Valid until July 2020
Arielle Scarcella has had enough.
Millennial lesbian vlogger Arielle Scarcella caused a stir last Friday when she announced that she no longer feels a part of the contemporary LGBTQIAA+ movement, the latest evolution of the gay rights movement that stands for ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Allies and others.’
My first introduction to Scarcella was via one of Magdalen Berns’s early videos, in which Magdalen took issue with some bit of trans dogma Scarcella was pushing. It’s been heartening to see her changing her mind since then.
Scarcella, who vlogs about women, sexuality and culture and has over 600,000 YouTube followers, denounced the ridiculously “woke” rainbow coalition movement as “a safe haven for the mentally unstable”, stating that she has been “more cancelled, tortured, tormented, harassed” by what is supposedly her own community than by any other group.
Mary Harrington gets to the core point in explaining why Scarcella has had enough.
The growing desertion of the movement formerly known as LGBT by actual lesbian, gay and bisexual people reflects a core issue raised by its current trajectory, namely the political paralysis that results from an attempt to practice inclusivity in the absence of limits.
Exactly. I keep pointing this out. “Inclusive” and “exclusionary” are bad stupid buzzwords because no politics can be “inclusive” of everyone and everything – politics is all about excluding some things, which entails also excluding people who want to include those things or who represent those things.
Forming a group in order to campaign for that group’s political interests necessarily means defining what that group is, which in turn means defining what it is not. That is, political agency requires a degree of self-definition that is necessarily exclusionary. But as other groups are added, willy-nilly, in the interests of inclusivity, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern the nature of their common political interests.
That + at the end of LGBTQIAA? That’s the door to chaos.
But the growing reluctance to impose limits, and willingness to include even heterosexual people (who sneak in under ‘queer’ or ‘ally’) in the rainbow coalition, renders the political programme ever more diffuse. What, from a political point of view, can lesbian women unite in solidarity with asexuals to campaign for, apart from a general feel-good assertion that ‘we are all valid’?
Not even a feel-good assertion, for me, because it’s such gibberish.
But validation has little meaningful substance as a political programme; in effect it takes away political agency. For if ‘validation’ is the core political demand, those pursuing this kind of identity-based programme ultimately hand power to the authority they claim to challenge, granting the state the ability to confer or withhold personhood itself.
And they turn themselves into something like a library card or a bus pass. No thanks.
It’s interesting to watch people come ’round to the “mean” or “callous” perspective (which I’ve always considered just the rational position) after they realize that the spears have turned toward them. You see it with this peeling-away from the alphabet soup. You see it with people supporting free speech after being canceled by the woke.
I’m always left wondering how they didn’t learn these rather basic ideas earlier. Like, the hell do you think we enshrine freedom of speech in the Constitution for—to protect speech that everybody like? The fuck do you think we have discrete movements like feminism and gay rights and so on rather than just egalitarianism—because everyone in those movements things egalitarianism is wrong? Pffft.
People be slow sometimes.
Nullius:
Once again, The Onion has it nailed: “Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Believes Constitution To Be.”
I seem to recall that at one point, there was a discussion about adding “kinky” people to the LGBTQIAIAWERIEAGAGAS+ “coalition.” I mean, I suppose you can draw a loose connection there of “people who are sometimes ostracized in society for their sexual practices,” though that would seem to rule out trans people already since that’s supposedly gender and not sex.
I’m not so sure that inclusivity is so much a goal as a tool. TIMs expect this rights movement to “center” them; all those allies are there to fight for them, not the other way around. That’s I think what’s behind the vehement opposition to any LGB people expressing a desire to organize without the “T”. Allyship and command are unidirectional. Without all those others, TRAs would have to do a lot more for themselves, and I’m guessing they would meet with more resistance and less success as a result. What’s a general without footsoldiers to follow orders?
The whole LGBTQ…etc umbrella is a political marriage of convenience, but the politics and convenience are not evenly distributed. It’s supposed to be one big happy family, but this family’s structure seems to be very familiarly patriarchal. TIMs claim the right to sex with lesbians on pain of accusations of TERFdom and bigotry. Resistance is met with ostracism, deplatforming and expulsion from LGBT events. Where’s the “allyship” here? Where’s the solidarity and loyalty? It looks a lot more like good old fashioned male entitlement, bullying and predatory exploitation. That many young women join in this punishment and repudiation of lesbians is heartbreaking.
The defection of the “LGB” bit, along with its longer track record and greater experience and legitimacy, would really hamper trans activism, which would not have gotten anywhere near the attention, response and cooperation it has garnered if it had not connected itself to the gay rights movement. Intersex people are handy props to have around when trying to “prove” that sex is a “spectrum,” but how much do their concerns really overlap with those of TRAs? Intersex people who complain about the inappropriate use of and inaccurate portrayal of their condition by TRAs are ignored or shouted down. In both of these instances, “inclusivity” has helped trans activism a lot more than it has benefitted lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex people. Cutting loose from the “T” would probably be of benefit to all of them. “T” is stronger with them, but they would be better off without trans activists. Time for LGB people to take the rainbow flag back, and let the trans pink white and blue stand-or fall- on its own.
Also why are asexuals in there at all? There’s certainly social pressure to have sex but nothing like what happens when you’re bonking the”wrong” people.
I think at some point it stopped being about oppression or repression or any of that and became about mere difference. It’s the “alternative lifestyle” bit. Everyone who doesn’t fall into the idealized norm is welcome!
Les sigh.
The sexual ‘liberation’ of the 60s provided cover for pedophiles like Gabriel Matzneff and Jimmy Savile.
Early gay rights groups had to draw the line when NAMBLA tried to ride their coattails.
While ‘self-identification’ has an enormous value—it takes away the bathroom police aspect—it cannot function unless there’s room to recognize the cranks and sociopaths that Scarcella’s talking about.