I did not intend to split this article up, but decided to when I passed 20 pages.
Part 2 is much more focused on solutions, focused on community. It is a more directly positive message following the setup, which appears somewhat unclear in direction without part 2.
I spent much of my youth asking myself, what does it mean to be a man? That question meant a lot to me. It still does. The last two women I have been in a relationship with both ended up supporting the woke transgender movement (not questioning the excesses.) Mostly it seems to me that what Feminism and Woke/Transgender ideology taught them, is that men are best emasculated, and women get to say whatever they want to the man they are in a relationship with, and if the man objects he is being a misogynist. Maybe I exaggerate - they are my ex's - but I feel like I see it more clearly now than I did then.
If I am ever in a committed relationship with a woman again, she will appreciate her womanhood, and will appreciate a man, recognizing that there is such a thing as Sacred Masculine.
Of course the woke do not recognize any concept of sacred anything. It is like scientific materialism meets atheism meets Lenin/Maoism meets jihadi close out the light.
Interesting Food for Thought Matthew, thanks. I’d been inclined to think that the current gender insanity is another elite misdirection. Similar to how “racism” began to be thrown about as Occupy Wall Street began to get noticed.
"Almost nobody ever really talks about the way Darwin divided humanity up into an explosively large number of races (55 if I recall correctly? I could not quickly find a citation and would appreciate a pointer.)."
If there is a quick reference to Darwin's races it eluded me.. he seems to cite an assortment of earlier works with arguments about classifications and no concrete conclusion, though it is quite possible I missed the reference that has the attribution and definitions between races and species that seem pretty fuzzy.
"But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed. Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke. (18. See a good discussion on this subject in Waitz, ‘Introduction to Anthropology,’ Eng. translat., 1863, pp. 198-208, 227. I have taken some of the above statements from H. Tuttle’s ‘Origin and Antiquity of Physical Man,’ Boston, 1866, p. 35.) This diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them.
Every naturalist who has had the misfortune to undertake the description of a group of highly varying organisms, has encountered cases (I speak after experience) precisely like that of man; and if of a cautious disposition, he will end by uniting all the forms which graduate into each other, under a single species; for he will say to himself that he has no right to give names to objects which he cannot define."
May 3, 2022·edited May 3, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
Dear Mathew, among many other things I admire about people I encounter, the rare ability to be unusually good in more than one dimension or discipline is uppermost.
In your case, it’s many, not just more than one!
In many ways, I’m very narrow. I know almost nothing about almost everything. I’m a half decent biological scientist but only through an ability to integrate a dozen subdisciplines of biology. I’m not a top scientist in any of the sub disciplines, but that ability to integrate was perfectly adapted to a commercially-valuable niche.
Those same abilities helped me unpick the COVID situation as fraud earlier than most & to have done so in ways which permitted me to “show my working” to anyone interested.
Outside of that, there’s nothing I’m any good at besides, perhaps, in-depth knowledge of 1970s Suzuki motorcycles. Not particularly useful 🤔
I much enjoy reading your articles. Thank you for your many contributions.
As a kid, I thought of “the ancient Greeks” as, well, ancient. Necessarily technologically primitive. Clever, foundational. Philosophy & mathematics. Advanced mathematics.
But too busy thinking about how we should live. How we should die. How to think. What to think about.
But machinery, engineering, advanced materials, hey, that’s us!
There are several very good documentaries about this device.
Among the surprises for me is that there are no others pulled from the ground or sea, or handed down from antiquity. Where are earlier prototypes? Derivative devices?
Either way, it’s a wonderful & intriguing machine.
These excellent, long and complicated ad-lib pieces contain a lot of really valuable brainstorming, but I'm going to confess straight out they're a little hard to follow. Maybe that's intentional, and if so, fine; or maybe they could do with a little "trailing the conclusion in the lede" to motivate the reader!
Is the explosion of non-traditional gender concepts an analogue in modern neoliberal capitalism of the way pre-capitalist, but also hugely unequal societies, utilized non-procreative "gender groups" such as eunuchs? (Traditionally this is a more broadly priestly/ecclesiastical function, of course. Think of monks and Catholic priests.) Are all the LGB~<slams fingers on the keyboard> genders essentially a kind of emergent courtly caste within the late capitalist state? I like this thesis. A lot.
There's a second lens. Lenin, like many Utopians, wanted to remould humanity in the image of his revolution aposteriori. The New Socialist Man. The history of the 20th century left was largely the history of the Homo Sovieticus failing and re-emerging in new guises. The workers failed to make the revolution (or at least failed to make it /well/ under the debased conditions of Russia, 1917.) So in 1968, Marxist avant gardes fell back on the students, non-whites and sexual minorities as the revolutionary/historical subject. By the 1990s and early 2000s, they'd fallen back on non-whites and sexual minorities. What's emerging now with the vogue for transhumanism is the whole thing going full circle. Let's directly bio-engineer the Homo Sovieticus. It's like Lenin has become a triune entity comprised of Marx (just to pick on three loosely representative names) Jon Stryker and Martine Rothblatt, with Judith Butler as the sort of median-point.
Wow. I'll have to re-read that one! Been thinking a lot about the horror that's become the inclusive, open minded cultures I once felt a part of. And how the pharma tentacles of manipulation hide in threads of compassion, caring, protection, and in this case compassion, inclusion, support, respect, and "open mindedness" (which has become pathological closed-mindedness in this backwards world). And the similarities with children encouraged to turn against and hide from their parents, for injections and puberty blockers.
To offer a somewhat different take on gender / sex (I think you're saying that sex and gender are the same and have been so throughout most of history? - that's a too short summary for such a deep and winding article, but it's 4am and I want to reply - and share some links - before putting this off) ...
I think the concept of gender being fluid, a spectrum that may fully or partly or sometimes or not really match with biological sex ... is completely different than denial of biological sex being ... unchangeable, it-is-what-it-is biological sex. (With of course some exceptions, some are born with both sexes in one body, and some are truly born in the wrong bodies and would be better off with medical assistance to change that, like "Sam" who Heather Heying writes about with much respect. And of course trans people deserve dignity and respect and equal rights (except when trying to pass for the biological sex they are not and destroy women's sports, and our relationship to words and reality itself).
It's possible to feel resonance and positivity at the thought of exploring gender-as-spectrum, to feel a recognition at the Indigenous term "Two-Spirit" (yet that would be cultural appropriation, I guess), and also be absolutely fucking horrified at how children and teens are being taught that if they feel any resonance with the gender that doesn't match their biological sex, that they should take puberty blockers and medical interventions to change the sex they were born with, with as much contemplation and enthusiasm as cutting their hair, or growing their hair, or putting on eyeliner, or changing their shoes.
Like how Heather Heying (evolutionary biologist who is also horrified at what's happening with kids and transitioning), speaks fondly of David Bowie as someone who played with feminine-as-gender while not denying that he is a man-as-biology.
Heather and Bret say that the gender is the software, and biological sex is the hardware. The conflation of them being the same is being used to gaslight kids - and everyone - that if a boy feels like a girl sometimes (or thinks he does, Or is told directly or indirectly that he should consider maybe that he is really a girl and therefore thinks about it a lot more than he would naturally) - that the solution to that isn't to become comfortable with the femininity that lives in him, and explore that as a beautiful part of himself - the solution is to decide he is now a she (or ze/ they / it ), and the only way to be comfortable in his own skin is to take puberty blockers and get on a road to irreversible physical and probably psychological damage.
Some may feel that our biology decides our gender, and there's no room in there for variations, different choices, experimenting.
That's taken out of context by those pushing the trans agenda (some from pathological creepy agendas, others from genuine allyship and genuinely feeling like they don't fit the traditional definitions of male / female).
They say that to be respectful of a child / teenagers development, they should be able to choose their gender and have that affirmed by those around them. OK. That's not necessarily a terrible thing. Gender can be combined and experimented with and changed as many times as they wish as they grow and get to know themselves. The Software. They cannot choose their hardware - that's already chosen.
The danger in conflating hardware and software is conflating buying those pink sneakers for the little boy and being happy that he's happy wearing them with literal medical interventions that have an agenda that misrepresents them as nearly perfectly safe, that cannot be taken off like the pink sneakers.
Make Johnny feel defective because he likes the pink sneakers? That's not nice, not affirming, and, depending how much care and tact is involved, might be abusive. Tell Johnny that even tho his Tumblr and Reddit "friends" and his teachers think he should take injections that stop the hormones his body naturally produces, that that's a very serious decision he might regret and maybe he doesn't really want to do that, like when he used to play dinosaur it didn't mean he needed to literally become one? - The powers that shouldn't be conflate That "Please seriously think about this" with crushing someone because they like the pink sneakers.
(Then again, a (loving, good, hard working) friend whose granddaughter is deep in the world of trans activists says that sometimes kids don't just experiment sometimes with the gender spectrum, they keep insisting they really feel like they are the other biological sex. Also, with so many endocrine disruptors around, this may be more common than we realize.) But I still wonder how much of that constant insistence of needing to be what one is not is coming from their authentic self, and how much is from the information they take in ...
Hope this makes sense .. I think there's an important middle ground that respects gender fluidness and that there are some legit trans people and also is suspicious of what's behind the zeal to change the pronouns of the entire human race, why google says things like "what are the 72 genders?" ... a middle ground that doesn't alienate the migration of disillusioned lefties who may be queer or have many friends who are queer / trans / pronoun obsessed ... but still makes clear that biological sex is biological sex. You don't need to be a biologist to understand this, but we do need to respect biology.
And disrespecting biology and getting used to it being augmented in whatever ways pharma wants, and getting used to that very, very young, is part of the agenda that's made trans "inclusivity" way too big of an issue these past years, that's more making sense now ...
https://letter.wiki/conversation/893 - beautiful conversation between Heather Heying and Abigail Shrier, author of "Irreversible Damage" .... "The Torment and Tragedy of Teenage Girls"
Speaking of the "really, really bad" guy. In the beginning I tended to say when seeing all the masked: "Was this year declared Michael Jackson Tribute Year & I missed it or something?". Then it became mandatory, and my hypothesis seemed less likely...
I suspect that when new genders are created they split off into separate species. You can see that with this species of bird that has evolved an extra two genders - females that look and behave like males and males that look and behave like females. I suppose these two genders will get along with each other better and become more isolated in their breeding from the two "traditional" genders until they become a new species.
Is the explosion of non-traditional gender concepts an analogue in modern neoliberal capitalism of the way pre-capitalist, but also hugely unequal societies, utilized non-procreative "gender groups" such as eunuchs? (Traditionally this is a more broadly priestly/ecclesiastical function, of course. Think of monks and Catholic priests.) Are all the LGB~<slams fingers on the keyboard> genders essentially a kind of emergent courtly caste within the late capitalist state? I like this thesis. A lot.
There's a second lens. Lenin, like many Utopians, wanted to re-mold humanity in the image of his revolution aposteriori. The New Socialist Man. The history of the 20th century left was largely the history of the Homo Sovieticus failing and re-emerging in new guises. The workers failed to make the revolution (or at least failed to make it /well/ under the debased conditions of Russia, 1917.) So in 1968, Marxist avant gardes fell back on the students, non-whites and sexual minorities as the revolutionary/historical subject. By the 1990s and early 2000s, they'd fallen back on non-whites and sexual minorities. What's emerging now with the vogue for transhumanism is the whole thing going full circle. Let's directly bio-engineer the Homo Sovieticus. It's like Lenin has become a triune entity comprised of Marx (just to pick on three loosely representative names) Jon Stryker and Martine Rothblatt, with Judith Butler as the sort of median-point.
I did not intend to split this article up, but decided to when I passed 20 pages.
Part 2 is much more focused on solutions, focused on community. It is a more directly positive message following the setup, which appears somewhat unclear in direction without part 2.
All those Greeks you mention, knew well the tale of Hermaphrodite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphroditus?wprov=sfla1
I spent much of my youth asking myself, what does it mean to be a man? That question meant a lot to me. It still does. The last two women I have been in a relationship with both ended up supporting the woke transgender movement (not questioning the excesses.) Mostly it seems to me that what Feminism and Woke/Transgender ideology taught them, is that men are best emasculated, and women get to say whatever they want to the man they are in a relationship with, and if the man objects he is being a misogynist. Maybe I exaggerate - they are my ex's - but I feel like I see it more clearly now than I did then.
If I am ever in a committed relationship with a woman again, she will appreciate her womanhood, and will appreciate a man, recognizing that there is such a thing as Sacred Masculine.
Of course the woke do not recognize any concept of sacred anything. It is like scientific materialism meets atheism meets Lenin/Maoism meets jihadi close out the light.
I set my coffee aside so as not to create a mess on the keyboard.
You may have missed your true calling, Mathew.
Interesting Food for Thought Matthew, thanks. I’d been inclined to think that the current gender insanity is another elite misdirection. Similar to how “racism” began to be thrown about as Occupy Wall Street began to get noticed.
"Almost nobody ever really talks about the way Darwin divided humanity up into an explosively large number of races (55 if I recall correctly? I could not quickly find a citation and would appreciate a pointer.)."
If there is a quick reference to Darwin's races it eluded me.. he seems to cite an assortment of earlier works with arguments about classifications and no concrete conclusion, though it is quite possible I missed the reference that has the attribution and definitions between races and species that seem pretty fuzzy.
"But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed. Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke. (18. See a good discussion on this subject in Waitz, ‘Introduction to Anthropology,’ Eng. translat., 1863, pp. 198-208, 227. I have taken some of the above statements from H. Tuttle’s ‘Origin and Antiquity of Physical Man,’ Boston, 1866, p. 35.) This diversity of judgment does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species, but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them.
Every naturalist who has had the misfortune to undertake the description of a group of highly varying organisms, has encountered cases (I speak after experience) precisely like that of man; and if of a cautious disposition, he will end by uniting all the forms which graduate into each other, under a single species; for he will say to himself that he has no right to give names to objects which he cannot define."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2300/2300-h/2300-h.htm#link2HCH0006
Dear Mathew, among many other things I admire about people I encounter, the rare ability to be unusually good in more than one dimension or discipline is uppermost.
In your case, it’s many, not just more than one!
In many ways, I’m very narrow. I know almost nothing about almost everything. I’m a half decent biological scientist but only through an ability to integrate a dozen subdisciplines of biology. I’m not a top scientist in any of the sub disciplines, but that ability to integrate was perfectly adapted to a commercially-valuable niche.
Those same abilities helped me unpick the COVID situation as fraud earlier than most & to have done so in ways which permitted me to “show my working” to anyone interested.
Outside of that, there’s nothing I’m any good at besides, perhaps, in-depth knowledge of 1970s Suzuki motorcycles. Not particularly useful 🤔
I much enjoy reading your articles. Thank you for your many contributions.
As a kid, I thought of “the ancient Greeks” as, well, ancient. Necessarily technologically primitive. Clever, foundational. Philosophy & mathematics. Advanced mathematics.
But too busy thinking about how we should live. How we should die. How to think. What to think about.
But machinery, engineering, advanced materials, hey, that’s us!
Until this was fished out of the sea.
I’m still dumbfounded & star struck.
How did they make this?
How did they know how to design it?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
There are several very good documentaries about this device.
Among the surprises for me is that there are no others pulled from the ground or sea, or handed down from antiquity. Where are earlier prototypes? Derivative devices?
Either way, it’s a wonderful & intriguing machine.
I love that description: the "Birds of Paradise" vector of cultural evolution in the absence of rivalrous pressure...
I never liked Wheaties, and don't care if a small plane crashes into the manufacturing facility or the company headquarters.
But I miss Bruce Jenner.
Looking forward to part 2.
Certainly one of history's mysteries, more complex than I had previously imagined. (Where are the 'Hardly Boys' when you really need them?)
These excellent, long and complicated ad-lib pieces contain a lot of really valuable brainstorming, but I'm going to confess straight out they're a little hard to follow. Maybe that's intentional, and if so, fine; or maybe they could do with a little "trailing the conclusion in the lede" to motivate the reader!
Is the explosion of non-traditional gender concepts an analogue in modern neoliberal capitalism of the way pre-capitalist, but also hugely unequal societies, utilized non-procreative "gender groups" such as eunuchs? (Traditionally this is a more broadly priestly/ecclesiastical function, of course. Think of monks and Catholic priests.) Are all the LGB~<slams fingers on the keyboard> genders essentially a kind of emergent courtly caste within the late capitalist state? I like this thesis. A lot.
There's a second lens. Lenin, like many Utopians, wanted to remould humanity in the image of his revolution aposteriori. The New Socialist Man. The history of the 20th century left was largely the history of the Homo Sovieticus failing and re-emerging in new guises. The workers failed to make the revolution (or at least failed to make it /well/ under the debased conditions of Russia, 1917.) So in 1968, Marxist avant gardes fell back on the students, non-whites and sexual minorities as the revolutionary/historical subject. By the 1990s and early 2000s, they'd fallen back on non-whites and sexual minorities. What's emerging now with the vogue for transhumanism is the whole thing going full circle. Let's directly bio-engineer the Homo Sovieticus. It's like Lenin has become a triune entity comprised of Marx (just to pick on three loosely representative names) Jon Stryker and Martine Rothblatt, with Judith Butler as the sort of median-point.
Wow. I'll have to re-read that one! Been thinking a lot about the horror that's become the inclusive, open minded cultures I once felt a part of. And how the pharma tentacles of manipulation hide in threads of compassion, caring, protection, and in this case compassion, inclusion, support, respect, and "open mindedness" (which has become pathological closed-mindedness in this backwards world). And the similarities with children encouraged to turn against and hide from their parents, for injections and puberty blockers.
To offer a somewhat different take on gender / sex (I think you're saying that sex and gender are the same and have been so throughout most of history? - that's a too short summary for such a deep and winding article, but it's 4am and I want to reply - and share some links - before putting this off) ...
I think the concept of gender being fluid, a spectrum that may fully or partly or sometimes or not really match with biological sex ... is completely different than denial of biological sex being ... unchangeable, it-is-what-it-is biological sex. (With of course some exceptions, some are born with both sexes in one body, and some are truly born in the wrong bodies and would be better off with medical assistance to change that, like "Sam" who Heather Heying writes about with much respect. And of course trans people deserve dignity and respect and equal rights (except when trying to pass for the biological sex they are not and destroy women's sports, and our relationship to words and reality itself).
It's possible to feel resonance and positivity at the thought of exploring gender-as-spectrum, to feel a recognition at the Indigenous term "Two-Spirit" (yet that would be cultural appropriation, I guess), and also be absolutely fucking horrified at how children and teens are being taught that if they feel any resonance with the gender that doesn't match their biological sex, that they should take puberty blockers and medical interventions to change the sex they were born with, with as much contemplation and enthusiasm as cutting their hair, or growing their hair, or putting on eyeliner, or changing their shoes.
Like how Heather Heying (evolutionary biologist who is also horrified at what's happening with kids and transitioning), speaks fondly of David Bowie as someone who played with feminine-as-gender while not denying that he is a man-as-biology.
Heather and Bret say that the gender is the software, and biological sex is the hardware. The conflation of them being the same is being used to gaslight kids - and everyone - that if a boy feels like a girl sometimes (or thinks he does, Or is told directly or indirectly that he should consider maybe that he is really a girl and therefore thinks about it a lot more than he would naturally) - that the solution to that isn't to become comfortable with the femininity that lives in him, and explore that as a beautiful part of himself - the solution is to decide he is now a she (or ze/ they / it ), and the only way to be comfortable in his own skin is to take puberty blockers and get on a road to irreversible physical and probably psychological damage.
Some may feel that our biology decides our gender, and there's no room in there for variations, different choices, experimenting.
That's taken out of context by those pushing the trans agenda (some from pathological creepy agendas, others from genuine allyship and genuinely feeling like they don't fit the traditional definitions of male / female).
They say that to be respectful of a child / teenagers development, they should be able to choose their gender and have that affirmed by those around them. OK. That's not necessarily a terrible thing. Gender can be combined and experimented with and changed as many times as they wish as they grow and get to know themselves. The Software. They cannot choose their hardware - that's already chosen.
The danger in conflating hardware and software is conflating buying those pink sneakers for the little boy and being happy that he's happy wearing them with literal medical interventions that have an agenda that misrepresents them as nearly perfectly safe, that cannot be taken off like the pink sneakers.
Make Johnny feel defective because he likes the pink sneakers? That's not nice, not affirming, and, depending how much care and tact is involved, might be abusive. Tell Johnny that even tho his Tumblr and Reddit "friends" and his teachers think he should take injections that stop the hormones his body naturally produces, that that's a very serious decision he might regret and maybe he doesn't really want to do that, like when he used to play dinosaur it didn't mean he needed to literally become one? - The powers that shouldn't be conflate That "Please seriously think about this" with crushing someone because they like the pink sneakers.
(Then again, a (loving, good, hard working) friend whose granddaughter is deep in the world of trans activists says that sometimes kids don't just experiment sometimes with the gender spectrum, they keep insisting they really feel like they are the other biological sex. Also, with so many endocrine disruptors around, this may be more common than we realize.) But I still wonder how much of that constant insistence of needing to be what one is not is coming from their authentic self, and how much is from the information they take in ...
Hope this makes sense .. I think there's an important middle ground that respects gender fluidness and that there are some legit trans people and also is suspicious of what's behind the zeal to change the pronouns of the entire human race, why google says things like "what are the 72 genders?" ... a middle ground that doesn't alienate the migration of disillusioned lefties who may be queer or have many friends who are queer / trans / pronoun obsessed ... but still makes clear that biological sex is biological sex. You don't need to be a biologist to understand this, but we do need to respect biology.
And disrespecting biology and getting used to it being augmented in whatever ways pharma wants, and getting used to that very, very young, is part of the agenda that's made trans "inclusivity" way too big of an issue these past years, that's more making sense now ...
Really Good Links -
https://www.corbettreport.com/what-is-the-trans-agenda-questions-for-corbett-video/ - Very Very interesting .. some of the same people involved in gene based injections and the idea that changing biological sex is a simple process of progress.
https://letter.wiki/conversation/893 - beautiful conversation between Heather Heying and Abigail Shrier, author of "Irreversible Damage" .... "The Torment and Tragedy of Teenage Girls"
https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/iamawoman?s=r - Wonderful article by Heather Heying
Speaking of the "really, really bad" guy. In the beginning I tended to say when seeing all the masked: "Was this year declared Michael Jackson Tribute Year & I missed it or something?". Then it became mandatory, and my hypothesis seemed less likely...
I suspect that when new genders are created they split off into separate species. You can see that with this species of bird that has evolved an extra two genders - females that look and behave like males and males that look and behave like females. I suppose these two genders will get along with each other better and become more isolated in their breeding from the two "traditional" genders until they become a new species.
Is the explosion of non-traditional gender concepts an analogue in modern neoliberal capitalism of the way pre-capitalist, but also hugely unequal societies, utilized non-procreative "gender groups" such as eunuchs? (Traditionally this is a more broadly priestly/ecclesiastical function, of course. Think of monks and Catholic priests.) Are all the LGB~<slams fingers on the keyboard> genders essentially a kind of emergent courtly caste within the late capitalist state? I like this thesis. A lot.
There's a second lens. Lenin, like many Utopians, wanted to re-mold humanity in the image of his revolution aposteriori. The New Socialist Man. The history of the 20th century left was largely the history of the Homo Sovieticus failing and re-emerging in new guises. The workers failed to make the revolution (or at least failed to make it /well/ under the debased conditions of Russia, 1917.) So in 1968, Marxist avant gardes fell back on the students, non-whites and sexual minorities as the revolutionary/historical subject. By the 1990s and early 2000s, they'd fallen back on non-whites and sexual minorities. What's emerging now with the vogue for transhumanism is the whole thing going full circle. Let's directly bio-engineer the Homo Sovieticus. It's like Lenin has become a triune entity comprised of Marx (just to pick on three loosely representative names) Jon Stryker and Martine Rothblatt, with Judith Butler as the sort of median-point.