Crab Bucket

My niece posted a link to a facebook rant, reacting in hostile way to the recent events in LGTBQ(.....) history: Darkmatter - This whole "Trans rights is the new priority" fiasco...

I pass on as an excellent example of 'crab bucket' behavior.


In case you are wondering, it is the behavior of crabs in an open bucket.  If one crab tries to get out, the others will pull it down.


That's very useful if you are selling crabs.  They can be kept in open buckets.


They also don't have to be fed.  A saves to the person who actually owns the bucket.

I have noticed this before, particularly in association with identity politics, and amongst 'progressives'.

It's a tribal attitude -- what might be called "amoral familism" (see The Moral Basis of a Backward Society -- Edward Banfield).

It implies a hierarchy of success of:

1. I win, you lose
2. We both lose
3. We both win.

It makes me somewhat home sick for my alma mater/pater.

From Darkmatter:

This
whole "Trans rights is the new priority" fiasco needs to stop. This
framing of the trans struggle as a "new" priority absolves Gay INC of
its complicity in literally stealing from us, pathologizing us, harming
us and erasing us. Trans people have been here lying under your bus
forever. We were actually the old struggle of this movement -- we just
got kicked out of it.

Let's get a few things straight:

1. The separation of "gay" from "trans" and "sexuality" from "gender
identity" has a political history. This distinction was a conscious
strategy to make the gay movement more palatable to straight cis white
middle class society.

2. "Love" became separated from "Gender"
because Gay INC knew that a politics of love would be much more
palatable than a politics of gender. "Love" allowed gay activists to
say, "We're just like you!" instead of "We look different from you."
Trans become the repository for difference, for otherness, for
transgression.

3. In order for "homosexuality" to become
de-pathologized, gender nonconformity had to become re-pathologized.
Gayness had to distinguish itself from trans: "We are not freaks like
them." The modern gay subject only emerged in distinguishing him/herself
from gender nonconformity.

4. The history of the gay movement
is a history of (re)producing the gender binary and gender conformity.
It is a history of institutionalized transphobia. The gay movement is
foundationally trans violence. It would not exist without trans
violence.

5. Now transphobia is discussed with no history or
origin story. It's only discussed as individual episodes of harm and not
a structure of violence. This de-historicization of trans violence
means that individual trans people are blamed for both their violence
and their outrage. People ask, "Why are you so angry?" instead of, "How
am I complicit in your oppression?"

6. There is no gay celebration without trans violence. Love won because gender didn't.