In the Atlantic, Mass Deaths Become Fodder to Attack Intersectionality
Helen Lewis and others are cheapening the deaths of innocents by making them about pre-existing culture war gripes.
by Evan Urquhart
The world has been shocked by horrific attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas fighters that began Saturday, October 7, as well as by a brutal Israeli response that has included cutting off food, water, and power to over two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza and demanding the total evacuation of civilians from an area including the main hospital in 24 hrs.
For those without a direct connection to the conflict, however, the grief, horror, anger, and fear for innocents caught in the conflict has not seemed to slow the production of takes, specifically reactions to the conflict that fold in the author’s previous opinions, however loosely connected to the events they might be. On Twitter, Yasha Mounk connected these events to identity politics and the excesses of the left, and of course to hawking his book. In a speech at UVA by Abigail Shrier on October 11, Israeli deaths were used as an example of a real threat, to belittle the idea that transgender people in the U. S. are under threat from the right. “After the massacre of Jews in Israel it is unseemly to pretend anyone is in danger from hearing an idea they don’t agree with,” Shrier said, in response to a question from an audience member about elevated suicide rates among trans youth who are not affirmed by their parents.
In the Atlantic, Helen Lewis responded to the tragedy by highlighting a handful of troubling responses in the immediate aftermath by Americans associated with the political left. (As Lewis herself noted, many of the posts and statements had already been removed and/or walked back by the time she published her response.) This response to responses she found distasteful formed the basis for an essay on what Lewis views as the difficulties of intersectionality when it is applied in a simplistic or overbroad way, allowing Lewis to work in some digs at the transgender community as she went. This, again, constituted her response to mass civilian casualties in Israel, one which castigated people on the left for not treating the lives if Israelis respectfully enough.
screenshot from the Atlantic
When Lewis says, “Got that? A politician with an essentialist view of womanhood is complicit in the deaths of innocents, but a terrorist indiscriminately murdering people at a music festival must be understood in context,” her underlying claim is that activists who ask politicians to consider the effects of their policies on the lives of trans people are behaving frivolously, that harm to trans people is perhaps nonexistent, or at the very least such harm pales in comparison to the violence perpetrated by terrorists. She’s saying such activists have their priorities skewed.
Such claims of frivolity and misplaced priorities are quite rich in the context of an essay responding to the mass murder of civilians by taking potshots at intersectionality and trans rights. Lewis wants it both ways: She wants the concerns of trans activists to be seen as trivial, unserious, and easily dismissed… but later she acts as if her concerns over advantages trans women might retain in sports competition after medical transition belong in an essay about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, which would imply that they should be taken very seriously indeed. [insert Lewis1]
screenshot from the Atlantic
It is shameful of Mounk, Shrier, Lewis, and others, to have festooned their pre-existing gripes with intersectionality, wokeness, trans activism, or the undifferentiated left with the dead bodies of Israeli civilians. The charge that some people on the left reacted too hastily and shallowly to the initial Hamas attack is undermined by right and “center” pundits who hastily and shallowly work to make these tragedies part of the narratives they shill every day.
Over a thousand innocent Israelis are reported to have died last weekend in the attacks by Hamas. Thousands of innocent Palestinians are already reported to have died in the Israeli response, and millions more Palestinian lives hang in the balance as Israel responds with plans to ethnically cleanse the area where they live. By making this moment about culture war griping, some mainstream pundits are showing how inadequate they are for a moment like this. You cannot gravely focus your attention on mourning families of Israelis while taking potshots at wokeness or trans people in sports. You cannot lift your voice against the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza while complaining that intersectionality has gone to far. If this is a serious moment, then let us all be serious, and let the babblings of unserious people be treated as the self-serving distraction it is now and has always been.