The Identity Wars: Manufactured Conflict, Real Harm

The Battlefield of the Body

I did not choose to be a debate; I chose to live.

Yet in both South Africa and the United States, I have seen how quickly a human life can be reduced to a political symbol. The “Identity Wars” are not essentially about the identities being targeted, whether trans people, migrants, or racial minorities, but about the utility of those identities to the people holding power.

For instance, in the United States, the introduction of the “Public Charge” rule effectively turned immigrant lives into symbols of economic burden, ignoring the nuanced realities of their contributions to society.

As we explored in the definition of the polycrisis, the backlash against trans people and immigrants is not about bathrooms or borders; it is about hierarchy: who counts as human, and who gets to define “normal”.

1. Why Marginalized Groups Become Political Fuel

Marginalized groups become fuel because they serve a specific strategic function: Convenient Displacement.

As articulated by writers like Shon Faye, the intense media focus on cultural conflicts is a sophisticated political tactic designed to protect the status quo. By fixating on moral panics, such as which bathroom a trans person uses, political energy is diverted away from material failures like housing shortages, stagnant wages, and failing healthcare.

• The Monstrous Other: To maintain the “historic bloc” of power, the dominant culture constructs a Monstrous Other to manage collective anxiety. By framing a specific group as a threat to “tradition” or “children,” leaders provide an external target for the public’s economic and social frustrations. This tactic echoes the past, resembling the strategies used during Reconstruction when African Americans were painted as threats to white supremacy, or during McCarthyism when individuals were labeled as un-American to stoke fear and justify repression.
• The Market for Division: In the digital age, this dynamic is amplified by the “attention economy”. Algorithms monetize outrage, meaning that identity conflicts, which generate high emotion, are more profitable than nuanced policy discussions. Identity is weaponized because division pays. Consider major platforms like Facebook and Twitter (now referred to as X), which have been reported to generate substantial revenue from increased engagement driven by divisive content. The more controversial and emotionally charged the content, the more time users spend on these platforms, resulting in higher ad revenues. If we trace the money trail, it becomes evident how outrage feeds the profitability of these digital giants.

2. Moral Panics as Governance Strategy

Moral panics are not spontaneous outbursts of concern; they are top-down governance strategies. They are used to enforce what Julia Serano calls Oppositional Sexism: the belief that gender roles must be rigid and opposite, and that any deviation is a threat to social order.

• The Architecture of Control: Just as the Apartheid state used the Immorality Act to police boundaries, modern authoritarians use “anti-gender ideology” to create a sense of siege. This allows leaders to present themselves as “protectors” of the family, justifying authoritarian overreach in the name of safety.
• Epistemic Dominance: The imposition of rigid binaries is a colonial technology. (“Epistemic” is philosopher-speak for anything to do with knowledge: whose ways of knowing count as true.) As seen in the history of the British Empire’s Section 377 or the Spanish conquest, the eradication of gender diversity was a tool to standardize populations for easier rule. Many of the cultures the colonizers encountered already recognized more than two genders; that knowledge had to be destroyed for the binary to look like nature. Modern moral panics are an attempt to reassert this colonial epistemic dominance against the reality of human diversity.

3. The Human Cost of Scapegoating

While politicians debate “ideology,” the cost is paid in flesh and bone.

I know this cost intimately. It is the three suicide notes I carried in my wallet in my early thirties, while I was still living as a man, convinced by the church and state that my existence was an error. Sit with that image for one breath: a young person, taught by pulpit and parliament alike that she is a mistake, carrying her own goodbye in her pocket, day after day.

• Necropolitics: The debate over identity rights often masks a deadlier reality: the power to dictate who may live and who must die. (The Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe coined the term necropolitics for exactly this power.) It is visible in the simultaneous assault on reproductive rights and trans healthcare. Whether it is forcing a person to carry a pregnancy against their will or legislating a trans person out of existence by banning their medication, the state is asserting ownership over the biological processes of its citizens. These are not separate issues; they are the same mechanism of control: using the body as a site of governance.
• The fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and the wave of state bans on gender-affirming care are chapters of the same book. A government that can force a woman to give birth can force a trans man off his hormones; the legal machinery is identical, and only the target changes. This is why reproductive justice and trans liberation are not allies of convenience. They are one struggle over one question: who owns the body?
• Internalized Oppression (The Panopticon): The ultimate victory of the Architecture of Control is when the marginalized person begins to police themselves. The Panopticon was a prison design in which a single hidden guard could watch every cell, so every prisoner behaved as if watched at all times. The philosopher Michel Foucault used it as a picture of modern power, and it fits: the watchtower works even when it is empty.
• For the Immigrant: This manifests as the “shadow life.” It is the constant, internalized surveillance where the fear of ICE or a raid forces you to shrink your world. It is the father who is too afraid to drive his child to school, or the worker who is too terrified to report wage theft, believing that visibility equals deportation.
• For the Trans Person: It is the “dirty pain” of shame that led me to try to “exorcise” Juanita from my soul.
• The Result: Whether through the fear of the raid or the fear of the mirror, the system forces us to become our own jailers.
• The Loss of Safety (Deputized Violence): The most dangerous outcome of scapegoating is that it creates a “permission structure” for violence. When leaders describe migrants as “invaders” or trans people as “predators,” they are effectively deputizing the public to enforce the border.
• The Vigilante Effect: We see this when citizens feel emboldened to harass Spanish speakers in grocery stores or interrogate people they suspect of being undocumented. The rhetoric turns neighbors into border agents.
• The Self-Appointed Inspector: I felt this deputization on the dance floor of a Pretoria hotel bar. The woman who reached under my skirt to “verify” my gender, and then announced her verdict to the room, did not act in a vacuum. She acted inside a culture that had taught her, from pulpit to playground, that a body like mine was public property, open to inspection.
• The Consequence: Safety ceases to be a right and becomes a daily negotiation. The world physically shrinks as we map out the “safe zones” and the “no-go zones,” knowing that in this political climate, any stranger could decide they are the enforcer of the state.

The Work of Hope Practice: Heat vs. Light

Goal: To develop “information hygiene” by learning to distinguish between narratives designed to manipulate (Heat) and narratives designed to illuminate (Light).

The Exercise: Select a recent news headline or social media post that sparked an intense emotional reaction regarding a specific group of people (migrants, trans people, the poor). Run it through the Heat/Light Filter:

1. The Heat Check (Manipulation)

• Does it use dehumanizing metaphors like “flood,” “invasion,” “contagion,” or “virus”? These terms are designed to trigger the Monstrous Other framework. Repetition is the point: hear “invasion” often enough, and the cruelty that follows begins to feel like defense.
• Does it appeal to “Innocence under Siege”? Is it framing a powerful majority as the helpless victim of a marginalized minority? (e.g., “They are coming for your children/way of life”).
• Does it focus on the symbol or the system? Is it attacking a drag queen reading a book (symbol), or discussing the funding of the library (system)?

2. The Light Check (Reality)

• Who benefits from this fear? If you are afraid of this group, who gains your vote or your click? Follow the money or the power.
• Is there a material grievance of being displaced? If the story is about “migrants stealing jobs,” is there a missing story about corporations cutting wages or automation? Look for the Convenient Displacement.
• Where is the humanity? Does the narrative include the voices of the people being discussed, or are they treated as objects of debate?

Reframing: Rewrite the “Heat” narrative into a “Light” narrative.

• Heat: “Migrants are flooding our borders and draining resources.”
• Light: “Global upheaval displaces families; our outdated system leaves them in limbo.”

The Shift: Bad-faith narratives generate heat (anger, fear, paralysis). Good-faith narratives generate light (understanding, systemic critique, possibility for action). Hope requires us to turn down the heat so we can see the light.