An exemplar of 21st century reactionary socialism

No, society didn't get a sex change, but some Marxists are transitioning in another sense.

Former socialist and eventual fascist Mussolini threshing wheat

Writing in their Communist Manifesto in the 1800s, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels warned against the “feudal socialists” who represented those parts of the aristocracy who saw the harmful symptoms of capitalist production. As they argued, the feudal socialists correctly identified some legitimately awful aspects of capitalism, but fundamentally misunderstood the causes of and solutions to the problems due to their mistaken theoretical paradigms, values, and ontologies:

In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.

The workers, luckily, are no fools, and can see through the aristocracy. They can grant the aristocracy its wit and cleverness while recognizing the delusional and archaic character of their thinking:

The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.

The reactionary socialists, which include not only the feudal socialists but the clerical ones too (as Marx explains, “the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism”), always represents the blind rejection of progress not exploitation, even if they end up expressing wariness with forms of capitalist exploitation.

Reactionary socialism continually re-emerged in various forms through the 1900s. In the Islamic world, there was the Arab and Islamic socialisms of Nasser and Gaddafi, respectively. The fascist movement also had is share of reactionary socialists too, like Strasser and Röhm (though Hitler made sure to liquidate them). Arguably, the Islamic Republic of Iran has some reactionay socialist influences too through Ali Shariati. Not all these forms of reactionary socialism were equivalently socialist or reactionary, but they all shared a tendency to frame opposition to capitalism in a way that rejects the cultural and material benefits of modern liberalism.

Today, we see a new form of it emerging as a reaction to the new cultural politics of the 21st century. It is rather different from its historical forms, being largely untethered to either an aristocratic class or a specific religious community. Often, reactionary socialists today claim to be “Marxists” of one sort or another. Yet it is always rooted on some sentimental attachment to aspects of our culture that can (at least in theory) be traced back to earlier epochs. Perhaps it rejects “gender ideology”, or any critique of masculinity. Perhaps it leans in to xenophobia and ethno-nationalism. Whatever, the case, it takes modern culture and change to be degenerate.

A recent case - “How Society Got a Sex Change”

One particular offender is Ashley Frawley’s recent Compact article “How Society got a Sex Change”. At its core, the article contains a clever conceit - society has de-gendered (or neutered) the abstract liberal subject, as it has gone from a “he” to a “they”. This is true in academic writing - if speaking of the abstract individual, instead of using the male pronoun, today one uses the “they” (though sometimes I still like to vascillate between he, she, and they, but perhaps that is just me). Yet Frawley’s analysis is intermingled with a broad and deeply reductive attack on transgender people, and really anyone who is gender-nonconforming.

Right off the bat, her article confronts us with two opposed events - the UK supreme court has been “reawakening to the reality of biological sex”, and the UN is presenting a curriculum in sub-Saharan Africa that challenges gender tropes. The first regards a UK supreme court ruling that, legally speaking, gender in the UK is dual and tied to birth. Regarding this UN curriculum, we are told that this curriculum that “gender norms—paradoxically—as both harmful and as a deeply held sense of self that must be respected” without any citation to the curriculum which elaborates on this (are they saying all gender norms are harmful, or only some? are they always harmful or only sometimes? It is not made clear at all).

From here on out, we can see many of the rhetorical tricksthat characterize reactionary socialist polemics in the 21st century:

The bold jump

As Dr Frawley argues of the UN document:

The only way to make sense of the commitment to this agenda is to realize that “gender identity at variance with biological sex” has become a master signifier for suspicion of the old ideal political subject of liberal democracy.

Here, we have a UN document which tells kids to question gender norms and their gender identity. The only explanation Frawley can provide is that these sub-saharan African children are being disabused of their liberal democratic subjectivity. Somehow, Frawley leaps from children being taught to question their gender norms to a conspiracy of sorts to attack the liberal subjet. This is not explained or elaborated on. Alternative explanations (like, the authors have a good faith belief that these children might be harmed by the imposition of gender norms through coercion or manipulation) are dismissed out at hand, because “the only way to make sense” of it is her explanation. We might think there are alternative explanations, but she tells us we are obviously wrong … they must not make sense. Why? Who knows, no argument is advanced.

The Strawman

At heart, the reactionary socialist of the 21st century must always build a giant, careening strawman of the progressive liberal who represents the change they loathe. Frawley cites Stiglitz’s critique of homo oeconomicus (for those who do not know, homo oeconomicus refers to the economic man who pursues his rational self interest in the marketplace. As Frawley notes, the homo oeconomicus is the foundational type of human being in the bourgeois economics, at once rational and self-interested, selling to meet the needs of others and buying to meet their own. Yet the occurrence of economic crisis shows otherwise - if we were all rational agents in the marketplace, there would be no crisis.

Frawley rejects this because … misanthropy, and misanthropy bad. In her account, if we reject the claim that human beings always rationally pursue their self-interest, then we must be affirming misanthropy. None of that follows. Can we not love a thing that sometimes acts irrationally? Can’t things act rationally by short-term standards and irrationally by long-term standards? Can’t things act rationally but out of other-interest instead of self-interest? All of these things are contrary to the homo oeconomicus, just as much as an unloveable and entirely irrational subject. Importantly, this is implicit in the very Stiglitz she quotes, as he clearly states that human beings are irrational at the level of systems, not their personal decision-making. This is a point that goes back to Karl Marx himself, as the whole theory of crisis is that a series of actions that are perfectly rational on the individual level are irrational in the grand scheme of things.

Thus, Frawley has, for the lack of a better term, irrationally projected a wholly undesirable trait (misanthropy) onto anyone who thinks the human subject is not entirely rational.

Frawley goes on to explain:

And so rationality must be kept at a safe distance from irrational man: in evidence-based policy, predictive models, and trained “expert consensus.” The more impersonal and opaque, the more “scientific,” the more we free ourselves from fundamental human frailty.

Yet who implements these policies and predictive models? Experts? And what are experts? Human subjects, who must be capable of reason. Perhaps they are not such minanthropes after all. Therefore, the obvious explanation is that thinkers like Stiglitz are capable of enough nuance to (a) love (instead of hate) human beings, (b) recognize human beings often act in a rational and self-interested manner, especially on the micro level of the individual, and (c) recognize they often they do not act in a rational and self-interested manner, especially on a systemic level.

The bad strawman vs the good strawman

The reactionary socialist of today loves the strawman, because the strawman becomes a target for all their personal vexations and irritations at the direction they think society is going. Social change is an infinitely complex phenomenon with numerous inputs, many intentional but many more unintentional. Yet if we can simply boil down that change to a simple narrative, it suddenly becomes easy to critique. We see that when Frawley takes on a purported hostility towards masculinity on the part of the “elite”:

“Problematic” men today still stubbornly cling to the myth of rationality. They believe in their own judgment; they selfishly demand more in the workplace. The working-class movements of the 19th century were a profoundly destabilizing force, and they were movements of “working men.” Masculinity comes to represent all that elite governance fears: populism, resistance, the refusal to comply. Once the bearer of liberal democracy, the old ideal of the citizen becomes the saboteur of our new “democracy” of managed compliance.

Note, there is a dual strawman here:

There is the “good” strawman of the masculine “problematic” man. Who is this “problematic” “rational” man we are talking about here? Andrew Tate, who thinks that laws against sex trafficing are imposed by the Matrix? Donald Trump, who thinks obvious photoshop images are real and soothes the country about price hikes by saying 12 year old girls can make do with 2 dolls instead of 30? Incels who spend their time cursing the names of Rachel Zegler and Bella Ramsey on the internet? Or is it Hasan Piker, the leftist streamer bro who spends 8 hours shouting at trolls on his twitch stream before heading to the gym? What “problematic” men do you mean here Ashley? Whoever she means, all we know is they’re supposed to be good despite being “problematic”.

There is the “bad” strawman of the “elite governance” which is afraid of populism, resistance, and a lack of compliance. No doubt the image here she is recalling is that of the bodies of technocratic experts, although this is vague (I’ll get back to that one). Yet clearly the framing here is loaded. They are all scared of the voice of the people, which makes them anti democratic, and they are soy boy beta cucks, sorry, critical of the masculine resistance to established policy.

Yet these two images are blatant caricatures. Often, the “problematic” man sees the lack of compliance by some as inherently blameworthy. The uncomplaint homeless, the uncompliant criminal suspect, the uncompliant protester, they are subjected to police violence for their lack of compliance and many “problematic” men will point to that as a sign that they had it coming. Often, the “governing elite” rests on the hyper-masculine, as in when it utilizs state violence in the form of a literal armed body of men. Who is, in practice, demanding complaince from these “problematic men”? It’s not some soy beta cuck - sorry, non-masculine “governing elite”, it’s a macho police officer. It turns out, often, the “governing elite” and the “problematic male” are often in agreement, and the first even hires the second to execute his will. This is true whether or not some of those same problematic males kick off their shoes after a hard days work policing and beating up protesters, snuggle up on the couch, and boil their blood on some spicy news about transgender teenagers using the bathroom of their choice.

Moreover, we get the ironic case here of a woman erasing the whole tradition of working class women organizing for their class. The worker’s movement was never just about working class men, it was always about men and women, black and white, ond and young together in solidarity with one another. There’s nothing inherently masculine or inherently feminine about standing up to economic power in an organized way. Yet the reactionary socialist is not interested in history as it was, but only history as it is felt after the fact, history as a kind of repository of images and tropes that produce warm fuzzy feelings but have at best a tenuous connection to reality.

Nor is the trans movement she is associating with this neuter-gender elite discourse inherently anti-masculine. The first transgender person I ever met was a transman, and he actively embraced masculinity. The non-binary, too, by definition are not just feminine but dabble in both femininity and masculinity.

By asserting these strawmen, Frawley is playing into naive and idiotic stereotypes we’ve all had pushed on us of the effete bureaucrat who took too many gender theory classes in university and the tough (white) working class man who is simply not understood or adequately appreciated by the bureaucrat. Both of these individuals surely exist, but the world is far more complex in practice. We know it is, but these archetypes stand out in our brain because of a host of deeply embedded cultural signifiers.

Who are the elites?

Running throughout the article is mistrust of “the elite”, a shadowy and inchoate body of people who seek to manipulate the masses according to their own wishes. Of course, every counter-hegemonic narrative has its body of elite figures it seeks to overturn, but what is the nature of this elite? For Robespierre, it is the ancient regime with its palaces and connections to the royals. For Karl Marx, it is the bourgeoisie, a specific class of people defined by their shared interests and relations to the means of production. For the free market libertarian, it is the state and their bureaucracy who seeks to pick winners and losers and redistribute wealth. For many late 20th century and early 21st century American socialists, it is the university-educated “professional managerial class”. For the antisemite, it is the Jewish people. Yet the 21st century reactionary socialist keeps this vague. Who is this elite? Is it all of these? None of these?

On the question of who, the reactionary socialist is always vague. Is it the bourgeoisie? It cannot be here, despite Frawley being a self-purported Marxist. Empirically speaking, huge swathes of the bourgeoisie oppose gender transitions and prefer patriarchy. Obviously, it depends on the factions of capitalists in questions (those who sell cakes to gender reveal parties obviously have no material interest in overturning gender norms). Is it the state and their bureaucracy? Maybe, but here too this doesn’t fit as the military is a part of the state and definitively adopts masculine ideals. Is it the professional-managerial class? This seems unlikely, as it is such a broad category that it includes soccer coaches, high school gym teachers, and the military officer corp (many of whom embody archaic masculine ideals). Or is it the Jews as the antisemite argues (or as the 21st century antisemite says, (((them)))?)? I seriously doubt Frawley is an antisemite, but perhaps unintentionally her vague object of critique lends itself to that tired interpretation.

Intellectual casuistry

Perhaps the most obvious and transparent intellectual error of the reactionary socialist is playing fast and loose with their own tradition. Frawley claims to be a Marxist of some variety, and one of the most fundamental claims in Marxism is that human nature is not entirely static. Rather, it is plastic, as human subjectivity is something which must be produced and reproduced both over the life of the individual and, in a more meta-sense, over generations.

Yet Frawley simply ignores this. Rather, she inverts this plasticity, and turns it into a kind of elite con. It is a tool to rip people from traditions deemed harmful by the “elite” and to reprogram them as some kind of docile populace. If subjectivity is malleable, then it can be molded into something flexible enough for the elite to shape like putty depending on their needs.

At its heart, Frawley nearly touches on a really fascinating problem at the heart of the Marxist tradition, which is just how plastic human nature is and whether that plasticity creates the opportunity for the bourgeoisie (or “the elites”) to create an entirely docile subject to rule over. Its one of the questions that troubled me when writing my dissertation, and one I never had the time to address adequately (yet, at least). Yet Frawley doesn’t engage with that question in any kind of interesting or serious way, rather she asserts that the kind of plastic gender-subjectivity must be a kind of psy-op:

Tradition and culture, from this perspective, are distorting forces that lead to poor choices and an inability to adapt. Transition signifies letting go of these old attachments. In this regard, transgenderism epitomizes a model of subjectivity prized by technocratic elites: malleable, untethered from tradition, and committed to an endless project of self-creation. Gender-identity literature emphasizes that “coming out” is not a one-time act but a lifelong process across ever-changing jobs, homes, and relationships, implying an ideal subject ever ready to adapt themselves to an ever-changing world. A fluid subject for a fluid world.

In other word, process metaphysics reinterpreted as a form of subtle totalitarianism. I imagine 2,600 years of Buddhists (and 250 years of Humeans) would be surprised to discover that the dynamic, process-based self is an invention of “the elite” of the 21st century. Heidegger would be shocked to learn that the idea of a Dasein whose temporality is “ecstatic” was actually imposed by the “they” he criticized (especially as a far-right figure himself). All these historical philososphers would say that this “ever-shifting” subject engaged in “lifelong processes” is just a description of human subjectivity, and it doesn’t seem like Frawley has any argument against this beyond “nuh-uh, you’re on the side of the ELITE!”

On the contrary, her argument is sophistic. One could just as easily say a technocratic elite would like a constant, predictable subject whose unchanging tendencies can be mechanistically incorporated into a grand elite plan. An ever-shifting subject is one who cannot be controlled in this view, not some static masculine subject. Yet like a good Protagorean, her goal seems to be to make the weaker the stronger, thus sharp rhetoric is to be desired whatever we take “the truth” to be.

“Woe is me, the language police won’t leave me alone!”

So many reactionary socialists rail against the fact that norms change, and that is bad in and of itself. This article is no exception. Of particular concern are shifting language norms. For the reactionary socialist, these shifting language norms are never the product of real people with legitimate feelings, fears, traumas, or whatever else. Rather, they are always the imposition of some powerful group:

Nor can tradition or common sense tell me how to understand and treat others: I must look now to new official guidelines for the correct language and rituals. And since these are always changing, I must be ever alert, ever malleable, ever willing to shift to new truths.

Yes, it is true that language norms shift. Yet this has always been the case. We can track this in the English language from Chaucer through Shakespeare through Dickens through to today. Most of these transitions never required some set of “official guidelines”, though they often became refleted in “official guidelines” at some point once incorporated in school curricula.

Often, these changes come from bottom on up. Black people demanded that others stop using the n-word to denigrate them, gay people demanded that others stop using the 6-letter-f-word to denigrate them, etc. New Amsterdam became New York and Turkey has requested we call their country “Türkiye”. Richards across the world have asked to be called “Dick” for some reason, meanwhile countless people who dislike their first name ask to be called by their middle name. Pluto has been reclassified as a dwarf planet (this, to be fair, really was an “elite” decision made by an assocation of astronomers). POTUS has declared the Gulf of Mexico a deadname (again, one actual elite decision). In rejecting the linguistic prescriptivism of the new, Frawley implicitly embraces the linguistic prescriptivism of the old. The Californian Chicano from a working-class background who calls himself “Chicanx” must be a part of the elite trying to impose language norms, simply in virtue of the fact that most Latin Americnas do not use the neuter “x”. No matter that he is a college freshman from an agricultural town and his parents are undocumented. He’s a part of “the global technocratic elite” somehow.

All these changes (with the possible exception of the first two) are, if not accepted by reactionary socialists, at least ignored. For some reason, it is the shifting terminology around gender specifically that produces such backlash. Why is that? My explanation would be some form of deep psychological sentimentalism, as the reactionary socialist is attracted to the old use of their language and is deeply irritated by prescriptive change. They are attached to the word “girl” meaning something specific, and the word “boy” meaning something specific, and they don’t want anyone, bet it some shadowy transnational elite or a transgender working class kid, telling them otherwise. They have been socialized to use terms this way, and their habits inform their emotional responses. The suggestion that their habits might be harmful is taken to mean that their character and their preferences are bad.

As this has instigated an emotional response on their part, they cannot come to defend their habits on rational terms. Only when its something that conflicts with their sentimental attachments do they begin seeing the working of elites, where otherwise they likely would have just seen the normal and everyday push and pull over linguistic norms (this everyday push and pull being the organic process of language change, a historically ubiquitous process that is the real tower of Babel from where all our languages came).

All in all, this seems like so much histrionics. What is the language police going to do to Frawley if she deadnames someone or uses the wrong framework to discuss gender issues? Not much. Considering the way politics is going, at this rate it might land her a job at GBN or Keir Starmer’s staff. Institutions like GBN, Fox News, OANN and so on must not be a part of “the elite” because they police the language of liberals and “progressives”, not “problematic men”. The pretense of all this is that the multinational language police are akin to the NKVD or Senator McCarthy. Yet it is anything but. There’s no language prison to correspond to the language police.

Concluding Fallacies

The article quite conveniently ends with a nice summation of the basic fallacies of the reactionary socialist:

The embrace of gender identity, then, isn’t a cultural detour but the very logic of contemporary technocratic rule: distrustful of ordinary people, hostile to autonomy, obsessed with management. UNESCO’s work in Africa shows how global this project has become. When schools without plumbing receive gender-identity curricula, it becomes clear this is not about local need. It is about making new kinds of people suited to a new kind of world-building, which no longer happens in bricks and steel but inside people’s heads.

(1) Appeal to Popularity (with an unhealthy dose of anti-elitism) - gender discourse is “distrustful of ordinary people” - who is “ordinary people”? It seems Frawley is saying that, well, most people believe sex and gender are the same, the “technocrats” are saying they’re wrong, and obviously we must be on the side of “ordinary people”. Most people identify gender and sex, so we should to.

Of course, this is a stupid position. There are plenty of “ordinary people” who are transgender, just like there are plenty of “ordinary people” who do not understand gender identity and think its all weird. Ordinary people are not a monolith and never have been. Yet even if they were a monolith, and sometimes they effectively are at least on some issues, they are often wrong. Ordinary people believed in geocentrism, racism, the divine right of kings, and child marriage for thousands of years. Ordinary people, just like “the elite”, sometimes get things right and sometimes get things wrong, and attacking anyone who criticizes common sense understandings of an issue is not inherently guilty of elitist misanthropy.

(2) War is peace - gender discourse is hostile to autonomy … because it suggests people should have the autonomous control over their gender identity instead of having it imposed via norms. For Frawley, autonomy is simply accepting one’s gender norms in virtue of one’s sex because “biological sex is real”, and either you recognize that reality (and thus are acting autonomously) or you do not (and are thus in thrall to “the elite”)

This, of course, is the kind of absurd identity right out of Orwell’s 1984 which describes how language is inverted, redefined, and abused by a bad-faith state seeking to manipulate and control the majority. The goodness of a thing can, through this linguistic trick, be used to justify its opposite. By asserting that war is peace, Oceania could use the goodness of peace to justify a constant state of militarization against Eurasia and Eastasia. So long as we can appeal to the right sentiments, this identity can appear rational even if it is not. The citizens of Oceania fear Eurasia and Eastasia, and this fear combined with their desire for peace justifies war. The fact is, Frawley is insisting we do not have autonomy over our gender, and that it has a kind of brute facticity we are not free to change.

(3) Attribution of motive - by asserting that the motive behind gender identity discourse is to better manage people, Frawley can successfully just ignore the material reality of gender-nonconforming subjects. Instead, she can just project her ascribed motives onto them without fear of pushback.

If someone is defending gender identity discourse, in this view, they are either (a) a nefarious elite trying to make people malleable and therefore controllable, or (b) some idiotic dupe who was conned by this elite into questioning their assigned gender. Actual elites want us to be transgender, and actual transgender subjects are delusional. Therefore, there’s no reason for me to engage with these groups or seriously consider their arguments, because I have already defined their motive as nefarious.

(4) The false dilemma - at the heart of 21st century reactionary socialism is the false dilemma between economic necessity and cultural issues. She ends with the assertion that the UN is stressing gender identity in sub-Saharan Africa because its dumb motives are upside down. Obviously these people need water pumps not sex changes, so UNESCO is proving that they don’t actually care what Africans need or want.

There’s almost too much to unpackage here. First, the UN does a ton of development work, and rather than a serious analysis to show that the UN cares more about gender identity than development she just asserts it. Second, she has no clue whether or not there are some, even a tiny subset, of people in these countries who might feel some comfort from the message. They do not need to be transgender. Tomboys and effeminate boys have always been targets for bullying due to their “failure” to conform to gender. Much more can be said on this, but all of it points to the simple fact that this is one big stinking false dilemma. It’s a false dilemma summoned out of thin air by the reactionary socialist. In fact, its common to reactionary thinking in general. The choice is always between some economic good for the masses, and some cultural achievement that has little or nothing to do with that economic good.

A great example of this false dichotomy can be found in the video where a ponytailed college student is asked to chose between economic stability and gender equality. He simply says “both” and “I reject the question”, and refuses the bait.

Certainly, Frawley would be correct that if there were such a choice, we ought to go with feeding and building infrastructure. You don’t need to believe in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to recognize that kids in underdeveloped countries need some basic infrastructure first. Yet the truth is, UNESCO telling sub-Saharan Africans about gender norms in no way impedes economic development. UNESCO is the cultural arm of the UN, and it is not the function of this institution to build wells or clinics. There is no zero-sum game, and we ought to be instantly suspicious of anyone who presents it as such (especially without the decency of an argument why).

Nor does Frawley provide any evidence that these UNESCO curricula are a serious problem and offense to these sub-saharan Africans. She’d rather stick her hand up their ass and use them as a kind of puppet to reflect her own sentimental presuppositions back at her - “culture politics bad, economic politics good”. At least James Carville spoke to American voters before he came up with the slogan, “its the economy stupid!”

Lack of historical self-awareness

Finally, Dr Frawley’s article ends with a shocking lack of historical awareness, assering that the construction of subjects is somehow a new feature of modern technocracy and intentional social engineering:

It is about making new kinds of people suited to a new kind of world-building, which no longer happens in bricks and steel but inside people’s heads

This is either ignorant or dishonest. The fact is, we have been building new types of subjects since the time of agriculture. Christianity created the subject who lives in sin and must confess. The Enlightenment produced the rational subject (the same one Frawley was so passionately defending). Capitalism produced the self-interested subject. Global movement created the cosmopolitan subject. All of these changes required massive, violent interventions into the subject far more invasive than anything the “technocratic elite” of today could cook up. The first missionaries in Mexico tore down the pyramids and tortured or even killed Mexica who continued to worship the old gods in private. Frawley must know this, which then requires us to ask the question why the hell is she even making this obviously misleading claim?

Why?

The last question here is, who is the intended audience of the reactionary socialist work? If we look at Frawley’s article, we have this question. Is it transgender people? I highly doubt it, because no transgender person will feel reflected in that critique. They would feel deeply misrepresented, with their views done a kind of rhetorical violence. They might feel attacked by the blatant hostility and contempt of her article, but they won’t be convinced. Is her audience the elite? Doubtful here too, as we’ve already seen the article isn’t even clear on what the elite is. I would rather suggest that the audience is twofold - leftists and Marxists who feel uncomfortable with gender identity discourse, of whom there are many, and rightwingers who are open to more egalitarian economic policies. I suspect these kinds of articles are intended to validate their sentiments.

No doubt, this discourse is deeply regressive. Frankly, it doesn’t matter one bit whether a big macho steel worker in China or a feminine girl in the Congo does or does not question their gender identity. That’s a question for the individual to grapple with, and frankly its none of our business. Yet it does matter that socialists just uncritically adopt cultural conservative positions because it fits with their intuitive sentiments. It acts to divide workers, it dumbs down Marx’s theory from a robust critique of class to ressentiment towards a vague “elite”, and it projects prejudice instead of listening to people. Solidarity doesn’t demand that we always agree with others, but it does demand a modicum of respect and patience. One does not have to endorse gender transitions and changing norms around gender to take the polite step of simply referring to someone by the pronouns and names they like. Nor does defending self-criticism mean we are misanthropic.

We must avoid the sirens call of reactionary demagoguery, and if we are the rectionary demagogue, we owe it those in our audience and those outside of it alike to overcome that part of us. Heck, we owe it to ourselves.

Note, the purpose here is not to cancel Frawley or say she’s a bad person. I do not know her, though I have enjoyed many podcasts she was on prior to her writing this article. She seems to have many virtues, even if I think she clearly exhibits some vices too. She is also smart, even if this article wasn’t, as she is a trained sociologist. Yet its important to identify and highlight the reactionary socialist tendencies of her argument here, and its fundamentally misleading character. Frawley is positioning herself as a kind of left (woman) defender of the patriarchy while simply ignoring all sound criticisms of the patriarchy are legitimate. In that way, she functions here as a perfect example of the reactionary cultural turn many Marxists are making today.