It seems sometimes that with each year of further social progression, there is somehow more to complain about than there was the year prior. I don’t believe that I’m the only one who has noticed this, and the reason behind it is actually fairly simple. We’ve piled so many issues together in solidarity, that the heart of the original message gets diluted.
International women’s day has just passed and with it there have been a number of conversations circulating the internet regarding women’s equality. This was also the day of the Irish referendum, in which Irish citizens would be voting on a constitutional change that no one seriously cared about concerning women’s roles in society and the household. Naturally, it has led to a culturally tense environment in Ireland. This perfect storm of uplifting positivity coupled with seemingly endless outrage can feel exhausting at times.
Unfortunately, gone are the days when an activist event could be intended to only represent a single issue. It seems that anywhere you see a woman’s protest regarding a specific issue, the protest ends up resembling a messy collective of unrelated grievances. Take a walk down the streets of Dublin and you’ll see posters of women’s movements listing out their goals. To end racism, abolish capitalism, champion the LGBTQ+ cause. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single thing actually concerning women on a women’s movement poster. This is because of a new precedent that’s been set in recent years in which you must be an ally to all other causes if you want to partake in any sort of progressive activism at all.
This isn’t to say that women’s activist movements are silly. They have their place in society and can be very important to voice issues that may otherwise go under the radar. My issue is that they have been corrupted. Whether by blind compassion or subtextual bullying, women seem to have lost their ability to have activism only centered around them. This is not exclusively women’s movement’s either. LGBTQ+ movements have recently felt the need to carry signs reading “Gays for Palestine!”. As if that wasn’t the LGBTQ+ equivalent of saying “Chickens for KFC!”.
Activist movements should be catered towards the group with the grievance. That is where the power of the Civil Rights movement came from as well as the Women’s Suffrage movement in the United States. They focused in on a specific set of demands and hyper-fixated on them until there was a public call for change. However, over the last few years the United States has shifted the format of protesting to a much more intersectional approach. Everyone needs to be advocating for everyone else and their granny and their granny’s dog.
I’m not saying you can’t have your protests. Part of a free society is being allowed to scream to the high heavens all the ways you feel you’ve been wronged. I’m saying this is going about it in all the wrong ways. What exactly does feminism have to do with BLM? This new-age intersectional approach to activism serves only one purpose: to tether a very specific issue to an infinite amount of cultural concerns. Activism isn’t activism if you’re advocating for every single grievance in human history. Women have their grievances, whether you agree with them or not, but they shouldn’t be leached upon by other groups looking for attention or validation simply because they attached themselves to an issue.
The war going on between Israel and Palestine has been difficult to watch, tragic, and hard to decipher. But when you see people marching in pro-Palestine marches with signs saying that the “LGBTQ community supports a free Palestine”, you instantly feel as though you’re being forced into another issue. If you’re worried about babies being bombed in Gaza, you shouldn’t simultaneously be bombarded about how much you support the gay community. Both of these things can be true, both can hold merit, but why are we stacking one on top of the other? In my view, it is a massive misstep in modern activism.
What made Martin Luther King Jr. so rhetorically talented was that he knew exactly the issue he wanted to address: black inequality in the United States. He wasn’t preaching the strife of African children or sea turtles’ infinite struggle with plastic straws. After seeing the way that women’s issues were protested for in Ireland, it seems that there needs to be a massive change in the way that activist issues are addressed. By adding on seventeen layers of problems, you dilute the original message; the one people are willing to passionately march in the streets for. Women’s day should be for women, BLM marches should be just that, and if I see another gay person marching for Palestine, I may just lose my mind.
Cannon Gerber is an opinion writer living in Ireland
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Thoughtful article. At the risk of boring some readers with this line of thinking (once again….), the sort of “omni-activism” identified in this article has, as its root cause in many cases, a Marxist viewpoint on the part of the activists concerned. You or I may be able to separate out various issues or various perceived failings in contemporary society but, for the foregoing activists, there’s a sort of common cause for why so many things are the way they are: the Capitalist bourgeoisie. It seems surprising that so many well heeled activists have “bought the idea” that only a fundamental re-ordering of things in the world (and remember the “Capitalist sickness” must be rooted out everywhere if “Nirvana” is to be achieved) will address various societal ills, real or imagined. So – in the eyes of these activists – it’s actually “logical” to be battling on all fronts and to make connections with, seemingly, disparate issues such as the lot of people of same sex attraction and the plight of the Palestinians. Whilst I won’t attribute to her the level of idiocy that things seem to have assumed in the past decade or so, Sally Rooney – Irish novelist – has professed to be a Marxist and one can readily assume many activists take inspiration from that fact and, taking account of the popularity of her novels, consider it to be a “self evident truth” that all of us can only be equal if the “chains of Capitalism are sundered”, private property abolished, etc., etc., etc. !!!!
I’m still waiting for my cheque from Sally Rooney with my share of her publishing rights.
Actually – though everyone’s tax affairs are 99.9 % private – Sally Rooney is quite possibly availing herself of the “artists’ tax exemption” – why wouldn’t she ? Charlie Haughey – il Duce – introduced that exemption. For all his venality, Haughey was – like many of his generation – “clued in” that society’s good came from private investment/risk taking – it would be well for those who avail themselves of the “artists’ tax exemption” to remember who introduced it – a died-in-the wool capitalist – with a penchant for charvet shirts but also a disposition for realizing that we can’t all be exposed to the rigours of the free market and that a “helping hand” – such as the free travel for the elderly – is something the State can responsibly provide for.
The can only afford to be Marxist in a capitalist society. Send them to Cuba and they would starve. Their luxury beliefs can only survive so long as society works and they are on the payroll of an NGO. In any other situation they are Fooked.
If they didn’t all support each other’s causes the protest marches would be very, very small indeed. Not that they disrupt too much traffic as it is.
Intersectionality is the word the woke ideologues love to use. It was a virulent critique of the Queer movement because it was argued, the said movement lacked a class and race lens. Judith Butler the doyen of trans ideology fell foul of the same critique for the gender performative framework. We can’t exclude because everything hinges on inclusion. Hence intersectionality. And by definition it’s anti capitalist. It’s so absurd only an intellectual could believe it. Devoid of common sense. Which is not surprising as common sense isn’t that common. However Judith Butlers philosophy is particularly toxic. I walked away from Butlers books feeling that the author, much like the Ryan Gosling character, Daniel Balint in the film The Believer’ had internalised an external hatred which in turn produced what can only be described as a thorough going misogynistic/misanthropic world view. The desire is to erase the categories of biological sex is an utterly absurd notion. Sadly we have to live with this absurdity and defend the scientific reality that our chromosomes are immutable.
“I was happy at the back of the bus” – Uncle Ruckus
The reason they support more than one cause is because they are all woke, liberal, leftie causes, often belonging to a fringe culture. The aim is to subvert traditional society and impose their version of the truth. Their tentacles reach into all levels of society through their govt funded NGOs. Their causes are often bigotry in disguise because they are opposed to religion and hate discipline. The radical feminists subvert religion by promoting promiscuity, labelled as freedom, or they campaign for lesbians to be ordained as priests or bishops. The LGBT cult is another, backed by several NGOs. Then there is the indoctrination of children into corrupt sexuality, all promoted by the state and the influence of the NGOs. They are all intertwined and interconnected, all being woke. Immigration is the cause most detrimental to our people and their country. This is a plantation, not immigration, to turn the Irish black. The NGOs are composed of extremists who are succeeding pretty well in imposing their delusions on mainstream society.
Very interesting post on X around a school in lusk
https://x.com/jklunden/status/1770610524230721650?s=46
Its. Its importance. Sorry, grammar and punctuation police are awful. Couldn’t help myself.
I wouldn’t think ‘nobody seriously cared about’ is an accurate description of the proposed change to the referendum. Everybody I spoke to and including myself very much cared about it. What did you base your opinion on? The pictures you’ve posted showing people objecting to gender ideology most definately belong in the protest and is not diluting it. It played a major role in our rejection of the changes to the constitution.