Are you on the Right Side of History?

Definitions and dichotomies: Part 3 of 4

Photo by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash

(Audio version here)

In Part One of this series, I cited Jessica Parker challenging AfD supporter, Celina Brychcy about whether her views that men and women should dress in traditionally masculine and feminine ways could be seen as ‘retrograde’. Ms. Brychcy responded that “biologically, we are men and women” and that she felt the sexes should dress accordingly. This is, of course, a big divide in the gender critical movement right now. The original gender critical feminists (continuous with the radical feminists) hold that there are two biological sexes - male and female - but that the notion of gender - masculinity and femininity - is largely, if not entirely, socially constructed and harmful particularly for women. Therefore, they believe that no woman should have to present as feminine and no man as masculine and are encouraging of people rejecting gender stereotypes and roles in all areas of their lives, including their presentation. The rigid social conservatives of the movement also hold that there are two biological sexes - men and women - but also that gender stereotypes and roles tied firmly to sex are not only natural but good. They are encouraging of men being stereotypically masculine in their dress and life roles and women being stereotypically feminine. Ms. Brychcy seemed to fit into this category.

Liberals who care about what is true typically also accept that there are two biological sexes and think that, consequently, there is a need for single-sex spaces and sports, but that otherwise, people should be able to dress and take roles in life that suit them as individuals. We tend not to see this as something that needs moralising about or assume it to be a political statement or consider the choices that individual adults make for themselves to be anybody else’s business.

Liberals should also, I think, consider concepts like ‘retrograde’ ‘regressive’ or, even sometimes, ‘reactionary’ carefully, as well as the exhortation to ‘be on the right side of history.’ While the three ‘r’ words all have negative connotations of returning to a worse time, they literally just refer to going backwards and wanting to undo things that have been done in the name of progress. Looking back in order to argue that some things have developed in a negative direction and should be undone does not necessarily indicate an illiberal reactionary mindset that stands against social progress. Evaluating whether developments intended to produce progress have had positive or negative results is also central to the process of liberal self-correction and reform. A simplistic idea of what it is to be ‘progressive’ or “regressive” can lead progressive people to be resistant to reevaluation and thus hinder genuine progress which requires critical reflection on past developments for the purposes of course-correction.

Similarly, the concept of ‘being on the right side of history’ evokes an optimistic idea that, in the future, we will have made progress towards a better and more just society, and have developed a moral consensus on certain issues that enables us to look back at this time and see who was ushering in this progress and who was standing against it. This can be a powerful concept to invoke because nobody with a liberal mindset wants to imagine themselves comparable to those who stood against the abolition of slavery, the expansion of universal suffrage or the decriminalisation of homosexuality. This is what many of us who have been critical of Critical Social Justice (woke) ideas have frequently been accused of. If we are not convinced that CSJ ‘anti-racist’ training is actually anti-racist or will improve race relations, we are informed that we would have opposed the Civil Rights Movement and legal equality for people of all races. If we are dubious that “queering” everything and dispensing with concepts of biological sex will work out well for women or same sex attracted people or gender-nonconforming people, we are told we are the sort of person who would have campaigned against decriminalising homosexuality.

This is, of course, nonsense, but it is the kind of nonsense that has a pull on the liberal progressive psyche. Nobody with this mindset wants to be the sort of person who is retrograde or regressive or, worst of all, reactionary and thus be behind the moral curve of the arc that bends towards justice.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that not all developments are good. Throughout the history of the development of liberal democracies, there have been movements and currents that have pushed the advance of liberal principles like individual liberty and equality under the law off course, and needed to be corrected for. Some of them have claimed themselves to be progressive and those liberals who very much want to continue the work of decreasing racism, sexism, homophobia and other bigotries can be vulnerable to taking this at face value or, at least, be reticent to criticise aims with those ends.

Because liberalism favours reform over revolution and works by trying to conserve what is good and reform what is flawed or unjust, it has both conservative and progressive elements inherent within it. Liberals, therefore, are found all over the political spectrum, although we may put different weightings on the drive to conserve vs the drive to progress. Those of us who are more progress-orientated need to be aware of our vulnerability to be dissuaded from criticising developments that are touted as progressive for fear of being regressive or on the wrong side of history. Instead, when looking at movements that claim to represent progress, we should ask ourselves two questions.

1. Are the claims this movement is based on true? Does it correspond with reality?

2. Does what it is advocating uphold liberal principles of letting people believe, speak and live as they see fit, provided it causes no material harm to others nor denies them the same freedoms?

When it comes to what is true, it matters much less at which point in history it has been held to be true than whether it actually is true. Ms. Brychcy, by answering the question about whether her views could be seen as retrograde by referring to the biological reality that there are two sexes, was making this point. If society once believed something that was true but then started believing something that was false, the fact that returning to the truth requires a return to a previous position does not automatically make it a regressive belief or the holder of it a reactionary. It means that an erroneous idea gained popularity and was then corrected.

When it comes to whether or not an idea is liberal, it also matters much less when it was expressed or commonly upheld than whether it genuinely does allow all people individual liberty. We could all agree that women in Iran, for example, had more individual liberty 50 years ago than they do today, and restoring that would not be regarded as regressive as the term is commonly used, even though it would involve undoing more recent developments. I disagree with Ms. Brychcy’s position that, because there are two sexes, men and women should present in typically masculine and feminine ways and conform to gender roles. This does not not reflect the reality of individual variation, and achieving it would require authoritarian restrictions on individual liberty via something like an Iranian-style Morality Police. This is not compatible with the values of a liberal democracy.

Liberalism is, at essence, the opposition to authoritarianism. Different forms of authoritarianism are constantly arising so our job is typically to try to stop them from becoming a dominant moral orthodoxy with institutional power in the first place or, failing that, roll back the illegitimate powers they have accrued and curtail their ability to impose them on others. This means we have to be able to able to look back at what has been presented to us as progress and evaluate whether it really is or not. In particular, we need to look at whether the development is moving us towards greater knowledge of what is true and greater freedom of everybody to believe, speak and live as we see fit regardless of any aspect of their identity. The Critical Social Justice (woke) movement moved us further away from both of those and so it is important to try to push back its impact and restore a greater appreciation for evidence-based concepts of knowledge, freedom of belief and speech and viewpoint diversity. It is not regressive to self-correct a failed attempt at progress.

There are, however, ways to try to fix the wokeness problem that are compatible with creating a more liberal society and ways which genuinely do want to regress society to a pre-liberal state and roll back the rights of women as well as those of racial, religious and sexual minorities.

Gender critical feminists often argue that many of the ideas from the ‘queer’ trans movement are regressive gender stereotypes and roles. For example, much rhetoric around gender identity implies that, if a boy likes pink and dolls, he is actually a girl and, if a girl likes football and tree-climbing, she is actually a boy. I agree that this is regressive, but more than that, it is false and illiberal. The progress we have made towards enabling women (and men) to step out of gender stereotypes and roles and pursue their own interests and talents is genuinely liberal and I am very grateful to have been a beneficiary of it. Any attempts by rigid social conservatives to fix ‘trans ideology’ by dictating how people may dress, who they may be attracted to, what interests they should have and whether they may pursue them outside the home depending on their sex would indeed be regressing us back to a deeply illiberal time. They have their own ideology of gender which is also untethered to the reality of living, breathing men and women and alarmingly authoritarian.

As Steven Pinker put it,

[W]hat we do know about the sexes does not call for any action that would penalize or constrain one sex or the other. Many psychological traits relevant to the public sphere, such as general intelligence, are the same on average for men and women, and virtually all psychological traits may be found in varying degrees among the members of each sex. No sex difference yet discovered applies to every last man compared with every last woman, so generalizations about a sex will always be untrue of many individuals. And notions like “proper role” and “natural place” are scientifically meaningless and give no grounds for restricting freedom.

Those who wish to return us to rigid gender roles and presentation genuinely are reactionary, however, and they won’t be at all moved to change their minds by being told their ideas are retrograde or regressive. They know. That’s a feature, not a bug. They think a past state of affairs, often imagined through rose-tinted spectacles, was better. It is, therefore, important that those of us who have discussions across political divides are able to make arguments about what is true and what is compatible with individual liberty rather than what is progressive and regressive. We may not ever change the minds of those who truly reject truth, individual liberty or both, but we can, at least, show them to be doing that. This, I suspect, will be more persuasive to those who can be persuaded than telling people they are on the wrong side of history.

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N.B. History is, after all, written by the winners. Should any of my writing survive into the future and be read in 200 years, I have no idea whether I will be regarded favourably as a link in the liberal chain that has grown and thrived. I hope so. If the woke win out, I could be regarded as a far-right fascist and if the genuine far-right does, I’ll be a depraved degenerate communist. I want to be on the right side of history as much as anyone, but whether I am will depend very much on where we go from here. All any liberal can do is try to influence that outcome towards liberalism. If we fail and liberalism dies and we end up on the wrong side of some authoritarianism’s history, at least we know we tried.