Identity politics and intersectionality come with the insidious assumption that all members of a particular group think alike. Opinions come to be seen as an extension of a person’s race, gender or sexuality rather than a carefully considered perspective. In reality, our views are no more determined by our genitalia than they are by our pigmentation.
Our identity may shape our experiences of the world, but the suggestion that this determines what we think is, as David Swift puts it, ‘both highly essentialist and reductionist’.
Swift goes on to note that an assumed link between race and opinions ‘holds little appeal for actual ethnic-minority voters. It is largely the creation of self-appointed “community leaders”, acting in concert with crank academics and guilty white people. It misses the crucial fact that most of the concerns of women, BME people and gays are the same as those of straight white men.’

Under the rule of the progressive Left, individuals who do not espouse the views that have been assigned to their particular identity group come in for severe criticism. Black British politician Kemi Badenoch, for example, is targeted for abuse because she does not believe that to be black is to be a victim of systemic and structural racism.

This linking of opinions to race and sex returns us to the racist and sexist thinking of a long-dead era. As Kwame Anthony Appiah puts it, this starts from the assumption that ‘there will be proper ways of being black and gay, there will be expectations to be met, demands will be made’. Appiah continues: ‘It is at this point that someone who takes autonomy seriously will ask whether we have not replaced one tyranny with another.’