Helen, thanks again for the wonderfully clear distinctions offered between the principles of true Liberalism and the various distortions of them that drive the collapse back down into all the various tribalisms that seem to be humanity's natural center of gravity.
Liberalism, in that sense anyway, isn't trying to establish some flimsy, non-existent "middle ground" between competing claims, but instead aims to create a higher ground above and beyond all those based on identitarian particulars.
Your articles and thought pieces always do such a wonderful job of this, thank you! <3
I’m not exactly sure it will achieve that. The social conservative, the gender-critical feminist, and the "queer" activist have wildly different views of what is objective reality and how we should live based on those principles. Without an objective factor and principle by which everyone should adhere to, it will create a fragmented, divisive society-an illiberal one, as Helen might call it-that will be at each others' throats over what is true and desired and what is not. In the same way we expect people of various ethnicities to adhere to a set of cultural standards and principles when living in a specific country, so should these various factions find a common way to address the concepts of sex and sexuality in a society. A sort of "anything goes" mentality is not feasible when trying to organize a tolerant and philosophically cohesive society.
You make many excellent points here, and the most meaningful one to me is: we need to be sure not to undermine the ideas and ideals that have made things like women’s rights, lgbt inclusion, etc. possible in the first place. It is not obvious as it seems it should be.
I hope the Torinese understood how fortunate they were to hear you in person.
I’m not exactly sure it will achieve that. The social conservative, the gender-critical feminist, and the "queer" activist have wildly different views of what is objective reality and how we should live based on those principles. Without an objective factor and principle by which everyone should adhere to, it will create a fragmented, divisive society-an illiberal one, as Helen might call it-that will be at each others' throats over what is true and desired and what is not. In the same way we expect people of various ethnicities to adhere to a set of cultural standards and principles when living in a specific country, so should these various factions find a common way to address the concepts of sex and sexuality in a society. A sort of "anything goes" mentality is not feasible when trying to organize a tolerant and philosophically cohesive society.
Do you talk about legal status of biological sex? Sure people can play around with however they want to look but it is important for women born women to have sex segregated spaces available supported by law.
Again and again, Helen. A brilliant clear piece of honouring and applying the power of liberalism for Italy’s LGBT audience and for us all. The way gay and lesbian campaigns were successful (and actually remarkably fast) because they were coherent and disciplined and used a liberal framework is the central contrast with the illiberal ways of the trans campaigning. T et al chose not walk in the gay footsteps while hoping to sneak in by pretending it was.
By "the androgynous person", you mean "non-binary"? Because both men and women can adopt an androgynous presentation.
But my bigger problem (or skepticism you might say?) is this section:
"Liberalism does not require us all to agree about gender. A socially conservative person may live by traditional gender roles. A gender-critical feminist may reject gender roles. A genderqueer person may play with them. A transsexual adult may seek medical transition.
A liberal society can contain all these people.
What it cannot contain, at least not peacefully, is the demand that one faction’s metaphysics be imposed on everyone else."
I'm not sure this is a feasible solution to living in a peaceful society. The social conservative, the gender-critical feminist, and the "queer" activist have wildly different views of what is objective reality and how we should live based on those principles. Without an objective factor and principle by which everyone should adhere to, it will create a fragmented, divisive society-an illiberal one, as you call it-that will be at each others' throats over what is true and desired and what is not. In the same way we expect people of various ethnicities to adhere to a set of cultural standards and principles when living in a specific country, so should these various factions find a common way to address the concepts of sex and sexuality in a society. A sort of "anything goes" mentality is not feasible when trying to organize a tolerant and philosophically cohesive society.
(On a somewhat related note, your definition of liberalism seems to align with social progressivism, which may not encompass various ideological factions, and can appear somewhat subjective, but at least it is a coherent definition. I don't think you'll disagree that liberalism has come to mean different things in recent years, so having an established definition of it makes your arguments easier to follow.)
Great point. Likely why it feels like conservatives “win” a lot. The reality is that it is, for the majority, the only semblance of a firm starting place.
Even if you want to move past it, or outright disagree with it, it has the cultural, historical and metaphysical foundation.
When more recent “liberal” causes, which I generally support in spirit, start to venture forward they seem to over expand, crash, loose definitions and the foundations for the new foundation become sand.
At that point, like a rocket failing to get free of earths gravity well, the attempt at progress comes crashing back to the conservative standing because it is the only thing resembling reality as shitty as the reality may be for many.
Without a cohesive, simple and grounded alternative, people who want change will always come back to the starting place if the new place seems warped and unstable.
The argument that safety compels distinguishing based on biological sex -- and ONLY that criteria looks shaky to me. It's of course statistically speaking true that there exists a number of crimes where men are over-represented among perpetrators.
But that's true for some other demographic groups too, for example violent crime (including sexual assaults) correlate strongly with age. And yet nobody at all proposes that on account of safety it's important and right to create spaces that are (for example) only available for people over 40.
Instead sex is treated as if it's the ONE THING in the entire scope of human existence that makes it natural and perhaps even necessary to split human beings into two groups.
It's also very hard to pretend not to notice that if we look at the world as it exists today, then women tend to be systematically safer from sexual harassment and assault in cultures that rarely gender-segregate, and unsafer in cultures that place a high importance on segregation. Of course correlation does not prove causation; but it's still at least a bit suspect when a correlation points the opposite way of a claimed causal effect. ("segregating women and men has the result that women are safer" is at odds with Scandinavia being safer for women than (say) Egypt is)
I'm not convinced. I think there's a good argument to be made that LESS segregation leads to more normalized and healthier relationships between women and men, and downstream from that, women end up being at lower risk of sexual crimes than they are where segregation is high.
That may be true but, as you say, it is difficult to glean causation from correlation. How can we tell that causation is not best described as being in the other direction (i.e. Scandinavia's socialisation practices lead to healthier relationships between women and men, meaning that gender segregation is not as necessary as currently in Egypt)? In this case, less segregation might prove risky, unless preceded by some other social program which solves the actual problem.
I'm not sure if there is a way to tell which way the causation points. The idea that gender segregation causes more division and animosity between women and men certainly sounds plausible, but so does the notion that removing sex-specific spaces would lead to less safety for women. Of course, it need not be so dichotomous. Perhaps the best solution to this problem is a holistic one in which education, child rearing practices and gender segregated structures are gradually reformed in tandem.
We can't be completely certain of that. It's not as if you can perform some kinda double-blind study on it or similar. (And for that to be valid it'd have to run for multiple generations, cultural changes take time!)
Personally I consider it the default baseline to treat people as people, and I'd want reasonably strong evidence in favor of segregation being a clear positive before I'd want to do it.
I mean what's the alternative? There's a hundred forms of segregation that we in principle COULD be doing -- are we going to do all of them on account of not having strong evidence that they're harmful? Or are we going to do none of them unless we have pretty decent evidence that they're necessary?
My thinking is the latter. And it's notable to me that as I said gender seems to be the ONE demographic factor that we do this for.
And it just so randomly *happens* to be the same one that the Taliban and other forces as far from liberal as at all possible strongly want. Doesn't that by itself make you somewhat suspicious?
I mean of course it's not the case that if your ideological opponents love something it MUST be a bad idea of course -- but at least it's a clear hint that some of the arguments in favor of something, are arguments you might not accept as valid.
It’s worse than that, we cannot tell either way because there is no way to test it, let alone have certainty.
I mean what's the alternative? There's a hundred forms of segregation that we in principle COULD be doing -- are we going to do all of them on account of not having strong evidence that they're harmful?
I suggested an alternative - a combination of policies aimed at various social structural factors that influence relations between women and men, like education and child rearing. As I said before there’s no need to be so dichotomous; we can take a holistic approach which treats the problem from many angles rather than presenting it as a choice between removing all gender segregated spaces and implementing as many as possible.
We can and must start from the position we are in already and work out pragmatic next steps to make progress. Removing all gender segregation at once seems rash and risks putting women in danger, whereas of course implementing more segregation would be regressive as you say. We need to use other avenues to change behaviours first then remove segregated spaces when safe. Hopefully then, we’ll have a snowball effect whereby changes in behaviour make women more safe, requiring less single-sex spaces, creating less division between the genders and contributing to further changes in behaviour, which again in turn allow for less segregation. There need not be an either/or here.
And it just so randomly happens to be the same one that the Taliban and other forces as far from liberal as at all possible strongly want. Doesn't that by itself make you somewhat suspicious?
Yes, of certain forms of gendered differentiation, of course. But the gendered segregation the Taliban implements such as, for example, preventing women from entering higher education, or leaving the house without a male relative, are bad precisely because they restrict half the population’s freedoms to engage in something which the other half is fully able to. This obviously does not hold for, say, splitting prisons, sports, bathrooms or sexual assault crisis centres.
And on your point about gender being the only demographic we do this for, that might be mostly true. You brought up age earlier but I can’t find any data to suggest that there is a particular problem with young on old violence that would suggest a need for over 40s spaces. I’m in the UK so perhaps the crime statistics here are different to wherever you are. Nor are there the equivalent of gender ideologies (like those from certain groups within the manosphere), nor analogies to the patriarchal justifications for the subjugation of women that have been around throughout recorded history and which contribute to this problem especially.
Yes, this has a presence but this is why I was invited to speak and urge against it. My reception was overwhelmingly positive. While there is clearly ideological divergence in the group, the majority of attendees appeared to be onboard with genuine liberalism. It was very encouraging. If you go to the recording, you will see that people applauded at the strongest freedom-defending parts.
I think we're actually witnessing the post-mortem of identity politics, of which this article is an example. Not that identity politics doesn't still have power for many people. It has an organizing logic in terms of unifying with people of similar identity backgrounds in order to enhance political power. However, it also has a major problem because it ultimately has toxic effects on the body politic and on the people who adhere to it. First, organizing around race or gender or sexuality is divisive and tends to produce it's own enemies. For instance, organizing around gender, in the form of feminism, tends to result in feminist backlash. Second, when people define their personal identity in terms of a limited number of politically salient identity categories, it tends to result in enhanced enmity towards other groups. You're effectively compelled to wedge your identity into a group that is defined as being in conflict with other groups for political power and resources. And that makes it more difficult to form positive relationships with people who aren't members of the same identity group. I think we've all sort of seen this - the people most caught up in identity groups tend to be the most toxic personalities. It becomes a status competition of victimization - which group has suffered the most so deserves the most political power. Coalitions across multiple groups become difficult to form and it undercuts itself. And that's leaving aside just the personal effects, like if you really wedge yourself into this worldview, your sort of required to interpret everyone else as a possible political opponent. You cannot just make friends with people who share the same non-political interests, you have to interpret relationships with other people through the lends of an identity status hierarchy. So these people tend to not exactly be easy going and likable, and end up not having positive relationships with others. The identity politics gets in the way of forming non-political relationships that cut across identity group boundaries.
And that's why, ultimately, most people dislike it, and it is losing adherents. Because it's not a mentally healthy way of living or looking at the world. You can't live your live inside this political lens where your identity is wedged into a narrow number of racial gender and sexuality based categories, and still be a mentally healthy fully developed adult human. You're just going to end up spending all your time thinking about how you've been oppressed and imagining enemies everywhere.
A brilliant explanation of liberalism and its importance.
Illiberalism stops at the group identity level and fails to recognise/inhibits the individual and their individual rights behind the coarse group aggregation. That is, many, even in so-called marginalised groups, do not accept the generalisations, characteristics or preferences assigned to them by academics or activists.
Those from minority groups who are heterodox to illiberal generalisations are the most disliked of all by illiberal activists because their lack of co-option weakens the group assertion. This demonstrates the oxymoronic and aggressive nature of identity politics that fails at the level of logic, reason, peace-seeking and humanity.
The weakness of the talk I think is in the definition of 'social conservatism' as an enemy to liberalism. As a Christian, I think most Christians are personally socially conservative, and advocate for it, but do not impose their beliefs on others.
21st century social conservatism is generally liberal within Christianity.
Since we know Christianity cannot be proven, others must be equally allowed their own belief system, but, in liberal tradition, it may not in turn be imposed on us.
The 'illiberal social conservatism by legal imposition' has gone from Christian nations through Protestantism and its splintering, and the tempering of Catholicism. I do not see a resurgence of true Christianity as the illiberal threat, relative to other threats. Quite the opposite.
Do you find that it is generally useful to consider LGBT together when thinking and talking about rights etc? I see quite a difference between LGB and T and combining them can lead to some muddled writing and ideas.
Secondly, do you think LGB rights are actually under attack in the UK? (I know your talking was in Italy) I'm probably not very aware of socially conservative views here.
Yes indeed. If the world had read and taken on what Helen has been saying clearly since soon after the T did (and did not) follow the success of LGB, we wouldn't have been through this nightmare!
Helen, thanks again for the wonderfully clear distinctions offered between the principles of true Liberalism and the various distortions of them that drive the collapse back down into all the various tribalisms that seem to be humanity's natural center of gravity.
Liberalism, in that sense anyway, isn't trying to establish some flimsy, non-existent "middle ground" between competing claims, but instead aims to create a higher ground above and beyond all those based on identitarian particulars.
Your articles and thought pieces always do such a wonderful job of this, thank you! <3
Yes, exactly!
This is magnificent! A wonderful essay and very inspiring.
I’m not exactly sure it will achieve that. The social conservative, the gender-critical feminist, and the "queer" activist have wildly different views of what is objective reality and how we should live based on those principles. Without an objective factor and principle by which everyone should adhere to, it will create a fragmented, divisive society-an illiberal one, as Helen might call it-that will be at each others' throats over what is true and desired and what is not. In the same way we expect people of various ethnicities to adhere to a set of cultural standards and principles when living in a specific country, so should these various factions find a common way to address the concepts of sex and sexuality in a society. A sort of "anything goes" mentality is not feasible when trying to organize a tolerant and philosophically cohesive society.
That… doesn’t really address my concerns.
You make many excellent points here, and the most meaningful one to me is: we need to be sure not to undermine the ideas and ideals that have made things like women’s rights, lgbt inclusion, etc. possible in the first place. It is not obvious as it seems it should be.
I hope the Torinese understood how fortunate they were to hear you in person.
I’m not exactly sure it will achieve that. The social conservative, the gender-critical feminist, and the "queer" activist have wildly different views of what is objective reality and how we should live based on those principles. Without an objective factor and principle by which everyone should adhere to, it will create a fragmented, divisive society-an illiberal one, as Helen might call it-that will be at each others' throats over what is true and desired and what is not. In the same way we expect people of various ethnicities to adhere to a set of cultural standards and principles when living in a specific country, so should these various factions find a common way to address the concepts of sex and sexuality in a society. A sort of "anything goes" mentality is not feasible when trying to organize a tolerant and philosophically cohesive society.
Do you talk about legal status of biological sex? Sure people can play around with however they want to look but it is important for women born women to have sex segregated spaces available supported by law.
Yes, I mention that in there and have done so at greater length in other pieces.
Again and again, Helen. A brilliant clear piece of honouring and applying the power of liberalism for Italy’s LGBT audience and for us all. The way gay and lesbian campaigns were successful (and actually remarkably fast) because they were coherent and disciplined and used a liberal framework is the central contrast with the illiberal ways of the trans campaigning. T et al chose not walk in the gay footsteps while hoping to sneak in by pretending it was.
By "the androgynous person", you mean "non-binary"? Because both men and women can adopt an androgynous presentation.
But my bigger problem (or skepticism you might say?) is this section:
"Liberalism does not require us all to agree about gender. A socially conservative person may live by traditional gender roles. A gender-critical feminist may reject gender roles. A genderqueer person may play with them. A transsexual adult may seek medical transition.
A liberal society can contain all these people.
What it cannot contain, at least not peacefully, is the demand that one faction’s metaphysics be imposed on everyone else."
I'm not sure this is a feasible solution to living in a peaceful society. The social conservative, the gender-critical feminist, and the "queer" activist have wildly different views of what is objective reality and how we should live based on those principles. Without an objective factor and principle by which everyone should adhere to, it will create a fragmented, divisive society-an illiberal one, as you call it-that will be at each others' throats over what is true and desired and what is not. In the same way we expect people of various ethnicities to adhere to a set of cultural standards and principles when living in a specific country, so should these various factions find a common way to address the concepts of sex and sexuality in a society. A sort of "anything goes" mentality is not feasible when trying to organize a tolerant and philosophically cohesive society.
(On a somewhat related note, your definition of liberalism seems to align with social progressivism, which may not encompass various ideological factions, and can appear somewhat subjective, but at least it is a coherent definition. I don't think you'll disagree that liberalism has come to mean different things in recent years, so having an established definition of it makes your arguments easier to follow.)
Great point. Likely why it feels like conservatives “win” a lot. The reality is that it is, for the majority, the only semblance of a firm starting place.
Even if you want to move past it, or outright disagree with it, it has the cultural, historical and metaphysical foundation.
When more recent “liberal” causes, which I generally support in spirit, start to venture forward they seem to over expand, crash, loose definitions and the foundations for the new foundation become sand.
At that point, like a rocket failing to get free of earths gravity well, the attempt at progress comes crashing back to the conservative standing because it is the only thing resembling reality as shitty as the reality may be for many.
Without a cohesive, simple and grounded alternative, people who want change will always come back to the starting place if the new place seems warped and unstable.
The argument that safety compels distinguishing based on biological sex -- and ONLY that criteria looks shaky to me. It's of course statistically speaking true that there exists a number of crimes where men are over-represented among perpetrators.
But that's true for some other demographic groups too, for example violent crime (including sexual assaults) correlate strongly with age. And yet nobody at all proposes that on account of safety it's important and right to create spaces that are (for example) only available for people over 40.
Instead sex is treated as if it's the ONE THING in the entire scope of human existence that makes it natural and perhaps even necessary to split human beings into two groups.
It's also very hard to pretend not to notice that if we look at the world as it exists today, then women tend to be systematically safer from sexual harassment and assault in cultures that rarely gender-segregate, and unsafer in cultures that place a high importance on segregation. Of course correlation does not prove causation; but it's still at least a bit suspect when a correlation points the opposite way of a claimed causal effect. ("segregating women and men has the result that women are safer" is at odds with Scandinavia being safer for women than (say) Egypt is)
I'm not convinced. I think there's a good argument to be made that LESS segregation leads to more normalized and healthier relationships between women and men, and downstream from that, women end up being at lower risk of sexual crimes than they are where segregation is high.
That may be true but, as you say, it is difficult to glean causation from correlation. How can we tell that causation is not best described as being in the other direction (i.e. Scandinavia's socialisation practices lead to healthier relationships between women and men, meaning that gender segregation is not as necessary as currently in Egypt)? In this case, less segregation might prove risky, unless preceded by some other social program which solves the actual problem.
I'm not sure if there is a way to tell which way the causation points. The idea that gender segregation causes more division and animosity between women and men certainly sounds plausible, but so does the notion that removing sex-specific spaces would lead to less safety for women. Of course, it need not be so dichotomous. Perhaps the best solution to this problem is a holistic one in which education, child rearing practices and gender segregated structures are gradually reformed in tandem.
We can't be completely certain of that. It's not as if you can perform some kinda double-blind study on it or similar. (And for that to be valid it'd have to run for multiple generations, cultural changes take time!)
Personally I consider it the default baseline to treat people as people, and I'd want reasonably strong evidence in favor of segregation being a clear positive before I'd want to do it.
I mean what's the alternative? There's a hundred forms of segregation that we in principle COULD be doing -- are we going to do all of them on account of not having strong evidence that they're harmful? Or are we going to do none of them unless we have pretty decent evidence that they're necessary?
My thinking is the latter. And it's notable to me that as I said gender seems to be the ONE demographic factor that we do this for.
And it just so randomly *happens* to be the same one that the Taliban and other forces as far from liberal as at all possible strongly want. Doesn't that by itself make you somewhat suspicious?
I mean of course it's not the case that if your ideological opponents love something it MUST be a bad idea of course -- but at least it's a clear hint that some of the arguments in favor of something, are arguments you might not accept as valid.
We can't be completely certain of that
It’s worse than that, we cannot tell either way because there is no way to test it, let alone have certainty.
I mean what's the alternative? There's a hundred forms of segregation that we in principle COULD be doing -- are we going to do all of them on account of not having strong evidence that they're harmful?
I suggested an alternative - a combination of policies aimed at various social structural factors that influence relations between women and men, like education and child rearing. As I said before there’s no need to be so dichotomous; we can take a holistic approach which treats the problem from many angles rather than presenting it as a choice between removing all gender segregated spaces and implementing as many as possible.
We can and must start from the position we are in already and work out pragmatic next steps to make progress. Removing all gender segregation at once seems rash and risks putting women in danger, whereas of course implementing more segregation would be regressive as you say. We need to use other avenues to change behaviours first then remove segregated spaces when safe. Hopefully then, we’ll have a snowball effect whereby changes in behaviour make women more safe, requiring less single-sex spaces, creating less division between the genders and contributing to further changes in behaviour, which again in turn allow for less segregation. There need not be an either/or here.
And it just so randomly happens to be the same one that the Taliban and other forces as far from liberal as at all possible strongly want. Doesn't that by itself make you somewhat suspicious?
Yes, of certain forms of gendered differentiation, of course. But the gendered segregation the Taliban implements such as, for example, preventing women from entering higher education, or leaving the house without a male relative, are bad precisely because they restrict half the population’s freedoms to engage in something which the other half is fully able to. This obviously does not hold for, say, splitting prisons, sports, bathrooms or sexual assault crisis centres.
And on your point about gender being the only demographic we do this for, that might be mostly true. You brought up age earlier but I can’t find any data to suggest that there is a particular problem with young on old violence that would suggest a need for over 40s spaces. I’m in the UK so perhaps the crime statistics here are different to wherever you are. Nor are there the equivalent of gender ideologies (like those from certain groups within the manosphere), nor analogies to the patriarchal justifications for the subjugation of women that have been around throughout recorded history and which contribute to this problem especially.
I’m not sure that there is anywhere that women feel safe without pretzelling their lives to reduce the risk of male violence.
You seem to be responding to a claim nobody made.
Oh no I live in Turin and I missed the opportunity to hear your speak.
May I ask what was the reception? I fear this liberal associations are embedded within identity politics themselves...
Yes, this has a presence but this is why I was invited to speak and urge against it. My reception was overwhelmingly positive. While there is clearly ideological divergence in the group, the majority of attendees appeared to be onboard with genuine liberalism. It was very encouraging. If you go to the recording, you will see that people applauded at the strongest freedom-defending parts.
I think we're actually witnessing the post-mortem of identity politics, of which this article is an example. Not that identity politics doesn't still have power for many people. It has an organizing logic in terms of unifying with people of similar identity backgrounds in order to enhance political power. However, it also has a major problem because it ultimately has toxic effects on the body politic and on the people who adhere to it. First, organizing around race or gender or sexuality is divisive and tends to produce it's own enemies. For instance, organizing around gender, in the form of feminism, tends to result in feminist backlash. Second, when people define their personal identity in terms of a limited number of politically salient identity categories, it tends to result in enhanced enmity towards other groups. You're effectively compelled to wedge your identity into a group that is defined as being in conflict with other groups for political power and resources. And that makes it more difficult to form positive relationships with people who aren't members of the same identity group. I think we've all sort of seen this - the people most caught up in identity groups tend to be the most toxic personalities. It becomes a status competition of victimization - which group has suffered the most so deserves the most political power. Coalitions across multiple groups become difficult to form and it undercuts itself. And that's leaving aside just the personal effects, like if you really wedge yourself into this worldview, your sort of required to interpret everyone else as a possible political opponent. You cannot just make friends with people who share the same non-political interests, you have to interpret relationships with other people through the lends of an identity status hierarchy. So these people tend to not exactly be easy going and likable, and end up not having positive relationships with others. The identity politics gets in the way of forming non-political relationships that cut across identity group boundaries.
And that's why, ultimately, most people dislike it, and it is losing adherents. Because it's not a mentally healthy way of living or looking at the world. You can't live your live inside this political lens where your identity is wedged into a narrow number of racial gender and sexuality based categories, and still be a mentally healthy fully developed adult human. You're just going to end up spending all your time thinking about how you've been oppressed and imagining enemies everywhere.
A brilliant explanation of liberalism and its importance.
Illiberalism stops at the group identity level and fails to recognise/inhibits the individual and their individual rights behind the coarse group aggregation. That is, many, even in so-called marginalised groups, do not accept the generalisations, characteristics or preferences assigned to them by academics or activists.
Those from minority groups who are heterodox to illiberal generalisations are the most disliked of all by illiberal activists because their lack of co-option weakens the group assertion. This demonstrates the oxymoronic and aggressive nature of identity politics that fails at the level of logic, reason, peace-seeking and humanity.
The weakness of the talk I think is in the definition of 'social conservatism' as an enemy to liberalism. As a Christian, I think most Christians are personally socially conservative, and advocate for it, but do not impose their beliefs on others.
21st century social conservatism is generally liberal within Christianity.
Since we know Christianity cannot be proven, others must be equally allowed their own belief system, but, in liberal tradition, it may not in turn be imposed on us.
The 'illiberal social conservatism by legal imposition' has gone from Christian nations through Protestantism and its splintering, and the tempering of Catholicism. I do not see a resurgence of true Christianity as the illiberal threat, relative to other threats. Quite the opposite.
Vive liberal, not illiberal, social conservatism!
Truly excellent. Well said!
Do you find that it is generally useful to consider LGBT together when thinking and talking about rights etc? I see quite a difference between LGB and T and combining them can lead to some muddled writing and ideas.
Secondly, do you think LGB rights are actually under attack in the UK? (I know your talking was in Italy) I'm probably not very aware of socially conservative views here.
In writing, I generally now use "LGB and/or T" and I have a piece in progress on when they can be considered together and why they often can't be.
Yes, I see a resurgence of anti-gay views as a backlash against 'queer' activism in the UK discourse. More so in America, though. https://www.hpluckrose.com/p/can-we-please-not-throw-lgbt-rights
Thanks for the link, there's a large section in it which you wrote in 2018. I wish that had been read and understood by everyone at the time.
Yes indeed. If the world had read and taken on what Helen has been saying clearly since soon after the T did (and did not) follow the success of LGB, we wouldn't have been through this nightmare!