When one draws a convenient analogy between racial and gender discrimination, two baffling questions emerge:
1. Why does colour-blindness to race and ethnicity seem easy to espouse, while gender neutrality remains inconceivable to most people?
2. If transgenderism is tolerated because gender identity is whatever one purports it to be, why can’t I change my race to, say, Korean?
Illustration by Douglas Hale
The former question is a genuine impasse, characterised not only by the perceived necessity of sexual differences but also the trade-off in the expression of individual identities. On the other hand, the latter is often weaponised as a derisive affront on the fragility of identity politics – defined as the political approach wherein a political agenda promoted pivots around the narrative of oppression of groups whose essence is based on gender, racial, religious, class, socio-economic background etc.
Thus it seems problematic to compare across forms of alienation and subordination, yet such reactionary identification, rooted in Hegelian master-slave dialectics, is too tempting to forego in the absence of a better linguistic apparatus to describe the exertion of power and control by the privileged majority on those marginalised. There lies the grey area on which this article aims to shed light. An alternative to the traditional identitarian mode of thinking can be found in the Deleuzoguattarian posthumanist theoretical framework: schizoanalysis over psychoanalysis, collective over personal, non-essentialism over identity politics.
1. Constructing Race and Gender
On first impression, race and gender both appear to be parts of one’s identity, hence carrying equal weightage. The default mode of thinking is that race is constituted by one’s innate biological traits, so is one’s sex. In recent times, gender is recognised as a social and cultural product, which can differ from one’s sex, yet for centuries people have been accustomed to viewing both sex and gender through binary binoculars, thus invalidating the experiences of intersex, transsexual and transgender persons. A review of the definitions of race, sex and gender would require rethinking the formation of the self as a concept situated in a historical dimension.
According to Claire Colebrook, the difference between gender and racial inequality can be encapsulated as follows: the former is marked by ‘exclusive disjunction’, while the latter by ‘segregative conjunction’. Put simply, having a gender is seen as essential to one’s being – one must be either male or female. Such stratification precedes any conceivable social interaction, dating from your birth certificate. By contrast, race is “the effect of imagining a common humanity within which there are differences or identifying markers”. The emergence of the concept of humankind requires the suppression of these differences. Hence when activists fight for “Black Lives Matter”, countermovements chant “All Lives Matter” in response, aiming to subsume one race under the humanity umbrella and erase the perception of discrimination. As such, subordination in the cases of gender and racial inequality relies on these distinct oppressive mechanisms.
Both race and gender are concepts that emerged from histories of oppression, rather than merely resulting in those. In Anti-Oedipus, French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari defied Freudian psychoanalysis, in which the Oedipal complex compels one to absorb power and authority by aligning with the father, instead suggesting that the ‘father figure’ is formed by a long history of plunder, kleptocracy and despotism, which produced authority through oppression of ‘the other sex’. On the other hand, the history of race presumes global humanity of fundamentally raceless subjects. Identities of the racial minorities are seen as a negation of this raceless humanity, which has been cemented in the image of the privileged group. Evidently, the kind of self-censorship and abstinence one often exercises when it comes to racial issues is a response to the reminder that we are one people. Race is thus as much a product of colonial construct as it is an aggregate of biological traits. The root cause of gender and racial inequality is the overlapping history of colonisation, capitalism and patriarchy, yet the development of their oppressive mechanisms took different courses: alienation through the division into gender binary for the former, and the signification of negating humanity for the latter. ‘Exclusive disjunction’ versus ‘Segregative conjunction’.
Therefore, it is problematic to compare the two battles fought over so different invisible forces behind the seemingly homogeneous manifestation in discrimination and mistreatment. In abstract terms, the solution proposed for gender inequality would be the dissolution of the hard-wired gender binary disjunction, and for racial inequality, a better understanding the current racially stratified society and acknowledgement of systemic discrimination.
Yet a question is left open for debate: Shall LGBTQ+ and racial minority activists evolve away from reactionary identity politics to enact revolutionary and systemic changes?
2. At the Crossroad
I have argued for the discrepancy between racial and gender inequality, which results in the implausibility of comparing the two. Does that mean advocates for various movements should never shake hands and form alliances? Well, no.
Parallel to the analysis method above is the intersectional approach, which studies how all these identities interrelate. The theory of intersectionality, first conceptualised by American lawyer Kimberle Crenshaw, holds that the combination multiple aspects of one’s identities, such as gender, sex, race, nationality, class, religion, disability and physical attributes, can engender profoundly unique modes of discrimination as well as privileges. For example, Crenshaw observed that in the American legal system, which only dealt with mistreatment on the basis of race or gender, the experiences of Black women were lumped together with those of privileged white women, or better-off men of colour. As a result, Black women had no means to express their unique struggle against evident discrimination in the existing system of justice. Thus Crenshaw proposed the creation of hyper-specific categories to reflect that nuances lost in the oversimplified stratification apparatus, in crude inexpressive data of social injustice.
If the intersectional approach creates more identity categories to grant them a voice and recognition, is this not merely identity politics all over again? Yes, we must admit, but it is a kind of identity politics with hyper-specificity that reflects more nuances than any singular movements with an identitarian objective. Perhaps some Deleuzoguattarian thinkers would say that the intersectional perspective is still reactionary and therefore preserves the system that inherently disadvantages ‘weaker’ groups in the society. Nonetheless, taking into consideration the relationship between multiple aspects of one’s social and political identities allows us to find an immediate practical solution to the common experience of discrimination that members of these hyper-specific groups share, thus enshrining the protection of their rights in legislative systems.
Furthermore, what an intersectional perspective can reveal about the seemingly superior multicultural approach is rather striking. In the UK, multiculturalism meant that communal autonomy of religious and cultural groups sometimes overrides the need to protect individuals within those communities. Among other issues, the problem of domestic violence and abuse against minority women is underpoliced, hence jeopardising instead of uplifting the so-called beneficiaries of multiculturalism. In Singapore, multiculturalism is seen as more accommodating than the assimilationist approach in countries like France, where racial and religious identities are suppressed. However, the reality of minority experiences in Singapore that underlies the image of positive outcomes should be extensively examined and made visible.
3. Marching forward
Rethinking race and gender and their relationship has significant implications in the Singapore context, where the complexity and fluidity of racial identity on top of a supraethnic nationality makes the discussion on race hypersensitive, while the preservation of cultural and religious values renders sex and gender taboos. On the bright side, many youth movements have emerged to advocate for public awareness of social issues and equality in manifold spheres. It is crucial that future leaders – those who aspire to enact social changes – are wary of where identity politics reproduces inequality by sustaining a flawed thinking system, a Hegelian cul-de-sac.
Written by Tran Vu Phuong Uyen (21A15)
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