I agree that the principle/fact distinction is important and useful. I think with respect to this particular debate though that the shift in public opinion is at least as much to do with factual arguments as it is to principled ones. I saw a study a few years ago which suggested that a significant number of people (I think around 20%) understood the term 'transgender woman' to mean a female person who identifies as a man. So if people have shifted from 'agree' to 'disagree' on questions like 'should transgender women compete in women's sport' I suspect this is more likely to do with exposure to factual arguments about what 'transgender woman' actually means, rather than abstract arguments about fairness or freedom of association or whatnot. In other words, people haven't updated their principles as a result of listening to liberal arguments, they have applied new information to their existing liberal principles.
This is not to say that we shouldn't be making liberal arguments (we absolutely should) But abstract principles will only get us so far, if we're talking about policy then facts matter just as much.
I have done. I stand by the original point. I'm not sure what you mean by 'clear'. I'm also not sure that we actually disagree. When you say that people are "increasingly reluctant to endorse policies they believe create risks for women and children or require others to affirm beliefs they do not share" I doubt that you are suggesting that people have gone 'I used to think that creating risks for women and children was good/neutral but now I've listened to liberal arguments and think it is bad' Surely it is more likely that the shift has been 'I used to support these policies because I didn't realise that they created risks but having now become more acquainted by facts (i.e. having been exposed to truth claims) I now realise that my *pre-existing* liberal principle of "don't create risks for women and children" is in play and I can no longer support the policy"
Sorry, missed this. I meant that I agree that confusion about what the terms “trans woman” and “trans men” meant has confused results of some surveys. Some people have said “yes” to questions like “Should trans women access women’s sports” because they thought a trans woman meant a biological woman who identified as trans but YouGov anticipates this and the question are set out accordingly. It says:
“In the following questions a transgender person is someone who identifies as a different gender to their sex at birth, including people who identify as being non-
binary.
A transgender woman is someone who was biologically male at birth, but now identifies as a woman.
A transgender man is someone who was biologically female at birth, but now identifies as a man.”
Yes, the second is what I mean. I think people have been convinced by liberal arguments which reference harm (risk) and threats to freedom.
Yes, I agree - both arguments are correct. As Helen said, most people hadn't thought too much about the trans issue and only felt it was fair to 'live and let live' (I was just like this!), and certainly there was confusion with the terminology. There was a survey done, possibly by Sex Matters (?) that showed this. Once people understood the facts - what the terminology meant and the potential harm policies, like the Sturgeon's Gender Reform Bill in Scotland, could cause - then opinion changed. Liberalism has remained in place, people feel overall that we should all live as we choose but not at the expense of others. Some hard facts were needed. Rowling has provided both. She started gently, tentatively, but her arguments have grown more factual and stronger as time passed. But indeed we'll never convince hardline ideologues - luckily we don't have to.
Another great piece here, thank you Helen! I particularly how you articulate truth claims and (Liberal) principles are two different categories and how so many common "arguments" can be seen more clearly as just cross-categorical confusion.
This piece (again, and again thank you) points out the absurdity of wishing to establish some sort of collectively coherent "common ground" of universally believed truth (As one of my favorite clients often says, "I mean, have you met people?") and instead orients us to the "higher ground" aspiration of figuring out how to live well enough together in spite of all our different beliefs.
People will ALWAYS believe different things, from the has the best take-out to the primacy of God(s), so how to accept this fact and live well enough together anyway?
Although, I guess I've just tripped myself up there by making a truth claim myself!
Thanks Helen. I’ve been more on the ‘truth’ side (“impossible to change sex!”) so your arguments were particularly resonant with me. There are many mini-issues (preferred pronouns, bathrooms, etc.) that fall outside of clear harm but the broad strokes (such as opportunities for women in sports & fairness therein, medical harm to children) seem clear. Appreciate your efforts.
Yours is an exceptionally insightful argument that uses clear, tight reasoning to bring clarity to a subject that is notoriously difficult to untangle. Thanks.
This is very thoughtful and interesting. But you never close on the objection to telling the truth, bluntly.
"God exists/does not exist" is a metaphysical claim. No truth value there. We take sides, but ultimately there is no way to know. You might just as well take part in a "yo' mama" contest.
"Humans cannot change sex" is a statement about human biology, which does have a truth value, and is worth stating publicly, to counter all the biological nonsense that is also being stated publicly.
Oh, and I don’t object to telling the truth bluntly. At all. This is an essay arguing that truth claims and principles are different things, not a recommendation to only care about one of them. If you even just read the first paragraph, you’ll see I say that I agree on not softening them.
Birdy Rose argued that we might as well just assert truth claims instead of making arguments about harm and freedom and also seemed to conflate the two. I separated them and said I think the arguments that trans activism has been doing harm and denying freedom has convinced more people than statements that nobody can change sex. People react strongly against women and children being harmed.
I am glad you've clarified things. I thought you were arguing that, that's why it seemed to me unfinished (the argument, I mean). I was not sure exactly what you were arguing, that's why I asked. Is there really any reason to insult me? I'll tell you: no there isn't. :-)
I don’t know why you thought that. This is why I suggested you read the first paragraph. I don’t know if that is what you interpret as insulting you, but it isn’t. It’s what I think will clarify the argument
I thought that because you had said, "Can I suggest you read the piece you are commenting on. If you want to address something it actually says, I’ll respond. If you want to make stuff up, I’ll let you rant to yourself."
Nothing makes my day more bright than coming to a new substack, praising the piece, then having some critical feedback, and the author telling me off cuz I apparently failed to read it.
No, scrap that last response. I am short on patience and I have a lot of people being nasty at me. I don’t think it was your intention to misrepresent my view and I have jumped down your throat. I’m sorry, Erin. Can we start again?
Just read your essay on How to tell if you are living in a patriarchy. Excellent.
This hits one of my pet peeves....
The more we have moved away from patriarchy, the more there are people yelling about patriarchy. But not the obvious patriarchy "over there." They are yelling at us. There must be money in it... :-)
OK, you have a different definition of insult to me. That’s my policy when people tell me I’ve said things I haven’t and then tell me things like that my attitude gets children mutilated. I tell them to read what I actually did say and that I won’t respond if they intend to claim it is something else and go into rants about it. Because that is what I do. You are insulted if someone calls you names. Not when they tell you why they won’t indulge your behaviour
I am talking about the Abrahamic God and claims that he actually exists in reality and made the world and makes people survive the deaths of their brain to go on to live in another form. I’m not interested in metaphysical concepts of God that don’t involve truth claims about material reality that affect material humans.
My stance properly stated is:
There is no evidence to warrant regarding claims about the existence of God as a serious proposition.
“God does not exist” is a blunt and less careful version.
Likewise, the claim that there’s no such thing as a trans child or that people cannot be born in the wrong body is,
There is no evidence to warrant regarding claims about having been born in the wrong body as a serious proposition.
There might one day be evidence of God or evidence that some people can be born with some hardwired sense of themselves as the sex which does not match their body, but currently there isn’t so we can say provisionally that this is not true.
Trans activists don’t typically disagree with the core biological facts. The terms ‘trans woman’ and ‘cis woman’ for example refer to biological features of the body. But gender criticals would say “Man who identifies as a woman’ and ‘woman’. The difference is on what people who identify with a gender identity should be called, not the biological reality of their bodies.
But this wasn’t an argument that beliefs in an innate gender identity and beliefs in a theistic god are identical anyway. I explicitly the latter was a different belief to which the same rules of ‘let people believe what they want as long as they don’t harm anybody else or deny their freedoms’ apply. Also that they raise similar concerns about hostility to those who don’t share the beliefs and threaten the rights of women, children and same-sex attracted people. We don’t have to stretch comparisons any further than that. It’s not as though this changes the argument that truth claims and principles are different things.
"I explicitly the latter was a different belief to which the same rules of ‘let people believe what they want as long as they don’t harm anybody else or deny their freedoms’ apply."
No matter how insane a belief, you think we should just ignore it under the rubric of"let them believe what they want as long as no harm" -- is that what you are arguing? And isn't this sort of an attitude exactly what has gotten us into this mess, with tens of thousands of children mutilated, thousands of girls deprived of sports opportunities, and so on. You know the littany. Because we did not rise to squelch the crap right away.
Beliefs, like ideas, are dime a dozen. A lot of them are stupid. Many are harmful. I believe in opposing them before they start doing material harm, if at all possible.
People should be respected. Not their #%$!* beliefs.
“No matter how insane a belief, you think we should just ignore it under the rubric of"let them believe what they want as long as no harm" -- is that what you are arguing?”
Well, no. I have not argued anything remotely like that.
Can I suggest you read the piece you are commenting on. If you want to address something it actually says, I’ll respond. If you want to make stuff up, I’ll let you rant to yourself.
The other distinction you draw here should also be seen as crucial for public discourse and persuasion. This is the one between committed (illiberal) ideologues and people who may be relatively uncommitted on particular issues but (we hope!) can agree to a liberal approach to matters of public concern. Having spent years listening to those on the illiberal edges, I'm going to go ahead and talk with the liberals!
Agreed. What would you think of protecting transgender rights under the First Amendment? I live in WA state where the Ninth Circuit ruled that a women's spa couldn't exclude a pre-operative transwoman under a state law that protects "gender identity" as a protected class. Just wrote my first article arguing that Transgender Ideology has sufficiently evolved to satisfy US Supreme Court test for protection under the First Amendment. Plan on writing more. Would love your thoughts. https://reasonableheretic.substack.com/p/transgender-ideology-has-evolved?r=2vvyoa
Well, yes. People must be able to believe in gender identity and say so. We discriminate against men in women’s spaces for different reasons to do with biology, though, so I don’t really think this fits.
Helen, I feel we both have a lot of the same liberal principles, and we both value classical liberalism. Classical (progressive) liberalism has its Pro's and Con's, I think where we differ is in how we rank them. Liberalism, due to its nature, will always be open and need to fight back against the problems that we are seeing today (ideological capture, ...). You believe the Pro's are worth it. When we are on the brink of civilizational collapse, loss of national identity and loss of economic prosperity - I find the failings of liberalism to be profound. It seems some kind of postliberal solution should be tried.
The difference might be that my ultimate aim is to live in a liberal society. Liberalism is the only way to achieve that. If somebody wants to live in some other kind of society, liberalism could be one of a number of methods to try to get there.
Good points in both your replies. I also don't want to pretend to believe in things which I don't, though I'm open to it (depending ...). Ultimately, unless I have a specific alternative that I'm in favor of, my criticism of Liberalism is somewhat hollow.
Great piece. In online debates about various topics I've been asked by like-minded people why I bother to argue with those whose minds almost certainly can't be changed. My answer to this is that while the individual(s) I'm speaking to directly are probably not going to change their minds, there are likely a number of passive readers whose minds are not yet made up and open to persuasion. Another reason why it will always help your cause, whether you're taking a factual or principled approach, to stay polite and reasonable.
Interesting side note on your religious comparison. As an atheist I follow several online groups involved in religious debates and I find it odd that a majority of atheists are sympathetic to even the most tenuous of trans lobby claims: sex is not binary and can be changed, trans-women are women etc.
It's odd because many if not most atheists' beliefs on the existence of God are strongly evidence-based, but this clearly isn't the case when it comes to their position on trans-issues. I can only imagine it's because atheists in general tend to be left-leaning liberal progressives who apply liberal progressive views across the board, even if it means inconsistent applications of reasoning.
I don’t think Helen is arguing that you should not argue against bad or wrong ideas, nor do I think she’s arguing that it’s illiberal to do so. She is saying that if you can make an argument from a liberal principle or from a truth claim, go with the liberal principle because that will be more compelling and effective, especially for the many who, whether consciously or unconsciously, embrace the principles of liberalism. It is especially effective if you can show someone how their own opinion doesn’t actually align with their values.
Truth claims are definitely worth arguing about. They’re just much harder to make progress on, especially if the person doesn’t start from a point of shared reality or acceptance of evidence.
I'm saying that truth claims and principles are different things and that holding principles that we should let others believe, speak and live as they see fit but not let them harm anyone else or impose their views on them cannot be replaced by simply saying "You are wrong." As I argue in the piece itself, we should keep arguing for what is true without neglecting to protect the freedom to do that.
Have this one which is about why defending freedom of speech does not require defending everything that is said. It has a section on how it enables people to argue for what is truie and discover what is true.
No. Don't abandon truth in favour of liberal principles. How would that even work? These are different categories! Please read the piece you are criticising. Liberalism doesn't require people not to say what they think is true. It protects their right to do so. What it does is prevent people from telling people they are not allowed to believe something or say it even if they think the thing is not true. It requires you to argue that it is not true and not coerce people into affirming your own beliefs. This is to protect us from always having to affirm the beliefs of whoever has the power to tell everybody else what they must accept as true.
Liberal principles, to my knowledge, aren’t based in a higher truth or reality. Neither are human rights. They are a set of principles created and agreed to by some humans. And when that is done consistently, then truth and wellbeing for humans are more likely to result. I don’t think they are incompatible
I have blocked him now. I think I probably did overreact so I have taken down my post about him. Don’t want to make him the scapegoat for all bad faith arguers. It is possible he has been genuinely misreading me, I suppose. It’s just been so constant and ongoing. The snide, unjust remarks about what I allegedly really mean and believe. I can’t stand it. It’s the worst possible thing for my kind of psychology because I keep correcting and explaining until I exhaust myself.
I came here to say this. The mess we are in is a direct result of permissive liberalism being leveraged by bad-faith actors. It's why the UK's National Council for Civil Liberties, run by key Labour politicians of the present day, supported PIE.
You identify a very important distinction here. Thank you. I think it's one of your best pieces.
K, that did it. Paid up.
Thank you!
Brava!
I agree that the principle/fact distinction is important and useful. I think with respect to this particular debate though that the shift in public opinion is at least as much to do with factual arguments as it is to principled ones. I saw a study a few years ago which suggested that a significant number of people (I think around 20%) understood the term 'transgender woman' to mean a female person who identifies as a man. So if people have shifted from 'agree' to 'disagree' on questions like 'should transgender women compete in women's sport' I suspect this is more likely to do with exposure to factual arguments about what 'transgender woman' actually means, rather than abstract arguments about fairness or freedom of association or whatnot. In other words, people haven't updated their principles as a result of listening to liberal arguments, they have applied new information to their existing liberal principles.
This is not to say that we shouldn't be making liberal arguments (we absolutely should) But abstract principles will only get us so far, if we're talking about policy then facts matter just as much.
No, YouGov has always been clear about they mean. Have a look at the questions themselves.
I have done. I stand by the original point. I'm not sure what you mean by 'clear'. I'm also not sure that we actually disagree. When you say that people are "increasingly reluctant to endorse policies they believe create risks for women and children or require others to affirm beliefs they do not share" I doubt that you are suggesting that people have gone 'I used to think that creating risks for women and children was good/neutral but now I've listened to liberal arguments and think it is bad' Surely it is more likely that the shift has been 'I used to support these policies because I didn't realise that they created risks but having now become more acquainted by facts (i.e. having been exposed to truth claims) I now realise that my *pre-existing* liberal principle of "don't create risks for women and children" is in play and I can no longer support the policy"
Sorry, missed this. I meant that I agree that confusion about what the terms “trans woman” and “trans men” meant has confused results of some surveys. Some people have said “yes” to questions like “Should trans women access women’s sports” because they thought a trans woman meant a biological woman who identified as trans but YouGov anticipates this and the question are set out accordingly. It says:
“In the following questions a transgender person is someone who identifies as a different gender to their sex at birth, including people who identify as being non-
binary.
A transgender woman is someone who was biologically male at birth, but now identifies as a woman.
A transgender man is someone who was biologically female at birth, but now identifies as a man.”
Yes, the second is what I mean. I think people have been convinced by liberal arguments which reference harm (risk) and threats to freedom.
Yes, I agree - both arguments are correct. As Helen said, most people hadn't thought too much about the trans issue and only felt it was fair to 'live and let live' (I was just like this!), and certainly there was confusion with the terminology. There was a survey done, possibly by Sex Matters (?) that showed this. Once people understood the facts - what the terminology meant and the potential harm policies, like the Sturgeon's Gender Reform Bill in Scotland, could cause - then opinion changed. Liberalism has remained in place, people feel overall that we should all live as we choose but not at the expense of others. Some hard facts were needed. Rowling has provided both. She started gently, tentatively, but her arguments have grown more factual and stronger as time passed. But indeed we'll never convince hardline ideologues - luckily we don't have to.
This is an important point. Principles mean more (and perhaps only mean anything) when we understand what the facts actually are.
Lovely writing Helen. Inherently sensible as always! But this is exactly what I couldn’t articulate but felt in my bones- thank you 🙏
Excellent point, one that needs to be made. Thank you.
Another great piece here, thank you Helen! I particularly how you articulate truth claims and (Liberal) principles are two different categories and how so many common "arguments" can be seen more clearly as just cross-categorical confusion.
This piece (again, and again thank you) points out the absurdity of wishing to establish some sort of collectively coherent "common ground" of universally believed truth (As one of my favorite clients often says, "I mean, have you met people?") and instead orients us to the "higher ground" aspiration of figuring out how to live well enough together in spite of all our different beliefs.
People will ALWAYS believe different things, from the has the best take-out to the primacy of God(s), so how to accept this fact and live well enough together anyway?
Although, I guess I've just tripped myself up there by making a truth claim myself!
Thanks Helen. I’ve been more on the ‘truth’ side (“impossible to change sex!”) so your arguments were particularly resonant with me. There are many mini-issues (preferred pronouns, bathrooms, etc.) that fall outside of clear harm but the broad strokes (such as opportunities for women in sports & fairness therein, medical harm to children) seem clear. Appreciate your efforts.
Yours is an exceptionally insightful argument that uses clear, tight reasoning to bring clarity to a subject that is notoriously difficult to untangle. Thanks.
This is very thoughtful and interesting. But you never close on the objection to telling the truth, bluntly.
"God exists/does not exist" is a metaphysical claim. No truth value there. We take sides, but ultimately there is no way to know. You might just as well take part in a "yo' mama" contest.
"Humans cannot change sex" is a statement about human biology, which does have a truth value, and is worth stating publicly, to counter all the biological nonsense that is also being stated publicly.
I think I'll get one of those buttons. :-)
Oh, and I don’t object to telling the truth bluntly. At all. This is an essay arguing that truth claims and principles are different things, not a recommendation to only care about one of them. If you even just read the first paragraph, you’ll see I say that I agree on not softening them.
Birdy Rose argued that we might as well just assert truth claims instead of making arguments about harm and freedom and also seemed to conflate the two. I separated them and said I think the arguments that trans activism has been doing harm and denying freedom has convinced more people than statements that nobody can change sex. People react strongly against women and children being harmed.
I am glad you've clarified things. I thought you were arguing that, that's why it seemed to me unfinished (the argument, I mean). I was not sure exactly what you were arguing, that's why I asked. Is there really any reason to insult me? I'll tell you: no there isn't. :-)
I don’t know why you thought that. This is why I suggested you read the first paragraph. I don’t know if that is what you interpret as insulting you, but it isn’t. It’s what I think will clarify the argument
I thought that because you had said, "Can I suggest you read the piece you are commenting on. If you want to address something it actually says, I’ll respond. If you want to make stuff up, I’ll let you rant to yourself."
Nothing makes my day more bright than coming to a new substack, praising the piece, then having some critical feedback, and the author telling me off cuz I apparently failed to read it.
No, scrap that last response. I am short on patience and I have a lot of people being nasty at me. I don’t think it was your intention to misrepresent my view and I have jumped down your throat. I’m sorry, Erin. Can we start again?
Oh wow. Now I am laughing in delight. You are very fine in my world, Helen Pluckrose! :-)
Just read your essay on How to tell if you are living in a patriarchy. Excellent.
This hits one of my pet peeves....
The more we have moved away from patriarchy, the more there are people yelling about patriarchy. But not the obvious patriarchy "over there." They are yelling at us. There must be money in it... :-)
OK, you have a different definition of insult to me. That’s my policy when people tell me I’ve said things I haven’t and then tell me things like that my attitude gets children mutilated. I tell them to read what I actually did say and that I won’t respond if they intend to claim it is something else and go into rants about it. Because that is what I do. You are insulted if someone calls you names. Not when they tell you why they won’t indulge your behaviour
I am talking about the Abrahamic God and claims that he actually exists in reality and made the world and makes people survive the deaths of their brain to go on to live in another form. I’m not interested in metaphysical concepts of God that don’t involve truth claims about material reality that affect material humans.
My stance properly stated is:
There is no evidence to warrant regarding claims about the existence of God as a serious proposition.
“God does not exist” is a blunt and less careful version.
Likewise, the claim that there’s no such thing as a trans child or that people cannot be born in the wrong body is,
There is no evidence to warrant regarding claims about having been born in the wrong body as a serious proposition.
There might one day be evidence of God or evidence that some people can be born with some hardwired sense of themselves as the sex which does not match their body, but currently there isn’t so we can say provisionally that this is not true.
Trans activists don’t typically disagree with the core biological facts. The terms ‘trans woman’ and ‘cis woman’ for example refer to biological features of the body. But gender criticals would say “Man who identifies as a woman’ and ‘woman’. The difference is on what people who identify with a gender identity should be called, not the biological reality of their bodies.
But this wasn’t an argument that beliefs in an innate gender identity and beliefs in a theistic god are identical anyway. I explicitly the latter was a different belief to which the same rules of ‘let people believe what they want as long as they don’t harm anybody else or deny their freedoms’ apply. Also that they raise similar concerns about hostility to those who don’t share the beliefs and threaten the rights of women, children and same-sex attracted people. We don’t have to stretch comparisons any further than that. It’s not as though this changes the argument that truth claims and principles are different things.
"I explicitly the latter was a different belief to which the same rules of ‘let people believe what they want as long as they don’t harm anybody else or deny their freedoms’ apply."
No matter how insane a belief, you think we should just ignore it under the rubric of"let them believe what they want as long as no harm" -- is that what you are arguing? And isn't this sort of an attitude exactly what has gotten us into this mess, with tens of thousands of children mutilated, thousands of girls deprived of sports opportunities, and so on. You know the littany. Because we did not rise to squelch the crap right away.
Beliefs, like ideas, are dime a dozen. A lot of them are stupid. Many are harmful. I believe in opposing them before they start doing material harm, if at all possible.
People should be respected. Not their #%$!* beliefs.
“No matter how insane a belief, you think we should just ignore it under the rubric of"let them believe what they want as long as no harm" -- is that what you are arguing?”
Well, no. I have not argued anything remotely like that.
Can I suggest you read the piece you are commenting on. If you want to address something it actually says, I’ll respond. If you want to make stuff up, I’ll let you rant to yourself.
The other distinction you draw here should also be seen as crucial for public discourse and persuasion. This is the one between committed (illiberal) ideologues and people who may be relatively uncommitted on particular issues but (we hope!) can agree to a liberal approach to matters of public concern. Having spent years listening to those on the illiberal edges, I'm going to go ahead and talk with the liberals!
Agreed. What would you think of protecting transgender rights under the First Amendment? I live in WA state where the Ninth Circuit ruled that a women's spa couldn't exclude a pre-operative transwoman under a state law that protects "gender identity" as a protected class. Just wrote my first article arguing that Transgender Ideology has sufficiently evolved to satisfy US Supreme Court test for protection under the First Amendment. Plan on writing more. Would love your thoughts. https://reasonableheretic.substack.com/p/transgender-ideology-has-evolved?r=2vvyoa
Well, yes. People must be able to believe in gender identity and say so. We discriminate against men in women’s spaces for different reasons to do with biology, though, so I don’t really think this fits.
Helen, I feel we both have a lot of the same liberal principles, and we both value classical liberalism. Classical (progressive) liberalism has its Pro's and Con's, I think where we differ is in how we rank them. Liberalism, due to its nature, will always be open and need to fight back against the problems that we are seeing today (ideological capture, ...). You believe the Pro's are worth it. When we are on the brink of civilizational collapse, loss of national identity and loss of economic prosperity - I find the failings of liberalism to be profound. It seems some kind of postliberal solution should be tried.
The difference might be that my ultimate aim is to live in a liberal society. Liberalism is the only way to achieve that. If somebody wants to live in some other kind of society, liberalism could be one of a number of methods to try to get there.
Good points in both your replies. I also don't want to pretend to believe in things which I don't, though I'm open to it (depending ...). Ultimately, unless I have a specific alternative that I'm in favor of, my criticism of Liberalism is somewhat hollow.
I can’t think of any that would be a solution. I don’t want to have to pretend to believe anything I don’t or pretend not to believe anything I do.
Great piece. In online debates about various topics I've been asked by like-minded people why I bother to argue with those whose minds almost certainly can't be changed. My answer to this is that while the individual(s) I'm speaking to directly are probably not going to change their minds, there are likely a number of passive readers whose minds are not yet made up and open to persuasion. Another reason why it will always help your cause, whether you're taking a factual or principled approach, to stay polite and reasonable.
Interesting side note on your religious comparison. As an atheist I follow several online groups involved in religious debates and I find it odd that a majority of atheists are sympathetic to even the most tenuous of trans lobby claims: sex is not binary and can be changed, trans-women are women etc.
It's odd because many if not most atheists' beliefs on the existence of God are strongly evidence-based, but this clearly isn't the case when it comes to their position on trans-issues. I can only imagine it's because atheists in general tend to be left-leaning liberal progressives who apply liberal progressive views across the board, even if it means inconsistent applications of reasoning.
Spot on, Helen. Love, always! 💛
I don’t think Helen is arguing that you should not argue against bad or wrong ideas, nor do I think she’s arguing that it’s illiberal to do so. She is saying that if you can make an argument from a liberal principle or from a truth claim, go with the liberal principle because that will be more compelling and effective, especially for the many who, whether consciously or unconsciously, embrace the principles of liberalism. It is especially effective if you can show someone how their own opinion doesn’t actually align with their values.
Truth claims are definitely worth arguing about. They’re just much harder to make progress on, especially if the person doesn’t start from a point of shared reality or acceptance of evidence.
I'm saying that truth claims and principles are different things and that holding principles that we should let others believe, speak and live as they see fit but not let them harm anyone else or impose their views on them cannot be replaced by simply saying "You are wrong." As I argue in the piece itself, we should keep arguing for what is true without neglecting to protect the freedom to do that.
It’s not very plausible that I’d take the position that we should not argue for objective truth, is it?
lol I don’t think so!
"For" even! (I'd written against because I changed my sentence in the middle. Edited now. But I think you read what I meant anyway!)
Have this one which is about why defending freedom of speech does not require defending everything that is said. It has a section on how it enables people to argue for what is truie and discover what is true.
https://www.hpluckrose.com/p/freedom-of-speech-exists-so-we-can
No. Don't abandon truth in favour of liberal principles. How would that even work? These are different categories! Please read the piece you are criticising. Liberalism doesn't require people not to say what they think is true. It protects their right to do so. What it does is prevent people from telling people they are not allowed to believe something or say it even if they think the thing is not true. It requires you to argue that it is not true and not coerce people into affirming your own beliefs. This is to protect us from always having to affirm the beliefs of whoever has the power to tell everybody else what they must accept as true.
Liberal principles, to my knowledge, aren’t based in a higher truth or reality. Neither are human rights. They are a set of principles created and agreed to by some humans. And when that is done consistently, then truth and wellbeing for humans are more likely to result. I don’t think they are incompatible
Sorry, maybe I’m not following your disagreement, but I don’t understand how what I just said is different from my original reply.
I have blocked him now. I think I probably did overreact so I have taken down my post about him. Don’t want to make him the scapegoat for all bad faith arguers. It is possible he has been genuinely misreading me, I suppose. It’s just been so constant and ongoing. The snide, unjust remarks about what I allegedly really mean and believe. I can’t stand it. It’s the worst possible thing for my kind of psychology because I keep correcting and explaining until I exhaust myself.
I came here to say this. The mess we are in is a direct result of permissive liberalism being leveraged by bad-faith actors. It's why the UK's National Council for Civil Liberties, run by key Labour politicians of the present day, supported PIE.