Privilege vs. Power: How Identity Politics Halts Progress

Feminism does not mean co-signing everything a woman does simply because she's female.  3rd wave feminism is an oxymoron and the people who subscribe to it, actual morons.  Yes, I'd love to see a female president in my lifetime after 250 years of male rulers, but I didn't vote for Hillary or Kamala, nor would I have voted for Tulsi Gabbard or Elizabeth Warren or Roseanne Barr.  Shirley Chisholm?  Hell yeah!  Jill Stein?  Absolutely, if my state allowed 3rd party votes or write-ins.  But that's based on policies and behavior that goes beyond their stated views or superficial traits (race, sex). 

Sure, women have the right to be video vixens & strippers and hookers and Playboy bunnies and tradwives & similarly brainless things, but that doesn't mean I'm obligated to support them in that.  More importantly, when I call them out it doesn't make me "anti-woman" or anti-feminist.  It makes me a woman with an opinion that feminism fought to allow me to have.

I stand with Black people & all oppressed minorities against their oppressors, but that doesn't mean everything every minority individual says or does is worth defending.  Diddy, R. Kelly, Michael Vick, OJ Simpson, the Sinaloa cartel, MS-13, Bill Cosby, Hamas, President Obama, Tawana Brawley, Chris Brown, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West... the list goes on.  These people and groups are NOT above criticism based on their skin tone or the hardship that comes with it, nor does my criticism imply that I'm racist or don't acknowledge that hardship.  Jeffrey Dahmer was a gay man but he also killed/cannibalized gay men, therefore my condemnation of him is not "anti-gay".  



Privilege vs. Power

Maleness = privilege; the ladder = power

You cease to be a victim the moment you become a victimizer.  No billionaire on the planet is oppressed or marginalized in any meaningful way regardless of their race or sex.  While white skin and male anatomy definitely remove a few hurdles in life, that's privilege, not power.  Privilege is an absence of obstacles.  Power is the added ability to control others & the outcome of situations that others would be at the mercy of.   

When you can walk through airports all over the world with no TSA checks like Epstein (a Jew) after decades of raping/trafficking underage girls, or be a serial rapist of men, women and children as young as 10 and have people killed like Diddy (a Black man), and not spend ONE DAY IN PRISON for it or even have it mentioned at your trial, that's power.  Power is the ability to pay off judges and prosecutors, to issue NDA's that cover illegal acts & bully hoardes of people into silence about their own experiences.  It's handpicking the next tween sensation/industry plant to be groomed & pushed on the public like Bieber or Billie Eilish or Katy Perry or Milli Vanilli or Fletcher while ignoring actual talent.  Power is the ability to commit illegal, evil acts and still be treated like a V.I.P.  To buy up newspapers & social media platforms & influence society at a macro level.  To set trends, make or break careers.  Declare war silently with drones & sneak attacks.  To determine who lives and dies, who eats & who starves.  To buy off politicians & be granted unfair advantages.  To control the food supply, the banks, the nukes and the natural resources of this planet.  

Black Rock is power.  Israel is power.  Military contractors like Halliburton & Raytheon are power.  NAFTA, the 3 Strikes Crime Bill, the Affordable Care Act, the Big Beautiful Bill & other deceptively-named wide reaching bills are examples of power transfers from the weak to the strong.  Bezos, Musk, Maxwell, Zuckerberg, Sackler, the Royal Family... that's power.  A poor ignorant redneck in West Virginia has privilege, not power.  And all his racist ranting is because he's acutely aware of it.  His race is the only thing he DOES have, so he clings to it with all his might to convince himself he's not a total failure in life.  His anger is justified but badly misdirected.  Unless he picks up a gun and walks into a school, church, grocery store or other public venue and starts mowing people down, he has no power to influence your life or mine.  Politicians and billionaires of all races, political affiliations & persuasions DO.  

When you align yourself with bad people because you share superficial traits like sex, sexual orientation, race or religion, you aid the power imbalance that is killing the planet & ruining our lives.  Gloria Steinem is a woman and a feminist who looks like me (white), but she doesn't represent me because I've never worked for the CIA or owned a print publication & do not have a net worth in the millions.  I do NOT believe that working outside the home is innately empowering.  It only means that 100% instead of 50% of the adult population is now available for wage slavery & exploitation.  More workers = less pay for each individual worker & the ability to fire anyone who stands up for themselves, knowing you can just hire someone else in their place (or hire NO one in their place and just divide their responsibilities up among existing workers).  It means mothers no longer get to stay home and bond with/care for their children.  Couples are forced to pay for expensive, neglectful childcare and the children suffer. 

Ask any Black working mother from the '60s or '70s whether she found work "empowering" and prepare to be laughed at.  Now we're all in that position.  That was the goal of Steinem's CIA-backed feminism crusade whether she knew it or not.  Working outside the home should be a choice; something you do because you have a talent to share with the world, not something you have to do to avoid starvation.  There's more than enough wealth & resources to pay for this many times over but it's being hoarded in tax havens by a powerful few who don't even pay federal taxes on it.  AND AMERICAN IDIOTS DEFEND THEIR "RIGHT" TO DO IT.

Work is only empowering when it's compensated fairly & when pay keeps pace with the cost of living.  HAVING to work and not being paid fairly is indentured servitude.  You canNOT do/be/have it all, nor can I.  That mindset shaves years off your life via stress, sleep deprivation, increased blood pressure, poor health choices & self-neglect.  This is why the sad phrase "self-care is revolutionary" exists.  Because simply taking a minute to goddamned BREATHE outside of work IS revolutionary when you live in a capitalist hellscape like the U.S.  A system whose only intention is to use you up and throw you away once you break down, replacing you with a freshly propagandized able-bodied worker before your funeral.  THEN they have the nerve to whine about low birth rates!  Maybe stop making the planet unlivable and life unaffordable if you want people to bring new defenseless lives into the world.   

Where was I going with this?  Oh yeah, capitalism blows and identity politics is irrational tribalism.  Class solidarity > everything.