R.I.P., carceral feminism: some thoughts

Comment posted on New York Times blog in response to article, “Trump overhaul of campus sex assault rules wins surprising support,” June 25, 2020:

American liberals have been much too focused on seeking changes through the legal and penal systems. That the efforts are often successful is evidence of what is wrong with our political culture.

These problems find such acute expression at our universities, because they are the feeding troughs of the professional and managerial elite, their are organized and run on (in fact) anti-political models of administrative justice, they facilitate the formulation of symbolic solutions and even wrongs, and a hermeneutical creativity that, with things like "micro-aggressions," are basically designed so that people who can state popular grievances can inventive discover them as having a basis in real wrong-doing that merely must be inferred.

Historically feminism accompanied the rise of the urban classes of capitalism, the bourgeoisie and proletariat, and many feminists were socialists or radical workers. But it became a runaway success, especially in America, as a movement of the professional class. And after 1968, it became part of the supposed new radicalisms of identity politics, along with gay liberation and multicultural intersectionality. Especially in America, it's popular to be oppressed!

But much of feminism was fraudulent. In the 70s, the second wave made sexual violence the great issue. Along with such things as the new Jewish preoccupation with political evil, we saw what really is a politics of the right.

Why don't we leave it at that?