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It is common, in political debates, to hear people respond “Nobody is saying that!” This can be quite baffling because it is so often said in response to someone addressing something that people are, quite clearly, saying. What it usually means is something more like: “None of the people in my group whom I approve of are saying that, and I feel like you are attacking my group.”

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Most recently, I saw a man claim that nobody is saying it is a moral problem when women do not have children until their thirties to a woman responding to precisely that discourse. I’ve seen people insist that ‘nobody is saying all white people are racist’ to people objecting to diversity training explicitly based on the thesis of Robin DiAngelo that all white people are racist. I’ve had gender critical feminists insist that “nobody is saying that men should not be allowed to wear dresses’ even though I was clearly responding to a deluge of people saying precisely that.

This is, I suspect, another manifestation of a broader problem: people speaking into tribal narratives, vibes, and themes rather than addressing specific arguments and principles. It is an attempt to reclaim the narrative from the more extreme or indefensible views within one’s own side and towards a more reasonable version. In effect, “Nobody is saying that” means “Don’t look at those people who are saying that. Look at me saying this more reasonable thing.”

Sometimes this is a conscious rhetorical move—a version of the motte and bailey, where a more radical claim retreats to a more defensible one when challenged. More often, I think, it reflects a discomfort with the existence of those more extreme views, combined with a reluctance to acknowledge them openly. It is easier to minimise or deflect than to say, “Yes, some people who broadly share my values do say that, and they are wrong.”

Another variation of this is “That’s not the point” or “You are missing the point” when someone is clearly addressing a specific point that they themselves have raised and set out clearly. I have typically responded to people doing this in the comments of one of my pieces or threads that I am the person who wrote it and consequently, I know what the point of it was. If they want to raise a different point, they should make that clear or perhaps even write their own piece or start a separate thread.

What “That’s not the point!” often means is: “I don’t want you to focus on that point. It is weak, inconvenient, or difficult to defend. I would prefer to move the discussion onto stronger ground.” This, again, is much easier than saying the honest thing, “Yes, that argument does not really work even on its own terms. We’d be better off abandoning it.”

At root, this is an attempt to minimise or gloss over the most extreme or indefensible views on one’s own side and, rather than correctly directing one’s annoyance at the members of one’s own tribe who are creating them, instead aiming them at the people noticing them. This is, I think, a very strong tribal instinct.

This became very clear to me when I was addressing problems with Critical Social Justice (woke) scholarship in accusations of ‘nutpicking’ that work in the same way. I was frequently told that I was unfairly selecting only irrational and illiberal examples to criticise rather than better scholarship. But my focus on those examples was deliberate. I think irrationalism and illiberalism are the problem. I do not criticise good, rigorous work addressing racism or sexism because I think it is good. I support it.

The same pattern appears on the right. When I criticise ethnonationalists or Christian nationalists, I am sometimes asked why I pick on the extreme positions and do not instead address more thoughtful arguments about cultural compatibility or the challenges posed by illiberal interpretations of Islam. The answer is the same: I think those more principled, well-reasoned and evidenced arguments are sound. Why would I criticise them?

In both cases, the assumption is that criticism of the worst arguments on one side must be an attempt to claim they represent the entire group and thus discredit it. That assumption itself is a projection of tribal thinking. If one’s own critique of one’s most illiberal and irrational political opponents genuinely is nutpicking rather than a good faith engagement with specific bad ideas, it is natural to assume that anybody criticising any element of one’s own side must be doing the same.

Ultimately, all of these responses reflect a commitment to tribal narratives over engaging with specific arguments and consistent principles. It is not necessarily that people doing this secretly agree with illiberal or irrational ideas on their own side or don’t see the problem with them, but that their understanding of solidarity and effective organised action requires not drawing attention to them and instead minimising them while pointing out the illiberal and irrational ideas on the other side.

I believe this attitude to be both very natural and a fatal mistake. When people prioritise defending their side’s overall narrative, they become less willing to acknowledge its weaknesses and more inclined to attack those who do. The result is increased polarisation. Each side constructs its own narrative out of its strongest arguments while constructing a counter-narrative of their opponents out of their weakest arguments. Over time, this makes it harder to see one another clearly at all and self-correction becomes all but impossible. This tribalistic tendency may have served us well in some other context in our evolutionary history, but it certainly does not do so now.

The same kind of confusion arises around spurious accusations of “straw manning.” It is correct to accuse someone of making a straw man when they misrepresent a position in order to attack an easier target. But it is not a straw man to respond directly to an extreme, unreasonable, or unethical argument that someone has actually made. There is no obligation to improve a bad argument before criticising it.

The thing not to do when people are criticising the worst arguments made and least ethical stances taken by people on your own side is become angry with them for noticing that and accurately pointing out the problems with it and insist that they instead address your best and most defensible arguments.

Instead, go to the people on your own side making the extreme, ridiculous, fallacious, blatantly unethical or otherwise easily refuted arguments and say something like, “No. What are you doing? Stop that. This is not reasonable, principled and grounded in reality, is it? Come on, now. I share your overall aims and am sympathetic to your frustration and the sense of urgency that is making you want to go full ‘scorched earth’ here. But you’re turning a strong and principled position which can be convincing to ethical and reasonable people into one that is neither and won’t be.”

Ideally, say this privately if you can and try to help that individual who is going off the rails to get back on them again. If this is not a possibility or it fails, say it publicly and address the problems with the stance being taken by people on your own side in detail and with clarity and consistent principle. This is how political sides and movements self-correct and self-regulate and become the strongest, most ethical and most persuasive versions of themselves. This is always going to be more effective than ignoring internal problems and then getting angry with political opponents for noticing them.

If you find yourself getting angry and frustrated with someone for accurately criticising a position actually being taken by people on your own side, stop and ask yourself if you have ever acknowledged and addressed those problems yourself.

If you have, you are in a good position to say, “Yes, I agree with you that this stance is indefensible. It is one I do not hold and am actively countering. Can we now discuss the position I do hold and am setting out here? I’d be interested to know if you have objections to that.”

If you have not addressed these problems, your anger at your political opponent for observing one and accurately spelling out why it is a problem is misplaced. That was your job and if enough people on your side had done it, you could have fixed it by now and not have to be dealing with your political opponents doing it for you.

If we can resist this impulse to build narratives that function as public relations for our own side while casting our opponents in the worst possible light, we might have a chance. That would mean engaging in good faith with the best arguments from those with whom we disagree, as they really are, and addressing the worst arguments on our own side honestly and transparently in order to self-correct and become better. We might even create a political system in which both sides are incentivised to be honest, accountable, and consistently principled, rather than one in which the average reasonable, ethical person is left trying to work out which is the lesser of two evils.

We can but dream.

The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain has over 6000 readers! We are creating a space for liberals who care about what is true on the left, right and centre to come together and talk about how to understand and navigate our current cultural moment with effectiveness and principled consistency.

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(Audio version here)

The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain has over 6000 readers! We are creating a space for liberals who care about what is true on the left, right and centre to come together and talk about how to understand and navigate our current cultural moment with effectiveness and principled consistency.

I think it is important that I keep my writing free. It is paying subscribers who allow me to spend my time writing and keep that writing available to everyone. Currently 3.8% of my readers are paying subscribers. My goal for 2026 is to increase that to 7%. This would enable me to write full-time for my own substack! If you can afford to become a paying subscriber and want to help me do that, thank you! Otherwise, please share!

People so often speak of “gender ideology” as if there is only one. Typically, they are referring to a belief in an innate gender identity which is more authoritative in determining whether one is a man or a woman than one’s biological sex. This is, of course, an ideology of gender. However, it is far from the only one and I think we do well to consider carefully the arguments against it by people who clearly have a very distinct gender ideology of their own.

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First, we should examine what a gender ideology is. The term ‘ideology’ simply means ‘a set or system of ideas and beliefs’ but it is often said with negative connotations to imply that claims made from ideology are biased rather than objective. When engaging in political and cultural debate, and addressing social issues, however, there is nothing inherently suspect about doing so from any political, religious or philosophical position as long as one is clear and consistent about it. I argue from a liberal framework which is a set of ideas and beliefs about individual liberty, viewpoint diversity and democratic governance. Having a consistent set of principles, ideas and beliefs only becomes a problem when people become authoritarian or blinkered and engage in dishonest argument, motivated reasoning and tribalism to protect their beliefs.

The concept of “gender” is more complex, because it has multiple definitions. Some people use ‘gender’ synonymously with ‘sex,’ either as a more ‘polite’ term or to distinguish it from the act of sex. In political and cultural discussions, however, ‘gender’ is more commonly used to refer to characteristics of being a man or a woman that are not anatomical—primarily behaviours and presentation. Even within this definition, there is considerable variation. Some use ‘gender’ to include distributions of traits that constitute evolved psychological sex differences, while others restrict it to socially constructed, culturally specific roles and expectations. This is further complicated by disagreement over which traits are rooted in our biology as a dimorphic, sexually reproducing species, and which are socially constructed. These disagreements can be productive, however. Rigorous research in evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, and sociology can help to clarify them.

The simplest way to capture what most people mean by ‘gender’ is to think of it as standing in relation to sex as ‘masculine’ does to ‘male’ and ‘feminine’ to ‘female’. From there, we can recognise that people differ considerably in how they define masculinity and femininity, how they believe they came to be associated with men and women, and whether they regard this as a good thing or a problem.

We appear always to have had a concept that distinguishes gender from sex. This is reflected in longstanding language: ‘manly’ and ‘womanly’ (generally approving and aligned with sex), ‘mannish’ and ‘womanish’ (often disapproving and applied to those seen as manifesting traits more proper to the other sex), and terms like ‘effeminate’ or ‘butch’ to describe more feminine men and masculine women. If the sentences “She is a very feminine woman” or “He is not a particularly masculine man” make intuitive sense to you—even if you disapprove of evaluating people in this way—you already have a concept of gender as distinct from sex.

Therefore, a gender ideology can most simply be defined as “a set of ideas and beliefs about what masculinity and femininity are, how they relate to being male or female, and what their ethical and social implications are.” On this definition, it becomes clear that more than one gender ideology is being expressed and contested in contemporary political and cultural discourse.

There are many sets of ideas and beliefs about gender and its relationship to sex, but they can be broadly divided into three main streams: gender conservative, gender critical, and genderqueer. Each contains a kernel of truth and can be articulated in ways that respect individual liberty. But when hardened into ideological commitments, each can lead us away from what is true and become hostile to that liberty.

Gender conservatism holds that gender roles and stereotypes of masculinity and femininity are good and natural (or God-ordained), that they should align with biological sex, and that this alignment ought to be enforced legally and/or socially for the wellbeing of individuals and the moral good of society. This typically includes, or strongly privileges, heterosexuality as a moral ideal.

There are significant ethical differences within this broad stance. The ‘manosphere,’ which includes figures such as Andrew Tate and Myron Gaines, portrays masculinity as aggressive, boorish, and misogynistic, with an emphasis on sexual conquest. This is sharply at odds with the ‘tradlife’ Christian conservative ideal, which emphasises celibacy before marriage, monogamy, male leadership, and female submission. Nevertheless, both are rooted in beliefs about the natural dominance of men, seen as suited to leadership and governance, and the corresponding subordination of women, seen as primarily suited to sexual and domestic roles.

Most social conservatives reject both of these extremes, but typically believe that men and women are fundamentally different—though often of equal value—and suited to different roles in life. They tend to see men as oriented towards protecting and providing, and women towards nurturing and homemaking, and to believe that both sexes are happier in these roles, that families function best within this arrangement, and that society is healthier as a result.

The kernel of truth here is that psychological sex differences do exist, and that gender roles and stereotypes are therefore grounded in something real. More men than women are drawn to protecting and providing roles, while more women than men are drawn to nurturing and homemaking ones. Attempting to socially engineer these differences away entirely would likely make many people unhappy.

Gender conservatism departs from reality when it attempts to turn statistically different distributions of traits between the sexes into rigid categories of masculine and feminine roles, ignoring the biological fact that men and women are overlapping populations with significant individual variation. Some of the most ambitious, career-oriented people with strong leadership skills are women, while some of the most nurturing and domestically oriented are men. More commonly, men and women both possess a mix of these qualities and are happiest when they combine professional, intellectual, or vocational work with hands-on parenting and family life. They may differ, on average, in the work–life balance they prefer.

Gender conservatism becomes illiberal when it not only denies the overlap in trait distributions between the sexes, but insists that such variation should not exist. In its more rigid forms, it treats deviations from stereotypical masculinity and femininity—whether in personality, behaviour, or sexuality—as morally wrong. Some seek to impose these values on others through legal or social pressure.

Gender-critical views require more unpacking because this concept is not only held to different degrees, some of which are compatible with truth and individual liberty and some of which are not. Its meaning has also recently been significantly expanded to encompass directly contradictory views.

Gender-critical feminism is continuous with the radical feminism that arose to challenge longstanding and historically dominant forms of gender conservatism. It holds that ‘gender’ is an oppressive social construct created to subordinate women to men within patriarchal systems. Gender—and with it, gender roles and stereotypes—is understood as a set of fictions created to justify the subordination of one sex class to another. Notions of masculinity and femininity should therefore be abolished in order to liberate women (and, to a lesser extent, men) from the constraints they impose.

The term ‘gender critical,’ however, has broadened considerably, particularly over the last decade. Many people have adopted the label specifically to signal opposition to the trans activist/queer movement, often from positions other than radical feminism or any form of feminism. As a result, while those who describe themselves as ‘gender critical’ can nearly all be understood to object to the concept of gender identity, they are not all critical of gender itself, including roles and stereotypes. Some hold gender-conservative views, and there has been a noticeable influx of people from the populist right hostile to the aims of gender critical feminism. This adds further to the conceptual confusion. Some of the original left-wing, gender-critical feminists from the radical, materialist and socialist traditions now feel utterly alienated from the movement they began.

Among those original gender-critical feminists who are both genuinely critical of gender and grounded in feminist theory, there is still considerable variation. In their most absolutist manifestation, some gender-critical feminists within the radical feminist tradition adopt a blank-slatist position. They are “defined by holding that all behavioural and psychological average differences are developmentally acquired, and that none are structured into sexed brains in the womb or at puberty.” (Kathleen Stock, Material Girls). This is also often described as holding a belief that ‘evolution stops at the neck.’ It assumes that, if patriarchal social conditioning did not exist which assigns different roles to men and women, the sexes would be psychologically and behaviourally identical. This stance can be expressed explicitly or revealed implicitly in assumptions that any disparities between men and women must be socially constructed rather than influenced by biologically-driven psychological differences. These include overall differences in earnings (but not in spending), representation in prestigious professions (but not dirty or dangerous ones), work/life balance, concern for domestic orderliness, violent crime etc.

Because this is a political movement with the specific aim of liberating the sex class of women from the sex class of men, feminist theorising is prone to reading behavioural and psychological differences between men and women as well as the different experiences and challenges faced by men and women in a highly politicised way. “Patriarchy” - an oppressive system which legally or socially gives men disproportionate power and leadership, including over women - is typically theorised to persist and provide a primary explanatory framework for a wide range of social issues. Due to class-based thinking that sees men and women as distinct classes with their own sex-based interests rather than as individuals who can individually subscribe to a range of political positions on the roles and rights of women, ‘patriarchy’ can often be used synonymously with ‘men,’ thereby lending justification to misandrist views.

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How to Tell if You’re Living in a Patriarchy

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a year ago · 36 likes · 10 comments · Quillette and Helen Pluckrose

This blank-slatist stance on the existence, origins, and causes of psychological and behavioural sex differences is sometimes upheld consistently, and sometimes not. Because this strand of feminist theory operates explicitly through a lens of what it understands to be in the interests of women, it does not always apply its principles consistently across groups. In this respect, it differs from a liberal framework, which treats people as individuals with equal moral rights, and can be described as feminist when it objects to women being denied those rights. This can lead some proponents to accept psychological sex differences when they appear to favour women, but to downplay or reject them when they appear to favour men, and to recognise areas in which women are disadvantaged while overlooking those in which men are.

gives a good overview of how these biases can manifest in the social sciences and more widely.

The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter

The War on Sex Differences

In Case You Missed It…

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5 months ago · 42 likes · 8 comments · Steve Stewart-Williams

However, it would be a mistake and unjust to assume that all who take a gender critical stance with particular concern for the rights and roles of women are blank slatists with a misandrist bias. The majority of people who take this position (and many of them are men) accept that psychological and behavioural sex differences exist and manifest in disparities between the sexes. They are concerned about the enforcement of gender roles and stereotypes or social pressure to conform with them and particularly with the way this manifests in trans activism and the risks of this to women (and children). They typically reject the idea that the conflict is between ‘men’s interests’ and ‘women’s interests,’ and instead see it as a disagreement between political groups comprising individuals of both sexes. They may or may not believe that we still live in a society in which patriarchal norms have a significant presence and disadvantage women in particular.

The kernel of truth in the gender critical stance is that culturally constructed and oppressive gender roles and stereotypes and patriarchal values have demonstrably existed throughout history and continue to be held and expressed within factions of society today. There is also an inherent risk in assuming that psychological sex differences manifesting in autonomous choices made by women explain their underrepresentation in any prestigious field. It may well be better to err in the direction of making a false positive error (assuming disadvantage to exist when it does not) than a false negative error (assuming that disadvantage does not exist when it does) and then falsify this if warranted.

The gender-critical standpoint departs from reality when it adopts a blank-slatist position and defines ‘gender’ in ways that encompass cognitive, psychological, and behavioural sex differences for which there is considerable evidence. Evidence for these differences can be found across multiple disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, neuroscience, cognitive and evolutionary psychology, primatology, and endocrinology. They are also observed in very young children, prior to extensive socialisation, and show parallels in other great apes, suggesting evolutionary roots that predate human culture. There is also a well-documented paradox in which differences in male and female preferences tend to increase, rather than decrease, in more sex-egalitarian societies where individuals have greater freedom to choose.

The gender critical feminist stance becomes illiberal when it demonises men and pathologises perfectly normal and healthy male traits which most commonly manifest in positive and neutral ways. It can also hinder effective detection of, and intervention with, violent and predatory offenders when ‘men’ or ‘masculinity’ are treated as the primary explanatory categories, rather than undertaking rigorous analysis of why a minority of men behave in harmful and antisocial ways despite widespread social condemnation. It also represents a devaluation of more female-typical traits and a denial of individual autonomy when it is assumed that when women do not make the same life and career choices as men in the same numbers, this means they are being prevented from doing so. This seems to regard men as the default and optimal humans, diminishing the value of areas in which women are more strongly represented, such as communication and social domains.

The gender critical movement more broadly is illiberal when it attempts to cancel and penalise people for their language and clothing choices and engages in homophobic and racist rhetoric. Principled gender critical feminists who object to authoritarianism consistently and actively support gender nonconformity and same sex attraction have been in the forefront of opposing this development. It remains essential to distinguish between gender conservatives who adopt the ‘gender critical’ label alongside (often radical) culturally conservative views, and left-wing gender-critical feminists working within a progressive, materialist framework. The people most likely to blur this distinction are the ‘genderqueer’ activists.

Genderqueer activism holds that categories of sex, gender and sexuality have all been socially constructed in the service of upholding cis/heteronormative power structures. ‘Cis/heteronormative’ refers to the assumption that people are, and ought to be, heterosexual and conform to gender roles, stereotypes, and presentations aligned with their biological sex. Liberation, on this view, requires dissolving, blurring, and fragmenting these categories. The verb ‘to queer’ refers to this process of dismantling boundaries and destabilising classifications.

The development of ‘queer theory’ upon which this ideology depends followed the evolutionary pattern we set out in Cynical Theories. Originally, it was merely deconstructive and sought to subvert established concepts of sex and sexuality particularly by complicating them. This then moved into an activist phase which took aim at both gender conservatism and the radical feminism with which gender critical feminism is continuous. Consequently, it shares gender conservative views that align gender roles and gender stereotypes with biological sex but inverts them. Rather than ‘Women should be feminine” it enables ‘People with feminine traits are women.” It also shares some tenets with feminists in that it believed gender to be a social construct but explicitly contradicted their materialist stance by claiming sex to also be socially constructed and so open to subjective reconstruction. Later (and current) development of queer theory hardened into accepting the subjective element of ‘gender identity’ as authoritative and unquestionable while allowing sex to be redefined in accordance with that identity and sexuality to be reframed as attraction to gender identity rather than biological sex.

Consequently, there is a range of views that exists under this heading too. However, what is most evident to most people is authoritarian trans activism and institutional capture. This takes an absolutist stance which holds that gender identity must be affirmed and that a failure to do represents a denial of the trans-identified individual’s right to exist. The advocated right of the trans person to be accepted straightforwardly and uncritically as a man or woman on the basis of their gender identity and in all situations is held as though it takes precedent over the rights and freedoms of every other group. This gender ideology has rightly been the cause of greatest concern because it has gained most institutional power and been implemented in ways which directly jeopardise the safety of women and children.

Trans activists have been particularly aggressive and even violent and their primary targets have been gender critical feminists. The website “TerfIsASlur” has been documenting this.

Meanwhile, institutions, organisations and workplaces have been enforcing affirmation of belief in gender identity on employees under threat of disciplinary action. This necessitated court cases to produce rulings that people cannot be discriminated against for simply believing that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are biological categories and declining to affirm otherwise. The battle to protect women’s single sex spaces and categories including bathrooms, changing rooms, refuges, prisons and sports for reasons of safety and fair competition are ongoing. So too are attempts to address “gender-affirming care” for children experiencing gender distress, oppose medical interventions on those typically considered too young to give consent to life-changing decisions and make available therapeutic support that helps young people explore a range of reasons for feeling alienated from their sexed bodies including autism and same-sex attraction.

These varied and serious problems are all underlain by the belief that the consequences of not affirming the gender identity of a trans-identified person are so devastating that a moral imperative to do so takes precedence over other considerations. These include freedom of belief and speech, the risks to women of enabling sexual predators to ‘self-identify’ into spaces where they are undressed or vulnerable, and the rights of women to compete safely and fairly in sport. They also include the rights of children who will not always perceive themselves as having a gender identity different from their biological sex, to grow up without medical intervention and make their own decisions as adults capable of informed consent.

Because these manifestations of genderqueer/gender identity views are so authoritarian and unreasonable and the consequences so serious, they have understandably dominated the discussion and eclipsed earlier iterations which were more playful, individualistic and freedom-respecting, demanding no affirmations, sacrifice of women’s sex-based rights or medical intervention on children. These included the ‘gender-bending’ playfulness commonly seen in the 70s, 80s and 90s and portrayed by artists like David Bowie, Prince and Annie Lennox and in the “Rocky Horror” fandom.

It also included the rare phenomenon of people (mostly men) who experienced persistent distress about their sexed bodies and underwent psychiatric evaluation as adults followed by hormonal treatment and surgery to alleviate their distress. They were typically known as ‘transsexuals’ and understood to be dealing with a persistent psychological issue, not to have actually changed sex. Many transsexuals are particularly critical of the concept of gender identity.

Support of both categories of individual and an acceptance of ‘queerness’ as a liberatory and/or joyful phenomenon involving anybody who is not straightforwardly masculine or feminine, heterosexual, monogamous and sexually conventional continue to exist. This stance is commonly found among those who have a worldview geared towards sexual liberation and a culturally libertarian ethos. That same ethos causes them to strongly object to authoritarian queer or trans activism.

The kernel of truth to be found within ‘queer’ activism is that many people do not have, or do not wish to express, typically masculine or feminine traits aligned with their biological sex, and have historically been pressured to conform to them. This sometimes coincides with same-sex attraction, which has also been subject to stigma. Enabling people to live more openly as gender-nonconforming and/or homosexual has made life easier for those individuals.

Genderqueer activism departs from reality when it asserts that a sense of gender identity is universal, and that it is more authoritative than biological sex in determining whether someone is a man or a woman. It does so when it claims that trans women simply are women, and that recognising them as such carries no risks for women’s safety or fair competition. It also does so when it treats gender identity as uniquely stable and reliable in adolescence, unlikely to be mistaken or exploratory, and therefore something that can be safely affirmed without question.

Genderqueer activism becomes illiberal when it coerces others into affirming beliefs about gender identity that they do not hold, and to which they may have ethical objections that should be protected in a liberal society. It is illiberal when activists engage in abuse, intimidation, no-platforming, censorship, or attempts to silence gender-critical feminists in particular, but also others who object either to the concept of gender identity or to the methods used to promote it. It is illiberal when it treats the rights it seeks for trans-identified people as overriding the individual liberties and group-based rights of others.

There are clearly at least three gender ideologies with a significant presence in our culture wars. The question is how those who care about truth and individual liberty should navigate them. A common response is what I have called “reactive overcompensation”: surging in the opposite direction of a dominant totalising narrative and embracing its apparent opposite. This is seldom helpful, either for remaining grounded in reality or for protecting freedom. Understanding truth as that which corresponds with reality and caring about it is essential for forming principled stances and achieving anything effectively.

We cannot be entirely certain of knowing everything that is true about sex and gender. Research into cognitive, psychological, and behavioural sex differences, sexuality, and individual variation is ongoing, and competing hypotheses remain. This is all fascinating (to me, at least), but a detailed grasp of the literature is not required in order to take a stance in defence of truth.

Some things are so well established that they are extremely unlikely ever to be overturned and can, at least, be accepted as provisionally true and worked with.

• We are a sexually reproducing, dimorphic species, consisting of two sexes defined by the production of one of two types of gametes. This is not a social construct, and it has practical significance—for example, in relation to single-sex spaces and categories.

• It is also extremely unlikely that evolution ‘stops at the neck.’ A substantial body of evidence from multiple, mutually reinforcing fields indicates that cognitive, psychological, and behavioural sex differences exist. This has relevance for patterns in career choice, work–life balance, crime, and attitudes towards risk and sexuality, among other things.

• At the same time, men and women are overlapping populations with respect to these traits, and there is considerable individual variation within each. For this reason, claims that men and women are psychologically distinct in ways that justify rigid gender roles are scientifically unsound.

• A minority of people are exclusively attracted to members of the same sex. This is highly unlikely to be socially constructed, and attempts to pressure such individuals into heterosexuality whether by social conservatives or trans activists are unlikely to be effective.

Liberals can vary enormously on ethical stances towards gender. They can be socially conservative, gender critical or gender queer. What they are united on is the responsibility to apply this to their own lives and not impose it on other people.

Those who value traditional gender roles can build relationships and communities around them, advocate for their value, and still respect the right of others to live differently. Those who are gender critical can organise their lives around rejecting gender roles and stereotypes, while respecting others’ freedom to adopt them and limiting their objections to criticism. Those who understand themselves as genderqueer can live and present themselves however they wish, while recognising that others are not obliged to affirm gender identity, are free to criticise it, and that biological sex continues to exist and have significance.

It is also entirely possible for liberals to have no strong opinion on theoretical concepts of gender whether conservative, critical or queer. I suspect this to be the majority position. As recently as 2022, a Yougov survey found that the majority of Britons paid little to no attention to debates around gender identity. I admit that this would be my preferred stance. Those of us who simply do not care very much if others embrace, reject or play with gender norms cannot meaningfully be said to have a gender ideology.

Nevertheless, liberals are defined by a commitment to individual liberty and freedom of belief and speech. That has required engagement in this debate, because these freedoms have come under significant threat. Those who are not interested in arguing about what gender is, how it works and whether it should be respected, accepted or abolished should still be committed to ensuring that those who are can argue amongst themselves without being penalised or censored.

Because recent threats to freedom of belief and speech have come largely from the genderqueer faction, and because gender-critical feminists have often been the primary targets, many liberals rallied to their defence under the banner of #LetWomenSpeak. That was the right thing to do. It was also right to defend the freedom of those with socially or religiously conservative views to hold, express, and live by them without penalty. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that having worked together to protect the freedom of belief and speech of those who wanted to criticise the concept of gender identity, makes us natural allies. That should entirely depend on whether the individuals making those critiques are doing so in a way that corresponds with reality and upholds individual liberty.

It is important that liberals who care about truth do not attempt to fit empirical, rational, and liberal principles into any particular gender ideology and then put their weight behind it. Instead, both those already committed to a particular view and those without strong opinions should remain focused on understanding truth as that which corresponds with reality, and on allowing others the freedom to believe, speak, and live as they see fit provided they do not materially harm others or deny them the same freedom. This is not a compromise between competing ideologies, but an overarching framework within which they can coexist, argue with other productively and be tested against reality.

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It is very important to recognise if one is defending a cause one agrees with or freedom of speech. One is about what should be believed while the other is about how disagreement should be handled. It is valid to be doing either or both but confusing and conflating them leads to incoherence, inconsistency and counterproductive arguments.

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This confusion and conflation is particularly prominent in online discourse around the Evangelical Christian activist, Enoch Burke. Burke was suspended from his job as a secondary school teacher for gross misconduct. This followed his interruption of a school religious service to protest against the school’s acceptance of a child’s gender transition and they/them pronouns. When the headteacher told him she would speak to him later, he refused to accept this and pursued her until others had to intervene.

He was subsequently issued with a court order to stay off school premises. He repeatedly ignored it and was jailed for contempt of court. He remains in jail, which he can leave at any time by agreeing to comply with the injunction. Burke has said he will stay in jail for 100 years if necessary, because he obeys God, not man.

The case has resurfaced because Burke’s mother, Martina, and sister, Ammi, were arrested and jailed for disrupting court proceedings by shouting and roaring. Mr Justice Cregan remarked, “We live in a democracy governed by the rule of law, not a theocracy governed by the Burke family.”

Interest surged again when Elon Musk shared a report of their arrest, commenting simply: “This is crazy.”

Musk did not clarify what he thought was crazy, and many who agree with him appear similarly unclear.

They are, broadly, making one of two arguments.

1. That belief in gender identity is false and harmful, particularly in children, and that Burke was right to oppose the school’s actions forcefully. These arguments support the cause of those who oppose its acceptance
2. That Burke and his family are being punished for expressing their beliefs, and that this constitutes a violation of freedom of speech. These arguments are about the principle of freedom of speech.

These are not the same argument, and they require different standards of reasoning.

When people fight for a cause, they do so because a specific issue matters to them urgently. The goal is to draw attention and force recognition.

• The cause is primary

• Urgency justifies escalation

• Tactics are flexible

• Consistency across issues is not required

Suffragettes were not defending a universal right to chain oneself to railings. Environmental activists are not defending a general right to block roads or throw soup on paintings. They are pursuing attention for causes they consider serious and urgent, often accepting arrest as part of that strategy.

Those who defend the Burkes on these grounds can do so coherently. They need not claim that disrupting assemblies, pursuing headteachers, defying court orders or disrupting court proceedings is generally acceptable. The claim is simply that this issue is important enough to justify such actions.

When people are defending freedom of speech, they do so because of a commitment to a principle which they believe should apply universally.

• The principle is primary

• The content is secondary (even irrelevant)

• Consistency across viewpoints is required

• The principle constrains behaviour

To defend free speech is not to defend this speech, but all speech, including speech one strongly opposes. Organisations such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) defend speech across political divides for this reason, often supporting individuals with directly contradictory views. When editing Areo, I applied the same principle, publishing arguments that took opposing stances, most of which I myself disagreed with. Consistency is key.

Those who wish to defend the Burkes on the grounds of free speech could do so coherently, but, in practice, they do not. Because this is a principle, doing so would require them to universally defend the form of activism the family uses, including for activists with entirely opposing views.

If you are somebody who feels sympathetic to the Burkes, try this thought experiment. Imagine the school had refused to affirm a student’s gender identity, and Burke had been a trans activist protesting that refusal. He disrupts a religious service to demand that the school affirm gender identity, pursues the headteacher to insist she listen to him immediately, ignores a court order and trespasses repeatedly leading the school to need to hire security and keep the children inside. His mother and sister shout and roar in court disrupting proceedings because they also believed he should be able to engage in this kind of activism in a school.

Do you still feel sympathetic to these hypothetical, counterfactual Burkes? Or do you feel that such disruptive trans activism on school property and in a court of law is unacceptable and justifies suspension and prosecution? If it is the latter, you are not defending a universal (and very radical) principle of free speech. You are sympathetic to the cause of opposing affirmations of transgender identity in schools and believe that this is such an important and urgent issue that it justifies disruptive, intimidating and law-breaking activism.

This is not a criticism of activism which can absolutely be justified ethically. Most people will be able to think of some cause that would justify them becoming loudly vocal and disruptive, defying workplace and institutional policy and engaging in civil (or uncivil) disobedience that is likely to result in arrest. Absolute, uncritical deference to authority on principle is neither common nor desirable.

It is perfectly ethical to fight for a cause passionately. It is also perfectly ethical to defend free speech as a higher-order principle. What is not ethical is to conflate the two and confuse and collapse the distinction. People typically do this when they care about a specific cause first, but wish to appear more principled and less partisan. They claim the moral authority of a universal liberal principle which few people are overtly authoritarian enough to explicitly reject. But by using the principle as a tool, they abuse it, and weaken that authority. If appeals to freedom of speech become recognised as primarily a cynical ploy to further a specific political agenda, the cultural value placed on that essential freedom principle will erode. This is how freedom of speech dies.

The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain has over 6000 readers! We are creating a space for liberals who care about what is true on the left, right and centre to come together and talk about how to understand and navigate our current cultural moment with effectiveness and principled consistency.

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The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain has over 6000 readers! We are creating a space for liberals who care about what is true on the left, right and centre to come together and talk about how to understand and navigate our current cultural moment with effectiveness and principled consistency.

I think it is important that I keep my writing free. It is paying subscribers who allow me to spend my time writing and keep that writing available to everyone. Currently 3.8% of my readers are paying subscribers. My goal for 2026 is to increase that to 7%. This would enable me to write full-time for my own substack! If you can afford to become a paying subscriber and want to help me do that, thank you! Otherwise, please share!

In a recent piece for which I encourage you to read in full, addressed “The Unbearable Intellectual Lightness of the Postliberal Being.” He looks at the claim that liberalism is a threat to religious liberty writing,

The core critical claim of postliberalism is that liberalism inevitably turns into its opposite; that what begins as an ideology of tolerance and free speech ends in repression.

and argued that “its case that liberalism must turn into its opposite is based on feelings, not theory or real world evidence.”

Indeed.

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The claim that liberalism is to blame for the rise of illiberalism is fundamentally incoherent. The same mechanism is not posited to exist in relation to any other philosophical or ideological framework. We do not, for example, see people claiming that Christianity inevitably leads to atheism or that support of free markets invariably results in socialism. It is recognised that when Christianity gives way to atheism, this is caused by a decline in Christianity and that socialism can only take hold in a society that has abandoned its commitment to free markets.

It should be equally clear that when threats to freedom of belief, freedom of speech, freedom of religion or any threat to individual liberty arises, it has been enabled by a failure to protect individual liberty and not as a result of consistently doing so. This is not a feature of liberalism but of failures to uphold it.

I have been accused before of indulging in a No True Scotsman fallacy with this claim but that is to misunderstand the fallacy. It gives the example of the statement “No true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge” but the fallacy here is redefining ‘Scotsman’ as ‘someone who would never put sugar on his porridge’ rather than by his holding Scottish ancestry or citizenship. It is falsified by the existence of someone who meets all definitions of being Scottish putting sugar on his porridge. If we were to say, “No true Scotsman has Welsh ancestry and has always lived in Wales” this would simply be definitionally true. So, too, is the statement “No true liberalism is illiberal.”

This does not mean that no liberal can ever fail to live up to his or her principles, but that when they do, this can be pointed out to them and they can self-correct because we know what liberal principles are and what a failure to live up to them looks like. It looks like being illiberal: seeking to deny the individual liberties of others - their freedom of belief, speech, religion etc. If that individual does not self-correct and resume upholding those values, we can then say that s/he not being liberal for exactly the same reason that we can say somebody who eats meat is not being vegetarian. The same principle applies to political movements or governments. If they are suppressing the freedoms of others, they are being illiberal. The people opposing this and defending individual liberties will be the liberals.

There can be disagreement about what constitutes a denial of individual liberty. Some liberals argue that gun control or restrictions on recreational drugs or sex work denies individual liberty. Others disagree and argue that these regulations are to prevent demonstrable material harm to others which is the only grounds on which liberalism sanctions coercion. There are also grey areas when it comes to issues of freedom of speech and social sanctions. When does public criticism of an individual become cancellation that destroys livelihoods and reputations and stifles free speech? Where precisely is the line between expressing horrible views about a demographic that wish them ill and inciting violence against them? Applying liberal principles to complex social issues can be messy because humans are messy. Nevertheless, it remains true that, while a philosophy centred on the aim to protect individual liberty may not always perfectly achieve this, individual liberty is best protected when a majority of people have this aim.

The belief that liberalism will inevitably result in illiberalism is, therefore, incoherent. As Koppelman argues, it is not rooted in either the philosophy of liberalism or in real world evidence comparing the individual freedoms of those who live in liberal democracies with those who don’t. It is, indeed, based on feelings. It is, in my observation, rooted in intuitions which see freedom as inherently dangerous and corrupting and which see criticism and coercion as existing on a continuum. Both of these are inherently authoritarian.

The first of these fears - that liberalism can be dangerous and corrupting - considered in the context of religious freedom can be justified if one accepts the premise that one particular religion is correct and that a failure to enforce it results in the social acceptance of ‘sinful behaviour and consequent eternal damnation. The fear is that if people are not compelled to practice or at least respect one religion and are permitted to criticise that religion or argue against accepting it as true, increasing numbers of people will stop believing in it or regarding it as good.

This is a legitimate criticism of liberalism. We do want people to be free to both express and listen to arguments for and against the truth or goodness of all and any ideas and belief systems. We recognise that this process causes some ideas to become more widely accepted as true or good and others to decline in credibility or approval as a result of people evaluating and comparing them. This is the liberal concept known as the Marketplace of Ideas, and it is a feature, not a bug.

The belief that individuals are capable of evaluating ideas for themselves and forming their own conclusions and must be allowed to do so is a central feature of liberalism. It is not that we believe that individuals are all perfectly rational, unbiased agents who will consider ideas objectively based on evidence and sound reasoning. It is that when we set up systems which have that expectation, people are incentivised to make the best arguments they can for what they already believe. This is because others, who believe something different, will provide disconfirming evidence and make strong counterarguments. We are very good at spotting holes in arguments for claims we do not believe in. This kind of collaborative conflict is the best way of exposing truth claims which do not appear to be true and reasoning which is not reasonable and producing reliable knowledge and sound ethical reasoning.

There are always those who regard this cynically. They typically see the developments of the modern period during which this became an expectation very negatively. For critics on the identitarian left, the growth and dominance of the West on the world stage was characterised by colonialism and exploitation. The rise of Enlightenment rationalism, the Scientific Revolution, and the formation of liberal democracies was part and parcel of this and are thus white, Western, masculinist ways of thinking. For the critics on the right, those same developments led to secularism and turning away from religious and tribal values in favour of rational, scientific and freedom-centred ones and are thus divorced from divine truth and tradition and are degenerate, narcissistic and soulless. The first stance is postmodern, the latter postliberal. They differ profoundly in their vision of what an ideal world would look like, but they agree that liberals are standing in the way of it, and on that point, they are right. It is essential that we continue to do so.

The second fear is not straightforward authoritarianism that wishes to impose its own values on everybody else for their own good and that of society, but it is still rooted in authoritarianism. It is the intuition that there is a continuum where critique inevitably turns into coercion. If a liberal society allows criticism of, say, Christianity to go unpunished, it will eventually morph into repression of Christianity. This is, I believe, rooted in the individual’s own authoritarian impulses. For them, the belief that a certain set of ideas are bad leads naturally to banning or punishing the expression of those ideas. They therefore conclude that others must feel the same way. Why would anybody allow ideas they believe to be bad to continue to exist?

This is not a legitimate critique of liberalism. Liberalism is the philosophy defined by having a clear line which holds that only to prevent material harm to another can we justify coercion.

[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

(John Stuart Mill, On Liberty)

This “harm principle” draws the line postliberals deny exists and consequently their critique fails. The tendency to see criticism and coercion as existing on a continuum is very common even among those who are not overtly authoritarian. It appears in assumptions that if one strongly disapproves of an idea, one must want to ban it or conversely that, if one is defending the expression of an idea, one must agree with it. This is deeply troubling and it manifests alongside the tendency of highly vocal partisans to appeal to liberal principles of freedom of belief and speech when it is their own views being threatened, but not when they are those of people with whom they disagree. When people do this, liberalism is not being defended as a set of freedom-centred principles in itself but used as a tool for furthering a specific political agenda. This is sometimes done knowingly and cynically for authoritarian ends, but more often, I suspect, it is a product of the motivated reasoning our species is prone to and people not giving enough thought to whether they are upholding principles consistently.

This is why it is so important for liberals on the left, right and centre to become more vocal and be seen to defend the principles of liberalism specifically and consistently within all contexts, not only when illiberalism threatens their own freedoms. For this reason, I will continue to defend use of the preface “I disagree with this person, but…” before defending their freedom to express their views. This annoys some liberals who feel there should be no need for what they see as a ‘disclaimer’ and it should be a given that we will defend people’s right to speak regardless of whether we agree with them. In our current state of political polarisation, this is clearly not a given and to reduce that polarisation and defend the principles of liberalism themselves, we need to be seen explicitly saying, “I oppose these views and defend the right of their proponents to express them.”

At the centre of that is the liberal line between criticism and coercion and the ‘harm’ principle, which can most simply be expressed as,

Let people believe, speak, live as they see fit, provided this does no material harm to anyone else nor denies them the same freedoms.

This is ultimately what liberals seek to protect and we must make this explicit and model it consistently. Criticism and coercion are entirely different things. Liberalism protects the right to criticise absolutely and opposes coercion fundamentally. It makes the case that doing both of these things at the same time is the best way to protect individual liberty, produce knowledge and resolve conflict. History supports this thesis.

This brings us to the question of religious freedom. Liberalism is not a threat to it and is, in fact, its strongest protector. While some people may be genuinely philosophically vague and foggy on what liberal principles are, those who define themselves as postliberals whose central mission it is to subject liberalism to critique and dispatch it as an organising political philosophy should not be. Historically informed Christians should be particularly aware of liberalism’s role in protecting religious freedom. Some of the earliest defences of the individual’s right to evaluate, criticise, accept or reject ideas for him or herself that we now recognise as the seeds of liberalism came from Christian thinkers defending their own right to interpret scripture without state interference.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644

This principle also became central to the founding of the United States, the only nation established explicitly on liberal principles and as a liberal democracy by dissident Protestants fleeing persecution in England. Its constitution decreed there shall be “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” alongside its freedom of speech protections as a central part of its liberal philosophy.

If the state or any faction of society attempts to deny a Christian’s right to believe, express or live by their faith, liberalism is the mechanism which says, “No, we cannot allow you to do that” and protects them from it. Any attempt to deny freedom of religion will be, by definition, illiberal. Such a threat may come from another religion, or from an atheistic authoritarian regime, or from progressives who wish to coerce religious believers to adopt progressive beliefs, but it will never come from liberals. Liberals are the strongest allies Christians have against anybody who wishes to deny them freedom.

The only way liberalism can be argued to pose a threat to religious freedom is if ‘freedom’ is redefined as giving Christians the ‘freedom’ to impose their religious beliefs on other people or granting them the ‘freedom’ from being likely to encounter dissenting or critical views. Again, liberalism would say “No, we cannot allow you to do that” and protect others from their authoritarianism. Unfortunately, some postliberal Christians appear to want precisely these special protections for their faith, and their apparent confusion about what liberalism is serves to obscure that.

Ultimately, the postliberal claim that liberalism will inevitably become illiberal relies on a mischaracterisation of liberalism, a projection of authoritarian intuitions, and a refusal to recognise the defining liberal distinction between criticism and coercion. It treats liberalism not as a philosophy with a clear central principle that only material harm justifies coercion, but as an ungrounded cultural mood that could slide into authoritarianism. But liberalism is not ungrounded. It is grounded on a firm line which prevents it from collapsing into illiberalism. When liberal principles are upheld, when the harm principle is understood, when criticism is protected, and when coercion is strictly limited to the prevention of material harm, religious freedom is most strongly protected. Where it is threatened, it is not because protections of individual liberty have been too robust, but because they have not been robust enough.

The central problem for postliberals taking this stance, I believe, is that liberalism does not seek to guarantee that any religion will endure. It seeks only to ensure that it may be believed, practised, defended, criticised, and rejected freely. The responsibility for Christianity’s survival therefore remains with its adherents, who must convince others that its truth claims are true and its moral values are good. This is not a flaw in liberalism but its defining strength, and it applies equally to all belief systems and moral frameworks. Liberalism has historically been the ally of religious dissenters, including Christians, and it remains their strongest protection today. Those who reject it in the name of defending faith are not correcting a failure within liberalism but abandoning the very framework that secures their freedom to believe at all.

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These kinds of outraged responses demanding that the criminally insane be punished for their acts frequently appear when somebody who does something truly awful is found not found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a psychiatric institution. People frequently feel that justice has been denied, but this, I would argue, relies on a concept of justice that is not justice at all. Underlying this appears to be intuitive reasoning that goes something like this:

If a crime is really, really heinous, then it cannot justifiably be explained on the grounds that the perpetrator was insane and justice cannot be served by treating them as such.

But how does that follow?

These are two completely separate questions:

1. What act was committed?

2. Was the person who committed it mentally capable of understanding what they were doing?

The severity of the act tells us nothing about the mental state of the person committing it. The horror of the crime tells us how bad the act was, not how sane the perpetrator was. It cannot be that the more horrendous an act is, the more mentally competent the perpetrator becomes. There is simply no logical connection between the two.

This seems to come from a very primitive intuition about justice that is based on a sense of balance rather than a consideration of ethics and effectiveness. It is the same kind of intuition, I think, that once made things like child sacrifice make sense to our ancestors. If you sacrificed something extremely valuable, the cosmic scales were tilted in your favour. Your community had already suffered enough. The gods, fate, or the universe now owed you prosperity in return.

But justice in the more developed sense that requires our higher cognitive faculties does not work like this. It requires that we first discover what is true about the situation and then apply moral reasoning and strategic thinking about responsibility, deterrence, and the protection of society. If someone truly did not understand what they were doing, that remains true whether the act was minor or monstrous. The horror of the act does not magically restore the perpetrator’s sanity.

Try a thought experiment. Do you believe that you would be justified in killing someone who was trying to kill you or someone you love? If so, imagine that you experienced a psychotic episode in which your brain fed you information that someone was trying to kill you or someone you loved and this information was utterly indistinguishable from reality.

In that situation, you might commit an act of violence to save your own life, or that of your spouse, child, or parent. An act based on this ethical reasoning would normally be considered morally justified by the vast majority of people. However, because your brain is feeding you false information, you have actually killed an innocent person who intended you no harm. The problem is therefore not with your ethics but with your perception of reality. This is why evaluations for an insanity defence are frequently referred to as determining whether the individual was ‘mad or bad.’

A radical misperception of reality is what is required for an insanity defence. It cannot be that you were having very strong emotions due to a mood or personality disorder and, in a fit of rage, you knowingly killed an innocent person. It must be that you did not know what you were doing. For example, you believed the person was a murderer posing an immediate threat to your life. Alternatively, you did not know that what you were doing would result in death or injury. This has been the case when somebody’s delusion caused them to believe themselves to be saving a family member from a demon which was possessing them.

In such a situation, you would absolutely need to be removed from society until we could be sure that you were no longer in danger of having such a delusion again. We might never be able to be sure of that so this could be a life sentence. But the only way you could be morally responsible for the killing would be if it were morally wrong to kill someone who is trying to kill you. That is what you believed yourself to be doing. And because of what was happening in your brain, you had no way of believing anything else or distinguishing your delusion from reality.

That is the ethical reality of the situation.

Other ethical questions can exist around this. Are evaluations of mental state rigorous enough? Can they be fooled? Are they biased? If people who knowingly committed crimes are escaping punishment through fraudulent insanity defences, that is a different problem entirely. So too is a concern that evaluations for releasing people who have committed violent crimes during a psychotic episode are not stringent enough or that they are not properly monitored on their release, posing a risk to the public.

And there are more complicated cases in which someone who was utterly delusional may still bear some level of responsibility. Was this the first onset of schizophrenia, which often appears suddenly in the early twenties in someone who has no prior reason to doubt their own perception of reality? Or was it somebody who already knew they had a psychotic illness which made them wrongly perceive others as a threat and has medication and caseworkers to report emerging symptoms to? If they deliberately neglect their medication or conceal worsening symptoms and then commit a violent act, they may well bear responsibility in the same way that someone who knows their eyesight has deteriorated badly but chooses to drive anyway would be responsible if they killed a pedestrian.

But those are separate questions.

The idea that “the act committed was so horrendous that the perpetrator cannot possibly be insane” is simply vengeance intuition.

It is emotionally-driven vengeance, not sober ethical reasoning grounded in reality.

The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain has over 6000 readers! We are creating a space for liberals who care about what is true on the left, right and centre to come together and talk about how to understand and navigate our current cultural moment with effectiveness and principled consistency.

I think it is important that I keep my writing free. It is paying subscribers who allow me to spend my time writing and keep that writing available to everyone. Currently 3.8% of my readers are paying subscribers. My goal for 2026 is to increase that to 7%. This would enable me to write full-time for my own substack! If you can afford to become a paying subscriber and want to help me do that, thank you! Otherwise, please share!

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The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain has over 6000 readers! We are creating a space for liberals who care about what is true on the left, right and centre to come together and talk about how to understand and navigate our current cultural moment with effectiveness and principled consistency.

I think it is important that I keep my writing free. It is paying subscribers who allow me to spend my time writing and keep that writing available to everyone. Currently 3.8% of my readers are paying subscribers. My goal for 2026 is to increase that to 7%. This would enable me to write full-time for my own substack! If you can afford to become a paying subscriber and want to help me do that, thank you! Otherwise, please share!

Unfortunately, the “Men and women can never be friends” discourse is happening again. Here are recent examples:

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The idea that people should simply exclude half the human population from the pool of potential friends is extraordinary to me.

If you genuinely cannot fathom why anyone would ever have a friend of the opposite sex, I would suggest that you cannot really fathom friendship at all. At best, you can imagine a limited category of companionship organised around convenience, proximity, or shared activity. Within that framework, individuals cease to be unique human beings and become largely interchangeable placeholders that fill a particular social function. I imagine the selection process as something like a person who doesn’t care very much for fashion buying shoes. “I need some for work, some for the gym, some for special occasions, and some for casual loafing. Yes, those will do. Make sure they’re all the same colour.”

Anybody who recognised that every friendship is unique because it arises from the interaction of two distinct minds could not think like this. The claim that men and women cannot be friends therefore seems to me to rely on not valuing individual minds at all. I must conclude that is the stance of people who do not like to think.

The fear beneath the dogmatic claim that heterosexual men and women cannot be friends is, of course, that friendship might lead to romantic or sexual attraction, with all the complications that could follow, particularly if one or both people are already in relationships. But this concern reflects a curiously immature understanding of human relationships. Mature human beings generally move through the world encountering many attractive people while simply not acting on that fact. Attraction does not compel any action and, in partnered adults with rudimentary impulse control, it generally functions as an observation that passes through the mind and passes out again.

Humans are almost unique among species in forming close and lasting bonds with individuals to whom we are neither related nor seeking to mate. The name for this bond is “friendship,” though it seems we often have very different ideas about what it actually is.

Admittedly, friendship is an expansive concept. It ranges from casual acquaintances we occasionally meet up with to people we bond closely with for life. It also takes many forms depending on our interests and circumstances. A friendship might revolve around a shared activity such as sport or music, a shared environment like work or school, or simply enjoying each other’s company at social gatherings. Parents often form friendships with other parents through their children’s schools. Some friendships centre on partying or shared hobbies. Others grow from intellectual or professional admiration, where people seek out those whose work they particularly appreciate.

These gradations of friendship have long been recognised. One frequently cited formulation is attributed to a poem by Brian A. “Drew” Chalker which begins: “People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”

Friends we make for a reason can be people we genuinely care about and respect, but the relationship exists to serve a particular purpose. It might arise around a work project, a group of mutually supportive mothers of young children, or a coalition of people engaged in a shared cause. It is fundamentally collaborative.

Friends we make for a season may overlap with this category, or they may simply be people with whom we spend time during a particular phase of life. These are the friends we might bond with quite intensely at the time, at university, perhaps, or within a particular social milieu, and whom we will always remember fondly. But when we move on from that era of our lives, they do not come with us.

While the individuals in these two groups are, of course, unique, the kinds of friendships we form with them are to some extent interchangeable. We expect, and often hope, to form similar friendships again when we move on to a new project, a new environment, or a new phase of life.

Friends for a lifetime, however, are rare and precious. These are the people with whom a genuine meeting of minds occurs — something unique and important that we recognise as worth protecting. They are the people who truly see how our minds work, and whose own minds work in compatible or complementary ways that delight us. Such friendships are not interchangeable with any others. If they are lost, other friendships may become just as meaningful in different ways, but they are never the same.

This popular formulation captures something people intuitively recognise about types of friendship, but the idea itself is ancient. More than 2,300 years ago Aristotle made a very similar distinction in his Nicomachean Ethics between friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of virtue.

Aristotle’s friendships of utility are those collaborative friendships ‘for a reason.’ Of them he says, “Those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other,” and “Those who are friends for the sake of utility part when the advantage is at an end; for they were lovers not of each other but of profit.”

He is perhaps a little uncharitable here. Humans do need to cooperate and collaborate for mutual benefit, and it is certainly better if we can do so with warmth, liking, and genuine respect than in a purely detached or transactional fashion. Nevertheless, friendships founded primarily on utility do tend to end when their purpose has been served.

Friendships of pleasure are typically seasonal because what we enjoy changes. For this reason Aristotle associates them most closely with the young:

The friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure; for they live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue above all what is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately before them… This is why they quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so; their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant.

Here again Aristotle is perhaps a little dismissive. The friendships we form as we pass through different phases of life and grow out of as our interests mature and change can still be genuine and important to our development. Nevertheless, they are the friendships that do not necessarily put down deep roots, and in which individuals do not grow together over time.

Friendships based on virtue, however, are all about growing together. These are the most significant friendships and the most likely to endure. Of these Aristotle says, “Perfect friendship is the friendship of those who are good, and alike in virtue,” and “Such friendships are rare, because such people are rare.” Some translations render this as ‘men’ rather than ‘people,’ but the Greek itself does not specify a sex, and Aristotle explicitly allows for friendship between husband and wife, which can be based on any of the three categories. Where such friendships are based on virtue, the couple delights in each other’s virtue and helps to strengthen both their partner’s and their own.

In any case, we need not be bound by the assumptions about gender roles that prevailed in Ancient Greece or anywhere else to recognise that humans who care about what is good can recognise something admirable in each other’s character and intellect. They may be drawn to each other through admiration for the other’s thinking and the desire to engage with it and think together. Sometimes we are drawn to people who think very much as we do; sometimes to those who think differently but whose complementary strengths make the results of that engagement particularly valuable. Such friendships involve intellectual companionship: collaborative thinking, challenging each other, correcting each other, and the kind of insightful emotional support that arises when two people truly understand how each other’s minds work. These are the friendships in which people help each other clarify their values, strengthen their thinking, and become better versions of themselves.

Friendships like these are not exclusive relationships. If you are open to close friendships, you may hope to have several of them, and the dynamics of each are different. Humans are complex and multi-faceted, and the people we meet interact differently with the various facets of ourselves. It is always a mistake, I think, when people expect their romantic partner to meet every emotional, psychological, and intellectual need they have. That expectation creates unrealistic pressures and often leads to resentment and disappointment. My husband is, in my opinion, the best man in the world and, if I had to be stranded on a desert island with one person for the rest of my life, it would certainly be him. But he cannot fulfil every emotional and intellectual need I have, nor can I fulfil all of his. We both need friends and not merely friends who enjoy the same activities we do, but friends who can meet different aspects of our minds.

Among my closest friends, there is one who tends to fall into the same kinds of psychological tangles that I do. This is incredibly helpful, because that is the friend who can always tell when I am underestimating or sabotaging myself, why I am likely to be doing it, and point it out immediately. I can return the favour. In addition to standing for absolutely no bullshit from each other, we are the fiercest defenders of each other’s competence and capability. Often clarity and perspective emerge when one of us asks the other the simple question: “What would you say to me if I described myself to you like that?”

Another friend is the one I go to when I require a particularly keen and rather ruthless analytical mind — someone who can examine my thinking on subjects both intellectual and personal with the fervour of a prosecuting barrister armed with a fallacy-detecting microscope, and who will absolutely relish the opportunity. A third has the gift of zooming out and considering whatever issue we are discussing in the light of multiple intersecting contexts, making connections that illuminate matters considerably. A fourth is exceptional at putting the brakes on my tendency to overthink everything in multiple directions, each with several competing hypotheses, by listening carefully and then saying some variation of: “Well, this seems to be the most salient issue, and here is what you could do about it.”

Two of these friends are female and two are male. Can you guess which ones? When I first wrote this, I did not intend for you to try. But if you know something about average psychological sex differences and if I tell you that these friends all happen to be fairly typical for their sex you probably can. The friend with whom I most analyse my own psychological tangles, and the one who considers problems through multiple social lenses, are women. The friend who subjects everything to intense formal logic and the one who immediately converts problems into strategic goals with measurable outcomes are men. And I value them all enormously.

The point is not that men and women think in rigidly different ways, but that the small number of people whose minds complement our own in important ways will inevitably include both. Such friendships are already rare, and to deny ourselves the possibility of forming them with half the population on the basis of their gonads is one of the most self-limiting things a person can do. It is nonsense to think that when you meet someone whose mind syncs with your own in some uniquely valuable way, you can say, “Yes, I like you, but I really need one of you in a male version,” or “a female version.” That is not how friendship works. People are not shoes.

People who think this way appear to miss out on that third and most important category of friendship. They remain confined to friendships of utility that exist for a reason, or friendships of pleasure that shift as tastes and circumstances change. Consequently, they are left with a transactional or immature model of friendship which is very much what their commentary on the subject on social media reflects. They never achieve the kind of bond formed through mutual admiration of character and mind and the joy of bringing them together. In limiting their friendships, they limit their own minds.

I feel a certain pity for people who regard a world of individual human beings, each with their own potential to form a network of unique friendships, in such a restricted way. They are missing, I think, the primary wonder of what it is to be human: a creature with a complex mind capable of growth, development, and shared discovery. If you approach relationships in a purely transactional or immature way, it is hardly surprising that you cannot imagine friendship across sexes. But that is not because such friendships are impossible. It is because you have misunderstood what friendship is.

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Leading developmental psychologist, Uta Frith, has recently aired her concerns about the expansion of diagnostic criteria for autism. She feels that it has become so inclusive that it is now including people who do not really merit the diagnosis. This has sparked considerable discussion and debate. Some of this is thoughtful, well-informed, compassionate and valuable. However, a substantial amount of it is confused, conflates different issues and has been politicised. I would like to try to untangle some of it.

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The following selected quotes cover the most salient aspects of Frith’s concerns that I’d like to address.

Over the years, the basic definition of autism that I’ve given you - that it’s lifelong and neurodevelopmental, and that there are communication difficulties and restricted behaviour - has remained the same. It is generally accepted. But the interpretation of that definition is a different matter, because we have made it more inclusive.

With the purely categorical approach, you had a very rare number of cases that were quite precisely defined, and then lots of people who just missed that. It was felt this wasn’t quite right, which is how we came to a spectrum-based approach.

But that still wasn’t enough. Because of various cultural factors, the spectrum has gone on being more and more accommodating. And I think now it has come to its collapse.

Asperger syndrome was introduced as an official diagnostic term in the 90s, as a way of including people who would not fit the original autism description. These were people who had fluent language, sometimes a high IQ, and yet still had very typical symptoms of autism.

I think at least we have two big subgroups: the people who are diagnosed in early childhood - usually before age three or age five, depending on things like their intellectual abilities and language - and another group, diagnosed much later.

This population is different. It is made up of a lot of adolescents, and among them, a lot of young women. These are people without intellectual impairment, who are perfectly able to communicate verbally and non-verbally, but who might feel highly anxious in social situations. They are perhaps characterised mainly by a sort of hypersensitivity.

In summary and with my own paraphrasing:

• Autism is a distinct lifelong, neurological disorder which presents consistent and enduring problems for those affected.

• Some people are profoundly disabled by it, are typically non-verbal and require lifelong care.

• Other people have milder manifestations of the same traits but fluent verbal skills and can lead successful lives.

• The concept of a spectrum emerged to cover those who still had clearly autistic traits that impacted their lives and capabilities and required support, but were not so profoundly disabling

• Cultural factors have caused this concept of a spectrum to expand past the point of usefulness to include individuals, often women, who are not significantly impaired by distinctive autistic traits but may feel easily overwhelmed and socially anxious.

I think all of this is quite clearly true and also very important. My professional experience speaking on this issue is not trivial. I worked for seventeen years in social care, including supporting individuals with profound autism in residential care and day centres, as well as those living more independently with varying levels of support.

I also have extensive familiarity with the branch of Critical Social Justice Dis/Ability activism often described as the “neurodivergent” movement. This movement frequently rejects medical models of neurodevelopmental disorder, encourages self-diagnosis and frames neurological variation primarily as a political identity rather than a clinical condition. I have been strongly critical of this approach because it obscures genuine medical realities, minimises the profound needs of those most severely affected and complicates the task of providing appropriate support to those who can live relatively independent lives with reasonable accommodations.

My motivation for addressing this issue, however, is also deeply personal.

I come from a family in which autism appears frequently. This is only one branch of my family, but within it more than half of the members show clear autistic traits, ranging from severe disability to eccentricity.

This includes a great niece who may never speak and will almost certainly require lifelong care; a great aunt who was hospitalised in her time for what doctors then described as “fanaticism” and “mania”; a father widely regarded as a solitary, eccentric genius; and a grandfather who was very functional but possessed an uncanny ability to count cards and assumed everyone else could do the same.

Among my own generation and those below it there are further variations: a daughter with severe face blindness and difficulties with reciprocal communication, a niece widely regarded as rude and astonishingly tactless because of her intensely literal communication style, and a nephew with intensely focused interests that, fortunately, happen to be profitable, along with a tendency to forget that other people exist.

Alongside them are a few older relatives who were historically labelled intellectually disabled due to limited verbal communication, and a scattering of socially awkward but otherwise functional family members with narrow, all-consuming interests.

It is safe to say that I absolutely believe autism exists on a spectrum, and that the gradations along that spectrum matter enormously.

Much of the current confusion arises because several quite different phenomena are now being discussed under the same label. In practice, it may be more helpful to think in terms of at least four broad categories, with some overlap between them.

1. Profound autism

The most severely affected individuals who will never be able to live independently, have little to no meaningful speech and require assistance with their most basic care.

2. Significant autism

People with clear and significant autistic traits who nevertheless have fluent language but struggle to function in many areas of the social world. They may live independently or semi-independently but often require support or accommodation with tasks involving executive function, communication, or social interaction. This group has historically often been described as having Asperger’s Syndrome or “high-functioning” autism.

3. Subclinical autistic traits

People who may become easily overwhelmed or overstimulated, struggle with executive function in some areas or experience anxiety in social situations, but who are nevertheless able to live independently and form relationships. In some cases these difficulties may reflect the presence of mild autistic traits that do not meet diagnostic criteria; in others they may simply reflect ordinary variation in personality and temperament. These difficulties may often be better addressed through ordinary psychological support rather than medical diagnosis.

4. Neurodivergence as identity

Finally, there is a growing cultural phenomenon in which autism or “neurodivergence” is adopted primarily as a social or political identity. Within this framework, neurological variation is often framed not as a clinical matter but as a marginalised identity category, and diagnostic labels may be claimed through self-identification rather than clinical assessment.

Because these categories overlap, and because many people struggle to think comfortably in terms of gradations and nuance, there is a recurring tendency to collapse the entire spectrum into a single stereotype and moralise about it.

For a long time, it was common to treat everyone diagnosed with autism as though they belonged in the most profoundly disabled category. This was one of the reasons my father rejected the concept of autism for himself, and why my mother refused to consider an assessment for me when my primary school recommended one. They understood autism primarily in the light of a deeply stigmatised intellectual disability and reacted with understandable indignation. This historical misconception is rarely considered when people speculate about why autism diagnoses were lower among Boomers and Gen X.

Later, the stereotype shifted in the opposite direction. Individuals who would previously have been described as having Asperger’s Syndrome or “high-functioning autism” were sometimes romanticised as eccentric geniuses whose unusual cognitive style gave them special talents. As Frith notes, some parents even sought such diagnoses for their children as a kind of status marker. This framing is not especially helpful either. Most people in this category are not extraordinary geniuses. Their intelligence is typically quite average, and what they most need is a little additional understanding and accommodation in areas such as communication, executive functioning and social interaction.

At the same time, romanticising autism in this way can be deeply frustrating for families caring for individuals with its most profound manifestations. Supporting a strong adult who cannot communicate needs, maintain personal hygiene or reliably keep themselves safe is an immense responsibility. When public understanding of autism is shaped primarily by the image of the quirky savant — the “Rain Man” stereotype — it becomes much harder for carers to explain the scale of the challenges they face and obtain appropriate support.

More recently, a different distortion has emerged. The excesses of the Critical Social Justice movement in claiming marginalised identity statuses, together with a somewhat related tendency within some therapeutic cultures to pathologise feelings that were once understood as part of the normal range of human experience, have created new sources of confusion. When political activists claim “neurodivergence” primarily as a marginalised identity and frame it in explicitly ideological terms, it can create the impression that individuals who identify as autistic while being fully verbal and functioning in society are pretentious ideologues seeking special status, unnecessary accommodations and opportunities to lecture others. This stereotype is deeply unhelpful. It makes life harder for people who face genuine challenges but are simply trying to navigate them and would appreciate a little patience or charity if they occasionally make a social mistake. It can even reduce sympathy for autism more generally, affecting those with its most profound manifestations.

Those who fall into the third category of individuals with genuine psychological difficulties who may or may not have mild autistic traits are particularly likely to be failed by this confusion. In practice, it can be extremely difficult to determine whether someone’s struggles are primarily neurodevelopmental or primarily psychological. Yet the distinction can make a profound difference to how those struggles are best addressed.

Girls with autistic traits have often historically been diagnosed with conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or borderline personality disorder and treated heavily with medication. In many cases what would have helped more is an understanding of their need for predictability and order, support with developing social communication skills and techniques for managing overwhelm and sensory overstimulation. Conversely, individuals who are struggling primarily with trauma, distressing life events or other forms of mental illness may sometimes be encouraged to understand their difficulties primarily through the lens of autism. Because autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition, this framing can inadvertently discourage them from pursuing forms of treatment that might help them recover.

The way forward is not to abandon diagnosis, but to make it more careful, more rigorous and more individualised. Clinicians need to keep multiple possibilities open, remain attentive to the specific experiences of the individual and be willing to adjust their understanding when new evidence emerges about what actually helps that person live a better life.

Few of us are in a position to influence how the clinical diagnosis of autism develops. We are, however, all likely to encounter people somewhere on that spectrum and to participate in discussions about how they should be understood and treated. We can choose whether to indulge unhelpful narratives about autism: whether to pathologise every social difficulty or personality quirk as a neurodevelopmental disorder, or to assume that anyone who says they are autistic but can speak fluently and go out unsupervised must be an attention-seeking activist. We can choose whether to make life easier or harder for people whose brains are a bit (or a lot) different by the way we speak to and about them.

My primary personal concern right now is for my own offspring, who will soon be twenty-two and whose consent to speak about her difficulties I have. She could easily be taken for one of the verbally fluent, intellectually unimpaired, socially anxious young women Uta Frith describes. But “hypersensitive” is not really the right word for her. If anything, one of the more positive ways autism affects her is that she often does not especially notice or care what other people think. Her social anxiety arises more specifically from two difficulties: prosopagnosia and reciprocal conversation.

Prosopagnosia is an invisible disability that runs in my family. My child cannot reliably recognise individual faces. She can compensate when she knows who is likely to be present and can identify people by height, colouring, clothes or voice, but this falls apart if somebody appears unexpectedly or changes their appearance. That makes social encounters stressful, because if somebody speaks to her, she may have no idea whether they are a stranger or someone she is expected to know.

She also struggles with reciprocal conversation: the ordinary back-and-forth of everyday speech. Asked a question, she is liable either to answer in a word and leave silence hanging, or to launch into a monologue and still fail to return the conversational ball. Yet she can be delightful company especially in groups because she has developed a kind of humorous commentary style. She follows the conversation, interjects witty observations and can be very entertaining. This means people can spend hours with her without realising she has not actually been engaging in conversation in the usual sense at all. The difficulty becomes apparent only when she is expected to perform the social game directly.

She also has what one psychiatrist called anaesthesia. This is not the rare condition affecting nerves that makes one insensitive to pain but a detachment from the sensations of the body so that one can simply not notice that something hurts. As a child, she could have an injury or ear infection and give no sign of it, yet if asked “Doesn’t that hurt?” reply cheerfully, “Yes, it hurts a lot.” She has alexithymia where she struggles to recognise her own emotions and says things like, “I’m crying. I think I must be sad,” and once answered a psychiatrist’s question “What does happiness feel like?” with “It feels like smiling.” Despite being more than averagely intelligent, she also needs simple everyday tasks broken down into steps. If told to vacuum downstairs without first being told to pick things up off the floor, she will simply vacuum around them. When she is able to live independently, which we hope she will be, she will need a checklist for things like shopping, housework and the preparation and eating of meals.

You are probably thinking at this point, that this is somebody who would surely always be recognised as autistic. The answer to that is “No.” She makes direct eye contact, speaks fluently, has a large vocabulary, is funny and kind and appears to most people to be a happy, confident little geek. Because she is socially inclined, she has developed workarounds. What is often called “masking” is not, in her case, a false persona that comes off in private so much as an unusual but genuine style of social learning. At home, for example, she will affectionately narrate my absent-mindedness in the style of a mock news report: “Local woman forgets what she came upstairs for. Previous episodes of scattiness have included putting milk in the washing machine and fabric softener in her tea. Insiders recommend avoiding her cooking. Will she remember what she was meant to do before she goes downstairs again? More on this story later.” This is affectionate engagement! It’s just not reciprocal conversation.

The problem is that the areas in which her difficulties become visible are precisely the important ones. She is excellent with small children: patient, energetic, genuinely interested in them, and much loved by them. Her commentary style works beautifully with little ones. But job interviews require the kind of reciprocal dialogue she finds hardest. It took three years and the help of an autistic employment caseworker for her to get through the interview process and secure a nursery job with people who believed they could accommodate her prosopagnosia and social difficulties. After three days, they let her go, citing problems with executive function. She has not been daunted and is now applying for a voluntary role instead. Once she knows the expectations and routines, she will be excellent.

Cases like my daughter’s are exactly the sort that become difficult to understand when the concept of autism loses its clarity. She is neither profoundly disabled nor a quirky savant, neither someone taking on a political identity to feel special nor a socially anxious young woman who needs therapy. She is a self-assured young person whose neurological differences that are not immediately apparent shape how she experiences the world and how she navigates it. She wants to get out in that world and do worthwhile things and she will do them well but she could very easily be prevented from doing so by people not recognising that her neurodevelopmental difficulties are, in fact, neurodevelopmental.

This is why the collapse of clear thinking about autism is a serious problem that we should not facilitate by thinking in reductionist narratives. When the term is stretched to encompass everything from profound disability to ordinary personality variation to ideological identity, it becomes unhelpful to everyone. Those who require the most intensive care risk losing public sympathy and resources. Those with genuine but less visible difficulties risk being dismissed as attention-seekers. And those whose struggles arise from other psychological causes may be led to interpret their problems through the wrong framework that prevents them from accessing support that will genuinely help.

The solution is not to abandon the concept of autism or to deny that neurological differences exist along a spectrum or to be endlessly expansive and inclusive. It is to think about that spectrum carefully and in well-informed ways. Autism is a real neurodevelopmental condition with many different manifestations. Recognising those differences clearly, without buying into any ideological or political narrative which fails to recognise the majority of people affected by it is the only way to ensure that they receive the understanding and support they actually need.

The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain has over 6000 readers! We are creating a space for liberals who care about what is true on the left, right and centre to come together and talk about how to understand and navigate our current cultural moment with effectiveness and principled consistency.

I think it is important that I keep my writing free. It is paying subscribers who allow me to spend my time writing and keep that writing available to everyone. Currently 3.8% of my readers are paying subscribers. My goal for 2026 is to increase that to 7%. This would enable me to write full-time for my own substack! If you can afford to become a paying subscriber and want to help me do that, thank you! Otherwise, please share!

(Audio version here)

The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain has over 6000 readers! We are creating a space for liberals who care about what is true on the left, right and centre to come together and talk about how to understand and navigate our current cultural moment with effectiveness and principled consistency.

I think it is important that I keep my writing free. It is paying subscribers who allow me to spend my time writing and keep that writing available to everyone. Currently 3.8% of my readers are paying subscribers. My goal for 2026 is to increase that to 7%. This would enable me to write full-time for my own substack! If you can afford to become a paying subscriber and want to help me do that, thank you! Otherwise, please share!

We currently appear to have a problem with illiberal factions on the furthest right denying terms that accurately fit their own description of their positions. It makes communication very difficult. The terms most likely to be objected to and denied are “Racist”, “Far-Right” and “Ethnonationalist.”

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The simplest and most widely used definition of ‘racism’ is “prejudice and/or discrimination on the grounds of race.” Yet, we currently have people who openly say that they believe certain races to be inferior and advocate discriminating against them hotly rejecting the term ‘racist’ to describe their stance.

The simplest definition of ‘far-right’ is ‘people on the furthest right end of the political spectrum.’ What this actually means in terms of values and beliefs is therefore dependent on the range of any political spectrum in any country in any period. The far-right in Saudi Arabia does not look like the far-right in the United States, and the far-right in the eighteenth century does not look like the far-right today. Nevertheless, we have people who openly acknowledge themselves to be on the right of the most right-wing parties in the UK or US objecting to being called ‘far-right’ and indicating that this is a slur.

In the same way, the word ‘ethnonationalist’ refers to people who are nationalists and whose perception of national belonging is centred on ethnicity. Yet we see people who hold precisely this position objecting to being described by the most literal term for it.

But if ‘ethnonationalist’ simply means ethnicity-centred concepts of nationalism, there is nothing more to unpack. This is not a complicated or ambiguous position. It’s irrelevant whether someone can imagine himself describing a Japanese person this way or not. If that is a Japanese person’s position, that is simply what they are.

There are, I would argue, three related reasons that people do this.

Firstly, there is the issue where these terms have been abused and fired at people whether they apply or not as a condemnation by activists of the Critical Social Justice movement. When a descriptive term becomes synonymous with ‘bad person’ this will produce instinctive ‘No, I’m not!” denials from people who are driven more by vibes and feelings than by definitions and reason. It also enables people with a more sophisticated but intellectually dishonest mindset who know very well what words mean to cynically redefine them as ‘terms that identify their speaker as the worst of our political opponents” to dismiss the accusation without addressing it. Wilfred Reilly is correct to note that this functions as the same kind of trap used by activists of the CSJ movement.

Secondly, and relatedly, ideologues are prone to denying labels which both apply to them and indicate that theirs is a fringe position. This is because they want their position to be understood as simply being the morally good, reasonable or evident one. We saw this with the Critical Social Justice movement too when it resisted any terms other than ‘Social Justice” to define itself. They claimed that what people began to call ‘woke’ to distinguish it from the aim for a just society (which is something we all want) was just being an empathetic person, addressing social realities and caring about their fellow human beings. Similarly, identitarian ideologues on the right want racism, far-right positions and ethnonationalism to be understood as simply reasonable, ethical and evidence-based views held by people who care about the good of society without doing the work of convincing people that this is, in fact, the case. Making fringe beliefs rejected by most people as unethical and divorced from reality harder to talk about by resisting definitions of them makes them harder to criticise and marginalise them out of mainstream political discourse.

Thirdly, there is the issue of shame and denial. These are people who are morally conflicted. They are typically genuinely very conservative and they feel a lot of anger with the identitarian left and a sense of urgency about immigration levels and problems with cultural cohesion particularly in relation to Islam. However, they are not naturally inclined either by disposition or by their longstanding principles to the radical, reactionary, collectivist mindset that enables a genuine commitment to racism, far-right views and ethnonationalism. They are not entirely convinced that this is who they want to be and that these values are ones they can ethically justify. Consequently, they are motivated to ‘soften’ and minimise the stance they are taking into something they consider more respectably conservative that they can live with and react defensively to having it pointed out that it is, in fact, far-right, racist ethnonationalism they are endorsing.

We need those on the far-right taking these stances to own them honestly. Those who knee-jerk react to having the views they actually espouse named accurately with a defensive “No, I’m not!” because those views are widely considered bad need to recognise the difference between genuinely not holding them and believing them to actually be good. This is what they would do if they genuinely believed the ideas were morally good, reasonable and evidence-based in a way that should appeal to the majority of people of good will and common sense. Some already do, of course, and will proudly declare their racism, ethnonationalism and position on the far right. This is not pretty but it does at least allow them to be seen as they really are and to be accessed for strong and accurate criticism in a way that prevaricating about labels impedes. It also makes it much more difficult for the morally conflicted trying to deceive themselves about what these views actually are to do so. It enables conservatives who reject those stances to distinguish themselves from them and offer a better alternative.

Those of us trying to engage with people who hold racist, ethnonationalist far-right views from a critical standpoint need to be able to cut through this self-protective tactic of linguistic evasion. We need not to enable proponents of them to get away with obfuscating what they are advocating and merge these views with much more justifiable ones about immigration levels and cultural cohesion, and ask them to justify these positions specifically. This is very difficult when they will not allow them to be named, but not impossible.

I have, for some time, been avoiding the term ‘far-right’ because it simply makes people identify me as a leftist who dismisses everybody who disagrees with her as ‘far-right’ even though I am not. Instead I have been saying ‘those on the furthest right of the political spectrum.” Even though this means exactly the same thing, it does not trigger the same ‘discourse recognition’ reflex and makes people less likely to categorise me as a political enemy and more willing to acknowledge that this is what they are. In the same way “people who evaluate others by their race” and “people with an ethnicity-centred concept of nationalism” can convey exactly the same views as ‘racists’ and ‘ethnonationalists’ without triggering the same defensive denial response. This makes it more likely that you will be able to get to discussing the central issues of substance.

Insisting on addressing substance is the only way to get at bad ideas and defeat them. This, at root, is the primary reason that ideologues attempt to make their own ideas difficult to criticise, including by quibbling over what they are called. If someone truly believes their ideas are good, reasonable and supported by evidence, they should have no difficulty defending them clearly and honestly. The refusal to name those ideas accurately is a strong sign that the person advancing them is not entirely convinced themselves. Ethical conservatives will be best placed to challenge obfuscation on the illiberal right that seeks to conflate radical, fringe positions with their own defensible ones and make them mainstream, but to do that they will need to pin their proponents down. Political disagreement can only be productive when we are willing to describe positions plainly and defend them honestly. When the argument becomes about whether those positions may be named at all, discussion collapses into evasion.

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Since writing my piece on Britishness and Englishness, I have tried to talk with ethnonationalists about what makes someone belong to a nation. This has been largely futile. The problem is not simply disagreement but a refusal to recognise that the disagreement exists at the level of premises. Ethnonationalists typically speak as though their understanding of national belonging as rooted in ethnicity were self-evidently true, and that anyone who disagrees is simply factually wrong.

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There are, in fact, two contradictory premises underlying the debate about what makes someone British or English.

1. Britishness or Englishness is defined by an individual’s ethnicity or genetic lineage — where one’s ancestors lived.

2. Britishness or Englishness is defined by where the individual themselves lives, was born and the culture they are embedded in.

Ethnonationalists work on the first premise. Most other people work on the second.

The disagreement is therefore not about whether genetic ancestry exists. Nearly everyone accepts that it does. The disagreement is about whether ancestry should determine national belonging.

It is not self-evident that people should be defined by the geographical location of their ancestors rather than their own. In most situations we evaluate people within their own context rather than that of their forebears, though this is not always the case. I once dated a man from a fishing family that had dominated a small village for centuries and generated much local lore. Although he himself was a mechanic, local people still referred to him as a fisherman because of that lineage. Humans often do feel a strong connection to their ancestry. Yet in most cases we assess people according to their own lives rather than those of their ancestors. This includes nationality. The Irish often joke, with irritation or resignation, about Americans eager to inform them that they are Irish. The joke is that, to the Irish, they are quite clearly not. They are American.

Nevertheless, it is clear that humans commonly feel invested in their ancestry and history, and this tendency may be partly innate. Ancestor worship has appeared across cultures, along with many less formal expressions of ancestral attachment. As both a patriotic person and someone with a background in late medieval English history, I feel this pull and a sense of connectedness and continuity when thinking about who my ancestors were, where they lived and what they were likely doing. This is necessarily tied to place. People also commonly feel pride or shame about things their country did long before they were born. Given this intuition, it will not do simply to dismiss attachment to ancestry as irrational or racist. Ancestry is culturally meaningful to many people, so Premise One cannot simply be rejected.

Both premises ultimately stem from our tendency to create, value and preserve culture. Humans are a culture-creating species. The 89% of white Brits who think one does not have to be white to be British and the 84% who think one does not have to be white to be English clearly understand these identities primarily in cultural terms: where someone was born and lives, the language they speak, the national identity they hold and the customs and norms they embody. Those who instead define these identities through ancestry typically justify this in terms of protecting cultural heritage and history. In both cases, concern about culture and about people failing to respect or integrate into it lies at the heart of concerns about immigration.

If neither premise is inherently irrational or factually false, then the question becomes which one should guide how we define belonging. This requires argument. Yet this is precisely what ethnonationalists often refuse to do. Instead they assert their premise — that Britishness or Englishness is defined by ethnicity or genetic lineage — as though it were simply an objective fact. Some have begun accusing those who reject this premise of using the same reasoning as people who deny that “woman” is a biological category and claim it can be identified into. But people who use “British” or “English” to describe someone born and raised in the country do not typically deny the biological reality of ethnicity. They simply disagree that ethnicity must define national belonging.

Both groups accept that genetic lineage is biologically determined and can be identified through genetic testing. The disagreement concerns whether this should determine who belongs to Britain or England. When we are arguing about how we should understand and define things, we have moved away from indisputable biological facts and into the realms of culture and ethics. We have moved from the realm of what is objectively true to the realm of what is socially constructed. Facts about humans’ genetic ancestry are objective. The division of the world into nations and devising of rules for who belongs where are social constructs.

Many people become deeply suspicious when anyone speaks of anything being ‘a social construct.’ This is understandable. In recent years, we have most commonly heard this used by Critical Social Justice activists telling us that certain things are social constructs when, in fact, they are not and/or that we have a moral responsibility to deconstruct certain social norms that exist or are claimed to exist and reconstruct them according to their own theories. However, social constructs do actually exist because humans form societies and within them, they construct systems. Money is a social construct and so are marriage, political parties and systems of government. Whenever someone argues that some feature of society should be changed, they implicitly acknowledge that social arrangements are constructed and can be constructed differently.

We can often identify social constructs by asking a simple question: would this still be true if no humans had thought of it? Take biological sex. Humans are a bimodal, sexually reproducing species. That fact would remain true whether humans recognised it or not. But the social rules and expectations surrounding how men and women should behave have varied widely across societies and time periods. Those rules are socially constructed. This does not mean that all arrangements are equally good including sexual slavery and child marriage, but that such rules arise from human societies rather than nature itself.

Questions about who is British or English similarly involve both biological facts and social constructs. Genetic populations existed long before humans understood genetics but categories such as “British” and “English” are products of human history. The island to which the labels refer existed long before any humans knew about it (although it was not always an island). The naming of it and the formation of countries within it resulted from different groups of humans engaging in invasions, battles, tribal warfare, monarchical dynasties, feuds, alliances and unifications that decided who it belonged to and who had a right to be there. This was constructed by societies of humans. (The other animals living here presumably have no concept of being British or English).

The mixture of biological facts and social constructions appears particularly clearly in the arguments of those who say that black and brown people can be British but not English.

For example, Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, recently said,

English ethnicity exists - it’s the only sodding data point that the Government collects on anything. Of course someone who is not of that ethnicity can be British, obviously. But it equally does not mean that the English ethnicity is imaginary. Those two things can be true at the same time.

It is not self-evident why descent from Anglo-Saxon populations should define “English,” while descent from the many populations who inhabited the larger landmass of Britain does not similarly define “British.” An arbitrary decision has been made that Englishness should be ethnic while Britishness can be granted legally. It is indeed true that an English ethnicity exists but it is not inherently true that a British identity can be granted by law or that this is how either should be defined. That part is a social construct. And, of course, very many people disagree with it. Many ethnonationalists will insist that “British” is also defined by ethnicity while the vast majority of white Brits will consider their black and brown compatriots born and raised in England to be English. Interestingly, a smaller proportion of black and brown Brits in England see themselves as English while nearly all consider themselves to be British.

Therefore, it should be clear that there is no consensus on who should and should not be considered British or English and that different, coherent and logical premises exist for considering this to be a matter of ancestral lineage or to indicate the country one was born in and continues to live in and considers home. It is no good for ethnonationalists to assert that both designations simply are a matter of genetic lineage and thus the vast majority of people who disagree with this are straightforwardly, factually wrong. It certainly doesn’t help when some of them insist that this is ‘not up for debate’ and that to disagree with them is to ‘deny their right to exist.’ This approach has never convinced anybody.

My own position, as a patriotic, liberal, economically left but culturally conservative Brit, is clear. To be proudly British and patriotic is to value the history and culture of the nations on this island and to preserve those elements that are worth preserving. Ethnonationalism is often presented as a defence of tradition, but it has little grounding in the intellectual or cultural traditions of Britain. It is not to be found in liberal philosophy, in Christianity or even in the tribal cultures that existed on these islands before the modern nation emerged.

The British values I most want to conserve are those developed in the modern era. They include Britain’s significant contributions to Enlightenment thought and liberal philosophy: individual liberty, freedom of belief and speech, parliamentary democracy, equality under the law and respect for our common humanity. Defending these values also means recognising the many black and brown Brits who share these commitments as my compatriots and my people. To defend such British values is to oppose threats wherever they arise whether from external cultures that reject science, reason, liberty, democratic processes and human dignity, or from internal ones.

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The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain has over 6000 readers! We are creating a space for liberals who care about what is true on the left, right and centre to come together and talk about how to understand and navigate our current cultural moment with effectiveness and principled consistency.

I think it is important that I keep my writing free. It is paying subscribers who allow me to spend my time writing and keep that writing available to everyone. Currently 3.8% of my readers are paying subscribers. My goal for 2026 is to increase that to 7%. This would enable me to write full-time for my own substack! If you can afford to become a paying subscriber and want to help me do that, thank you! Otherwise, please share!

The political discourse to the right of the UK’s Conservative party is currently highly conflicted and fractured. The problem is not simply that the British right disagrees about policy. It disagrees about something more fundamental: what Britain is. Within the current discourse three distinct and often incompatible answers have emerged: ethnic, religious and cultural. Within this debate are explicit and coherent differences of opinion about what it is conservatives who did not feel the Tories were conservative enough should be conserving. However, the larger popular discourse is characterised by a shared sense of a need to restore “Britishness” or “Englishness” to the realm, but considerable confusion about how that is defined. This appears to be due to a lack of shared first principles and conflation of ethno-biological, cultural and religious factors.

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Since the Tories faced a dramatic dwindling of confidence over the space of a few years resulting in being voted out of power, the British right has been struggling to develop a coherent vision for its replacement. Nationwide, the loss of confidence was multifaceted and related to a variety of failings over a range of policy decisions. However, for those on the right, the problem was overwhelmingly about the failure to produce functional immigration policies. Consequently, Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, running on a platform of prioritising addressing immigration with a view to dramatically reducing it surged ahead in popularity polls, quickly outstripping both of the main parties in our previously two party system.

For those of us on the liberal left, the big question has been whether Starmer’s Labour can effectively address growing national concerns about immigration effectively and resolve other major causes of mass discontent by focusing on practical policies that benefit the working class before the next general election and prevent a Reform landslide. Then, last month, a spoke was placed in Reform’s wheel by the emergence of Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain Party. Lowe had been a central figure in Reform and significantly on the right of it, before being ousted due to conflict with Farage and Chairman Zia Yusuf. Those who felt that even Reform was not radically right-wing enough and was, in fact, turning into a recreation of the Tories flocked there, egged on by Elon Musk.

The name “Restore Britain” and Lowe’s air of radical simplicity spoke successfully to that sense on the furthest British right of urgently needing to restore Britishness or Englishness. The party is still unclear about its first principles and what, precisely, it wishes to restore, despite making strong statements on a range of issues that appeal to voters seeking radical change.

For Co-founder and spokesman, Charlie Downes, Britain is defined by both British ethnic ancestry and the Christian faith. He rejects the view that British values are defined by liberal principles like democracy, tolerance, the rule of law and mutual respect for people of different faiths and beliefs and, instead, makes Christianity central. Others in the party have rejected this, pointing out that white Brits are the demographic least likely to have any religious faith and that, realistically, one can either increase Christianity or decrease immigration, but not both. Others have argued that trying to produce Christian Nationalism in the UK is both a non-starter and also an unpatriotic attempt to produce American-style politics and called for the ‘deyankification’ of the British right.

For many ethnonationalists who also reject liberal principles and want to ‘remigrate’ all black and brown people and have joined Restore with this view in mind, Christianity is either irrelevant or alien. As Steve Laws, leading campaigner for ‘remigration’ who has joined Restore, put it, “Blood is what makes you British but the people aren't ready to hear that yet. It's about your heritage, your ancestry and your roots to this land. Blood & soil. Our people existed before Christianity and they’ll exist after.” For some, Christianity is itself a Middle Eastern import that should be rejected in favour of the pre-existing Paganism. Ultimately, however, for ethnonationalists, genetic ancestry is everything and culture and religion mean very little.

Meanwhile, many former Reform members who switched allegiance to Restore, believing it to be more proactive but who still hold some degree of liberal principles and see these as central to the British philosophical traditions they wish to conserve, reject both of these positions. They insist that Restore is simply about preserving British culture and addressing immigration effectively and being welcoming of everybody who is already here and is patriotic and committed to conserving British values.

Often, members of these different factions - Christian Nationalist, Ethnonationalist and culturally conservative - speak as though their view is the defining one and anybody not understanding this is deliberately missing the point. Some, however, have begun to address the problem.

Tommy Robinson, whose primary focus has always been opposing Islam recently addressed this confusion, speaking from the “cultural preservation” position and posting from the United States:

Political scientist, Eric Kaufman, accurately categorised Robinson as speaking from the culturally-conservative-in-a-way-that-conserves-liberalism camp when he responded: “Tommy Robinson rejects ethnonationalism in favour of a kind of anti-Islamic English liberal nationalism.” Ben Habib, who is of mixed English and Pakistani origin and is the former deputy leader of Reform and now head of Advance, another political party to the right of the Tories also asserted the cultural position when he challenged ethnonationalists among Restore members: “I am English and British. A darn sight more English and British than the prejudiced idiots who say otherwise.

We might all well be confused by the current mess on the British right. While some prominent figures have taken a decided position that the Britishness or Englishness that is to be restored is defined by Christianity or ethnic ancestry or commitment to the history, culture and traditions of Britain, many people engaging in general discourse seem to flit between the positions often conflating religion with culture more broadly, religion with race and race with culture.

This conflation and confusion occurs because the position being taken here is so often reactive. This is something that happens when people define their goals by what they oppose rather than what they stand for. This leads to reacting against specific examples of a perceived threat by reaching for whichever stance is most opposed to it. People typically call upon Christianity most strongly in response to objectionable manifestations of Islam or any manifestations of Islam but may not practice Christianity on a regular basis or at all. Race becomes the salient issue when somebody committing a crime or just holding an opposing view is black or brown but not Muslim but may become less relevant in the case of people with shared views. People typically call on elements of British or English culture and tradition in response to manifestations of other cultures and traditions but may not generally uphold those in their lives either. Liberalism is most commonly reached for when freedom of belief or speech is denied or when the rights of women or same sex attracted people are threatened but this may not indicate a commitment to protecting any of those consistently.

The mess is created by a profound failure to clearly articulate any first principles at all, let alone to organise around shared ones. This does not mean that no consistent features can be identified, only that no coherent framework has yet emerged among the factions to the right of the Conservatives that could form the basis of a stable consensus. What is clear, however, is that the proliferation of parties and movements clustering around immigration issues indicates a genuine and widespread public concern about ineffective immigration policy and cultural cohesion. The scale of support for these movements suggests that this concern is not marginal or fringe but widely felt.

Nor is it limited to the white majority, as illiberal identitarians on both left and right often imply. Surveys consistently show significant concern about immigration among ethnic minority Britons as well, with around 45% of Black Britons and 50% of South Asian Britons believing immigration levels are too high. Nor is the issue confined to the political right. Labour has significantly toughened its rhetoric and policy proposals on immigration, drawing criticism from some within its own ranks as well as from the Green Party.

Restore is not helping with coherence and this appears to be a feature rather than a bug. By leaving its first principles vague, the party can appeal simultaneously to ethnonationalists, Christian nationalists and traditional cultural conservatives. Each faction is able to imagine that its own interpretation of “restoring Britain” is the one the party actually supports.

This ambiguity may be politically useful in the short term, but it leaves the movement an unknown quantity and makes organising around shared goals difficult. It is hard to build a stable political project when its supporters are imagining fundamentally different things. The result is likely to be fragmentation and schism as those incompatible visions eventually collide, much as Reform itself fractured under the strain of its own internal disagreements.

As someone on the liberal left, the incoherence, schisms and factional infighting on the right can hardly be unwelcome, and neither can the emergence of Restore to divide Reform’s vote. I do not want to see large numbers of my fellow citizens become effectively organised around values such as ethnonationalism or Christian nationalism. These are damaging, illiberal ideologies that fundamentally undermine the liberal democratic philosophical tradition that developed in England — a tradition of which many of us remain patriotically proud.

Liberals on the left, however, cannot simply hope that the rise of the illiberal right will resolve itself by confusing and contradicting itself into an incoherent mess and then disappearing. A healthy liberal democracy requires a strong and coherent culturally conservative presence on the right. It is essential that such a movement be guided not by reactive grievance but by clearly articulated principles and that those principles be liberal. What we need to see, therefore, are liberal conservatives stepping into this role: those who wish to conserve the liberal philosophical tradition that produced modern Britain — individual responsibility, meritocracy, freedom of belief and speech, and equality before the law.

This is also what is most likely to work. When we examine the three competing conceptions of Britishness or Englishness currently circulating on the right, only the culturally conservative appears compatible with either social reality or political stability.

Christian nationalism is highly unlikely to succeed in Britain because Britain is simply not a religious country. Nor is the decline in active and literal belief in Christianity a recent phenomenon. English culture has long been temperamentally suspicious of religious zealotry. One might facetiously say this began when our Puritans became so troublesome we persecuted them out of the country and sent them to America. That is, of course, a simplification, but it gestures toward a deeper cultural tendency.

When the United States won its revolutionary war and wrote its constitution asserting that there would be no establishment of religion, much was written in England predicting that the country would quickly become faithless and atheistic. Instead, the opposite happened. Christianity remained culturally central in the United States while it gradually declined in England. Historians have often argued that this divergence emerged precisely because Americans had to build their own religious communities, whereas England retained an established church. Paradoxically, the existence of a state religion appears to have encouraged religious moderation and gradual secularisation.

As the Church of England settled into a moderate, mainstream institutional presence, it increasingly came to function as a kind of cultural background noise rather than a source of intense belief. Literal belief steadily declined. Today, just over a quarter of Brits believe in God, including only 56% of self-identified Christians. Culturally, we tend to respond to explicit declarations of religious faith with the same mild embarrassment reserved for people oversharing private matters. As a result, many English people are tolerant of Christianity as a personal belief but uncomfortable with attempts to bring it into the public sphere. (This is something people from more devoutly Christian minority ethnic groups have found difficult). Attempts to build a national identity around Christianity among white Britons are therefore unlikely to succeed. The resistance to Charlie Downes’s attempt to frame Restore Britain in explicitly Christian terms illustrates this cultural reality.

Ethnonationalism faces an even deeper problem. Proponents often insist that defining Britishness or Englishness ethnically is “not hard” and that it is simply a matter of ancestral DNA. They tend to pounce upon those of us referring to black or brown people as “British” or “English” and accuse us of denying biology and ‘explain’ that English (and sometimes British) is an ethnic group. They frequently end with “This is not complicated.” Well, no, it’s not. The rest of us are not confused. We just disagree with you.

It is, I would argue, ethnonationalists who are going against biology. They are trying to make people think in ways human brains do not naturally think. In practice, human beings do not naturally organise themselves with reference to ancestral DNA. Our brains were simply not built to attend to race because, unlike sex and age, this was not a significant feature over evolutionary time. Studies repeatedly show that when individuals cooperate toward shared goals, they retain an awareness of the sex and age of their collaborators but quickly lose track of racial categories.

Our evolved social psychology is built to detect cultural alliances, not genetic lineage. We recognise shared language, norms, customs and values as indicators of group allegiance far more readily than we recognise skin colour or other aspects of ‘race.’ That is, we recognise culture. In order to make oneself regard race as significant one has to consciously take on a belief system that ties ethnicity into group loyalty. Only then will the cognitive mechanisms we have to detect allies and enemies attach themselves to racial categories. Ethnonationalists clearly have done this and remain bewildered and frustrated that the rest of us have not.

For most people, cultural recognition remains far more immediate than racial categorisation. It is profoundly difficult to stop recognising friends and neighbours who share one’s language, humour, mannerisms and social norms as “one of us” simply because they have a different skin colour.

I was reminded of this while visiting San Francisco. Walking down the street I heard the accent of my home town, London, behind me. Instinctively I felt that small jolt of recognition: “my people are here.” When I turned around I discovered that the voices belonged to a group of South Asian Sikh lads. I stopped to say hello. They recognised my accent as readily as I had recognised theirs and grinned at me. We chatted. Over the course of the week we ran into one another a few more times and always exchanged smiles and greetings.

What produced that moment of recognition was not shared ancestry but shared culture: speech patterns, humour, mannerisms and the countless subtle signals that mark a shared social code. In a city thousands of miles from home among people with different speech patterns, humour and mannerisms, those cues immediately created a sense of familiarity and ‘home’.

This is the kind of social recognition human beings evolved to perform. Attempts to persuade people to ignore these powerful cultural signals in favour of ancestral lineage are therefore likely to struggle. Ethnonationalists are not appealing to the way human social cognition naturally operates, but asking people to override it.

The conception of national identity that aligns most closely with both human social instincts and Britain’s historical development is therefore cultural. This can include those small markers of what we often call “national character”: understatement, self-deprecation, the gratuitous use of irony for no good reason, politeness, emotional reserve, beginning conversations with strangers by saying “Sorry,” and much else besides. These are the kinds of things people mean when they tell me that I am “very English.” They are not saying that, by looking at me, they can detect an entirely Anglo-Saxon genetic profile. This is fortunate, because genetically I am mostly Welsh with a dollop of Italian and a smidgeon of French and English. What they are really saying is that I embody a familiar cultural stereotype of Englishness. I do. I am extremely English, and for the most part nobody feels any urge to dispute this.

But the cultural understanding of Britishness or Englishness is far larger and more important than these small social markers. Britain is the home of the great philosophers of liberalism: John Locke, Adam Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill. The culture that developed around their ideas shaped how people in Britain came to understand politics, institutions and civic life. People recognise themselves as belonging to a shared culture expressed through ways of speaking, debating, organising institutions and resolving disputes. Britishness and Englishness have long been defined less by ancestry or religion than by a distinctive political and cultural tradition: parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, equality under the law, freedom of speech, religious tolerance, an understanding that only material harm justifies coercion and the expectation that individuals should be judged by their conduct rather than their identity.

When people criticise multiculturalism, they are commonly criticising an imperative to accommodate people who do not uphold these views and do not wish to integrate themselves into this culture. These criticisms are absolutely valid and they are at the root of cultural conservatism. These concerns are also widely shared among people on the left and the right, people of all races and people from a variety of religions and none. Immigration policies that require those who wish to live here to commit to the fundamental principles of a liberal democracy can command broad consensus in a way that demands for ethnic or religious conformity never could.

For this reason, cultural conservatism can work, but only when it remains liberal. A cultural conservatism rooted in liberal principles preserves precisely the traditions that many people who half-heartedly and inconsistently invoke Christianity or ancestry actually wish to defend: freedom of belief, stable institutions, civil disagreement and a society in which people from different backgrounds can participate under the same rules. With these values, people actually have shared first principles and they are standing for something, which enables coherence and consistency.

Without those liberal foundations, British cultural identity itself cannot survive. A movement defined primarily by opposition to perceived enemies or threats quickly becomes incoherent, shifting between incompatible definitions of itself. A movement grounded in shared liberal principles, by contrast, possesses a stable framework within which cultural continuity and political disagreement can coexist.

And that is ultimately the question facing the fractured British right today: not whether Britain should be restored, but what it is that they believe Britain actually is.

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