Summary
Costco shareholders voted overwhelmingly (98%) against a proposal by a conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, to assess risks linked to the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Costco’s board supported DEI initiatives, dismissing the proposal as partisan and unnecessary.
This rejection contrasts with trends in other companies scaling back DEI efforts.
The vote comes amid new federal rules from Trump targeting DEI initiatives in federal agencies, potentially impacting private vendors working with the government.
I’m going to use TERFs as an analogy to explain what I think it is (and I do mean TERFs, not your garden variety transphones). There used to be a subreddit called /r/GenderCritical, before it got (rightfully) banned for hate speech. I had a look around there a few times, trying to understand their incomprehensible ideology.
At first, I only became more baffled. I saw so many stories that had the rough shape of “I am a women who was abused, victimised or otherwise oppressed by a cis man and/or men and that’s why I now hate trans women”. I just didn’t understand how those two things connected. I get that radical feminists tend to take a biologically essentialist view that undermines trans identities. However, I couldn’t understand why they put such effort into distilled down their bitterness and resentment into the vitriol to throw at trans women, as opposed to the men who hurt them (and the patriarchal systems that hurt them).
Over the years, I’ve come to understand that many TERFs have experienced trauma such that they feel powerless and small when looking at the actual cause of their systemic oppression (i.e. the patriarchy), so through a trick of transference, they direct their rage and grief onto transness instead. Fighting an already marginalised foe means that they get both the feeling of fighting something ideological that’s larger than them, but also they don’t have to confront how small they actually are when fighting against oppression (because each of us is small and helpless against systemic oppression; we can’t do shit without solidarity with other people). To be clear, I don’t consider this absolutely isn’t a legitimate excuse for someone to be an awful person; however, it does help me to understand why someone who calls themself a feminist would take such a stance (as much as I’d like to consider them “no true feminist”, I feel like I need to acknowledge the complex baggage of the term “feminist” if I’m to identify as one).
I think people who crusade against DEI initiatives are doing a similar sort of transference, where their real enemy is in fact Capitalism, but that feels like so impossible of a foe that they feel hopeless; it reminds me of that widely shared Mark Fisher quote about how it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And so they tell themselves that there must be some big, bad, insidious force at work, making organisations opt into DEI initiatives, and it must be the same force that’s responsible for the deep unease they feel when they look at the world, or contemplate the future their grandchildren have to look forward to.
In a sense, they’re right in that there are nefarious forces at play and the game is indeed rigged. The problem is that they’ve picked the wrong target and would be better served going after the oil barons and billionairess. In terms of my background, I probably have far more in common with the average Trump voter than I do the average Democrat, so I relate to the hopelessness that their misplaced rage protects them from feeling. The tragedy is that their ignorance hurts everyone, including themselves; None of us are free until all of us are free.
I’d say this is true, but it isn’t some accidental mind trick that people pull on themselves. It is the core tenet of the right wing narrative to deflect from how capitalism is failing regular people and pin the blame on some progressive boogey man. They blame bad pay and bad jobs on immigrants “stealing” the good jobs, and now POC doing the same through DEI. They tell men it’s not their learned misogyny that is keeping them from a meaningful relationship, no, it’s the feminists with their radical ideas about equality, body autonomy, and safety. And this can go on for every I’ll brought about by the current system. The tough trick though, is that this doesn’t just fool those who believe it, it also keeps those who disagree busy fighting over bigoted bullshit, and makes it nigh impossible to build any sort of coalition
Awesome comment. Thank you! This is where something starts to become visible: the weird indirect physical and psychological violence of liberal ideology.
It’s base claim is: If everyone, as a single enlighted decent individual agent, would just play by the rules (fair markets), everything would be at it’s best. All of them shall thrive.
Now all those good christians go through life working their ass of, actually trying to be “a good person”, but after decades they have to painfully find out: It doesn’t work out. Most of them get more stressed, poorer, there’s ecological destruction, war and so on. Almost no one get’s to thrive.
As you pointed out, finding out about capitalism and (neccessarilly collectively) paving a way to more rational production and fairer distribution, is difficult. You could almost say it’s practically and ideologically out of reach. You know, because your freedoms depend on liberal individualism.
They end up with two options: 1. Look for an outside menace to the otherwise funtional market game (immigrants, jews, or heck why not trans people) 2. Get more of the same: more privatizarion, less social welfare etc.
They cling ever harder to a political decision, the more it harms them. This is brutal and sad af imo.
Real agency is possible, just not the individualist kind liberalism is successfully promising them in their despair of heteronomy.
It feels like the phase of the fantasy arc wherein the “minor bad” admits that he was lied to by the big bad, and that they believed that sacrificing 100 babies on the altar of Better Future would actually lead to a Better Future, and not summon ArchVillaeous, demon god of suffering.
Learning about the truth doesn’t mean I feel for that person being lied to. It means now I’m just angry at how willingly gullible they were. It really, really doesn’t change the act of sacrificing 100 babies.