I’m sorry Amber Lisa i should have read the earlier comments in the discussion thread. It was not my intention to derail a particular conversation around reproductive rights.

Now you’ve totally derailed the conversation about reproductive health. Oh that’s so clever.

My main point as always, is around that which we are identified as. Am I a human before I’m a person and therefore before being a man and heterosexual and brown haired and hazel eyed.

There’s a very real possibility, if you’re under a certain age, that your existence might have not been. This is the thing that anyone advocating for female reproductive rights, wind up having to conflate with health in order to justify removal of life in order to maintain life.

So when you toss the baby out with the bath water you have to take ownership (responsibility) of all of it. Think about the world without Amber Lisa’s voice here on Medium. Could you fight the good fight for what you believe if there is no you. This is as far down that rabbit hole as I’m willing to go.

I would like to address, or expound upon the reason for my entering this conversation. My entry was seeing your response to Ryder Spearmann and my reading his comment which lead to your response. I was completely unaware of the previous elements of conversation prior. As you know sometimes these conversations go on for days with dozens of people each offering multiple responses. So onto the rest of your response which will shed light on the reason for my entry into this conversation.

You don’t HAVE to be, but you pretty much should be because Pubs are typically only concerned about what affects white men. Now sure you can delude yourself, pretend this is not the case, whatever…it is what it is.

Here it is you who is pretending. You delude yourself into buying into a racist narrative that only white men can be Republicans. Come on , seriously. Do you ever even listen to yourself. You follow that with this:

Now, let’s flip it. What is the Dem identity? It’s Everyone else. And since there are sooooooooo many different identities vying for attention under that tent, since it’s not the homogeneous boring white male only “identity politics” the right claims that the left practices “identity politics.”

Seriously, you think the Democrats speak for everyone else? HaHaHaHa…oh stop my sides are going to split.

This is the entire bait and switch of the Democrats since at least FDR. Trying to be all things to all people is a fools errand. FDR prolonged the Great Depression by playing the economic version of identity politics by promising farmer relief by implementing price guarantees while simultaneously promising factory workers price controls and wage guarantees. He literally made things worse for everyone by trying to please everybody.

The left supposedly caters to all the various and fractured pieces of its constituency. (It really doesn’t.)

So I see that you do understand that the Democrats don’t and probably never really did cater to all those various constituencies. How could they. Ultimately, they don’t really care, at all, about any of the things they claim to. They only care about their political ambitions and whatever offers them the most expedient avenue to power.

It baffles me how you assume that one party is of by and for only one group and the other is for everybody else. How then do you explain the roughly 50/50 split in the political leanings of America. Neither the population nor the demographics, or even the geographical divide, support your conclusion.

But in order to stop them from even attempting to try, the rights rhetorical trick is to complain about “identity politics” in order to stop people on the left from talking about things that are important to them.

No. The only trick is believing that single issue items will get you the fairness and equality you seem to crave. With identity politics for one to win someone else has to lose. This is the fact you desperately try and avoid. See the above economic example. What’s worse is that everyone loses more than anyone gains. Meanwhile cronies and wonks get fatter as the government does their bidding while distracting you with shameful promises that are never kept about what they’re going to do for you. For your identity. Until someone else’s identity takes precedence and your identity issue is trampled under.

When you are talking about removing identity from politics, you are talking about an idea or concept that does not exist.

I’m not talking about removing identity but about including all of your personhood. There’s no way to remove your womanhood from your personhood, so why do you try to? Do you not understand that you are greater than the sum of your parts.

Speaking of parts, how would you like for someone, say a white man, to look at you only as a physical object. To see you as only someone to be used for a sexual conquest. Someone who ignores your personality, your brains, your tastes, your other desires (outside of sex),your priorities, exc. How is that behavior any different than you looking at yourself as a woman first. All while you ignore all those other parts of you personage. Your identity politics is no different than someone else objectifying you. The only difference is you’re doing it to yourself as opposed to letting someone else do it. I know damn sure you wouldn’t allow that from someone else, yet…

No one, least of all me, is trying to take away your womanhood or femininity. Or to condemn you for justly fighting for your rights. Only how about your entire personal rights?

Please also realize that you’re the the one who’s upset here. The one who’s angry. I suspect that that is part and parcel of what comes with slicing and dicing yourself onto the cause of the day. Or hour. Or minute. Since it seems there are so many different parts to feel intersectionalised over.

Identity IS politics.

Sorry, but no. The personal is not political. That’s merely the largest lie told. Nothing in life has to be political. Only if you make it so.