Danger of Identitarian Deference: After its Cause Wins, Does it Reverse its Position?

Having a rule of identitarian deference or other standard of identity politics under which some people's view is given more weight than others in accordance with who has the least power is dangerous because, once the disadvantaged cause in question that righteous/virtuous people are fighting for and for the purpose of fighting for which identitarian deference is established/practiced gains support and power and begins to win and becomes dominant, then it wouldn't lose the benefit vantage of identity, and opposition what in fact. 

In concrete terms, for example, Emma Sulkowicz has more power in some ways than Paul Nungesser; after all, one was supported by a multitude including elected officials and the other was not. Similarly, racial minorities have more social power and white supremacists and the KKK do at this time in this country. 

Should the arguments between these camps then really be settled by, or addressed by giving any (argumentative/discursive) benefit/advantage to, privileging the side with less power?

Identitarian Deference in Abortion Rights Rhetoric

I just realized another long-standing example of "identitarian deference" that I never noticed/recognized before:

"it you don't have a uterus, you do not get a vote"

"if you're not a woman, you don't get an opinion on this issue"

This is a very long-standing, from as far back as I can remember following politics, argument/piece of rhetoric/retort used by pro-choice women (and even some men) on the left to argue against pro-life men.

When in the past I've been thinking about how best to argue against some of these more risky/destructive tendencies, I've tried to recall previous examples of identity politics and identitarian deference ad hominems to show how the approach is fallacious; I especially tried to show them examples of conservative ad hominem fallacies that they might have decried as fallacious at the time and still would have the partisan amenability to that judgment.
But I was also trying to identity past examples of erroneous identity politics and identitarian deference in general, including on the left, in order in part to discover whether recent developments, in identity politics and PC--especially on campus, really represent a change on the political scene, whether there really was something new.
Even when I was recently casting about for specific identifiable examples of earlier lefty identitarianism, I didn't think of this.  Could mean nothing, but could be because of how deep this was engrained and normalized...

***

Incidentally, the current line on gender identity and trans rights would invalidate/preclude this rule anyway, since men and women can no longer be assumed to have penises and vaginas, respectively, and in general that there is no external way to determine whether they have a uterus or not--and asking them is rude and verifying is assault and insult.  

Diversity, the Marketplace of Ideas, and Identity Politics

The value of diversity is in enhancing the marketplace of ideas and proliferating new content in it, not merely new types of participants. Under this interpretation of the value of diversity, ideological diversity is obviously just as desirable as ethnic diversity, or even more so.

This (that the value of diversity is in the new content that it includes/makes accessible) means that while traditionally/historically/largely excluded/marginalized/oppressed peoples' views should be made sure to be included, decisions on still being made on the merits of the arguments raised, including their's, and their views should not automatically be deferred to.

Reasonable Person Statutes and Identitarian Deference

One example of identitarian deference already established and recognized in the law--rightly, in my opinion--is the clarification to "reasonable person" statutes, like those requiring that in order for a genuine belief in the necessity of a violent act to defend oneself from imminent physical harm to rightly claim 'perfect self-defense' and fully exonerate one from criminal charges, that the standard of "reasonableness" must take into account the totality of the defendant's circumstances.

In People v Humphrey, the CA Supreme Court found that expert testimony concerning the effects of battered woman syndrome are relevant, and thus admissible, to determining whether the belief in the necessity of violent self-defense was objectively reasonable because the standard is defined as "what a reasonable person would do in her situation", i.e. as a long-term victim of battering and suffering of battered woman syndrome.

Hence there is an identitarian deference here, and assertion of an unbridgeable gap in the understandings of those who have been battered women and those who have not.

Liberal Universalism or Identity Politics: Empty the Categories of All Social Significance or Not?

Imagine if we have gender-neutral policy, based on a commitment to classical/political liberalism with its universalism that seeks to divorce the significance of socially-arbitrary/irrelevant social categories, and thus do not use the concept of gender in any legislation or regulation/policy, and don’t acknowledge/look at/notice/document gender when researching outcomes and policy problems and solutions.  Thus, when we looked at income distribution and income inequality, to investigate its legitimacy/whether its ok or not/how it’s caused/etc., we would simply see women’s incomes alongside men’s/the rest of the population’s/the general population’s, and would not be able to see/recognize their disparity as a class, as something they experience for similar reasons and in a common way.  Thus, we wouldn’t be able to analyze it for its nature, justification/legitimacy, its causes and solutions.

—So this looks like my ending thought about gender critical feminism and the abolition of gender: 

-we can reject and end the use and maintenance of the categories/social classes of gender…RRC may want to abolish gender as a social class, abolish all social classes based on biology/sex, but she is sure to create the category again to discuss the material problems that all vagina-having people share. 

-we may try to implement Liberal Universalism all the way and fully empty the arbitrary/morally-irrelevant categories of people of all social significance//practical implications/significance, but that will blind us to/can potentially blind us to possible ways that people can be oppressed for their identities.  

(((**This sounds like the question that Butler was addressing in Gender Trouble: can you do feminism without a concept of woman?  If the concept is the means of oppression, can you abolish it without losing the ability to recognize and analyze the systemic oppression that affects all similar people in the same way because of the same causes?** [http://lauragonzalez.com/TC/BUTLER_gender_trouble.pdf])))

—In this way, emptying these arbitrary categories of social signifiance/practicel implications is a CAP—which is just what Noah Smith observed before of being colorblind in action/treatment/policy.

Either we can be non-(gender-neutral/colorblind) and allow for and accept/tolerate racially unequal outcomes that result from certain contingent facts 

One option is we can be (gender-neutral/colorblind) and allow for and accept/tolerate racially unequal outcomes that result from certain contingent facts operating within our neutral system.  

The other option is we can recognize these empirical facts that disadvantage certain people (physical differences like in terms of reproductive role for the subjection of women; psychological facts with some socialized, but at least some innate; for example, categorization, likeness and in-/-outgroup dynamics, bias, cross-race identification, etc.) and realize that they would result under a regime of gender-neutral/colorblind policy in an unjust outcome.

A large class of people with a common characteristic, an arbitrary, morally-irrelevant fact about their identity that they did not choose and do not control, are experiencing life outcomes worse than they otherwise would/could be through no fault of their own.

Even if it’s not dependent solely on the facially neutral system, but in fact requires also the other facts—and in fact would not exist under the same (facially) neutral system if these empirical facts were otherwise—once you know about the outcome(s) and why and accept it, you are responsible for the outcome yourself.    

So, instead of the neutral system, you craft one recognizing and taking into account those empirical facts, and craft it to avoid those potential injustices.  The outcome is more just.

But you have also crafted policy that presupposes and depends on certain empirical facts, including people being racist.  

(This is like what XXX argued to me when I suggested that maybe a “punch up, not down” rule could account for the rationality/reasonableness/plausibility of/coherence of/internal inconsistency of/consistency of a certain social phenomenon he accused of hypocrisy: adopting this rule would require defining which groups are up and which are down, which literally requires defining a hierarchy of classes).

     ——

But if I’m right here in identifying the value of identity politics, there is no identitarian deference called for.

Identitarian Deference

The problem with identitarian deference is that there is diversity (of thought or opinion) in every community.  So how can a, say, straight white man advocate for abortion rights or affirmative action or gay marriage in the face of a woman or ethnic minority or gay person (respectively) who opposes these policies?

The supporter of identitarian deference may, rightly in many or most of these cases, point out that such positions are held by the minority in these communities. 

But of course public opinion of these communities, like public opinion in general, can only be known through public polling data that is equally-accessible universally.  So this undermines the idea of identitarian deference anyway.