. And if we ever want to make our ideas a reality, we have to fix it.
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