[lbo-talk] Fwd: ABC News/Washington Post Poll: After the Conventions

Dwayne Monroe dwayne.monroe at gmail.com
Tue Sep 9 07:49:55 PDT 2008


Michael Pollak (to Wojtek):

Unless you are asserting that the median white woman is an identity politics troll. Which, if true, I repeat, would be appalling.

.............

Appalling? Yeah.

But once you discard ideas of gender-determined political virtue, not the least bit surprising. As you know, we're a mishigas of impulses and motivations. The same woman whose day-to-day, hard headed common sense you admire may cherish political ideas that are absurd, even dangerous.

We seem to accept this when it comes to men (I think it has something to do with progressive guys who came of age in, say, the 1970s associating varying amounts of self deprecation with loyalty to feminism -- e.g., "I've always thought the median woman was smarter than the median man").

It's really a pity more list members didn't follow Bitchlab's illusion smashing proceedings. Shag routinely found herself tangling with women whose views could fairly be described as 'identity politics trollism', though mostly of the lefty sort.

I don't know if the "median white woman' is or isn't an "identity politics troll" but the evidence seems fairly compelling that a non-trivial percentage are. I'm sort of amused (but in a dark, Terry Gilliam way) that many lefties are surprised and dismayed that Operation Palin is apparently paying propaganda dividends.

Needless to say, women don't live outside of ideology and are no more resistant to manipulation than their brothers, sons, etc.

.d.



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