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When it comes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the first two seem to take top billing. Diversity is brought up regularly in the context of affirmative action and quotas, with hot debates about whether diversity is our strength, potentially a neutral value, or even a liability. Equity is discussed in fiscal policy, with questions raised about the relative virtues of desserts, redistribution, and fairness. I rarely hear people talk about inclusion though and even among DEI skeptics, I rarely hear it raised as a point of contention. I get the feeling that this is because saying you're against inclusion sounds just plain mean. Nonetheless, I want to broach that a little bit, at the risk of being mean, since I think rejecting inclusion as a terminal value is necessary for achieving the results I actually seek.
The examples that keep popping up as the most intense culture-war fodder involve trans inclusivity. The most aggressive form of this putative inclusion is including trans-identified males in women's sports, but it's also showing up in places that I would have expected even less. In Wisconsin, we have a group called the Women's Medical Fund that has had the primary mission of funding abortions for the indigent and under resourced. While I am well aware that abortion itself is hotly debated, I am personally happy to grant that the people that are carrying out this mission are intending to provide a service that they think women should have available to them. This is, unfortunately, not an inclusive mission because of the emphasis on women. With a new director, they now have a home page statement:
When this was brought up on a local subreddit, the comments emphasize that this was about inclusion and making sure trans men are including as well. While the private organization can do what they want here and it's no surprise to see such an organization embrace the farthest left gender politics of its day, I can't help but see such "inclusion" as actually being rather alienating to women, or at least as a complete waste of time for an organization that surely has bigger problems to deal with at the moment.
This doesn't actually get to the heart of why I think the persistent emphasis on inclusion can be poisonous though. As I have mentioned approximately 37 million times here, I really enjoy running - the physical activity, the competition, the camaraderie of groups, everything about the sport has been great for my life. Many runners pride themselves on being inclusive in the sport, welcoming everyone in, and meeting them where they're at. I agree that this is good! Everyone's got to start somewhere and I want people to feel welcome and to enjoy the sport whether they're talented or experienced or not. Nonetheless, there are aspects of the sport that are exclusive and taking an inclusion-maxing philosophy would be damaging. On a small scale, my club has one night a week that is intended for a faster group; not a hard speed workout or anything, but a fast enough pace (typically 7-8 minutes/mile for about 5-6 miles) that it excludes quite a few people. That filter is still pretty broad, but it does tend to cut down to people that are generally more serious about the sport. This isn't inclusive and that's a good thing.
On a broader scale in the sport, some races have qualifying times to enter. Most famously, most Boston Marathon entries are granted based on qualifying times and the cutoff marks for it are often thought of as capstones for being a solid amateur runner (young men need to run a marathon below 3:00 to qualify, meaning a 6:52/mile pace). I've always been dimly aware that some people don't like that setup, but became more acutely aware of it when the Boston-area running apparel company Tracksmith released a running jersey that was exclusively for Boston qualifying athletes and pissed a bunch of people off:
...
Well, I have my answer. Yes, I want to include everyone in the sport. No, I don't want everything to be for everyone. There's nothing wrong with saying, "this is for fast guys", regardless of where you put that cutoff. People rightfully derive pride from putting in the time and work to develop themselves at the sport and it's good that they are able to have symbols, groups, and events that are exclusive.
This gets to my core objection with inclusion as an important value in and of itself, and it's the desire to include everyone in everything flattens people and groups out into boring sameness. It's not possible to distinguish by merits, preference, difference, or interests if the top goal is to provide an inclusive environment to everyone in every place. If I embrace inclusivity as a top priority, I lose the ability to select for people that actually demonstrate their interests, merits, and loyalty. The implications of this broaden out at every level - if anyone can be American, it means nothing to be American.
So, the next time you're thinking that you're not a fan of DEI, don't stop with noticing that diversity is a liability, and that equity is about taking your home equity, remember that the progressive conception of inclusion sucks too.
I like Lindsay's take on the whole DEI. Paraphrasing:
Diversity means whatever is opposing the cultural hegemony. That is why room full of white women feminists can be diverse and why Larry Elder can be a Black Face of White Supremacy. So in practice, diversity means that you have to welcome subversive elements into the company/movement/club or whatever, diversity needs to be ensured by cadre of political commissars who themselves are experts on diversity.
Inclusion means that you are welcoming to "diversity", it is making sure that the subversive elements can have free reign. The basic form of inclusion is basically censorship - you will be subject to certain "ethical standards", that you will not do hate speech or microagressions. The advanced level of inclusion is called belonging, this means that you now have to be active and supportive of these elements: you have to put pronouns into your bio, you have to get rainbow keychain for your company card and so forth. The aim is to create atmosphere of fake consensus via social pressure to supress any resistence.
Equity means adjusting shares in order to make citizens A and B equal on basis of diversity. This is your cookie cutter socialist redistribution so that subversive elements get necessary resources to thrive and multiply, but now expanded to other domains such as positions of power inside companies or in casting of movies or moderating teams of some random forum. As with other socialist movements that were also very keen on redistribution, it has to be enforced by diversity and inclusion experts - those are the vanguard forces that will at first enforce equitable society until this becomes automatic as when socialism is supposed to voluntarily turn into communism now called Social Justice.
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In practice, "inclusion" means conformity to the ideology. For example, the mere presence of a conservative expressing non-progressive opinions will make a space non-inclusive. All kinds of diversity are welcome except that diversity which is non-inclusive, and so that actually means a rather narrow range of diversity limited to "historically marginalized groups" of race, gender, and sexuality.
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I recall some of the dehumanizing language they used for women:
https://www.jostrust.org.uk/professionals/health-professionals/nurse-gp/trans-non-binary/language
There's also 'birthing persons' for to denote what would otherwise (problematically) be called real women.
Inclusion can mean throwing these novel terms at people, getting everyone to announce their pronouns even though there aren't any trans people there. Creating new words puts people on the back foot, amateurs/students who don't know the technical jargon. It gets people to low-level signal their conformity and acceptance of the party line, mostly out of not wanting to be rude.
Let's just hope that 'birthing vessels' isn't next: https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Axlotl_Tank
I'm sorry, but here at The Motte you need to write like everyone is reading. Your bigoted comment would have made me feel unwelcome and emotionally unsafe had my masters not seen fit to also make me a Zensunni master at peace with life. We need you to Do Better.
I wouldn't want to deny the existence of gholas.
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ಠ_ಠ
I have been summoned for moderator action, but genetic conditioning stays my hand against any fellow ghola.
Carry on.
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The trans wedge has been a good development for anti-feminists.
Abortion is not a woman's choice and it is not an issue that men cannot talk about. Similarly, as the trans tidal wave keeps crashing over the ruins of society, wamen may find out that liberal men offering their physical and legal protection was a mere accident of history, and perhaps going out with a chaperone is a good idea, once there is literally no space free from the towering presence of a trans stasi agent.
This, even in extremely-progressive (thus trans-friendly) spaces, is incredibly, ridiculously overstated.
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I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. I'm a 32 inch waist, as a man, and I have a lot of trouble seeing a significant market for high end women's running clothing above my waist size.
It's deeply weird for me to see complaints about diversity in running, a sport dominated at the upper end by Kenyans.
Well, yes, but all those Kenyans are in far-off places like Kenya. How many Kenyans are in your local running group, the one the diversity-complainers see every day?
Not many, but any marathon with a sufficiently large cash prize will have many Kenyans or Ethiopians competing, and the Boston Marathon is no exception. Since the start of this century, the men's and women's divisions saw a combined six winners who weren't Kenyan or Ethiopian (and one was an American citizen who was born in Ethiopia to Ethiopian parents).
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One of the more interesting “conspiracy theories” I’ve read was a comment about how athletic / athleisure brands no longer use scenes of competitive dominance in their marketing. Instead of scenes of glorious victory, you find scenes of drills and weightroom practice, occasionally alone or on an empty court. This was a decision to market to those who only occasionally exercise or who purchase the consumer goods as a signal (to themselves or others) that they are athlete-coded. The aspirational messaging can't depict competitive victory because the person who just goes to the gym after work doesn’t compete at all, so the marketing valorizes the act of “progress”, “improvement” alone. They want to feel like they are a “great athlete to be”, in training, rather than a competitor pursuing competitive dominance.
And this relates to that marathon jersey. By producing a cutoff jersey you are delegitimizing the whole attraction to running gear. If a norm of showing off your competitive times through trademarked clothing developed, then putting on Nike running shoes now signals to everyone that you are not athlete coded, but a poser (the skateboarding culture equivalent of wearing vans but unable to kickflip). The consumer is no longer dressing like the high status royal but a Don Quixote. It’s stolen valor.
So I wonder, did the journalistic criticism of this company originate with a brand like Nike? Maybe. But it could have also been a marketing ploy by the company; “people are mad about this” is a way to say “look at this”. I’m more tempted to think the cause is the former, because running magazines likely have major deals with the big giants.
I'd wager it'd just be a pragmatic decision. The majority, wealthiest portion of consumers is 40+ years old, age groups where you can't seriously compete in most sports. People who are both wealthy enough to spend money on competitive sports equipment and in an age range where competition even makes sense are a very small fraction of the population.
I wouldn't be surprised if these brands' marketing started looking more like drug ads 'after my hip-replacement surgery I wasn't sure I would still be able to run, but the new Nike SwiftMax give me just the right amount of support to keep going...'
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"Nike" turning its back on victory sounds very mythologically ominous.
Next thing you’ll tell me is that “Bud Light” is not, in fact, your bud.
I don’t know about you, but Budweiser’s a friend of mine.
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While Nike was named after the Greek goddess of victory (and came out of a company called Blue Ribbon Sports, referring to victory in another way), Budweiser was not named after the concept of being a buddy, nor after a flower bud.
Fine, how about
“Budweiser: neither bud nor wise”?
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Neat observation. I see there's a preponderance of ads not showing competition. Did they ever market victory though? For essentially their entire market, competitive dominance is kayfabe. Sure, you might have a collection of medals or team victories, but that's only because of the competition structure that allows you to compare yourself to a pool of people that are similarly mediocre. If the elite show up you'd quickly see that you barely play the same sport. Worse, for things like long distance running in a populous area, actually winning any event is a 1 in 1000 thing. At best, you're fighting to beat the fucker 10 feet in front of you.
Even among RealMenTM, there is a lot less competitive participation sport for Bowling Alone type reasons.
When I was a kid, the culturally dominant paradigm for male participation sport in the UK was pickup games of football (soccer for you Americans) or basketball and the preferred marketing message was "What you are doing is a facsimile of professional team sports, so you should wear what the pros wear in order to be winning like them."
In the current year, the culturally dominant paradigm for male participation sport (I have no idea how accurate this is, but advertising follows the culture) is "Do you even lift, bro?" strength-based gym culture. Strength training is fundamentally PvE in a way which pickup football (or whatever the American equivalent is) is PvP, but even more so the culture of lifting with your gym bros is one of collaborative self-improvement, not competition. I have aged out of the target audience for sportswear marketing, but if I was marketing activewear to gym bros, I would reflect this change in my marketing messaging.
This is even before we consider the modern trend of selling sportswear to the spectators as athleisure. I notice that the men I see in the streets in traditional casual styles are, on average, in much better shape than the men in athleisure. FWIW I don't think the same is true for women, where athleisure appeals to the "I've got it and I want to flaunt it, and sportswear is an excuse to dress sexy before sunset" crowd.
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That seems like an unnecessarily high standard of what "victory" involves.
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There was this one from this 2000s: https://youtube.com/watch?v=liKnJ-ejztw
So at least sometimes they did.
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It’s female marketing. Empathy = women like seeing diverse people getting along. Less about victory and more about working out is also feminine.
Female clothing market is bigger than the male market.
Since the change I refuse to buy Nike.
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Inclusion has a weird status in culture, because its opposite is not always seen as a bad thing.
Diversity : Homogeneity :: Equity : Unequal :: Inclusion : Exclusive
Exclusivity is still a widely accepted marketing and branding decision. Media networks love to brag about exclusive events, where only they get to show something. Hollywood in general loves exclusive events where only the biggest stars can attend. Clubs brag about their exclusive requirements. High end brands love to use cost as a way to exclude the riff raff and readily imply that only the rich and discerning can afford to choose their brand.
I do wonder if exclusion has enough staying power to survive scrutiny by the culture. I am 90% sure it will stay around. Marketers will just have to very carefully tiptoe around who is being excluded, and the rules on who it is ok to exclude will likely shift randomly depending on the whims of internet mobs.
This depends on you taking "inclusion" at face value, instead of assuming that it specifically meant racial and sexual inclusion like anyone who's ever seen the term used.
There's no contradiction in that view for events to both be inclusive and exclusive. In fact, being inclusive removes the moral argument against being exclusive: if you have some minorities and women it's considered more legitimate to keep out the poor.
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The events you identified are all for rich people. Most of the events, products and activities consumed by DEI are intended for common people.
Xbox exclusive, Netflix exclusive, exclusive interview with a person, etc. plenty of exclusive type language used for mass products.
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I guess we’ll see.
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