Nobody is safe from identity politics, even its own allies

THE Left once focused their rage on the Right, but thanks to identity politics there’s now plenty of potential victims in their own ranks, writes Caroline Marcus.

Mark Ruffalo found himself on the wrong side of identity politics when he cast a non-trans actor to play a trans woman in his movie Anything. (Pic: Larry Busacca/Getty)

FRENCH essayist Jacques Mallet du Pan once observed that the Revolution devours its children.

Those words hold as much truth some 200 years later, with identity politics devotees thinking nothing of hungrily wolfing down their own.

Exhibit A: Mia Freedman versus black, queer feminist and fat activist Roxane Gay.

Freedman was once lauded as one of Australia’s most high-profile feminists.

But she is now Feminism’s Public Enemy Number One, finding out the hard way that when you kneel so far at the altar of identity politics, you’ll eventually fall over, much like her idol Hillary Clinton.

On the surface, Freedman’s great crime was to openly discuss with her audience the physical challenges of an author who is “super morbidly obese” (yes, that’s the medical term, lest I too am accused of “fat shaming”), an author who had appeared on her podcast to promote her new memoir that deals, in part, with, um, the physical challenges of being super morbidly obese.

That Gay herself appeared only too happy to discuss these struggles during the interview, including going into detail about having to buy two aeroplane tickets (before she could afford to fly first class) and the importance of sturdy chairs seems lost on Freedman’s fiercest detractors.

Freedman, a huge Gay fan who at one point even thanks her guest “just for being”, took great pains to avoid offending her guest, even asking her what would offend her so she can avoid asking it.

(A side note: imagine if journalists afforded every interview subject the luxury of avoiding questions they find “offensive”? The newspapers would be nothing but press releases.)

Roxane Gay. (Pic: Jay Grabiec)

Mia Freedman. (Pic: John Fotiadis)

In any case, Gay said she didn’t know what would offend her, but it turns out Freedman would find out soon enough.

In her spoken and written introduction to the podcast, Freedman decided to reveal some of the details that went into planning Gay’s visit to Mamamia to record the podcast, including the many questions from Gay’s team in the lead-up — “how many steps were there from the kerb to the end of the building?”, “how big was the lift and was there a goods lift?”

Freedman said these concerns “broke her heart and opened her eyes” about the way fat people struggle to fit into the world, and she didn’t think Gay would mind her revealing them because that was the point of her book.

Oh, how wrong she was.

Gay tweeted, “it was a shit show. I can walk a f***ing mile.” A monumental social media pile-on ensued, with reams and reams of column inches around the world devoted to just how awful a human being Freedman is.

Whatever you think of Freedman’s decision to reveal these behind-the-scenes details, it’s clear she believed she was helping Gay’s cause.

But because Gay is considered a high priestess of “intersectional feminism”, a relatively new movement that aims to — as the UK Telegraph’s Ava Vidal puts it — highlight how traditional feminism is “overly white, middle class, cis-gendered [read: someone who identifies as the gender they were born] and able-bodied.”

Freedman is, of course, all of these things, through no fault of her own, and so must shut up.

There’s been a similar push in gay politics in the US, where in Philadelphia, the rainbow Pride flag has been altered to include the colours black and brown to be more representative of “people of colour” (POC) in the LGBTQI community.

The head of Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs, Amber Hikes, told CNN the “vast majority” of the new flag’s critics are gay white men who claim the existing flag already represents everyone.

“White people do not know what racism looks like because that’s the definition of racism,” Hikes says.

But where does this end? What about gay Jews? Or gay Muslims, who surely win in the discrimination stakes, given their sexuality would see them thrown off buildings in some Islamic countries?

Back in Australia, openly gay journalist Shannon Molloy learnt what it’s like not to be considered the “right” kind of gay simply by virtue of his employment at News Corp.

The entertainment reporter said he felt “bullied” into stepping down from his position on the board of the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby last month, following a vicious campaign by Melbourne gay rights activist Rodney Chiang-Cruise.

Meanwhile in Hollywood, progressive actor-turned-executive producer Mark Ruffalo was slammed by the transgender community for daring to cast a cis actor (read: a man) to act a transgender woman (read: a man who identifies a woman) in his latest movie, Anything.

The key word here being “act”.

But according to some in the trans community, only trans actors should be able to act as trans people.

Shh, no one tell them about The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Ruffalo responded: “To the Trans community, I hear you. It’s wrenching to see you in this pain… we are all learning.”

Yes, learning that no matter how hard you try to appease the identity politics crowd, you’ll still likely end up on their dinner plate.

Caroline Marcus is a journalist with Sky News

@carolinemarcus