If you start saying that people are not individuals - that they are created by their upbringing and the role they play in real, nasty, going-to-work-in-traffic society - then you open the door to the idea that only a social revolution can actually solve the real problems with humanity.
Interestingly enough, I wrote that without knowing what Marx's Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach said:
The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.
The "human individual" is determined by their place in the social networks which form the "true" nature of our species. As Aphorism #3 puts it, you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake - or, at least, you're part of a huge drift of snow from which you can't be disentangled. I am only following in the rather large footsteps of giants, but at least I'm going in the right direction.
2) This Fandom Wank thread, on an interesting young wymyn who has declared that she can tell that Joss Whedon rapes his wife from watching his TV programmes, really does sum up every single problem with academic "radical feminism" in particular and bourgeois identity politics in general. Simply put, the equation is: identity politics = voluntary ghettoisation = the cultural logic of consumerism in late capitalism. This nonsense can only exist because little havens exist for the priesthood of the media culture to train their successors and to think up strategies to sell identities/goods/services to new niche markets. In this case, we are talking about Women's Studies departments as the factories where the identity-commodity of "radical lesbian wymyn" or whatever is produced and sold. Those who buy such an identity will not only buy the appropriate clothes, books, memorabilia etc to make sure no-one forgets their Special Unique identity for a moment. They will also hide in their little communes or staff common rooms or book circles or other voluntary ghettos, and never venture out to bother the real world again - except perhaps to go on the occasional abortion-rights or anti-rape demo and act like sectarian imbeciles just like their Marxist, anarchist etc. counterparts.
3) For those following Chanology - a schism has arisen. Some of the more hard-core anonymous are angry at the movement's turn towards "respectable" protest politics, and wish to return to (quite simply) trolling and pranks, of anti-Scilons as well as Scilons. Those on the other side, however, point out that if "respectable" protest politics can actually dismantle Scientology in its current form, how much lulz would then be produced?!? As I keep saying, even those who don't consider Scamintology any kind of real priority or threat must keep an eye on Chanology, because it is going through all the major dilemmas and turning points that any serious mass movement does.
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