cawacko
Well-known member
It's a sh*t show on the right currently but not everyone on the left is walking hand in hand. This is a local progressive columnist whose pronouns are they/them. I'm not going to lie, I read this and roll my eyes but that's probably because I'm not a progressive. But for those who are is this more fringe ideology in your opinion or does more of the base share these thoughts?
On Dianne Feinstein, Laphonza Butler, and California Democrats’ toothless girlboss identity politics
The late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s final arc demonstrates how half-hearted and ineffective appropriation of identity politics leads to dubious governance.
In the months before Sen. Dianne Feinstein passed away last week, the question of whether or not she should retire seemed, to some, to have little to do with whether or not she was still capable of providing effective leadership. Instead, the need for informed and responsible governance took a back seat to Feinstein’s womanhood.
As ailing Feinstein was repeatedly dragged between the Capitol and San Francisco to make a tragic and embarrassing farce of the democratic process, demands for her to resign — after revelations of her severe mental decline, including forgetting what she was voting on, not understanding where she was, and to whom she was speaking — were met with accusations of sexism.
“I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the senate in that way,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told a reporter this past spring.
“This is about respecting an iconic woman leader,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told the New Yorker in April when asked about whether calls for her resignation were “sexist.”
“When women age or get sick, the men are quick to push them aside. When men age or get sick, they get a promotion,” wrote Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) on Twitter around the same time. “#WomensRights ARE #HumanRights,” she added.
For the sake of parity, I’ll just say straight-out that Mitch McConnell, who has also publicly demonstrated his own mental instability multiple times this past year, needs to go, too. But at least the GOP isn’t claiming that they’re wringing every drop of productivity out of his body for feminism’s sake.
Feinstein will most likely be remembered as an icon, and it may be tempting to paper over the spectacle of her final months in favor of hazy memory. But in her twilight, she didn’t represent a strong feminist politician to me — just one whose image was manipulated in favor of shallow gestures toward identity politics while, ironically, her real body and mind withered away. If those long months can teach us anything, it’s that we should expect more from those who are said to represent us.
In keeping obviously unfit people in powerful positions by virtue of how their identity serves some greater social good, establishment Democrats operate like they’re more interested in checking boxes than actually benefiting the people they’re pretending to represent. This has had disastrous consequences, most notably against affirmative action.
Yes, Feinstein was a woman who assumed significant power, and that does mean something. She led San Francisco through some of its darkest times, working to hold the city together in the wake of the 1978 Jonestown massacre and the assassinations that suddenly transformed her from the city’s first female Board of Supervisors president to its first female mayor. She no doubt inspired many women to enter politics and provided a model to follow in what has always been a closed white man’s club.
She did good with her power, including fighting for gun control and advocating for the Violence Against Women Act. But in assimilating into a figure of the American political establishment, she hurt women, too. When we reflect on her legacy, my fellow millennials will likely recall her actions as the GOP installed Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court in 2020 — when she famously embraced Sen. Lindsay Graham after praising Barrett’s confirmation hearings. In advancing Barrett, she and her colleagues furthered the right wing’s mission to reverse the feminist progress that Feinstein herself had once symbolized.
And it seems like the Democrats are on track to continue that ineffectual streak with her replacement, again in service of their toothless take on identity politics. Take Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pledge to fill Feinstein’s seat with a Black woman, to fill the gap left by Kamala Harris when she left her Senate seat to become vice president. Over the weekend, Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler, a Maryland resident who once led California’s largest union before joining Uber’s fight against labor rights in an industry where many workers are people of color and immigrants. Oh, but she’s a Black lesbian. Check!
That Newsom responded to calls for more Black representation in the Senate by appointing a person who has contributed to deprecating the livelihoods of many people of color in the state is depressing, but perhaps fitting for this seat in particular. Yes, representation does matter; but is it more than an aesthetic victory? People aren’t asking for just anybody who looks like them, but someone who will give a damn about their community. Instead, what we too often see in California is representation as branding, not action. That’s not only an insult to our intelligence, but our humanity.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion...-butler-newsom-identity-politics-18397148.php
On Dianne Feinstein, Laphonza Butler, and California Democrats’ toothless girlboss identity politics
The late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s final arc demonstrates how half-hearted and ineffective appropriation of identity politics leads to dubious governance.
In the months before Sen. Dianne Feinstein passed away last week, the question of whether or not she should retire seemed, to some, to have little to do with whether or not she was still capable of providing effective leadership. Instead, the need for informed and responsible governance took a back seat to Feinstein’s womanhood.
As ailing Feinstein was repeatedly dragged between the Capitol and San Francisco to make a tragic and embarrassing farce of the democratic process, demands for her to resign — after revelations of her severe mental decline, including forgetting what she was voting on, not understanding where she was, and to whom she was speaking — were met with accusations of sexism.
“I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the senate in that way,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told a reporter this past spring.
“This is about respecting an iconic woman leader,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told the New Yorker in April when asked about whether calls for her resignation were “sexist.”
“When women age or get sick, the men are quick to push them aside. When men age or get sick, they get a promotion,” wrote Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) on Twitter around the same time. “#WomensRights ARE #HumanRights,” she added.
For the sake of parity, I’ll just say straight-out that Mitch McConnell, who has also publicly demonstrated his own mental instability multiple times this past year, needs to go, too. But at least the GOP isn’t claiming that they’re wringing every drop of productivity out of his body for feminism’s sake.
Feinstein will most likely be remembered as an icon, and it may be tempting to paper over the spectacle of her final months in favor of hazy memory. But in her twilight, she didn’t represent a strong feminist politician to me — just one whose image was manipulated in favor of shallow gestures toward identity politics while, ironically, her real body and mind withered away. If those long months can teach us anything, it’s that we should expect more from those who are said to represent us.
In keeping obviously unfit people in powerful positions by virtue of how their identity serves some greater social good, establishment Democrats operate like they’re more interested in checking boxes than actually benefiting the people they’re pretending to represent. This has had disastrous consequences, most notably against affirmative action.
Yes, Feinstein was a woman who assumed significant power, and that does mean something. She led San Francisco through some of its darkest times, working to hold the city together in the wake of the 1978 Jonestown massacre and the assassinations that suddenly transformed her from the city’s first female Board of Supervisors president to its first female mayor. She no doubt inspired many women to enter politics and provided a model to follow in what has always been a closed white man’s club.
She did good with her power, including fighting for gun control and advocating for the Violence Against Women Act. But in assimilating into a figure of the American political establishment, she hurt women, too. When we reflect on her legacy, my fellow millennials will likely recall her actions as the GOP installed Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court in 2020 — when she famously embraced Sen. Lindsay Graham after praising Barrett’s confirmation hearings. In advancing Barrett, she and her colleagues furthered the right wing’s mission to reverse the feminist progress that Feinstein herself had once symbolized.
And it seems like the Democrats are on track to continue that ineffectual streak with her replacement, again in service of their toothless take on identity politics. Take Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pledge to fill Feinstein’s seat with a Black woman, to fill the gap left by Kamala Harris when she left her Senate seat to become vice president. Over the weekend, Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler, a Maryland resident who once led California’s largest union before joining Uber’s fight against labor rights in an industry where many workers are people of color and immigrants. Oh, but she’s a Black lesbian. Check!
That Newsom responded to calls for more Black representation in the Senate by appointing a person who has contributed to deprecating the livelihoods of many people of color in the state is depressing, but perhaps fitting for this seat in particular. Yes, representation does matter; but is it more than an aesthetic victory? People aren’t asking for just anybody who looks like them, but someone who will give a damn about their community. Instead, what we too often see in California is representation as branding, not action. That’s not only an insult to our intelligence, but our humanity.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion...-butler-newsom-identity-politics-18397148.php
