On March 8, the nation celebrated International Women’s Day by participating in A Day Without a Woman. Activists could express their support for A Day Without a Woman in several ways, including taking the day off from work, avoiding shopping for one day (shopping at “small, women- and minority-owned businesses” was fine), or wearing red to show solidarity.
According to the movement’s website, the aim of the demonstration was to celebrate “the enormous value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system.” That is a worthy enough goal—after all, women’s labor contributes $7.6 trillion to the nation’s GDP each year.
For some on the left, however, worthy goals mattered little, because the demands of the protest had unintentionally reinforced the most contemptible institution known to identity politics: white privilege.
“What’s the purpose of a strike when you can’t afford a day to not work?” said Angie Beem, an organizer of the first Women’s March, in an interview with the Seattle Times. “Women who could possibly do this are in an executive-type position. Life will go on for them. Their career is more stable. This screamed white privilege.”
This is not the first time factions of the left have been at odds with each other. Most recently, the Women’s March on January 21 drew similar concerns.
First, there were the Black Lives Matter activists, who took offense to any celebration of the protest’s non-violent nature. “When you brag that your protests had no arrests, I wonder what you think that says about you?” wrote Ijeoma Oluo, Editor-At-Large of The Establishment. “When you take pictures with smiling cops and thank them for protecting you, I wonder, who are you marching for?”
There were also objections surrounding the Women’s March’s signature apparel—a pink “pussy hat”—mostly because, well, it was pink. The hat allegedly “excluded women of color by insinuating that pussies must be pink.”
Not to be outdone, the transgender crowd also took offense to the pussy hats, seeing the hats as excluding women with male genitalia. In an interview with Mic.com, several trans woman vented their outrage at the other demonstrators’ audacity to “equate womanhood with having a vagina.” One transwoman penned an essay describing the existential crisis of deciding whether to don a pussy hat for warmth or stay true to her crusade against a “hierarchy based on genitals that is exclusionary and painful.” (Spoiler alert: she chose the hat). Another non-binary/penis-wielding person, seeing the genital-centered focus of the protest, feared she would be placed in a “men’s jail” if arrested (fortunately—or unfortunately, if you’re in the BLM camp—there were no arrests at the Women’s March).
One might be inclined to see the humor in these absurd disputes. At the very least, they warrant the highest caliber of eye-roll.
Sadly, the underpinnings of such disagreements are less amusing. In this ominous scramble to out-victim the next person (and therefore claim the moral high ground), there is a perverse incentive to perpetually degrade the human condition. In sum, it is a twisted race-to-the-bottom that no one actually wins.
A person who secures moral authority and political clout through victimhood creates an adversarial relationship with prosperity itself. The more power accumulated to one or more individuals on the basis of their oppressed status, the greater the incentive to preserve systems of inequity—even if that means, for example, fabricating hate crimes. For the professional victim, individual responsibility is not just a political disagreement; it is a threat to his or her very identity. It is unsurprising, then, that any threat to such entrenched victimism should elicit such a screeching and primal response as often as it does—it exposes to social justice warriors, often for the first time, the possibility that an unfavorable position in life may in fact be the result of individual shortcomings.
With such a compelling drive to navel-gaze ad infinitum, there is little, if any, reason to further legitimize the plight of competing social groups. In terms of identity politics, perhaps this much is obvious: When an entire belief structure requires highlighting differences between people, it is unsurprising a meaningful commitment to unity remains elusive.
Thomas Wheatley is a law student and a contributor at the Washington Post. Follow him on Twitter @TNWheatley and visit his website at thomasnwheatley.com.