Shan Ju Lin, James Ashby and the pitfalls of intersectionality

A coupla more thoughts on this mini-scandal engulfing One Nation:

So Shan Ju Lin is refusing to back down on her anti-gay comments. And rather intriguingly she's blaming her fate on One Nation Chief of Staff James Ashby, the gay former assistant to Peter Slipper:

The former candidate learned of her disendorsement while overseas, through a Facebook message from Pauline Hanson's chief of staff James Ashby, she said.

"I think Pauline gave him too much power, he is the one running the party, not Pauline," she said. "I should have had a chance to speak to Pauline but James Ashby just decided very quickly.

"There's no time left for me to come to talk to Pauline."

Obviously impossible to know whether this is true or not. And of course Ashby himself is denying this claim. But if this is what's going on it looks like a kind of Credlin-Abbott dynamic in reverse ... or something.

And if you're trying to interpret this event, and Hanson's party in general, through the lens of politically correct intersectionality, as many lefties surely are, then it'll do your head in.

For example, some people on social media are saying that Shan Ju Lin was Hanson's "token Asian". And now she's gotten rid of her under the pretence of homophobia.

Well, if that's the case and this standard was selectively applied, then why was Andy Semple, a white male, also punished for the same sin?

And while it does seem to be the case that Ms Lin has been the party's only Asian candidate so far, the racist redneck narrative has long been too simplistic in explaining One Nation.

And what of the gender angle? Well, obviously you can't say that One Nation is sexist, because it's led by, like, a chick, who is completely synonomous with it.

And what of class? On that score, it's the inner city Left who are classist in their condemnation of Hanson and her supporters, not the other way around. These sneering hipsters bang on about being champs of the underdog, the voice of the people and all that other crap. Yet when they see a truly working class person (and a woman at that) who has the temerity to disagree with their patronising political prescriptions they mock, deride and bully her for decades on end!

Really, it's much more productive to at least try to see people as individuals rather than members of a group, innit?