The Perilous Pendulum Swing Threatening LGBT Rights
Currents
When humans become too deeply invested in fighting for their “side” of the culture wars, they invariably cease to prioritise what is true and what is ethical. Their determination is to win at all costs, regardless of the collateral damage to liberal norms, the fabric of civil society, or innocent bystanders. The result is that there are no winners. One side might well emerge victorious for a time, but the manner in which this pernicious game is played has troubling implications. Every time one side goes too far, tribal pride and the blinding need to “win” prevents them from course-correcting. This leads to backlashes from the opposing side, which then engender counter-backlashes and so on, in a negative feedback death spiral. The primary casualties are usually not the culture warriors themselves but the “civilians” on whose behalf these wars have purportedly been waged in the first place, whether or not they themselves subscribe to any of the ideologies ascribed to them. The latest group to be caught in the crossfire is the LGBT community.
I fear very much that we are living through the beginnings of a pendulum swing on LGBT rights as the socially conservative “anti-woke” make significant headway in their reactive overcompensation to the bumbling missteps and extreme identitarianism of Critical Social Justice (CSJ, colloquially referred to as “wokeness”). Liberal critics of “wokeness” have been warning of this for many years, and with the dip in support for sexual freedom, the emboldened right-wing war on Pride, and the rise of “groomer” discourse, the backlash appears to have begun. Our best chance to break this cycle, and recapture some semblance of equilibrium, entails dialling down the intensity of identity politics.
The essence of identity politics, as practised by a particular element of the left, includes activists determining which views are to be regarded as authentic for each identity category. Last year in the UK, for example, a Labour MP accused the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, of being “superficially black” due in large part to his politics. Meanwhile in the US, during the 2020 Democratic primaries, numerous articles were written about the inadequacy of candidate Pete Buttigieg’s gayness due to him not holding sufficiently “radically queer” views. The left’s version of identity politics reads all interactions through a system of oppressive power structures, within which, each individual “positionality” is dictated by their identity-based group affiliations. The resultant identity determines their degree of oppression and consequently what they may speak about and to whom. As a result, communication and empathy across groups becomes very difficult. Worse still, the idea that only some people can be racist or sexist or homophobic or transphobic while other people are justified in denigrating others on the basis of their race, sex, gender, or sexuality goes against hardwired human concepts of fairness and reciprocity. As I argued in 2018,
“It is in this way that identity politics is the most counterproductive and even dangerous. We humans are tribal and territorial creatures, and identity politics comes far more naturally to us than universality and individuality. Our history bears the evidence of humans unapologetically favouring their own tribe, own town, own religion, own nation, and own race over others and creating narratives after the impulse to attempt to justify doing it.
“The universal human rights and principles of not judging people by their race, gender, or sexuality — which have developed over the modern period and resulted in the civil rights movements, legal equality, and much social progress — are much more uncommon to us and must be consistently reinforced and maintained. If we allow identity politics in the form of [Critical] Social Justice to undermine this fragile and precarious detente, we could undo decades of social progress and provide a rationale for a resurgence of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Given the novelty of egalitarian society, it is not at all clear that women and racial and sexual minorities could easily win these losses back.”
I fear that we are seeing a rise of people feeling perfectly justified in openly indulging in misogyny, racism, homophobia, biphobia, and hostility to trans people for simply existing. This, I believe, has come about as a form of reciprocation because the norms that made the open expression of prejudice against these groups so socially unacceptable have now broken down. Of course, some of the people giving voice to these abhorrent views have always done so and now feel able to let them out. But many, I fear, are developing these attitudes as a form of revenge in response to the authoritarian overreaches of left-wing culture warriors regarding so-called anti-racism, the alleged toxicity of masculinity, hostility toward free expression, and radical trans activism.
Why, for example, does H. Pearl Davis have 1.8 million YouTube subscribers when her entire persona is dedicated to denigrating women? I have asked this question on Twitter and was dismayed by the number of men who replied that, of course, they did not agree with her, but found her account refreshing and amusing, given the social acceptability and popularity of a plethora of accounts demonising men.
The rise of a reactive form of white identity politics has been even more evident and alarming. Right-wing racism is nothing new, of course, from segregationism to the opponents of civil rights, to anti-immigrant sentiments. But the surge in left-wing identity politics that often paints white people as oppressors has inflamed many on the right to lean into their own identitarianism. As I wrote previously, this dynamic has given white racists a sense of grievance and victimhood that they can use as justification for their bigotry. The identitarian left has endorsed negative racist generalisations against majority groups while insisting that minority groups cannot, by definition, ever be racist. By undermining the universal cultural taboo against evaluating people’s moral and social worth by their race, they have thrown open the gates. We have seen a proliferation of social media users fixated on disparaging black people in the name of “anti-wokeness,” posting fight videos, out-of-context photos, and misrepresented clips designed to gin up fear, anger, or racial resentment. An account called “End Wokeness” assumed a medical conference of black doctors to have achieved their positions through diversity quotas. As Adam Coleman, a black American conservative, has remarked:
“Many who claim to be anti-woke are becoming the very people they criticise. The people who are supposedly tired of talking about race when leftists bring it up, can't help but be triggered by something as benign as a group of happy black people in white coats.
“In their desperation to fight the left, they became just like them. They're now race-conscious and they still think they're winning the culture war. But when you discard your principles, you lose every time. Quit staring into the abyss because it always stares back.”
This, I believe, hits the nail on the head. Too many of the anti-woke who have criticised “wokeness” for its collective blame of whole demographics to whom it assigns negative values like “white supremacy”, “toxic masculinity” and “cisheteronormativity” purely on the grounds of race, sex, gender, or sexuality are replicating this moral failing. Of course, the way to remedy prejudiced stereotypes against whole groups of people is to consistently oppose them, not to hurl some back in retribution and revenge. Have we learned nothing from history? As one of the members of Counterweight, Tom wrote to his employer, who was implementing training in contemporary critical race theory:
“It is distressing to know that my white colleagues, for many of whom I have a deep respect and admiration, are being smeared as irredeemable racists by virtue of their skin color alone. If you believe, as do Delgado and Stefancic, that minority status brings a presumed competence to speak about race and racism, please listen to me when I use mine to tell you that this never ends well. I’d rather, however, that you considered my argument than my skin color when evaluating my competence.”
This is a man refusing to discard his principles and asserting them strongly and consistently, but too many anti-woke critics have lost sight of why such bigoted generalisations are unethical and are increasingly mirroring them. In doing so, they not only betray their black and brown fellow critics like Tom, but all the women who have opposed the demonisation of men and all the LGBT people who have stood beside them against authoritarian critical queer theory and radical trans activism at particular risk to themselves.
The distinction between ideas and people has been blurred by both the identitarian woke and the identitarian anti-woke. It may well have been the “woke” who pushed the pendulum toward a form of divisive and illiberal identity politics. Nevertheless, because human rights depend upon the universalist principles that Critical Social Justice has abandoned, those most likely to be crushed as the pendulum ball gets shoved back are racial minorities and LGBT people, regardless of their own political views. This pendulum is not an ideology-seeking missile that takes aim at bad ideas, but a very blunt instrument that aims itself at identity-based tribes. Thus, as Coleman points out, principles get lost, and “anti-woke” can become “anti-women”, “anti-black”, or “anti-LGBT.”
The backlash against anybody who is lesbian, gay, bi, or trans, or who lives a romantic life that is not a monogamous, vanilla, heterosexual partnership is a particularly alarming manifestation of this phenomenon most clearly making its presence felt in the United States. It was not too long ago, during the refugee crisis when many traumatised people from war-torn countries, mostly Muslim, were seeking refuge in Western ones that conservatives suddenly seemed to develop a concern for the safety of LGBT people as a reason not to admit them. During Pride this year, numerous Twitter accounts, many of them Christian, celebrated scenes of Muslims stamping on Pride flags or banning them from public buildings. How quickly allegiances shift.
While some of these people were almost certainly religiously motivated social conservatives before the current moment, the internet is also awash with comments lamenting the “mistake” of having previously supported LGBT rights. America’s conservative Christians and Muslims, once completely at odds in the culture wars, have started to find common ground in their homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. The frequent evocation of slippery slope fallacies, which completely fail to show how enabling same-sex couples to marry leads to schoolteachers influencing children’s gender identity is one sign that we are in the midst of a most alarming right-wing moral panic. An even clearer one is the many anti-LGBT state laws that have been passed in the US in the past couple of years.
This is clearly related (in some people’s heads if not in reality) to developments within trans activism which have resulted in ideologically biassed materials on sex and gender being introduced into schools and the rapid spread of an affirmation-only approach in the treatment of gender-nonconforming kids that can fast-track them into medical transition with minimal assessment or safeguards. Reasonable liberal concerns have been raised about these developments, and about complicated situations that require careful, well-considered approaches, such as trans women in female prisons, shelters, and sports. These concerns have been met with black-and-white thinking, shutdowns, smear campaigns, and threats, none of which have endeared the general public to militant trans activists. Add to all of that the relentless language policing and accusations of “genital fetishism” against any lesbian who does not find herself attracted to a trans woman or gay man who could not become aroused by a trans man, and the backlash seems inevitable.
It is undeniable that the authoritarian strains of trans activism have done a strong disservice to the cause of trans acceptance and of LGBT people more broadly. The efforts of some educators to smuggle this brand of trans activism into classrooms has provided ample fodder for a reactionary right moral panic which struck out indiscriminately with its “OK, Groomer” meme.
Calling someone a “groomer” is an extremely serious accusation, as it refers to the deliberate psychological manipulation of a vulnerable person, usually a child, so that they can be abused and exploited, usually sexually. The sloppy use of this term is now frequently applied to anybody who supports trans rights or believes that gender exists, or who is LGBT or pro-LGBT. This not only disrespects the victims of genuine grooming, but also makes it much harder to separate much-needed, age-appropriate resources for LGBT youth from those that are genuinely ideologically radical or age-inappropriate.
The rise of the virulently homophobic “anti-woke” right resurrecting old hateful slippery slope fallacies and tropes about LGBT people being a threat to children should not be underestimated. Support for same-sex relationships has dropped seven points in a single year after consistently rising for several decades. This is a metric to be watched closely. Deescalating this war between two tribes who demonise people on the basis of identity requires popping the identitarianism bubble.
The advances made in women’s, racial, and LGBT rights have been largely achieved by liberalism, which rejected identity politics and called upon our shared humanity and ability to understand and empathise with each other despite our differences. This called upon our best impulses of compassion, fairness, and empathy and expanded that circle of empathy outwards. With a liberal individualist and universalist approach that treats people as individuals and advocates non-zero-sum outcomes that are mutually beneficial, there was far less push and pull on the pendulum, and its relative restfulness allowed for a period of rapid social progress.
Things began to change in the early 2010s as Critical Social Justice rose to prominence, first in elite universities, and then outward into wider society as graduates joined the labour force. The CSJ approach of boxing people into distinct identity camps — each with their own circumscribed levels of “privilege” and authority to speak on various subjects — and pitting them against each other called upon the worst of our tribal natures, undid decades of progress, and set it swinging wildly again. Finding a way to still the pendulum again won’t be easy, but any durable effort must be built on a foundation of open dialogue, mutual cooperation, and a desire to find common ground and compromise.
We must oppose both the illiberal Critical Social Justice activists and the illiberal, reactionary social conservatives in favour of a Liberal Social Justice that aims to lift all boats and bring people together for the common good. The only way to get that pendulum of action and reaction to stop swinging and smashing bystanders in the face is to get more people assertively behind consistent, liberal ethics that treats people not as representatives of an identity group, but as full-fledged human beings.
Published Oct 2, 2023
