Identity politics is a live issue for us. It has worked for others. I suppose it depends what you mean by 'worked.' Gays and women have got some good stuff out of identity politics, but at quite a cost. Identity politics seems to 'succeed' (if that's the right word) when movements cease to lobby for radical change and accept instead a share of the spoils. For rich women, feminism has been terrific. For poor women, it might as well never have happened. Maybe this is inevitable. Money can buy an awful lot of revolutionary solidarity. Fortunately, I don't think perverts are in any danger of taking the king's shilling any time soon. Paedophilia is much too important to our current cultural configuration to be bought out with a few parades and musical comedies like the gays were. The ability of capitalism to buy the LGBT movement revealed just how little homos matter in the bigger scheme of things. But we're much more important than that. After all, we must be pretty fucking dangerous, or else why would they put so much energy into squashing us? |