Thank you for taking a swing at this topic. Either you are very brave, or haven’t been badly bitten. I appreciate your neutrality (always do), but this is also where the line between awareness and advocacy becomes a chasm.
As an executive in a mid-sized company around the time of the George Floyd event, I felt I was in a unique position to facilitate an open conversation about DEI. Having been in a long relationship with a black woman and considering many of my close friends were LGBTQ+, and my role as a design leader, steeped in empathy and curiosity, I thought I’d be seen as an advocate. I quickly learned that my race (white), gender (male), orientation (straight/CIS), and role (VP), made me the symbol of inequality and a target to educate.
The reality is that I was naive and unaware of my unconscious biases. I hadn’t actively fought for DEI before that moment, and everyone in the room knew it. Being a “friend” is different than being an advocate. And my position amongst an all white, mostly male exec team was the product of countless opportunities stemming from my good fortune at birth.
While my “awakening” to my own role in this complex topic brought new levels of awareness, the true value came with advocacy and action. And it was through that work that a clearer picture of inequality emerged. One reason this issue is so fraught and polarizing, is because for most, it lives in the realm of the unconscious.
Did you ever think that people's experience is varied and maybe not totally determined by their race? There are black people with privilege and white people with very little. Each person's experience is their own and DEI's narrative that it is pre-determined by the color of that person's skin is evil. How do you know whether some white person wasn't sexually abused as a child? How do you know if some black employee is actually from a two parent home with strong values? If you actually think about what intersectionality means in the end is that each person is an individual made up of experiences unique only to them. DEI is the antithesis of that.
I haven't seen anyone on the "woke" side of this discussion who would argue that race is the only determinant. They simply say that it is a major factor and a much greater one than most people realize. The question isn't about whether people face challenges unrelated to race (they clearly do) but rather how much does race contribute to the experiences of people regardless of the other challenges they face.
Of course you could have a Black employee from a two-parent home with strong values or a white employee who grew up in poverty with abusive parents. But we can't ignore the fact that, no matter the background, the experience of MOST Black people is going to be more challenging than the experience of MOST white people due solely to the color of their skin. This has been borne out in literally hundreds of studies, including ones where people with Black-sounding names are less likely to be brought in for an interview, even when their resume is identical to a person with a white-sounding name.
Despite major improvements over the last few decades, the evidence for racial bias (overt and unconscious) is overwhelming and undeniable. We just have to determine what to do about it. Do we ignore it and pretend that it’s not a big deal or do we address it and risk overcorrecting and exacerbating the problem? I have hope that we can find a middle ground where we persuade people on the Right to stop denying that racism is real and people on the Left to resist the urge to overcorrect and treat all white people as racist. I believe my optimism is justified because most people on the Right don’t deny that racism is real and most people on the Left don’t think all white people are racist. We just treat each other as if these conclusions are true.
I would challenge you to consider that proclamations like: “DEI's narrative that (each person’s experience) is pre-determined by the color of that person's skin is evil” don’t help bridge the gap in understanding between the perspectives. It’s the same for people on the Left who say things like “White people are inherently racist.” While you could certainly attempt to defend both of these statements, they only serve to divide by categorizing the “other side” as extreme and intractable. In reality, there are far more “soft wokists” and “unracist anti-wokists” than either side realizes. I would argue that they’re the vast majority.
It doesn’t help to assume that everyone who disagrees with you holds the most extreme position possible. There are as many perspectives and opinions as there are people—there are no monolithic ideologies. Acknowledging this is the first step in finding a workable compromise where we address empirical inequities without swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction.
Indeed. Nobody is actually pretending race is the only factor. This is a VERY uninformed take Dave. The very idea of intersectionality is that, and let me tell you, it has NOT been introduced by the right ^^
I understand where you’re coming from but you must understand on the most basic levels, humans identify by the simplest means. I.e. discriminate by the simplest, tangible things. So skin colour and sex are pretty high up that ladder. Wealth is much less identifiable.
This is why rich people/politicians can rinse/repeat the most basic of tricks, getting one type of poor people to fight against another type of poor people. So get poor white to fight poor blacks to fight poor hispanics. Oldest trick in the book.
look, he said "I was naive and unaware of my unconscious biases", a very typical kind of statement from a white executive--uncritically buying into "unconscious bias", which is nebulous as hell if you actually look into it--why? Well, there are 2 main possibilities: 1) either he and all the other white executives just happened on the Truth, or 2) for *some reason* (HMM WHAT COULD IT BE) executives (outside of the singular personality Elon Musk) who *do not* subscribe and kowtow *are not represented* in board rooms any more... makes you think.
Honestly, this is disappointing. I'm used to read reasoning from first principles here, which implies getting your facts rights, but this is all over the place.
1) "When so many people disagree so vehemently for so long, it means they’re both right in some ways."
I'm honestly surprised I even have to explain why that's clearly a false assumption. This sounds like a caricature of the centrist dogma of "truth is somewhere in the middle".
So let me give you numerous examples :
- Some people still think the Earth is flat more than 2000 years after it's been proven to be spherical. But okay, let's say this is a fringe belief, and let's see some common ones.
- Some people still deny climate change is real even though scientists started to talk about it in the 80s
- As you said yourself in previous content, the anti-vaccine movement is as old as vaccines.
- Slavery took about 100 years to be abolished after the abolitionist movement started
- The health risks of tobacco were known in the 50s, but was denied till the 90s
- Women's right to vote took somewhere around 70 years
Do I continue ? Disagreement doesn't mean one side is right.
2) "Many types of discrimination still exist, some of which are not even registered as oppressive. Examples include people who are fat, disabled, short, less intelligent, or uglier than others."
Not even registered as oppressive, are you serious ? To me, this alone tells me you didn't take the time to hear any progressive argument in the last 10 years at least.
Literally ALL social progressives I know are aware all these discriminations are oppressive (maybe to the exception of being less intelligent, probably because this one has a lot of consequences even in a vaccum). Like this is social progress 101.
3) Then there's the very simplistic explanation copy pasted from Tim Urban.
He took YEARS to write a book on the culture war, managing to make it... 80% made of a critic of the left. It took me only a few hours of research to disprove most of what he states as facts, that honestly I stopped respecting him altogether. How can you spend so much time and just not fact check ?
The only reason is to be politically biased, and starting from an opinion and then ignoring facts. Which is fine, as long as you don't pretend to be neutral.
This is reflected in the schematics you've inserted in your post. You take them as face value, and I honestly can't understand why (maybe just respecting Tim you didn't reflect on it ?).
"there are two types of social justice" : sounds like a bit of a simplistic opinion with no nuance, which is surprising. But after all, I understand the need to simplify. What's most troubling is calling them liberal vs fundamentalist : it's very obviously painting one side as unreasonable, which frees you to actually listen to the argument.
And then you proceed to do so : let's just label the whole thing "one that tries to reverse discrimination and squashes dissent and cancels people to achieve it". This is like a copy-paste of far-right propaganda.
It's also amazing to me you don't realize that the definition of "social justice fundamentalism" is literally the same as the definition of "liberal social justice".
"certain illiberal systems and norms" is a very vague definition from a time where it had not been studied well yet. "politics, economics, culture, institutions, language, morality, science" ARE these systems and norms.
Another thing that's obvious to me is this schematic shows on the left side something that's evolving with society and its understanding, and on the right side something that stayed the same since 1965. Do you think in ANY science, and even ANY part of how we understand the world, it's better to stay at the level we were in 1965 ?
It goes against everything you've written before.
4) "The same judge who told me that the vast majority of women who suffer from sexual harassment don’t sue also told me in an informal conversation that about 60% of accusations against men for sexual harassment are probably false. Of course, this is one person’s subjective perspective communicated in an informal conversation, so I wouldn’t take the number at face value. Rather, my take is that the number of false accusations is probably substantial."
Seriously ? One person makes up a number, and then you also make up "false accusations are probably substantial" ?
Why didn't you take just 30 seconds to research data before just stating something wrong ?
5) And then, we have the usual "I'm a centrist but I'm curiously only critiquing the left" stance, which is basically : "the real reason for conservatives to fight against social justice is because the left went too far".
Of course the right pushes back, but they push back anyway, because guess what : they're reactionaries ! They will always push back. They don't push back because "the woke pendulum went too far". They push back because of their values.
Wokism is just a buzzword they instrumentalize to discredit the notion of empathy, exactly like they did with "political correctness" before that, and also "special interests", "bleeding heart liberal", "radical", "multiculturalism", "commie", "unamerican", ...
The right-wing rhetoric to frame progressive movements as threats to traditional values or education, to portray social justice advocates as overly sensitive or irrational, to claim that efforts for inclusivity actually suppress free speech or diversity of thought, and to using terms like "political correctness" or "wokism" to create a perceived divide between "ordinary people" and a "liberal elite" are as old as politics.
This is absolutely not new, and for some reason you're 100% falling for it, as did Tim Urban.
I'm appalled that such intelligent people can fall for something so obvious honestly.
Are there people on the left with no subtlety at all who will cancel anyone for anything ? Yes, because guess what : there are stupid people with no nuance everywhere ! Some people make it part of their identity, and then they stop thinking. Most people for most things actually.
It's not representative of the whole movement, nor the actual policies put in place, nor the actual reality of remaining discriminations.
Why focus on that ? Why not focus on the MANY ways right-wingers have appallingly stupid opinions ? This is a side where just "having a mostly female cast in a movie" is "too woke".
6) The whole "scope creep" thing is also a huge misunderstanding of the left. OF COURSE the scopes widens, when people realize other discriminations they weren't aware of. As you said yourself, there are several waves of feminism, and probably more to come. That's how progress work : the bigger and most painful issues first, and then people focus on the next one. THAT'S THE POINT.
The idea of progress is that it never ends.
7) "When inequality is harder to spot, or is more difficult to link back to discrimination, or when inverse discrimination appears, the legitimacy of the movements will be weaker, and people will fight back."
First : is the inverse discrimination in the room with us ?
Second : the Supreme Court is not the people. The people are actually largely in favor of Roe v Wade (65% of them). Why not do that quick google search ? There's no excuse for that.
8) Which baffles me is I actually 100% agree with your conclusion of asking more precise questions. I guess it's your go-to way to do things for any issue (and it's a good go-to), but considering everything you're stating before, I'm afraid of what's next honestly. I have rarely read such a badly researched post from you.
And even if I'm getting heated, I only write all this because I respect your work. I wouldn't take the time otherwise. I've read way worse, and generally I just close and never read the same author again.
But how can I trust that you will not "reach conclusions and then look to the data to support their positions" ? Because that's for sure how it looks like here.
1. I think you misunderstood the sentence. Many of your examples (flat-earthers) are not many people. Also, some truths on both sides doesn’t mean the truth is in the middle. It means literally what it says, and doesn’t try to say that one side is more right than the other. It just means you need to analyze both sides to understand precisely what they got right or wrong, rather than in generalities.
2. “Registered” was the wrong word. A more apt word would be emphasized. The idea is that some types of oppression receive much more attention than others. That’s what a benevolent interpretation of the sentence would suggest, I reckon. Your misinterpretation makes me think you might be ideologically disinclined to my stance, and that makes you less receptive than you should be given my intentions. Two examples of that are height and beauty, two examples of discrimination that, while acknowledged, are barely fought in comparison with others like sex and ethnicity.
3. I quoted Tim Urban’s tweet, not his book. If you took a few seconds you could have fact-checked that.
As you can see, this type of comment is not fruitful. I am happy to be corrected for many reasons. One is because of intellectual humility. Another is because I’m pretty open about the fact that I make mistakes, which are impossible to avoid given the range of topics I cover and the volume of content I publish with no writing or research help.
Now onto the gist of your point:
I have lots of respect for Tim for what he has done over the years. One of the takeaways from reading him is that he leans left. And that’s my reading of why he criticizes the left: it comes from a place of criticizing those you belong to and love. One of the best illustrations of this dynamic is how, a very long time ago, he wrote an article explaining why the right had gone crazy and disenfranchised most people in the U.S. I interpret his book as doing the same.
You are equating liberal social justice with fundamentalist social justice. That makes me think you might dislike the label because you feel identified with it. So maybe let’s talk about a specific instance that might illustrate this
I’ve heard from many social justice warriors that math comes from White supremacy. I attribute this to fundamentalists. Do you deny that this type of claim exists, or do you believe it’s liberal to say so?
I was clear to say liberals constrain oppression to LAWS and CULTURE. I believe math is not culture.
This type of debates are not science. They’re more culture or philosophy. As such it’s sensible to keep the principles quite stable.
The point of showing the history on the left is not to say “evolution is bad” but rather “fundamentalist social justice comes the same tradition family as Marxism” which I think is insightful.
4. I’m glad you bring this up, because I happen to know a lot about this, on an article I’ve written but unpublished, maybe keeping it for Unspeakable Territories.
The number quotes in that link corresponds to the share of accusations *proven to be false*. Then depending on the country, about 10% of accusations are *proven to be true* (and by that I mean in each case a tribunal’s verdict says it so). The vast majority of accusations are inconclusive. Some estimations must be made, which will be imperfect. For me, using the judge was a shorthand to simplify all this complexity.
So you are wrong.
More importantly, notice how you criticize exactly the mistake you made: you accuse of not fact-checking, and then share a link that you didn’t fact-check.
The point is not that I’m getting back at you. The point is that this is hard, and the only way to move forward is when debate is not hostile and assumes good intent on the other side. Don’t say “You’re dumb, here is the TRUTH”, but rather “hey did you consider this?” I’ll will get you further in life, and certainly further here.
5. Maybe I’m projecting on Tim because it’s what I felt. I have never identified with a party. The only party I ever joined was a centrist one. During the Clinton and Obama eras, I supported Dems because I felt Republicans went too far. I abhor Trump. I think he’s a dumb dictator wannabe. I have little respect for his administration, Breitbart, Fox, Tucker Carlson, etc. I was very vocal against his anti-COVID rhetoric. I wrote a full article against the Republican direction back then. As you know, I also think climate change is real and we must stop injecting CO2 in the atmosphere.
I also think Dems veered left way too aggressively in the last 8 years (the pendulum went too far). I think CNN and The New York Times are now a joke too. I think there are eco-communists on the left. I am pro-capitalism and against communism, for reasons I outlined in an article.
So I think I’m pretty balanced. The fact that you think I am not makes me think you might be biased leftwards.
6. It’s good that progress never ends!
But we must also recognize that early on there’s low-hanging fruit, which makes progress a no-brainer. The more progress, the less low-hanging fruit, the more likely there are mistakes, and so the more careful and less vehement the movement should be. Which is exactly the opposite of what happens. The defense of trans in female changing rooms is a good example. It looks to me like an awfully hard question, but if you are to hear fundamentalist justice representatives, it’s a no brainer. It’s not.
So yeah, we should have less vehemence and more carefulness—something that this exchange illustrates perfectly.
7. Affirmative action is reverse discrimination.
I understand why it exists, and I empathize with its goals. I even agree with some of its methods, like scholarships for underserved communities. But I don’t agree with others, like what the FAA did. That is reverse discrimination and doesn’t serve society.
I did not say I agreed with overturning Roe vs Wade. Where did I say so? If I did, please point that out to me. If I didn’t, consider this as another instance of your bias.
For the record I’m in favor of the state not deciding about abortion. It should be the choice of individuals.
Which, by the way, is not incompatible with the overturning of Roe vs Wade. That literally said “the federal government has no say in that matter.” I also like the European stance where abortion legal though. But this is also an awfully complex issue, because when does life start? I don’t know.
8. I honestly don’t take any of what you say the wrong way. I do appreciate the debate, and I feel like these heated exchanges are the precursor of more productive debate.
If you feel that any of the points I raised in this comment is valid, then I’ll take that as a win. I’m sincerely hoping you can continue criticizing my work, and I take comments like yours as a privilege, even if I don’t agree with them.
6. I do agree some issues are not easy. But you gotta recognize they're mostly instrumentalized by the right to challenge trans rights as a whole.
The republican party's stance is not "we're pro trans rights but we draw the line at changing rooms". Of course not. They're just using this mind virus as a way to convince the average american who doesn't know much and doesn't have much of an opinion this that "this is going too far". As you said at the end of your post, this is the kind of issue where we must look at the data.
Spoiler alert : when we look at the data, there's no indication it particularly happens, and in fact trans people are more likely to be VICTIMS of sexual assault than cis people. Shocker, the right would be using this question as a trojan horse for bigotry ?
It's not like it's the first time they did that.
They framed desegregation in schools as a threat to security, they framed gay marriage as a threat to the traditional family and parental rights, they frame the right to vote for women as a threat to their roles as housewives...
This is a well-known strategy of the right.
To be clear, I'm not saying you are right-wing. I'm saying you're getting targeted by the right's rhetoric to convert centrists as allies (or at least not enemies). They've been doing that for a long time. They NEED centrists to at least not oppose them, by definition. They're not gonna get the woke vote.
So they do large opinion campaigns to infect minds.
I've seen that exact same process happen over and over again. This is textbook "let's convert a centrist".
And I think the reason part of the left is saying it's a no brainer, it's because 1) facts are on their side, and 2) they perfectly know it's just a trojan horse.
7. I'd have to check exactly what this specific example of affirmative action is, and what's the problem with it. Let's say it sometimes happen : do you think it's as big a problem as systemic oppression ?
I never said you agreed with overturning Roe v Wade. I never would have thought that honestly, you're obviously not right wing.
You said "the legitimacy of the movements will be weaker, and people will fight back. For example :", and just afterwards you list several things, including the overturning of Roe v Wade, and another Supreme Court example.
I'm just underlining those examples are not relevant, as the Supreme Court is clearly NOT following the people's opinion. They're basically Trump's horcruxes.
I do agree the precise date when abortion should be illegal is subject to debate, but honestly that's been solved everywhere. People basically settled on "the foetus is not viable outside the womb so it's ok". Conveniently, this is also a delay that allows for the woman to have time to decide, inform herself, and make an appointment (providing Planned Parenthood is not defunded by a bigot obv).
8. To conclude, I'd like to clarify something : I'm not accusing you of portraying you as being right-wing, a bigot, or anything like that. I just wouldn't read you in that case.
I apologize if that wasn't clear.
I'm getting heated because I'm seeing the same thing happen again. I've seen it with friends, I've seen it with Tim Urban, and I've seen it with many true centrists I was following.
What I'm seeing someone obviously intelligent, with a pragmatic and open-minded view of the world, who generally think opinions should be based on evidence as much as possible, and who clearly demonstrated in the past he was entirely capable of taking a topic he knew NOTHING about, and the world didn't know much about, and be pretty accurate in predicting what was gonna happen and what we should do (aka : COVID).
Science is the only thing somewhat able to predict the future. You did science.
But as I said before, the right (which has now basically completely turned into the far right in the US) is using tactics they used before to infect the centrist mind. They're using our liberal values against us. They're blowing a lot of things out of proportion to make us think "oh, this is indeed problematic". And after a few years, we start to believe "the left went too far".
But I just don't think it stands to scrutiny.
And I'm disappointed because I've seen many centrists fall into this trap, and for some reasons, they don't seem to use evidence-based reasoning as much in that case.
I'm still not entirely sure why. They were all white men, which I think must play some role. But I'm a white man too. But also I was very educated by a friend who wrote brilliant post about social justice topics, especially racism. That might have saved me from being scammed.
So basically my long and heated comment is this : I'm yelling "what are you doing ? You're being scammed ! They're lying to you and you forgot to fact check ! You're repeating their arguments verbatim without even realizing it !"
And honestly, I know this is difficult to hear. I did that a bit, and it was hard to admit I was wrong. Mainly because I encountered the very vocal and not very subtle stupid left, and I was like "they're just crazy and will call anyone a fascist". But that doesn't mean this is the general stance of the left. I don't think we should define any political movement by their most stupid supporters.
As much as I like to make fun of people shooting a shotgun at hurricanes, I realize most Trump supporters are not THAT dumb.
I think what's important is to watch the policies actually put in place. Who's harming society the most ? What's the real danger ?
I think this is THE topic where it's the most important to look at facts. Cause it's very easily to be misaligned.
And my concern here is you didn't do it enough. Is it hard ? Yes. Can you make mistakes ? Also yes.
But I don't see one anecdotal mistake here. I see a general opinion of the left that's largely based on what the right has slowly infused in the political discourse since Trump. I don't think it's realistic.
You accused me of bias quite a lot, and I understand because this was written in a pretty angry tone. Because I'm angry. But not at you. I'm angry at the right for using our liberal opinions against us. And I'm angry when it works.
Politically, we're actually very close. So I encourage you not to see this as a biased discourse, but on the contrary as something aimed to shake you up and challenge some of yours. If you pretend you ignore EVERYTHING about the culture war, and search for facts, what would your opinion be ?
I have not a lot of sympathy for the right’s overall stance on trans, or LGBTQ in general over history. Gay marriage was a no-brainer for me since childhood. Being able to not make wedding cakes for discriminatory reasons seems gross to me.
But all the examples that the right has been fighting on trans rights lately seem of a different nature to me. Changing rooms, sports, and child transition to name a few sound like the main ones they push back against, and that sounds like a reasonable stance to take given how hard the debates are. Personally, I wouldn’t say: “they have a track record of being bad people therefore I don’t listen to anything they say.” Rather, I try to take every debate separately, and consider their arguments based on what they say, not who said them.
The one data point I have and trust suggests trans women who were biological men before have the same level of sexual harassment against females as straight cis men. I welcome other data points.
I agree that the data on their likelihood of suffering from sexual harassment themselves is also relevant.
I am not sure I feel comfortable with the argument that fetus viability determines the beginning of life, because then it’s a matter of technology. What will happen when we get artificial wombs: Will you then agree with the right that life starts at conception?
Thank you for the clarification at the end. Your exasperation makes sense to me now.
I guess then my reaction is: I will take all facts in. If I’m wrong, I want to know! And right now I feel especially not identified with either side of the political spectrum, so I think I’ll take in these facts in a way that is as unbiased as possible!
For fetus viability : I do agree that the future may change this, but I think for now this criteria works pretty well. We're even usually more conservative than the actual viability (delay in France in 14 weeks).
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As for trans rights, I agree some questions are legitimate, but I do think it's useful to know who asks them, for two reasons :
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- Knowing they have a larger agenda and history of discrimination questions their honesty not only in the data they present (if they even bother to do that), but also in the way they frame the questions.
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- The mere fact of talking about these questions further their agenda. Should we not talk about them just because of that ? No, but we have to be wary of what it creates. I think a good way of doing that is not only to be evidence-based (of course), but also to balance that with other trans rights questions where their stances are just unreasonable, and to put them into context.
My worry is that someone reading about it and not being very knowledgeable on the topic might fixate on specific issues (purposefully put forward by the right as an ideological trojan horse) and forget about all the other more simple questions.
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For example, the right is straight up prohibiting discussing the topic in school, they have a weird fixation on drag shows (and conflating that with trans rights because they don't know what they're talking about), and should we talk about the recent misgendering and harrasment of Imane Khelif ?
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And even when they're talking about topics where we should indeed look at the evidence, they're routinely dishonest about the topic.
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1. Changing rooms :
If they were really honest about minimizing harm, they wouldn't be supporting policies to exclude trans women from women's rooms. Because we have two choices :
- Trans women in men's bathroom : very likely to lead to more sexual assault of trans women
- Trans women in women's bathroom : would you care to share your data point ? I couldn't find it. Although if there's only one data point (when there's many reporting higher rate of sexual assault against trans women), I think the most reasonable stance in absence of more data is to support trans women in women's rooms.
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There could be the solution of a third room, but that's probably not realistic, and also feels segregatory, as it would out trans people. Also I've never seen the right defend that. Probably because they don't really care about people's safety from sexual assault. They just weaponize that to exclude trans people. Otherwise they would talk about trans women being assaulted.
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2. Sports :
This is a more complicated issue I agree. I don't have an opinion on this as I don't know how much it influences the result, depending on the sport, the precise process of transition, etc.
I haven't looked at the data yet. Do you have date showing it's a very common issue ?
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Because it doesn't feel like there are a ton of trans women suddenly taking over women's sports. As far as I know there has been no case of a trans woman getting an olympic medal this year (despite the right losing their shit about Imane Khelif).
And Hergie Bacyadan is a trans man but competed with women in the Olympics (because he didn't undergo any gender affirming care if I understand well), and didn't win a medal anyway.
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I'm only focusing on the Olympics (but after all they're supposed to be the best of the best), but it doesn't look like it's a huge problem.
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Is it a question ? Yes.
Is the right suddenly really interested in women's sports to further their anti-trans agenda ? Evidently.
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3. Child transition
Generally the right uses a pretend will to protect children to further their agenda, but I don't think it stands to scrutiny.
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The right presents gender affirming care in the younger population as "they're mutilating children", but in reality :
- genital surgery is never performed before age 18
- hormone therapy is rarely started before at least late adolescence, and after extensive evaluation (and is partially reversible)
- puberty blockers might be prescribed, which is good because they're reversible
- social transition may also happen, which is reversible too
Plus I think you agree we should listen to professionnals on medical issues. And the consensus seems to be gender-affirming care is overwhelmingly a good thing, even in kids :
So my stance on this is pretty simple (and as you can see largely supported by data) : the reality is way milder than the right pretends, and I trust mental health professionnals more than very very biased politicians to make individual decisions on kids health.
Basically : biological men and women have visible differences in the brain, and one of them is the size of a region call the "bed nucleus of the stria terminalis". It's bigger in male than females. Study shows that trans people have a region the size of their perceived gender (even without undergoing hormone therapy, so it's not a consequence but a cause, or at least correlated to a cause).
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To me that's a very important piece of information. The right focuses a lot on saying trans kids are just influenced by the media, and are basically denying the reality of transidentity, but the science shows there's a biological origin to it. So to me, considering the data we have, the most obvious conclusion conclusion is trans people, including kids, should receive gender-affirming care adapted to their age and mental health, under the supervision of trained professionnals.
That's NOT what the right are supporting. They're not "asking questions", they're straight up forbidding it. They're basically killing children by doing that, as we've seen before.
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So to summarize : every time I dig into these supposed issues, I find that it's either anecdotal, or that the scientific consensus is pretty clear, and (surprise surprise) not agreeing with the right.
And it's very obvious to me the right is hijacking the public debate with these supposed "reasonable stances" that are mostly baseless, because they know they sound reasonable at first glance.
I find myself in complete agreement with everything you wrote. That worries me a bit (because I like to think of myself as moderate even though I have clearly become left-leaning) but also gives me comfort. Thank you for taking the time to provide such clear arguments. I thought you might like to know that someone read and appreciated them.
Thanks, it does feel good that someone beside Tomas read my lengthy comments ^^
I have learned to stop putting a label on my political leaning. The overton window widened so much in the past few years that nothing makes sense anymore. Also it varies wildly depending on countries and issues.
I use to think myself as a moderate too, but the center has disappointed a lot. I'm french, and Macron was supposed to be exactly aligned with my politics, until he took a sharp turn right 2 years into his first mandate. I do think a lot of politicians pretending to be in the center are just traditional right (aka not complete lunatics). They had to relabel because the right parties became more and more conservative, but they're still rightwing.
For individuals it's different, but I have to agree with people to the left of me when they say centrists are generally just right-wing, because in many cases, I think authentic centrists are scammed by the right and then start to lean right (or maybe they were already leaning right). I've seen that happen many times, and I'm glad I escaped from it. That's also why I'm so vocal about it.
I don't think my political stance is represented by a party at all, so I generally define myself by my stance on some precise points. And if it's time to vote, any form of support to discriminations is a deal breaker for me, as it's a core value of mine. So I end up voting for the left, even though they sometimes say stupid shit (but anyway all politicians say stupid shit).
I think there's also a fundamental difference between the left and the right :
- the right, by definition, wants to keep things as they are (conservatives) or even go back to what they were (reactionaries). There are not many ways to do that, so they agree on most things.
- the left, on the contrary, want to change things. And there are infinite ways of changing things. Having only two significant parties in the US kinda masks that, but in most of the western world at least, there are many left parties, with different stances on different things, and different priorities. In the US I think they mostly constitute different camps within the Dems.
But they do form strong alliances when needed, as we've recently seen in the french elections (the left alliance ended up first in the elections, even though they're far from having the majority).
In any case, leaning left doesn't mean you have to agree with everything. I do agree with basically everything the left says about systemic oppression, but I also think communism is stupid, and I think the government should be strong in certain areas and even some public services should be state-owned, while also thinking the state should generally be weaker and less prone to make laws for absolutely every tiny detail of everything.
The problem with the label "moderate" is people often think it means "being kind in the middle about everything", when for me it means most "I agree with the people some call ultra woke on some issues, and I agree with the center right on others". That's why I can't identify with it any more. I'm half "fuck nazis" and half "capitalism is mostly good", that doesn't make me politically friendly to many people xD
What an interesting thread that developed from your patient and thoughtful response to Laurent! As I was reading his first comment I was dismissing him as a condescending ahole looking for a fight at best, but your more nuanced reply resulted in a well reasoned exchange. Impressive. Now I must subscribe, as I’ve wanted to for a long time, but have to justify every new expense with my accountant-wife.
Glad you like the final result ! A few things though :
- The well reasoned exchange stemmed from the combination of a well researched and argued comment that took me like an hour (albeit angry), and Tomas' openness to exchange.
I do laud his reaction too, but it's permitted because there are actual arguments being made too.
- Being angry doesn't make someone condescending or wrong (or right either). Being angry only indicates emotional investment (that I detailed later because I realize Tomas heard "you're right wing" when what I was saying was more "don't get scammed by the right, you're better than that !"). It doesn't directly correlate with being right or wrong.
Actually, I think "condescending" is often used to dismiss justified anger because it can serve as a tactic to undermine the legitimacy of someone's emotional response or the validity of their grievances. When someone labels another person's reaction as "condescending," they are implying that the person is talking down to others, acting superior, or being disrespectful. This shifts the focus away from the actual content of the criticism or complaint and instead highlights the perceived attitude of the speaker.
- And if I wanted to be a bit snarky, I could argue that calling your wife an accountant is condescending 🙃
Thanks for the detailed answer, and for taking that as I hope you would, despite the heat :)
1. Ok, in that case I do agree on principle. I just think it wasn't expressed in the clearest of ways (which is the basis to many disagreements, so I'm glad we can clear that one up).
2. Just from a logical point of view, it can't be a misinterpretation on my end if you admit it was the wrong word ^^
But this is hair-splitting, and to get the core : indeed, some discriminations are less emphasized than others. But as said in other points, this is kind of a natural mechanic in progressivism imo. You can't fight on all fronts at the same time.
One could have (rightfully) argued 10 years ago that trans rights were taking a back seat.
I think another component is how difficult or how pervasive those discriminations are. Height for example, is probably generally less important than gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. I'd say beauty is way more important, but it's difficult to actually determine how pretty someone is, unless we ask everyone to participate in PhotoFeeler. Whereas being a woman or being racialized is more black and white (no pun intended).
3. I wasn't clear : I didn't say you quoted his book, just that his book gave me enough insights of his understanding of politics to stop respecting what he had to say about it (although I could still enjoy if he was writing about something else I guess, even though it taints my view on the quality of his research).
I think Tim, like you, leans center. I used to think I leaned center, but seeing what the center has become, I can't identify with it anymore. There's too much leeway given to the right even though they're going absolutely batshit crazy and the overton window is apparently now back to literal nazism. I think many center liberals have their liberalism hijacked by the far right, and become unwilling allies because they're intellectually scammed to think freedom of speech is actually threatened by "wokism".
And I do think Tim and you show signs of that.
I would absolutely welcome fair criticism of the left, but I do think it's significant Tim wrote a book about the culture war, supposedly to talk about both sides, but ended up criticizing mostly the left, with very bad arguments I could easily disprove with a search.
The fact he's written one post about the right years ago doesn't seem a very valid argument to say he's leaning left.
I don't identify with fundamentalist social justice. In fact, I've already been called a fascist for stating fact (and a woke for literally the same thing 🤷♂️). I'm well aware some people are just cray-cray.
I just think the few cray-cray on the left are used as a general strawman to discredit the entire left, pretending their opinions are mainstream on the left. And I do think you're contributing to that phenomenon, in that case.
I honestly think "math comes from White supremacy" is a fringe view. But of course you're summarizing it with a one liner, so I asked ChatGPT to elaborate :
And of course, it's way more subtle than that. I doubt anyone is actually pretending that 1+1 comes from white supremacy. But I have to agree that the non-white origins of some advances in math are generally not taught, that (bad) science has been used to justify many forms of discrimination in the past, and other things. I intuitively don't agree that math isn't objective, but I'd have to read a detailed argument to know what they say.
In any case, this is a big strawman. Nobody is seriously pretending "math comes from white supremacy". These arguments are honestly a pretty standard analysis of a field under the lens of systemic oppression. They're talking about the culture around maths. Fair enough.
The fact that you think this is an actual argument of the left, to me, doesn't show a great understanding of the political stance of today's left. Either the person misunderstood something and is not very clever, or just straight up didn't explain what they meant.
But I think it represents well what my criticism is in this case : cherry picking the most stupid claims on the left and label them as a cultural phenomenon. Which is what the far right is doing. This is text book anti-wokism without even toning it down.
Even though 1) they're fringe, 2) they're not influencing any policy at all.
Whereas the most stupid claims of the right are actually influencing policy and actually hurting people. Can you show me a source saying maths have stopped being taught, or anything related to maths that's actually hurting people or society ?
4. In matters of sexual assault, I do agree most are inconclusive. I think that's unfortunately something that's inherent to these crimes. They're by nature difficult to prove : they often happen without witnesses, it's often difficult to even prove sex happened, unless the victim does exactly the right things AND isn't met with police skepticism, and even then, how do you prove the absence of consent ?
I think this is one instance where patriarchy does play a role (doesn't help women coming forward, filing a complaint, ...), but even in a perfect society, it would be difficult to prove anyway.
So, a low number are proven to be true, and also a low number are proven to be false. And as you say, we must make estimates.
But I don't understand yours. You're still basing it on ONE judge's opinion. And on a hunch that it's "significant".
But if we want to make an estimate, we must analyze what could provoke more false positives, and more false negatives. And I don't see how anyone could conclude the circumstances are not overwhelmingly in favor of false negatives.
Factors for false negatives :
- As we said, inherent lack of physical evidence
- Delayed reporting (well known to happen)
- Memory impairment (common in traumatic experiences)
- Potential relationship of the perpetrator to the victim (most sexual assaults are committed by someone known), which can cause fear of retaliation, peer pressure not to report, etc.
- Poor investigation (the unwillingness of police to take complaints is well known)
- Easy defense for the accused : "she consented" can't really be proven wrong
Factors for false negatives :
- Inconsistent testimonies (for example not seeing the perp well and then "recognizing" him). This is not specific to sexual assault though, and as most perps are known, can't be influencing most.
- Coercion during interrogation leading to a false confession
- False accusations
Considering publicly accusing someone of sexual assault still has MAJOR negative consequences for women coming forward (although they generally receive support, they're also systematically harassed at the same time, which is obviously hard to live, specially because of human's negative bias).
So honestly, this conclusion seems REALLY hasty to me. The most reasonable estimate would be that false negatives FAR outweigh false positives. I welcome counter arguments though, maybe there's something I'm not seeing ?
5. Ok it seems I haven't been clear enough : I'm probably to the left of you, but not that far. I agree with almost everything you said in this part, including being against communism. I think capitalism is great with some safeguards.
But what I see happening is centrists like you, Tim, some friends of mine (and not me, even though I share your opinions about society), is thinking "the left went too far", for reasons that don't seem based on facts to me.
Like, how specifically the Dems went too far left ? Which policies precisely ? Forgive me if I'm wrong as I don't live in the US so I don't have the daily detail of things, but I don't see Biden as a radical leftist.
But I can definitely tell you how the right went too far, both under Trump and in red states.
I sincerely don't know where the left went too far exactly. I generally don't read precise claims, and when I do, they're revealed to be wildly exaggerated when I check them.
2. You should look at data on the premium for height and beauty! The discrimination is staggering!
Math: I haven’t looked at it in detail; but everything I read about the California Math curriculum seems maddening.
Yes the conclusion on sexual harassment seems hasty because I have a full article on it but can’t really publish it! So sorry for that. But if you’re interested I encourage you to look at the evidence. Swedes and Danes have interesting data.
I’ll be very specific on instances where I believe the pendulum went too far because the proposal was positioned as a no-brainer when in fact it is a difficult topic, or in some cases just plain wrong:
Trans: changing rooms, sports, child transition, placing non-transitioned trans women (biological men) with a track record of rape in women’s prisons
Blacks: Affirmative action in air pilots to the point of tweaking the tests to lower standards
Completely disregarding test results in university admissions
Admissions discrimination against overperforming minorities like Asians
CRT in K-12 school curricula, across all disciplines
Considering math, rationality, and / or science as White
The concept of settler colonialism (assholes all the way down)
The concept of cultural appropriation
I might not be educated enough on some of them, so happy to hear good and compact arguments on either. But what I’ve found so far has been unimpressive, and doesn’t support the stances.
Beauty privilege I do believe the premium is high, but as I said i think the issue is beauty is not on/off, so it's harder to see and even act on it.
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About math : I find it surprising that you're stating that they say "math is white" (which is kind of a ludicrous claim) and at the same you haven't look at it in detail. The more ludicrous a claim, the more it should be looked in detail before talking about it.
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I don't know where you've read things about the California Math Curriculum. I've just read two posts about it, and it seems far from "everything is maddening" to me. Some points might be debatable, but a lot of things seem pretty reasonable to me. What specifically maddens you ?
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About sexual harrassment, could you just link your sources ? (or dm them if you prefer) I couldn't find anything related to Sweden or Danemark, but I might have had the wrong keywords.
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About the pendulum going too far, thanks for being specific. I think that's more helpful. Of course I doubt it NEVER exists. What I challenge is the idea that's it's very common, and a core tenet of the left.
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- Trans people : I've already answered in the other comment. I don't think the data shows a problem for the first three. The last one sounds worrying, but do you have a US case ? I could find two cases in the UK, and also that the law has been modified since.
This is a separate issue of course, but it seems insincere to me the right is all of a sudden very concerned with inmates safety, while at the same time treating like animals in discourse and policy.
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- Affirmative actions for black air pilots : do you have a source on lowering standards ? All I can find is some airlines have lowered their minimum experience requirements for applicants in recent years, but this was largely due to pilot shortages after COVID, and also that there are programs aimed at increasing diversity in aviation, but these focus on outreach, mentorship, and providing training opportunities - not on lowering standards.
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- Tests in uni admissions :
From what I can find, it seems only some universities did that, and some went back to tests. I think students who want to be tested can just choose a uni still doing it (I'd assume the majority is still doing, unless you have data showing otherwise ?)
But I fail to see how that's a problem : if a uni think tests don't predict student success well, shouldn't they be allowed to try that ? Won't the market just correct for that ?
If it really lowers the level, these universities will just become less valuable on the market.
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Honestly, I even think this is an interesting hypothesis to try. When I was in my master's degree, I could see first hand how the selection process was mainly based on test results, which tested more for memory than intelligence. And how it could select people with very good memory but mindblowingly stupid and who should never have been at that level.
So, why not ?
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- Admissions discriminating asians
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Do you have a source on that ? I could only find sources saying asians were discriminated against white students, and that athletic performance might play a role, but nothing more.
That sounds like something the left would be against btw.
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That also sounds like the right using asians as yet another ideological trojan horse to lobby against affirmative action.
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- CRT in schools :
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Could you precise how you define CRT precisely, and why do you think it's a problem ? From what I read it's just a pretty modern understanding of society, and I think kids should get taught a modern analysis of the world.
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The claims I see against it seem to come from a misunderstanding of it (and often times a purposeful misinterpretation for political purposes).
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- Math thing : as I said before, I have yet to see any proof that such a wild claim is more than a fringe view.
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- As for the concepts of settler colonialism and cultural appropriation, what's your issue with them ? Do you think they don't exist ?
I think they're useful frameworks to think about society.
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Also, as a general summary : I think my general problem with your argument is two things :
1) I think most of the instances you're quoting are at the very least completely blown out of proportion.
And they're all instances where the far right is using them to further their agenda. Hence my anger about a centrist being intellectually scammed by them.
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2) Even if they were all true, I think it's not enough to conclude to a general "the woke pendulum has swung too far".
At any times, ideas get floated in the public opinion. Some survive, some don't, some will re-emerge later when people are ready. A lots of ideas seeming obvious to us today were considered wildly woke at some point in history (they didn't use woke, but it was the same idea).
So, of course you're gonna find some crazy ones.
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But I think the most important is to take a step back to see the bigger picture. Mostly :
- What are the core values of the left and the right today ? And which seem more aligned with your values ?
- What are the actual real world consequences and policies that each camp were capable to implement.
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Let's do the exercise for each example you gave :
- Children wellbeing and mental health : Republicans voted against the Mental Health Matters Act, which aimed to expand access to mental health services in schools. Some Republican legislators and governors have called for bans on social-emotional learning and new restrictions on school counselors.
- Air safety : Republicans have pushed for a later age of retirement for pilots, and historically opposed increased regulatory oversight by the FAA, arguing it hampers business freedom.
- Equitable access to college : A lot of republican states pushed or already voted for a stop on grants and scholarships based on a student conditions (race included). Unless you think there's already an equality in chances, this reduces equitable access to college.
- Teaching facts in school : There have been various pushes by the right to stop the teaching of facts in school, using different strategies such as a very narrow definition of fact, discussing the "strength and weaknesses" of well established science under the guise of critical thinking (again using centrists liberalism against them btw), teaching creationism as en equivalent to evolution, etc.
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I get that you're for children wellbeing, air safety, a fair access to college, and that school teaches only facts. So am I.
What I'm questioning is why you're focusing on alleged attacks of the left on that (which I think mostly don't stand to scrutiny or don't have many effects in the real world), while in the process involuntarily repeating far-right propaganda, and not focusing on actual real policies put in place by the right which actually hurt those goals.
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I understand where you come from : you see the culture war and you wanna talk about it. But in the end, it's about values. I align with your values.
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I just think that when taking a step back and checking who's ACTUALLY threatening those values, it's clear it's the right, by far.
It isn’t the positions the woke left is taking that’s the problem, it was/is the brute intimidation taken against any even minimal dissent. You’re not in the US and maybe this hasn’t occurred in France, but the wave of cancellations, verbal attacks and name calling reached a point where people in many professions simply kept their heads down to try and survive. The cancellations hit people for the most absurd reasons and were not moderated by reason, a sense of proportion or some degree of humanity. See what happened to the truck driver who was sacked after being photographed for making an apt right finger gesture. He wasn’t given his job back after he explained that the gesture had nothing to do with politics. The cancellations were frightening and reminded me of the Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution.
I am used to being among people with different political opinions. I have a quite different ideology than most of my friends and family, but it’s not a problem because I consider them rational and well intentioned people. We agree to disagree. The character of Wokism strikingly resembles proto totalitarian movements and for that reason I consider an extremely dangerous one. It’s qualititatively different from moderate liberalism.
You are a very rational person and have made rational arguments for your positions, but what I see missing is mention of the tone and vehemence in Wokism. That’s the dangerous part.
(One step in the anti Woke reaction no one seems to mention is the opening scene in the film, “The Three Body Problem,” a gripping and powerful depiction of a public humiliation in China in the 60s. The scene is so memorable to me because it evokes in a more extreme form what the US has been like in the last decade. I am not saying Wokism is as strong as the Cultural Revolution, but it has too many similarities with it to ignore.)
I just searched about the truck driver story, and this indeed absolutely stupid. But the main problem I see is not with "wokism", but with the employer.
This wouldn't happen in France not for a lack of people trying, but because we have like, laws protecting workers ? You can't be fired for bullshit reasons like that, it's just not happening. It would have to be very serious and corroborated allegations to even think about it.
(As a tongue-in-cheek but maybe not-so-much, the side who would promote laws to protect workers the most is the woke side 🙃)
Apart from that, I get that you can always find an example to support your point, but I am once again asking for data. I know some people FEEL there's an epidemic of people being unjustly canceled and all that, but what is the data saying ?
Because honestly, last time I had a debate around so-called cancel culture, my conclusion was overwhelmingly that the right is canceling just as much if not more. I gave a link in another comment with my combined research about it (my comments are in french but most sources are in English).
I'm sure SOME people are going too far (this is basically always true for any movement), but I doubt it's a big part of it.
Out of curiosity I just googled is Ansari was actually canceled after the Babe post about the sexual assault, and apparently he got a Netflix special just after. So basically there was no consequence for him ?
I still think the testimonial very much describes sexual assault, but I don't understand how one can take his example when literally nothing happened to him ?
Because either he's not guilty and the system is functioning as intended, or he is and the system is not punishing enough. But in no world does this indicate it's "going too far".
Really, I see what you state here repeated over and over again, but I NEVER see any data to support it, and only anecdotes, even when coming from people who are supposedly moderates and evidence-based. The ockam's razor conclusion to this is : this is an intellectual scam from the far right.
(See Innuendo Studios great video series "The Alt Right Playbook")
What's bewildering about your Roe v Wade mention is not that you take a side in it, but that you present it as an example where a reaction to injustice has gone so far that the other side has responded. But where did Roe v Wade go too far? The problem with your argument is that it is essentially the same argument SCOTUS made: to wit, they said that abortion was an issue that should balance the rights of the mother with the rights of the unborn child, and acted as though Roe v Wade had tilted the pendulum too far towards the rights of the mother by allowing abortion. This is a straw-man argument, as it ignores that the Roe v Wade decision WAS the effort to balance those rights. The justices chose "fetal viability" as the point at which the rights of the unborn child exceed those of the mother carrying it. In other words, if the unborn child could not survive unassisted outside the womb then the mother's rights are the stronger rights, but if the child could be expected to survive then it's rights become supreme. This is the definition of a reasoned decision. The problem of the continued assault on abortion rights is that those who oppose abortion believe (or claim to) that ALL abortion is evil, and therefore there is no pendulum on which to balance here.
Then, more confusing still is your conclusion to this point. You write "I'm in favor of the state not deciding about abortion...." and follow that up with "...is not incompatible with the overturning of Roe vs Wade. That literally said 'the federal government has no say in that matter.'" But the STATE government does. I'm not sure what semantic game you are playing here. Are you arguing that state governments represent the individual's right to choose? I would argue a) that in modern American history that the governments which have oppressed individual's rights have overwhelmingly been state governments as opposed to the federal government; and b) living here in Texas I don't think many people feel that they have a choice about abortion as the state has not only made it illegal but allowed for enforcement of this policy by allowing citizens to sue other citizens with an incredibly stacked legal process in their favor (a technique borrowed from the Fugitive Slave Act, one of the worst legal acts ever passed in the history of the United States).
I recognize that this line is, essentially, a throwaway example in a much longer thought-piece, but your decision to defend this makes me confused as to what your whole point is.
Can't speak for Thomas here, but I read the Roe vs. Wade comment as an example for a reaction to progressive forces, since their successes/influence motivated a strong movement/pressure to select conservative judges which had an effect later in e.g. this decision. I don't think Thomas makes a moral judgement here, it is purely descriptive.
I'm not entirely sure now, but I've interpreted this as Tomas saying "there should be a law legalizing abortion, so individuals would have the right to choose".
I was confused by this as well. Perhaps Walter's and Laurent's more charitable perspectives are accurate but I found Thomas' statements to be contradictory or at best incomplete.
4. I think the question of the true false positive rate for sexual assault/harassment accusations is a really interesting one, so I'm excited to hear that you have (as yet) unpublished research about it. Definitely interested in hearing about that work. Meanwhile, a quick search brought me to this link (https://www.thejusticegap.com/just-how-rare-are-false-allegations-of-sexual-assault/), which is a more in depth analysis of the point you're making. This articles suggests that the judge you quote estimate is too high (the researchers cited in this article do say that real number is less than half), but it explains why the number @Laurent points to is the lower bound and not the actual number.
5. I think the idea that the "NY Times is a joke" is kind of ridiculous. The Times is easily far and away the most important and best source of news in the world (at least for those primarily interested in America). It and The Economist are indispensable. It's fine to ignore the OP Ed columns if those aren't your cup of tea (although I would argue that Krugman, Friedman, Brooks, Klein, and Douthat are all the top of the field of opinion journalism), but overall the NYT is amazing. Doesn't mean it doesn't sometimes get things wrong, but describing it as "a joke" is way, way off base.
I thought so until about 1-2y ago. I stopped my subscription during the war in Gaza, because I knew what I was talking about better than they did, and their bias was too flagrant.
Their news are good, but if I can’t rely on them for the most important news, then what’s the point?
I see your response to #5 as the problem. A huge swath of the US, including me, sees the Times as a partisan spin factory. Look at there coverage of Harris. Are they doing stories about why she won't talk to the press or article after article about how smart the Dems were to do what they are doing. This is why the left total missed Trump in 2016.
I think the next question would be : among these 10-15% of false allegations, what are the consequences for the falsely accused ?
I think we're biased to the high-profile cases. If a youtuber is accused of sexual assault (and I don't know about the US, but in France it happened A LOT in the past few years), it's generally really bad for them, but generally only life-shattering when they're actually convicted.
When they're not (or before they are), they generally have enough of people supporting them to still thrive.
I can think of several cases :
- Léo Grasset, who was accused by multiple women. He lost all sponsorships and his channel was demonetized, but he gathered enough money to live through his Patreon. Certainly hard for him, but not life shattering, even though several victims came forward.
- Norman Thavaud, who was accused of sexual misconduct with several minors. He went silent for years, and has just recently posted a video after the investigation being closed (he was not trialed and judged innocent, they just considered there were not enough material elements).
This went way too far as his wife and kid were harassed (people are shit), and the guy looks broken, but let's also say he's definitely not entirely innocent. He admitted to what he called "goujaterie" ("boorishness"), which still sounds like he admits to bad behavior, and now he's producing content rather than being on camera.
I'm sure he went through a tough phase, but there were too many women talking for it to be complete bullcrap, so 🤷♂️
So even though the general discourse is "they're unjustly canceled", it feels in a lot of cases their life is worse but not entirely shattered, they still gather a significant amount of support, even when there's concording testimonials (but not enough to convict).
So I'd be curious what researchers could find out about the long-term consequences on the lives of the confirmed false accusations.
I don't mean to excuse them, it's a very shitty thing to do to someone, but I think it'd counterbalance the general discourse around this.
Many lives are destroyed by these false accusations. People lose their jobs, families, and lives. In Spain, they are preemptively jailed. This is no joke.
It's hard for me to find anything to criticize about you because I think you're one of the greatest thinkers and communicators on the planet, but maybe because of that, I hold you to a higher standard.
I appreciate your comprehensive response to Laurent's bullet points and found myself nodding in agreement to both of your comments. I also found myself shaking my head. For instance, you wrote "Don't say 'You're dumb, here is the TRUTH". Literally three sentences earlier, you committed an entire paragraph to saying: "So you are wrong" followed up with accusing him of blatant hypocrisy (which struck my as ironically hypocritical on your part).
I found most of your rebuttal to be well-founded but I felt that you sometimes you lacked self-reflection and condescended to him, especially when accusing him of bias: "consider this as another instance of your bias" and "So I think I’m pretty balanced. The fact that you think I am not makes me think you might be biased leftwards." Almost everyone considers themselves "balanced" but it's bad form to accuse people of bias simply because they disagree with you. It may be true, but it also may be true that your perspective is biased.
So maybe a little more humility is all I'm saying. I don't have enough of it myself, so I'm no stranger to hypocrisy!
I think that there are some very valid criticisms here, although I'm guessing that a day between reading and commenting may have aided in tone. I've noticed in many recent articles that the research seems to be almost intentionally superficial (e.g. I couldn't find the answer easily, or I'm guessing that, etc.). It almost seems like this article is a great base to start to mold a view of the culture war situation, but it needs some critical debate to form something that can hold up to scrutiny?
I agree! And I hope that we can do it together because it’s not human to consider a single person can handle it. Tim Urban took 6 years in a corner and look at the result, according to Laurent.
So let’s not put the bar too high: nobody will write something that everybody agrees with. Instead, let’s iterate together. I put the strawman out for people to beat it and build on it.
I sometimes wonder if posts like this might be better broken up into multiple smaller pieces. There was a lot to chew on here. And so many points to question and strengthen. When you receive extensive feedback, it becomes a bit of a blur to me. I wonder if you could have written one article to establish the base for everyone to agree on: (1) The strong often take advantage of the weak, (2) This is wrong (for reasons that you could go into), (3) We should do something about it (for reasons that you could go into), but (4) Sometimes it can go too far and is harmful (for reasons that you could go into). Very poorly and probably inaccurately put, but you get my drift. If you establish these points as valid, then subsequent articles could possibly flesh out where people disagree, why, and how to make sense of it all. I guess it depends what the purpose of the post is meant to be - if we want to understand how we all see things differently and we want to understand how to better live with and prosper together, this might be a way to go about it. But it might also be a boring slog that no one wanted to read.
Hi Laurent. Nothing you have said is wrong, by the letter of the law, but it’s missing the point - the spirit of the law.
Clearly humans have the capacity to be entirely wrong. I don’t think this is what Tomas is teasing at.
The clue is in the title - the pendulum. There isn’t really a pendulum about facts. As we uncover more ‘truths’ they become foundations. They don’t really swing back the other way (apart from total loons).
What we’re looking at here is cultural and human interactions where there isn’t a total right or wrong but more like a shallowing cosign to something we recognise as a more, if imperfect, system of fairness.
I do recognise that everything you’ve said is factually correct, but I don’t think Tomas’ piece was about absolutes. I approached his piece with utmost caution and found myself on the back foot when he used the term ‘woke’, which immediately makes me think he has a bias against progressiveness. Which he may well do, but I think he acquitted himself well in delving into a foray where you can do much wrong and little right.
The image of the ‘pendulum’ is misapplied here. Better to think of ‘sublation’, an important part of Hegel’s historical dialectic, where opposing viewpoints learn from and absorb ideas from the other position.
Excellent balanced take on a difficult and complex series of issues. I really admire your willingness to tread in those perilous waters. I think we are all well served by thoughtful contributions like this.
Brave man getting into culture wars! A balancing act, if ever there were one. I think the pendulum metaphor is pretty spot on and what you’re teasing at primarily.
You asked about topics we might want to see you delve into. Kinda per your examples, I’d love to read some ‘universal theory’ that encapsulates financial inequality, immigration, the rise of the right in Europe, the rise in populism globally and its extent, the impact of culture wars, echo chambers, infinite complexity, AI, fertility, pandemics, global warming... My completely biased opinion is that these all feed off each other and the current state of affairs is indeed another pendulum where the visibility and complexity of our existence is leading us to swing back from the Age of Enlightenment and demand ‘simple’ solutions, I.e. A new Endarkening…
Just my musings. Culture wars is probably not a bad lead into this…
A key principle of Uncharted Territories is that the big forces that drive humanity are interconnected, so to nudge it in the right direction, we need some generalists who can look at all these big trends at the same time. That's what I'm trying to do with UT, and why it touches on so many different topics.
It looks like you also see connections between important topics. Here you mention some of these topics, but fail to mention your hypothesis on how they're connected. If you do, it might help me get some inspiration!
I was hoping to leave the big thinking to brains more educated and less frazzled than mine, but at risk of a sound bite, perhaps something along these lines. Obviously none of this is based on data - I’ll leave this to better minds like yours to prove, disprove or more likely, sensibly ignore ;-)
‘The evolutionary utility of intelligence at small scale and the utility of ignorance at scale, manifested culturally, biologically and ecologically - and perhaps even expressed genetically
Tomas and John, Are you familiar with Ian MacGilchrist's Master And His Emissary- the first half a compilation of research on how the brain works and the second half applying this to different time periods as a way of understanding the interplay and alternating dominance of right minded, Hidden Brain (Shankar Vedentam's term), unaware worldview processing and left minded, aware brain, rational, rationalizing processing.?
No, I try to avoid reading for fear of bias but I make exceptions. Right vs left hemisphere sounds curious if, well, curious. It sounds interesting. An undercurrent of biological systems, on a macro scale, that we don’t understand in the slightest, wouldn’t surprise me at all. Tomas, for example, explained how we can’t explain well why fertility rates are dropping. There are loads of seemingly sensible hypotheses but they don’t actually stack up under examination so there may be underlying forces that we are simply oblivious to
Sorry I wrote a comment right after you posted this, but it never made it.
Some years ago, I was involved in a messy business breakup and it left me wondering how one can devote 20 years to making things better only to have it end like that. It put me on a journey to grasp this better and eventually this pointed me to the research on how the brain operates to better grasp how people form their opinions. I even wrote a book on this, although I'm not trying to pitch a book here. Only to say, that this book by MacGilchrist was very informative as part of my journey. The insights about our brain operating system really gets to the heart of the matter.
This is a great article. I once heard another good take related to this talking about how nuance doesn't scale very well. I can't remember the source, but to paraphrase (I hope without ironically losing too much of the original nuance!), one example of how nuance doesn't scale could be cultural appropriation. One person wears an item of clothing that is very sacred and has particular religious importance to another culture, and is only used in a very specific ceremony by people who have been granted the right to wear that item of clothing. Someone from that culture points this out, and asks politely for people outside of that culture to not wear this particular piece of clothing.
This message doesn't spread very far, but a few people talk about it and pass it on. Each time the message is forwarded it gets simplified, until a fairly extreme right wing conservative picks it up (in this example, but for other cases it could equally be an extreme left wing liberal doing something equivalent) and either purposefully or accidentally misinterprets the message and uses it as a way to attack left wing liberals, claiming "Liberals are saying you can't wear clothes from other cultures now!". That isn't what the original argument was at all, but this version gets people angry, and spreads a lot.
Extreme left wing liberals then fight back, claiming that "Yes, that's right, it is wrong to wear clothing from other cultures!", and the entire argument continues like this, completely stripped of all nuance, with both side arguing unreasonable positions. The most extreme statements are the ones that spread, with nuanced takes being drowned out.
Ed is pointing out an effect that cannot be explained by the pendulum model. Declining trust (and hence rising polarization) among people and higher status-anxiety in a longer timeframe can, as researched by Wilkinson & Pickett (The Spirit Level - 2009 - and more). As it can explain overall growing polarization over the last decades as societies get by growing economically more unequal.
Caveat: I do not intend to say declining trust is the one and single possible explanation as the 'silver bullet' that puts all discussion to an end. But the data driven work of Wilkinson & Pickett sheds a relevant light on the issue of growing polarization as a result of declining trust among people.
As a long time reader, I have greatly enjoyed your content. This topic seems incredibly important and I am glad you are tackling it. You offer different insights than Tim Urban although your theses appear aligned. I don't think I agree with everything but I look forward to having ever more presuppositions peeled back by data.
A couple of comments I wanted to offer on this piece. I think the biggest part I am grappling with is section 4 "The Woke Pendulum" and the examples cited as evidence of a pendulum swinging back against Wokism (rather than, per step 4 of the opening section "4 Steps of Social (In)Justice", examples of Anti-Woke reactionaries doubling down to fight equality). I think the biggest difference between those options is a pendulum seems to imply that Wokism has gone too far and by overtreading it is inadvertently amplifying support for the Anti-Woke side; whereas if Anti-Woke sentiment is actually just reactionaries trying to double down to fight equality, then Wokism needs to step up the fight further (per step 3 in the opening section: 'People Fight Oppression').
Specifically:
1) Using Aziz Ansari as an example of #MeToo going too far. I admit that I never dug deeply into this story at the time and have not explored what may be fabricated on either end. However, the account that you linked to, if even 50% true, is nauseating. To portray repeatedly groping a woman who has verbally stated she does not want a sexual encounter as "on the grey area of standard courting practices" I find frankly appalling. It is definitely nowhere on the level of Bill Cosby rape, but something that I don't believe civilized society should ever tolerate. So I see that example as #MeToo doing its job, rather than overstepping. I look forward to your future article about false sexual harassment claims because I would like to understand the data around the scope of the issue. I am sure there are many greyer areas of #MeToo claims.
2) Under the heading "The Woke Pendulum" I thought in (1) Weaker Support for Wokism, the graphs on instances of cancel culture and publications on bias was a great example of a pendulum swing.
3) I think in (2) Scope Creep, using the expansion of LGBT is not a great example of pendulum overswing. As pointed out by other commentators, smaller forms of discrimination are unveiled as bigger forms of discrimination are reduced. LGBTQ+ is basically a catch-all for minority sexual identities-- I think it would be odd if there was like an LG society, a B society, then Ts and Qs have to make their own. I guess my point is that it seems like a very natural expansion of sexual identity recognition, not an overstep that would trigger Backlash and Intersectionality Conflict. Maybe I am misreading, in that Scope Creep is not being cited as a negative component of Wokism or a source for Backlash/Defection/Intersectionality Conflict but rather just a neutral observation of what happens on the path of growing Wokism.
4) Under (3) Backlash I am troubled by the statement "the legitimacy of the movements will be weaker, and people will fight back". I guess my question is to whom is the legitimacy decreased? Certainly not in the eyes of the Wokists. The examples cited seem to be areas that progressives would all feel quite aligned on, and conservatives would see as illegitimate. But I think 30 years ago progressives would have been quite aligned, and conservatives would have considered them illegitimate as well, so I don't think these examples imply the Woke Pendulum has changed public sentiment. E.g.:
a) Anti-immigrant sentiment is pervasive in US and Europe. I don't know any data so I can't offer any real critique here but anecdotally progressives I know largely support immigration and conservatives largely don't.
d) I don't have an opinion on the Olympic ceremony and I'm uninformed about CRT opponents.
e) Budweiser boycott -- at face value, this seems to depict that conservatives may disproportionately drink Bud Light and oppose trans rights. Again, I don't think their opposition is any stronger now than it would have been 30 years ago.
5) Under (4) Defection, I once again am not compelled by these examples as evidence of defection.
a) From that 2022 exit poll data I think it would be helpful to see a comparison to prior exit poll data to see if people are really defecting. I looked back at 2020 (https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results) and it appears that in those exit polls married men & women were predominantly Republican and unmarried men & women were predominantly Democrat. The "defectors" then are unmarried men (not married women defecting from their oppressed Women group, as this point seems to imply).
b) Fewer women identify as feminists but only white women were divided into liberal and conservative. It strikes me that liberal black and hispanic women might also still identify as feminists. Perhaps what this graph is catching is that conservative women are increasingly less likely to identify as feminist.
c) The Google Search data only implies that interest in tradwives is increasing, not support. I think a lot of people like myself are fascinated by their 2024 existence and research them out of curiosity especially after high profile articles published about them. This does not imply more women want to have traditional gender roles -- just that those who do so garner a lot of Instagram views :).
d) Re: the black thought leaders, I don't know enough to add much here, other than your reply in the comments that you didn't mention the overwhelming number of black voices in support of wokism because that seems implied. However- are more black voices really supporting Anti-Wokism, or are they just getting platformed by Fox News etc.? I don't really know - I could see either being true, but I would feel more compelled by data than a few figureheads that might not be representative of black thought leaders at large.
6) For (5) Intersectionality Conflict, this seems to be a very complex issue that I definitely agree is exacerbated by expanding Wokism. What do we do about trans or intersex athletes? No easy answers that I can see. I look forward to more data and commentary as you go forward.
In the end, I guess my take is this: There are many examples you cite that seem to be positioned as Backlash and Defection triggered by Wokism going too far. I am not compelled by these examples and I wonder if a lot of them could also be explained by ongoing Anti-Woke sentiment among conservatives who would like to covertly fight certain kinds of equality. I don't think the difference between those two possibilities is easily teased out but the answer is quite different. Do Wokists need to step back and take some letters out of LGBTQIA+ and support more traditional gender roles, or do they need to double down to call out oppression?
I hope this is helpful at least as a different way to view those examples and to maybe help you further position future examples. For instance, it might be more compelling to give more graphs of data changing over time -- e.g. are more men/women/conservatives/liberals supporting or opposing xyz over time. Thanks again for your work!
Such a fantastic comment. Thank you so much for offering your time and insights!
Trying to react point by point to make sure I don’t miss anything:
Yes I think both things can be true at the same time: reactionaries fight back (first part of the article) and they’re fueled by an overreach from wokes (hence the pendulum being too far).
1. I hear you on that point. This is a very interesting and important point. I didn’t dive into it because it was besides the point, as I believe everybody would agree it’s not illegal, which was the main point.
I have written but not published a full article on consent, informed by the series on Game Theory of Sex, and my conclusion on it is that what he did was probably not deft, but is not far off from common and useful courting practices. The key idea that should not be dismissed there is that women have an incentive to portray more chastity than they desire. I think disregarding this point can easily become virtue signaling, which makes the conversation really hard. So I will probably not go farther in that argument, but might do so if I publish that article.
2. Thanks!
3. Fair. Let me update my stance: I understand why they add more groups, but this has the risk of weakening the alliance by getting into problematic stances. For example, the gay right to marriage is a no brainer. The ability to want to change your sex is a no brainer. The ability to be safe when transgender is a no brainer. The legitimacy of wanting to be called by the gender you associate with is fair. But some other stances on transgender rights are more debatable, such as sharing changing rooms, participating in the same sports, getting male serial rapists who identify as transgender but haven’t gone through sex change into female prisons, or changing the sex of children without parental approval. The extension of LGBTQ+ means that gays who have fought for a long time for their rights end up having to defend these positions, which are harder to defend, and that might put them in a precarious situation of a social backlash.
This is not just fantasy. This is exactly what happened in Germany in the 1930s. The sexual freedom of the 1920s, from what I read, was huge, and some of the more radical practices might have fueled the Nazi backlash.
So gays could say: “OK we’re mostly done with our rights. Now we can support the rights of the transgender as a different problem to solve” and that would be good for them and to avoid scope creep. Or they could say “we’re going to defend the same rights as we got, which is to recognize our freedom.” But the examples I mention above are of a different nature, as they impinge on other’s rights (women and parents), so that’s a different type of problem. The scope creep might prevent them from even seeing the difference in nature of these problems.
Does that make sense?
And to be clear I’m not saying trans people should not have the rights mentioned above. My current opinion on the topics is not informed enough yet.
4. I think the mistake there is to assume 100% of people are one or the other. In fact, I think a much more accurate read would be to say that 10-20% of people are squarely on one side and 10-20% are on the other side. That means 60-80% are in the middle, swayed in one direction or the other based on what they see and hear. So when I say backlash, what is implied is not that the hardcore reactionaries suddenly swell, but rather that their support grows from the people in the middle, either because former moderate works defect, or unaligned people moderately support them. Is that sensible?
a. I don’t have enough data either, but I think the disagreement appears bigger than it actually is, based on incendiary rhetoric. Here are statements that I think most people would agree with in the US and Europe:
- Inmigration of highly educated and capable people is welcome
- legal immigration is welcome
- immigration of people who won’t contribute to crime, will integrate, and will contribute financially more than they will take is welcome
- immigration of criminals is not welcome
- taking some genuine asylum seekers who will not cause crime is welcome
That narrows down the issue tremendously. The rest of the issues might have very hardcore defenders on each side, but the people in the middle might not see things as clear. Should we get illegal immigrants without studies if we knew they were not going to cause crime and they would integrate and contribute financially? Harder question. Most people in the middle would say yes I reckon.
b. Fair point. I take it.
That said, most people don’t understand roe vs wade. They misinterpret as either banning abortion or withdrawing support, when it’s more specifically a “it’s not for me to judge” thing.
c. Thanks for the links! I see most research there stops in 2018. My contention is that the pendulum has been swinging back majorly since 2022, so I’d be curious about more recent data.
e. Previous boycotts didn’t work. This is the first time one worked so well AFAIK
5.a. This sounds possibly true. In that case, I’d update to say that the defection is from Dem men. I’d be curious to look at the evolution of conservative women numbers though.
B. Maybe! My prior is that women of other races have followed suite, albeit maybe less markedly.
C. Fair! If like to look at data. My prior is that we’d see it in the date, but I might be wrong.
d. Fair! Would love to see data too.
6. This is your overall point, and I think it’s very valid. I take it, and will ponder for future articles. Thank you!!
1) Similar to Laurent, this example still doesn't sit well with me. The area has seemed very black and white - no means no, yes means yes. But I will sit tight for your future article on consent, as it wouldn't be the first time I learn an additional layer of nuance through Uncharted Territories. Glad you are planning to dig into this further.
3) That makes a lot of sense! I could see people going "I'm against that whole LGBT thing" when they're actually ok with gay marriage, they're just against some component of trans rights. Not that it's okay that they oppose trans rights, but it ends up hindering gay rights in the meantime while we wait for the conservative end to catch up to accepting trans rights. Point taken!
4) That makes sense! I think that helps define the issue: are Woke stances pushing the middle more to the left or the right? Support for particular issues over time seems like a useful proxy.
a) Yes I agree most people on either side would agree with those stances. I think illegal immigration is the flash point in the US. I think this would warrant an article!
c) Yeah that makes sense that this might be an extremely recent phenomenon. The 2024 election data will probably be the next telltale data point.
e) Agreed this seems uniquely successful in the modern era. Found this quote: "Brayden King, a professor of management and organizations, gave an interview to CNBC calling the Bud Light boycott an outlier in the right's attack on "woke capitalism" because it is the first one to actually harm the company's sales. King studied 133 political boycotts from 1990 to 2005 and none of them accounted for more than a 1% drop in sales for a company; the Bud Light boycott had resulted in an estimated 18% drop in all AB InBev sales."
6) I think one point was that each individual issue gets very complex so I look forward to seeing how you work through it. My overall point has consolidated as I've noodled for the last 24 hours:
Seeing backlash and Anti-Wokism may indicate that Wokism has gone too far and is pushing moderates away. Alternatively, it may be that a lot of "moderates" were really conservative on social issues, and the more prominent the Wokist agenda becomes, the more those people are pulled out of the woodwork.
Whether the progressive agenda has gone too far is, I think, a value judgment that should be assessed on a case by case basis from first principles. It can't be judged purely by how strong the conservative backlash becomes. For instance, when the Civil Rights movement took off, centrists could have made similar claims: "These activists are pushing the Civil Rights agenda too far, the pendulum is swinging back and now there are all these anti-Civil Rights conservatives launching counterprotests." Now in hindsight we look back and see that clearly the progressive agenda was morally right and needed to forge through the backlash.
I guess my bottom line is: I don't think backlash and defection on an issue inherently signal the Wokist side has gone too far. It may be that a lot of people still have backwards ideas and the issue needs to be advanced until society catches up. Each issue needs to be taken from first principles. This seems to be your tack in general and what you recommend at the end of the article. I look forward to future articles and I just hope that increased resistance from conservatives or conservative-leaning moderates forced to finally take a side isn't taken to automatically indicate a flaw in the Wokist agenda.
(However there certainly could be flaws in the Wokist agenda! Looking forward to learning more on trans rights, affirmative action, CRT, etc)
100% agree with your last point : historically, the right has ALWAYS said ANY social justice claim was going too far. And then people were very vocal or even violent about it, and with time, society adapted, and social justice advanced.
I think it's a very narrow point of view to say that woke stances are pushing the middle to the right. Historically, it has never been the case. It just takes time, and there might be some setbacks (such as the repeal of Roe v Wade), but when you unzoom, the trend is pretty clear. And I assume that's why the right are so mad : they know they're losing long term.
I've just read other comments and stumbled upon this one and the Ansari case. I didn't know about it, but following Nolan comment, I read about the case, and honestly I'm pretty worried about 1) the way you describe it in the post, and 2) your answer to Nolan.
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"After some texting and a date, a single woman accused him of pressuring her into sex. When she declined, he accepted and she left."
This is NOT what happened. She clearly states she said no in verbal and non-verbal ways for 30 MINUTES, and he kept going. The signs she gave were pretty clear, and Ansaris behavior is 100% unacceptable.
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The fact you consider this "is not far off from common and useful courting practices" is very worrying. First, common doesn't mean ok, that's a very obvious logical fallacy.
Also, "not illegal" is up to debate (to me this 100% fits the definition of sexual assault, and even rape in some countries including France), but also, it's not the point.
It's clearly not moral.
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The fact that "women have an incentive to portray more chastity than they desire" is NOT an excuse for sexual assault. "Portraying" more chastity is not what she did. She clearly said a firm and clear no MULTIPLE times.
Portraying more chastity is flirting by being falsely coy, slowing things down a bit, teasing the other person. I've seen that in play multiple times, where I've first had a no and then an enthusiastic yes. I'm not stranger to the notion, but the appropriate reaction to a woman wanting to slow things down is to slow them down.
In Ansari's case, it was pretty simple to have "useful courting practices" without violating her consent :
- escalate but more slowly
- when she says no to immediate sex, the appropriate reaction is not to briefly give oral and ask for oral, it's to say "ok, do you want to keep kissing though ?". It would probably have been a yes btw. She just needed more time.
I do realize the necessity for men to persist, but there's persisting and there's pretending to be deaf. Slowing down when she clearly asks is not unsexy, it's just standard consent.
It shouldn't be rocket science for a 34 years old man who probably has had sex with more women than most.
The idea that Ansari's date with "Grace" (https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355) was sexual assault is absurd. It was clearly a case of miscommunication that BOTH parties were responsible for.
When a man invites a woman to his apartment after a date (or vice versa), it's essentially an invitation to have sex. Agreeing to go signals, if not consent, at the very least interest. And if within minutes of entering the apartment, both parties are voluntarily naked and performing oral sex on one another, that obviously is a (screamingly loud!) sign of consent as well.
Of course, consent can be withdrawn at any time. But when things have reached that stage, the party that is no longer consenting needs to be clear about it. Sending gentle, non verbal clues will likely not be enough. Ansari is certainly guilty of being a bad date who either didn't get the signs that Grace was giving him or intentionally pushed through them because he was hoping Grace was still interested but just wanted to take things slower.
What Grace should have done is what she eventually did: clearly say she wasn't interested in anything further that night and leave. The reason it took her 30 minutes to do so is pretty obvious. She was excited about dating a celebrity and was hoping to avoid the awkwardness that comes with cutting the night off in that way that would make Ansari feel rejected and potentially not want to date her anymore. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too; in this case, gain a celebrity boyfriend without having to sleep with him. Unfortunately, she lacked the self confidence to trust that Ansari would continue to be interested in her if she was clear she didn't want to have sex with him and the self esteem to be ok with it if he didn't.
Now there is, of course, nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has that self-confident and self-esteem. Just as there is nothing wrong with someone wanting to have sex with someone on a first date.
But when there are mismatched expectations in this way, both parties need to be clear about what they want. Ansari was very clear about what he wanted. Grace was deliberately ambiguous about what she wanted because she didn't want Ansari to stop being interested in her. And while that may make Ansari guilty of being a bad date or potential boyfriend, it definitely does not make him guilty of sexual assault.
You either can't read (because there were WAY more than "gentle non verbal clues") or you're gonna be "canceled" one day and whine about it on the internet, even though you refused to be educated on very basic consent understanding and communication skills.
Laurent: Let's review what actually happened on the date after they returned from dinner and how Grace communicated with Ansari (and note that this is an account 100% based on Grace's memory what happened, so we're getting a version of what occurred that is the most sympathetic to her perspective):
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- Immediately upon returning to his apartment Aziz began to kiss Grace, undress her, and undress himself. She goes along with it until he says he’s going to get a condom, at which point Grace says "Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill."
[Note that she doesn't say "no"; she doesn't say she's not interested, and she doesn't put her clothes back on.]
- Aziz then performs oral sex on her and asks her to do so on him. She does, although for unexplained reasons not for very long. [We’re told total time in the apartment at this point is about ten minutes.]
- Then, for the next 30 minutes, she moves to different places in the apartment, still naked, and Aziz (also still naked) follows her. He apparently keeps doing this thing where he puts his fingers in her mouth, wets them, and then fingers her. Here is how she described her response to this:
“Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points,” she said. “I stopped moving my lips and turned cold.”
[So apparently, at some points while he's doing this, she is moving her lips and hands (presumably in ways that demonstrate interest) but eventually she stops doing so. And that’s the extent of her communication. She doesn't say "stop"; she doesn't say "no" or she's not interested, and she doesn't put her clothes back on.]
- Aziz asks a number of times “where do you want me to fuck you?” She doesn’t respond at first but eventually tells him “Next time.” He says, “oh you mean on a second date; Well, if I poured you another glass of wine now, would it count as our second date?” and then pours her a second glass of wine. She goes to the bathroom.
- She returns from the bathroom, still naked, and he asks if she is ok. She replies “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you.” He responds “Oh, of course, it’s only fun if we’re both having fun.” He is sitting naked on the couch. She sits down next to him on the floor, also still naked. He sits back on the couch and points to his penis. She goes down on him again. He then pulls her up on to the couch and begins to kiss her and says “Doesn’t seem like you hate me.”
- After kissing for awhile, Aziz says she want to show her something. Still naked they walk together to a mirror. Aziz then “bends her over” [no idea what that means; over a bed?] and says ““Where do you want me to fuck you? Do you want me to fuck you right here?” while ramming his penis against her ass and pantomiming intercourse.
- She responds “No, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this.”
[At last a clear “no”!]
Aziz suggests they put on their clothes and chill. They get dressed, return to the couch, and watch Seinfeld. Eventually he kisses her again, puts his fingers in her mouth again, and tries to unbutton her pants. She says “‘You guys are all the same, you guys are all the fucking same.” Aziz asks what she mean, but when she tries to respond he kisses her forcefully.
- Grace then walks over to her phone and says she will call a car. He hugs her and kisses her goodbye. She pulls away and Aziz says he’ll call her a cab and does so. And she leaves.
End of time her time in the apartment and seeing Aziz.
—---
To describe this series of events as sexual assault I believe makes a mockery of the term. There is no doubt that Aziz was obtuse and missed the signals that Grace thought she was giving him, but there is also no doubt thatthose signals were mixed and unclear.
For the first hour they’re in the apartment, naked essentially the entire time, Grace’s only three comments indicating any hesitations or concerns were: "Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill."; “Next time”; and “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you,” while twice going down on him and never suggesting she wanted to leave or even trying to put on clothes.
And then, after she finally is clearer about the fact that she isn’t interested in doing more that night, Aziz suggests they get dressed; they do; they hang out for awhile clothed, he makes one more pass; she gets up and says she is going home, he hugs and kisses her goodbye, and she leaves.
And not once, even though the story is told through Grace’s eyes, is there ever the implication that she feared that she was physically at risk.
Grace was indirect because she feared the consequences for the relationship if she were more clear about her lack of interest in sex that night, not because she feared for her safety. And while I understand and can even empathize with the fine line she wanted to walk, I still believe that describing this as a sexual assult makes a mockery of that term and infantilizes women. It’s not too much to ask women to be much, much clearer than Grace was.
One last point Laurent. The entire relationship between Aziz and Grace was captured in this telling vignette at the very beginning of the date.
"After arriving at his apartment in Manhattan on Monday evening, they exchanged small talk and drank wine. “It was white,” she said. "I didn’t get to choose and I prefer red, but it was white wine.'"
Grace prefers red wine and is upset that Aziz doesn't ask her preference. And I would certainly grant that it would have more polite for him to have asked. But, of course, Aziz is not a mind reader and Grace could also have let him know she preferred red. That is what an adult would have done. But instead, Grace just stewed about it.
And there is the relationship in a nutshell: Aziz was a self-centered star who was not attentive to how Grace was feeling (although I thought it was interesting that she says she did most of the talking at dinner). Meanwhile, Grace was a star struck child, who expected Aziz to know what she was thinking without her telling him.
A bad match: absolutely. Sexual assault: absolutely not.
En mi opinión lo que ocurrió en el caso Ansari debería situarse en el límite entre la torpeza y el abuso, considerando “abuso”, como la acción de “hacer algo de modo excesivo o indebido”, no como una figura penal que describe un “delito” que amerita encarcelar al torpe abusador, y mucho menos con todo lo que implica privar a una persona de su libertad, quizás durante años, y sumergiéndola en un medio más parecido a un lugar de tormentos que a uno de aprendizaje y readaptación.
Personalmente, siendo naturalmente un hombre tímido frente a las mujeres, mi torpeza fue rutinariamente la contraria a la de Ansari, y ante el hecho de que las mujeres, por eso de que “poseen un incentivo para mostrarse más castas de las que en realidad son”, no suelen manifestar su deseo de una forma abierta tal como es bastante común en los hombres, ante la primer negativa yo solía dar un paso al costado y retirarme, cuando quizás con algo de insistencia, la cual, por otro lado, sería una manifestación genuina de interés, el resultado del encuentro podría haber sido otro.
Para entender lo sucedido entre Ansari y “Grace”, creo que sería útil en primer lugar, presuponer una cierta subjetividad en el relato de quien luego de aquel encuentro se asume y presenta como víctima. Si de la historia contada por Grace en https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355 hiciéramos abstracción de todas aquellas palabras que describen las sensaciones personales de Grace, y también omitiéramos los diálogos que, según Grace, ellos habrían tenido esa noche, y nos quedamos solo con los hechos, tal como si estuviéramos viendo una película sin sonido, creo que estaríamos mucho mejor posicionados para interpretar lo que sucedió realmente en ese encuentro.
Entonces, si tomamos como ciertos los hechos que surgen del relato de Grace, tenemos un primer encuentro en el que Grace se acerca a Ansari y podemos ver que inician una conversación que se convierte luego en coqueteo que incluye “intercambios de miradas”. Esta primera escena concluye con nuestros “actores” dándose los números telefónicos para seguir en contacto y volver a verse.
En la escena número dos se produce el siguiente encuentro entre Grace y Ansari. Los vemos cenando en un restaurante, toman algo de vino y rápidamente la escena se traslada a la casa de él. Apenas entrar en este tercer escenario, comienza a desarrollarse una acción de creciente contenido sexual. De los besos se pasa rápidamente a los manoseos, mientras ambos van quedando desnudos, primero ella, luego él. De los besos pasan al sexo oral, primero se lo practica él a ella, luego ella a él. El moja sus dedos en la boca de Grace antes de introducírselos en la vagina, llevando la mano de Grace hacia su miembro entre cinco y siete veces. Estuvieron jugando así durante unos 30 minutos, a veces ella se levantaba pero él la seguía y la historia se repetía. Se producen algunas pausas entre estos juegos, los podemos ver conversar, pero recordemos que no los podemos escuchar. La escena continúa en un sofá, luego frente a un gran espejo en donde Ansari la inclina y “le apreta el pene contra el culo”. Finalmente se visten, y luego de ver algo en la tv, Ansari quiere reiniciar el juego sexual, pero Grace se levanta y sale de la habitación. Él la sigue, conversan, se besan por última vez y finalmente ella se va en un uber que habían llamado antes.
Si dejamos de lado las manifestaciones de inconformidad que Grace ha expuesto en la nota de “Babe”, lo que queda es un guion típico de millones de encuentros sexuales entre hombres y mujeres comunes y corrientes.
Probablemente Ansari haya sido algo torpe, quizás Grace nunca estuvo del todo a gusto pero tampoco ella supo, si es que realmente deseaba eso, frenar la situación, muy probablemente sus sentimientos fueras más ambiguos de lo que su relato indica. Lo que no debería haber ocurrido tras estos hechos es ventilarlos como si se tratase de un delito de abuso sexual.
Me limité a tratar de exponer los hechos, basándome en el propio relato de la denunciante, del cual no surgen indicios claros de que el acusado hubiera utilizado violencia, sino quizás más bien lo contrario.
En primer lugar, ella se acerca a él. Luego, cuando comienzan los juegos sexuales, ella tiene un rol activo cuando le practica sexo oral a él. Estos juegos no duran 2 o 3 minutos, sino que, según ella, duran aproximadamente 30 minutos, media hora en la que no se describe ninguna acción de retirada o desagrado, ni mucho menos de forzamiento. Tras una pausa, en la que ambos están sentados en un sofá, conversando, se reanuda la acción, mientras ambos -según lo relatado por "Grace"- continúan estando desnudos. Recién luego entonces, se visten y ella va a otro cuarto, donde incluso se besan por última vez antes de despedirse.
Todo esto surge del relato de la propia y supuesta víctima. Entiendo que para vos esto es una agresión sexual, de modo que si de ti dependiera, el acusado debería estar preso...
No creo que existan pruebas concluyentes de lo que la denunciante manifestó a posteriori que SENTIÓ que ocurrió.
El arrepentimiento por haber tenido relaciones puede ocurrir y muchas veces ocurre, por distintas razones, lo mismo que pasar a convertirse en denunciante. No podemos conocer con certeza, a través del mero relato de la supuesta víctima, ni lo que ocurrió, ni qué motivos la llevaron a exponer el caso como una denuncia. Por lo tanto creo que tenemos que ser más moderados antes de juzgar implacablemente las acciones de otras personas. Los delitos y sus autores deben probarse, más allá de toda duda razonable.
You've been very brave in addressing such an emotionally charged topic, and I appreciate your efforts to foster meaningful dialogue. However, I'm concerned about the use of your personal experience as a basis for creating graphs, especially when there isn't solid evidence to support your claims. While it's fine to share your personal experience, it may not be necessary or particularly relevant to the broader discussion. What stands out most to me is that by making these graphs based solely on your experience, it creates a misleading impression of evidence where there isn't any. It would have been more appropriate to either choose a different topic with actual data to support your analysis or, if discussing this topic, to make it clear that the lack of data is the key point—not the graphs you've created. Thanks again for sparking this important conversation!
I think maybe what’s confusing here is that I usually abstain from topics that are more philosophical or are so contentious. Usually, science is pretty settled on what I write about. Not here. That’s why the subtitle says this is my opinion rather than the truth.
It sounds like you take issue mostly with the data on false reports of sexual harassment. Is that accurate? If so, just know that I do have data on this, I just haven’t published it yet because it’s even more fraught than this article!
I would be very interested in seeing the data you mentioned and letting it shed light on this issue. My concerns aren’t just about false reports but also about the extent of harassment that goes unreported. To truly understand this problem, it’s crucial to have data on both aspects. While I recognize that gathering accurate data on unreported harassment can be particularly challenging due to its nature, it’s essential for making a meaningful comparison and understanding the full scope of the issue. Thank you again!
Thank you! I was one of the people who wrote hoping you might take this topic on. I was hoping your very specific kind of intelligence and inside/outside perspective could be brought to bear on this territory. You were initially reluctant in the reaction to the language of woke that caused such a surprise in the response provoked by using the language. I was initially exasperated and sad that it seemed you were rejecting the idea of going to this territory. So this is a breath of fresh air that is badly needed. In order for us to talk to each other we need shared frames of reference. There can be debate within those frames but without them we will continue to talk past each other. There are more rich seams to explore in this whole arena. But if this ends up being your only foray into culture war debates it has already been refreshing and a delight to see you tackle with your customary courage and integrity. If you do more work in this area I would love to hear your take on the following other currents in Western Culture: 1. Marxism. How many of our ideas about inequality are rooted in the rise of Marxist ideology for good or for ill? 2. Christianity. Was Marxism a form of Christianity that became as complicated and compromised as the religious wars of the Reformation and the resulting cruelty and oppression of both sides? Or was it a form of secularism that divorced culture from the sacred and resulted in horrific mass murder and even worse inequality and oppression? 3. Class. The intersectionality of class seems to cut across some of the ideological divides on Left and Right. There are Leftists who think the focus on race and gender has destroyed class solidarity and resulted in a splintering of coalitions that enabled elite groups to emerge within oppressed communities, and has splintered unemployed white communities away from the narrative of oppression. There are Rightist who believe that the language of oppression is itself oppressive. Do they both rely on white male power as a default and fear the obliteration of the dominant group? 4. Imperialism and colonialism. How much does the history of ideas about what social justice means impact the way we think about the rights of people with whom The West does business? 5. The binary. How do we navigate the tendency of human thought toward creating binary opposites of good and bad ? Where does this come from? 6. Brain hemisphere theory. Is this a good way of framing the binary? Our brains are constantly sifting information between the chaotic flux of information that the Right hemisphere must process and the formalistic shapes that the Left hemisphere uses to create harmonious patterns that explain how and where to process that information? 7. Progress. Implicit in your framing is a narrative of progress in history. Is that accurate? Is that a Left brain narrative? Or a Western narrative? Are there other narratives that also have explanatory power? 8. The end of communism and the decline of Christianity. This might explore how the catastrophe of Marxist regimes brought both a realization of the dangers of binary oppressive logic, yet also allowed for the collapse of relatively functioning societies into immiseration and resulted in rising authoritarianism in Russia and the adaptation of capitalist economics in China? 9. China. Is it communist or capitalist? Or is the new authoritarian model the CCP have created a different kind of threat? Is the new China more insidious as the CCP have penetrated social media in the West and cemented power in Western finance? How did the CCP cause The China Shock which devastated the industrial heartland in the USA? 10. Mental illness. How much of the time are the narratives you discuss steered by people with Cluster B personality Disorders? When are we listening to people who have Anti Social Personality Disorder and who have hijacked social movements? Or are some forms of social organization more vulnerable to the influence and power of those people? What about other kinds of mental illness and how that may bias any of us? Are the mentally ill an oppressed minority or is the idea of mental illness itself a dangerous narrative?
I think your comment was the tipping point for me to tackle this! I apologize for the reaction: You’re right that it appeared unwelcoming, even though it did make me think.
On that note, maybe my subconscious will work in parallel on the other topics you mention. For now, I feel ill-equipped to address most of these issues, except the China one. Maybe I should write an article on it.
Understood. I also apologize for my tone. I could have expressed myself more productively. Perhaps my list here is more my areas of fascination that aren’t currently your in your beam of interest. It’s all good. I look forward to reading the next pieces. I’m a huge fan of your work and the way your mind works. You are always generating stimulating, creative and productive debate. The way you have decided to tackle this is very smart and interesting. It feels like it points us in a direction to think about how we might engage in difficult or polarized social issues in mutually beneficial ways. I wonder how much of the contentiousness of the current culture wars are to do with the way, say, Twitter/X encourages and structure the social conversation? I decided to come off that platform as the version of myself that was on there was too reductive and amygdala driven, and it compressed the actual complexity of how I experience things into a kind of sloganeering that put me on a “side” when often I feel I see many sides. Also do you know “Justice” by Michael J. Sandel? I think you might enjoy. He’s a political philosopher at Harvard who reframes the culture wars as philosophical debates. So he brings a different frame of complex thinking, and uses data and thought experiments to challenge us to recognize that many of these debates have no “right” answer-rather they invite us to engage with apparently irreconcilable conflicts in good faith. This turns unproductive purity tests and self righteous mud slinging into philosophical enquiry. Perhaps also the frame you offer here helps us see that we probably all oscillate between liberal and fundamentalist perspectives on different time scales. Many of us change our minds entirely. In other words we are not static. But do we need static frames to orient ourselves and recognize where we are situated culturally at different points of the journey of our lives? And I would love to hear your take on China. A massively important global threat which feels under theorized, and where none of the old frames of reference seem to serve us well, when deeper and clearer comprehension is required.
I think you have a similar way of perceiving reality, a similar ability to zoom out on complexities to see deeper structures at work, and a similarly empathetic but tough minded perspective on our various human foibles and delusions.
The topics are interesting, although I think the question "is diversity good" is better frame as "is the absence of diversity bad ?" (or at least it should be asked both ways)
On freedom of speech, as it's a part of a culture war series, and a war implies attacks from both sides, I do hope you're planning to talk about the numerous attacks on free speech from the right ?
I'm gonna outsource this to my past self and give you this extensive collection of examples of far right "cancel culture", that I originally made 3 years ago to debate with a friend :
I am particularly interested in #10, how personality disorders and mental illness plays a part in politics and in confusing and manipulating people, their viewpoints and their votes. Might be too thorny a topic to tackle, but if you did it would be interesting and informative.
I find this topic very interesting and would appreciate you writing more, especially on the challenges of intersectionality. It can be so complex. I have found that the MeToo movement quickly got overshadowed by many other movements but you point out many other interesting situations as well.
It might be helpful if you started from first principles: what's the basis for discrimination? I'm not an anthropologist but I'd surmise that the kernel of discrimination is identification: humans, like many species, evolved to identify with those most like and discriminate against based on the degree of unlikeness, with family being at the core, radiating out to encompass friends and neighbors, same dwelling, same tribe, same race, same species. etc. Then you need a theory of justice to determine, now that we are consciously aware of our programmed biases, when is it ok to discriminate and when is it not?
Disagreement might be rooted in (i) beliefs around the existence of such programmed biases; (ii) different notions of justice; and (iii) the extent to which the state or other societal groups should enforce our notions of justice. It's likely helpful to tease out the basis for disagreement in searching for consensus.
You might be interested in the podcast Where There’s Woke - while the hosts are strong leftists, the show provides some useful deep dives into cases that are reported in popular media as “wokeism gone too far” that are at best misleading and at worst outright lies
Could you just download them and have AI make a summary ? I don't listen to podcasts either, but today I just use AI a lot of the times to know more about long form content I don't have the time to listen to normally.
I can get a quick summary and then ask AI to dig deeper on some points.
I'm incredibly disappointed by this essay. I've come to expect better and truer essays from you and was excited to see this essay.
Wokeness incorporates different movements & political & personal actions.
But the obvious reason for many types of what's called wokeness is "disparate impact".
Why are certain groups less present in certain roles (e.g. white basketball players or women garbagemen). Overwhelmingly biology (in the largest sense) is the primary cause.
However, that fact undermines the basic anthropology of modern western societies.
So societal disparities must be the results of discrimination.
Once all discrimination has been removed & the disparities still exist, what do you do?
Keep your anthropology & find more discrimination.
So now you have implicit bias, or racist jokes, or objective standards are the discrimination causing disparities.
It's an endless race that will always find new sources of discrimination because of a fundamental rejection of reality.
The field of research that contradicts the simplistic biological determinism you’re suggesting includes sociology, psychology, and intersectional studies, among others. These disciplines have produced a wealth of rigorous studies that demonstrate how social, environmental, and structural factors contribute to disparities observed in society, often independent of biological differences.
Sociology: Research in this field has shown that societal structures and institutional biases significantly influence outcomes for different groups. One classic study is William Julius Wilson's work on the structural causes of urban poverty, which highlights how economic shifts, social policies, and residential segregation create disparities.
Psychology: The concept of implicit bias is supported by a large body of psychological research, including studies by Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, who developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure the unconscious biases that can affect decisions in ways people might not be aware of.
Intersectionality: Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality explores how overlapping identities (race, gender, class) interact to create unique modes of discrimination and privilege. This field illustrates that disparities often arise from complex interactions of social categories rather than simple biological differences.
Labor Economics: Research by Claudia Goldin and others in labor economics has shown how gender disparities in the workplace, for example, are not solely due to biological differences but are also significantly shaped by discrimination, social expectations, and policy frameworks.
Education Research: Studies on educational disparities, such as those by Sean Reardon, have demonstrated how race, socioeconomic status, and school funding inequalities contribute to achievement gaps, countering the idea that biology is the primary determinant of academic success.
I deeply admire your intelligence and your willingness to take on hard issues. I can tell by your willingness to take input and your genuine willingness to learn that your intentions are very positive. You have a unique intelligence and the way you go about your research and writing is always valuable. I’m interested in learning about the things that you think are important, even if they may spark controversy. So I would like to see more on this topic, if you’re up for writing more.
Tomas, I admire your courage in walking into the lion's den. My sense is that the term "wokism" arose on the right as a derogatory description for efforts by progressives to advocate for maginialized groups like trans, and in response to the me too movement. Wokism is now used by the right as a blunt hammer to dismiss any effort to speak on behalf of any discrimnated group, whether it be immigrants or redheads. As you say, there has always been discrimination against some "out" group over human history and the right's woke meme is just the latest form. As a biologist I'd speculate that this impulse arose from the social nature of human culture. It is likely that early hominids lived in extended kin groups which conferred an advantage in raising infants who are helpless for years and in gathering enough food. A sense of belonging to a group, which differentiates your kin group (good!) from other non-related competing groups (bad!) may be the basis for discrimination. If there is any validity to this speculation, then humans may always view societies in terms of those in and outside your group. As humans came together in large numbers at close quarters with the development of agriculture and defended cities, there must have been a continual tension between the kin group impulse and trying to integrate into a much larger group which may include individuals who look, speak, and believe differently. From this perspective discrimination isn't surprising and only the targeted out group changes. For much of American history Blacks have been viewed as different, as have immigrants at different times. As other groups have become more visible and vocal in demanding rights, like women, gays, lesbians, and trans, they become the target of the deeply seated impulse to discriminate between in and out groups. This is a long winded way of saying that "wokism" is nothing new and therefore perhaps not worth your detailed analysis. I will caveat the above by saying that I'm a biologist, not an anthropologist or sociologist, and much to most of what I said may be fatuous.
Woke is very much not a right-wing thing. It has a very long tradition in the Black rights movement. The fact that the right uses sarcastically doesn’t make it negative. I chose to use it very much because everybody knows what it refers to, and both sides broadly agree on it, even if one side sees it positively and the other negatively.
I think your biological explanation is probably valid!
Rich and fair analysis. The author may wish to consider two further points: i) ‘wokism’ is apparently confined to Western or westernised societies, resulting in an increase distance between such societies and the rest of the world, eg as measured by value surveys; ii) (more speculative) wokism
seems to be part of a wider trend that is also behind societies’ inability to reproduce themselves, as measured by (well) below replacement fertility rates.
By contrast value surveys tend to show an increasing differentiation between the West and the rest. Therefore I would actually suggest that drivers of the collapse in fertility go well beyond cultural influences subsumed under ‘wokism’.
Thank you for taking a swing at this topic. Either you are very brave, or haven’t been badly bitten. I appreciate your neutrality (always do), but this is also where the line between awareness and advocacy becomes a chasm.
As an executive in a mid-sized company around the time of the George Floyd event, I felt I was in a unique position to facilitate an open conversation about DEI. Having been in a long relationship with a black woman and considering many of my close friends were LGBTQ+, and my role as a design leader, steeped in empathy and curiosity, I thought I’d be seen as an advocate. I quickly learned that my race (white), gender (male), orientation (straight/CIS), and role (VP), made me the symbol of inequality and a target to educate.
The reality is that I was naive and unaware of my unconscious biases. I hadn’t actively fought for DEI before that moment, and everyone in the room knew it. Being a “friend” is different than being an advocate. And my position amongst an all white, mostly male exec team was the product of countless opportunities stemming from my good fortune at birth.
While my “awakening” to my own role in this complex topic brought new levels of awareness, the true value came with advocacy and action. And it was through that work that a clearer picture of inequality emerged. One reason this issue is so fraught and polarizing, is because for most, it lives in the realm of the unconscious.
I agree.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I think it’s valuable for others. It certainly is for me.
Did you ever think that people's experience is varied and maybe not totally determined by their race? There are black people with privilege and white people with very little. Each person's experience is their own and DEI's narrative that it is pre-determined by the color of that person's skin is evil. How do you know whether some white person wasn't sexually abused as a child? How do you know if some black employee is actually from a two parent home with strong values? If you actually think about what intersectionality means in the end is that each person is an individual made up of experiences unique only to them. DEI is the antithesis of that.
I haven't seen anyone on the "woke" side of this discussion who would argue that race is the only determinant. They simply say that it is a major factor and a much greater one than most people realize. The question isn't about whether people face challenges unrelated to race (they clearly do) but rather how much does race contribute to the experiences of people regardless of the other challenges they face.
Of course you could have a Black employee from a two-parent home with strong values or a white employee who grew up in poverty with abusive parents. But we can't ignore the fact that, no matter the background, the experience of MOST Black people is going to be more challenging than the experience of MOST white people due solely to the color of their skin. This has been borne out in literally hundreds of studies, including ones where people with Black-sounding names are less likely to be brought in for an interview, even when their resume is identical to a person with a white-sounding name.
Despite major improvements over the last few decades, the evidence for racial bias (overt and unconscious) is overwhelming and undeniable. We just have to determine what to do about it. Do we ignore it and pretend that it’s not a big deal or do we address it and risk overcorrecting and exacerbating the problem? I have hope that we can find a middle ground where we persuade people on the Right to stop denying that racism is real and people on the Left to resist the urge to overcorrect and treat all white people as racist. I believe my optimism is justified because most people on the Right don’t deny that racism is real and most people on the Left don’t think all white people are racist. We just treat each other as if these conclusions are true.
I would challenge you to consider that proclamations like: “DEI's narrative that (each person’s experience) is pre-determined by the color of that person's skin is evil” don’t help bridge the gap in understanding between the perspectives. It’s the same for people on the Left who say things like “White people are inherently racist.” While you could certainly attempt to defend both of these statements, they only serve to divide by categorizing the “other side” as extreme and intractable. In reality, there are far more “soft wokists” and “unracist anti-wokists” than either side realizes. I would argue that they’re the vast majority.
It doesn’t help to assume that everyone who disagrees with you holds the most extreme position possible. There are as many perspectives and opinions as there are people—there are no monolithic ideologies. Acknowledging this is the first step in finding a workable compromise where we address empirical inequities without swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction.
Indeed. Nobody is actually pretending race is the only factor. This is a VERY uninformed take Dave. The very idea of intersectionality is that, and let me tell you, it has NOT been introduced by the right ^^
I understand where you’re coming from but you must understand on the most basic levels, humans identify by the simplest means. I.e. discriminate by the simplest, tangible things. So skin colour and sex are pretty high up that ladder. Wealth is much less identifiable.
This is why rich people/politicians can rinse/repeat the most basic of tricks, getting one type of poor people to fight against another type of poor people. So get poor white to fight poor blacks to fight poor hispanics. Oldest trick in the book.
As Bismark said ‘Those who keep, can’
look, he said "I was naive and unaware of my unconscious biases", a very typical kind of statement from a white executive--uncritically buying into "unconscious bias", which is nebulous as hell if you actually look into it--why? Well, there are 2 main possibilities: 1) either he and all the other white executives just happened on the Truth, or 2) for *some reason* (HMM WHAT COULD IT BE) executives (outside of the singular personality Elon Musk) who *do not* subscribe and kowtow *are not represented* in board rooms any more... makes you think.
Honestly, this is disappointing. I'm used to read reasoning from first principles here, which implies getting your facts rights, but this is all over the place.
1) "When so many people disagree so vehemently for so long, it means they’re both right in some ways."
I'm honestly surprised I even have to explain why that's clearly a false assumption. This sounds like a caricature of the centrist dogma of "truth is somewhere in the middle".
So let me give you numerous examples :
- Some people still think the Earth is flat more than 2000 years after it's been proven to be spherical. But okay, let's say this is a fringe belief, and let's see some common ones.
- Some people still deny climate change is real even though scientists started to talk about it in the 80s
- As you said yourself in previous content, the anti-vaccine movement is as old as vaccines.
- Slavery took about 100 years to be abolished after the abolitionist movement started
- The health risks of tobacco were known in the 50s, but was denied till the 90s
- Women's right to vote took somewhere around 70 years
Do I continue ? Disagreement doesn't mean one side is right.
2) "Many types of discrimination still exist, some of which are not even registered as oppressive. Examples include people who are fat, disabled, short, less intelligent, or uglier than others."
Not even registered as oppressive, are you serious ? To me, this alone tells me you didn't take the time to hear any progressive argument in the last 10 years at least.
Literally ALL social progressives I know are aware all these discriminations are oppressive (maybe to the exception of being less intelligent, probably because this one has a lot of consequences even in a vaccum). Like this is social progress 101.
3) Then there's the very simplistic explanation copy pasted from Tim Urban.
He took YEARS to write a book on the culture war, managing to make it... 80% made of a critic of the left. It took me only a few hours of research to disprove most of what he states as facts, that honestly I stopped respecting him altogether. How can you spend so much time and just not fact check ?
The only reason is to be politically biased, and starting from an opinion and then ignoring facts. Which is fine, as long as you don't pretend to be neutral.
This is reflected in the schematics you've inserted in your post. You take them as face value, and I honestly can't understand why (maybe just respecting Tim you didn't reflect on it ?).
"there are two types of social justice" : sounds like a bit of a simplistic opinion with no nuance, which is surprising. But after all, I understand the need to simplify. What's most troubling is calling them liberal vs fundamentalist : it's very obviously painting one side as unreasonable, which frees you to actually listen to the argument.
And then you proceed to do so : let's just label the whole thing "one that tries to reverse discrimination and squashes dissent and cancels people to achieve it". This is like a copy-paste of far-right propaganda.
(also, it's well documented the right actually cancels way more than the left. I've documented that while arguing with a friend after reading Tim's book : https://apprendrelaphoto.notion.site/Cancel-culture-d-extr-me-droite-b94f092d748c41158e29a59e999f2e8a?pvs=4)
It's also amazing to me you don't realize that the definition of "social justice fundamentalism" is literally the same as the definition of "liberal social justice".
"certain illiberal systems and norms" is a very vague definition from a time where it had not been studied well yet. "politics, economics, culture, institutions, language, morality, science" ARE these systems and norms.
Another thing that's obvious to me is this schematic shows on the left side something that's evolving with society and its understanding, and on the right side something that stayed the same since 1965. Do you think in ANY science, and even ANY part of how we understand the world, it's better to stay at the level we were in 1965 ?
It goes against everything you've written before.
4) "The same judge who told me that the vast majority of women who suffer from sexual harassment don’t sue also told me in an informal conversation that about 60% of accusations against men for sexual harassment are probably false. Of course, this is one person’s subjective perspective communicated in an informal conversation, so I wouldn’t take the number at face value. Rather, my take is that the number of false accusations is probably substantial."
Seriously ? One person makes up a number, and then you also make up "false accusations are probably substantial" ?
Why didn't you take just 30 seconds to research data before just stating something wrong ?
I mean, it's easy : https://consensus.app/results/?q=What%27s%20the%20number%20of%20sexual%20assaults%20false%20accusations%20%3F&synthesize=on&copilot=on
5) And then, we have the usual "I'm a centrist but I'm curiously only critiquing the left" stance, which is basically : "the real reason for conservatives to fight against social justice is because the left went too far".
Of course the right pushes back, but they push back anyway, because guess what : they're reactionaries ! They will always push back. They don't push back because "the woke pendulum went too far". They push back because of their values.
Wokism is just a buzzword they instrumentalize to discredit the notion of empathy, exactly like they did with "political correctness" before that, and also "special interests", "bleeding heart liberal", "radical", "multiculturalism", "commie", "unamerican", ...
The right-wing rhetoric to frame progressive movements as threats to traditional values or education, to portray social justice advocates as overly sensitive or irrational, to claim that efforts for inclusivity actually suppress free speech or diversity of thought, and to using terms like "political correctness" or "wokism" to create a perceived divide between "ordinary people" and a "liberal elite" are as old as politics.
This is absolutely not new, and for some reason you're 100% falling for it, as did Tim Urban.
I'm appalled that such intelligent people can fall for something so obvious honestly.
Are there people on the left with no subtlety at all who will cancel anyone for anything ? Yes, because guess what : there are stupid people with no nuance everywhere ! Some people make it part of their identity, and then they stop thinking. Most people for most things actually.
It's not representative of the whole movement, nor the actual policies put in place, nor the actual reality of remaining discriminations.
Why focus on that ? Why not focus on the MANY ways right-wingers have appallingly stupid opinions ? This is a side where just "having a mostly female cast in a movie" is "too woke".
6) The whole "scope creep" thing is also a huge misunderstanding of the left. OF COURSE the scopes widens, when people realize other discriminations they weren't aware of. As you said yourself, there are several waves of feminism, and probably more to come. That's how progress work : the bigger and most painful issues first, and then people focus on the next one. THAT'S THE POINT.
The idea of progress is that it never ends.
7) "When inequality is harder to spot, or is more difficult to link back to discrimination, or when inverse discrimination appears, the legitimacy of the movements will be weaker, and people will fight back."
First : is the inverse discrimination in the room with us ?
Second : the Supreme Court is not the people. The people are actually largely in favor of Roe v Wade (65% of them). Why not do that quick google search ? There's no excuse for that.
8) Which baffles me is I actually 100% agree with your conclusion of asking more precise questions. I guess it's your go-to way to do things for any issue (and it's a good go-to), but considering everything you're stating before, I'm afraid of what's next honestly. I have rarely read such a badly researched post from you.
And even if I'm getting heated, I only write all this because I respect your work. I wouldn't take the time otherwise. I've read way worse, and generally I just close and never read the same author again.
But how can I trust that you will not "reach conclusions and then look to the data to support their positions" ? Because that's for sure how it looks like here.
Thanks Laurent! Reacting point by point:
1. I think you misunderstood the sentence. Many of your examples (flat-earthers) are not many people. Also, some truths on both sides doesn’t mean the truth is in the middle. It means literally what it says, and doesn’t try to say that one side is more right than the other. It just means you need to analyze both sides to understand precisely what they got right or wrong, rather than in generalities.
2. “Registered” was the wrong word. A more apt word would be emphasized. The idea is that some types of oppression receive much more attention than others. That’s what a benevolent interpretation of the sentence would suggest, I reckon. Your misinterpretation makes me think you might be ideologically disinclined to my stance, and that makes you less receptive than you should be given my intentions. Two examples of that are height and beauty, two examples of discrimination that, while acknowledged, are barely fought in comparison with others like sex and ethnicity.
3. I quoted Tim Urban’s tweet, not his book. If you took a few seconds you could have fact-checked that.
As you can see, this type of comment is not fruitful. I am happy to be corrected for many reasons. One is because of intellectual humility. Another is because I’m pretty open about the fact that I make mistakes, which are impossible to avoid given the range of topics I cover and the volume of content I publish with no writing or research help.
Now onto the gist of your point:
I have lots of respect for Tim for what he has done over the years. One of the takeaways from reading him is that he leans left. And that’s my reading of why he criticizes the left: it comes from a place of criticizing those you belong to and love. One of the best illustrations of this dynamic is how, a very long time ago, he wrote an article explaining why the right had gone crazy and disenfranchised most people in the U.S. I interpret his book as doing the same.
You are equating liberal social justice with fundamentalist social justice. That makes me think you might dislike the label because you feel identified with it. So maybe let’s talk about a specific instance that might illustrate this
I’ve heard from many social justice warriors that math comes from White supremacy. I attribute this to fundamentalists. Do you deny that this type of claim exists, or do you believe it’s liberal to say so?
I was clear to say liberals constrain oppression to LAWS and CULTURE. I believe math is not culture.
This type of debates are not science. They’re more culture or philosophy. As such it’s sensible to keep the principles quite stable.
The point of showing the history on the left is not to say “evolution is bad” but rather “fundamentalist social justice comes the same tradition family as Marxism” which I think is insightful.
4. I’m glad you bring this up, because I happen to know a lot about this, on an article I’ve written but unpublished, maybe keeping it for Unspeakable Territories.
The number quotes in that link corresponds to the share of accusations *proven to be false*. Then depending on the country, about 10% of accusations are *proven to be true* (and by that I mean in each case a tribunal’s verdict says it so). The vast majority of accusations are inconclusive. Some estimations must be made, which will be imperfect. For me, using the judge was a shorthand to simplify all this complexity.
So you are wrong.
More importantly, notice how you criticize exactly the mistake you made: you accuse of not fact-checking, and then share a link that you didn’t fact-check.
The point is not that I’m getting back at you. The point is that this is hard, and the only way to move forward is when debate is not hostile and assumes good intent on the other side. Don’t say “You’re dumb, here is the TRUTH”, but rather “hey did you consider this?” I’ll will get you further in life, and certainly further here.
5. Maybe I’m projecting on Tim because it’s what I felt. I have never identified with a party. The only party I ever joined was a centrist one. During the Clinton and Obama eras, I supported Dems because I felt Republicans went too far. I abhor Trump. I think he’s a dumb dictator wannabe. I have little respect for his administration, Breitbart, Fox, Tucker Carlson, etc. I was very vocal against his anti-COVID rhetoric. I wrote a full article against the Republican direction back then. As you know, I also think climate change is real and we must stop injecting CO2 in the atmosphere.
I also think Dems veered left way too aggressively in the last 8 years (the pendulum went too far). I think CNN and The New York Times are now a joke too. I think there are eco-communists on the left. I am pro-capitalism and against communism, for reasons I outlined in an article.
So I think I’m pretty balanced. The fact that you think I am not makes me think you might be biased leftwards.
6. It’s good that progress never ends!
But we must also recognize that early on there’s low-hanging fruit, which makes progress a no-brainer. The more progress, the less low-hanging fruit, the more likely there are mistakes, and so the more careful and less vehement the movement should be. Which is exactly the opposite of what happens. The defense of trans in female changing rooms is a good example. It looks to me like an awfully hard question, but if you are to hear fundamentalist justice representatives, it’s a no brainer. It’s not.
So yeah, we should have less vehemence and more carefulness—something that this exchange illustrates perfectly.
7. Affirmative action is reverse discrimination.
I understand why it exists, and I empathize with its goals. I even agree with some of its methods, like scholarships for underserved communities. But I don’t agree with others, like what the FAA did. That is reverse discrimination and doesn’t serve society.
I did not say I agreed with overturning Roe vs Wade. Where did I say so? If I did, please point that out to me. If I didn’t, consider this as another instance of your bias.
For the record I’m in favor of the state not deciding about abortion. It should be the choice of individuals.
Which, by the way, is not incompatible with the overturning of Roe vs Wade. That literally said “the federal government has no say in that matter.” I also like the European stance where abortion legal though. But this is also an awfully complex issue, because when does life start? I don’t know.
8. I honestly don’t take any of what you say the wrong way. I do appreciate the debate, and I feel like these heated exchanges are the precursor of more productive debate.
If you feel that any of the points I raised in this comment is valid, then I’ll take that as a win. I’m sincerely hoping you can continue criticizing my work, and I take comments like yours as a privilege, even if I don’t agree with them.
So THANK YOU!
6. I do agree some issues are not easy. But you gotta recognize they're mostly instrumentalized by the right to challenge trans rights as a whole.
The republican party's stance is not "we're pro trans rights but we draw the line at changing rooms". Of course not. They're just using this mind virus as a way to convince the average american who doesn't know much and doesn't have much of an opinion this that "this is going too far". As you said at the end of your post, this is the kind of issue where we must look at the data.
Spoiler alert : when we look at the data, there's no indication it particularly happens, and in fact trans people are more likely to be VICTIMS of sexual assault than cis people. Shocker, the right would be using this question as a trojan horse for bigotry ?
It's not like it's the first time they did that.
They framed desegregation in schools as a threat to security, they framed gay marriage as a threat to the traditional family and parental rights, they frame the right to vote for women as a threat to their roles as housewives...
This is a well-known strategy of the right.
To be clear, I'm not saying you are right-wing. I'm saying you're getting targeted by the right's rhetoric to convert centrists as allies (or at least not enemies). They've been doing that for a long time. They NEED centrists to at least not oppose them, by definition. They're not gonna get the woke vote.
So they do large opinion campaigns to infect minds.
I've seen that exact same process happen over and over again. This is textbook "let's convert a centrist".
And I think the reason part of the left is saying it's a no brainer, it's because 1) facts are on their side, and 2) they perfectly know it's just a trojan horse.
7. I'd have to check exactly what this specific example of affirmative action is, and what's the problem with it. Let's say it sometimes happen : do you think it's as big a problem as systemic oppression ?
I never said you agreed with overturning Roe v Wade. I never would have thought that honestly, you're obviously not right wing.
You said "the legitimacy of the movements will be weaker, and people will fight back. For example :", and just afterwards you list several things, including the overturning of Roe v Wade, and another Supreme Court example.
I'm just underlining those examples are not relevant, as the Supreme Court is clearly NOT following the people's opinion. They're basically Trump's horcruxes.
I do agree the precise date when abortion should be illegal is subject to debate, but honestly that's been solved everywhere. People basically settled on "the foetus is not viable outside the womb so it's ok". Conveniently, this is also a delay that allows for the woman to have time to decide, inform herself, and make an appointment (providing Planned Parenthood is not defunded by a bigot obv).
8. To conclude, I'd like to clarify something : I'm not accusing you of portraying you as being right-wing, a bigot, or anything like that. I just wouldn't read you in that case.
I apologize if that wasn't clear.
I'm getting heated because I'm seeing the same thing happen again. I've seen it with friends, I've seen it with Tim Urban, and I've seen it with many true centrists I was following.
What I'm seeing someone obviously intelligent, with a pragmatic and open-minded view of the world, who generally think opinions should be based on evidence as much as possible, and who clearly demonstrated in the past he was entirely capable of taking a topic he knew NOTHING about, and the world didn't know much about, and be pretty accurate in predicting what was gonna happen and what we should do (aka : COVID).
Science is the only thing somewhat able to predict the future. You did science.
But as I said before, the right (which has now basically completely turned into the far right in the US) is using tactics they used before to infect the centrist mind. They're using our liberal values against us. They're blowing a lot of things out of proportion to make us think "oh, this is indeed problematic". And after a few years, we start to believe "the left went too far".
But I just don't think it stands to scrutiny.
And I'm disappointed because I've seen many centrists fall into this trap, and for some reasons, they don't seem to use evidence-based reasoning as much in that case.
I'm still not entirely sure why. They were all white men, which I think must play some role. But I'm a white man too. But also I was very educated by a friend who wrote brilliant post about social justice topics, especially racism. That might have saved me from being scammed.
So basically my long and heated comment is this : I'm yelling "what are you doing ? You're being scammed ! They're lying to you and you forgot to fact check ! You're repeating their arguments verbatim without even realizing it !"
And honestly, I know this is difficult to hear. I did that a bit, and it was hard to admit I was wrong. Mainly because I encountered the very vocal and not very subtle stupid left, and I was like "they're just crazy and will call anyone a fascist". But that doesn't mean this is the general stance of the left. I don't think we should define any political movement by their most stupid supporters.
As much as I like to make fun of people shooting a shotgun at hurricanes, I realize most Trump supporters are not THAT dumb.
I think what's important is to watch the policies actually put in place. Who's harming society the most ? What's the real danger ?
I think this is THE topic where it's the most important to look at facts. Cause it's very easily to be misaligned.
And my concern here is you didn't do it enough. Is it hard ? Yes. Can you make mistakes ? Also yes.
But I don't see one anecdotal mistake here. I see a general opinion of the left that's largely based on what the right has slowly infused in the political discourse since Trump. I don't think it's realistic.
You accused me of bias quite a lot, and I understand because this was written in a pretty angry tone. Because I'm angry. But not at you. I'm angry at the right for using our liberal opinions against us. And I'm angry when it works.
Politically, we're actually very close. So I encourage you not to see this as a biased discourse, but on the contrary as something aimed to shake you up and challenge some of yours. If you pretend you ignore EVERYTHING about the culture war, and search for facts, what would your opinion be ?
I have not a lot of sympathy for the right’s overall stance on trans, or LGBTQ in general over history. Gay marriage was a no-brainer for me since childhood. Being able to not make wedding cakes for discriminatory reasons seems gross to me.
But all the examples that the right has been fighting on trans rights lately seem of a different nature to me. Changing rooms, sports, and child transition to name a few sound like the main ones they push back against, and that sounds like a reasonable stance to take given how hard the debates are. Personally, I wouldn’t say: “they have a track record of being bad people therefore I don’t listen to anything they say.” Rather, I try to take every debate separately, and consider their arguments based on what they say, not who said them.
The one data point I have and trust suggests trans women who were biological men before have the same level of sexual harassment against females as straight cis men. I welcome other data points.
I agree that the data on their likelihood of suffering from sexual harassment themselves is also relevant.
I am not sure I feel comfortable with the argument that fetus viability determines the beginning of life, because then it’s a matter of technology. What will happen when we get artificial wombs: Will you then agree with the right that life starts at conception?
Thank you for the clarification at the end. Your exasperation makes sense to me now.
I guess then my reaction is: I will take all facts in. If I’m wrong, I want to know! And right now I feel especially not identified with either side of the political spectrum, so I think I’ll take in these facts in a way that is as unbiased as possible!
For fetus viability : I do agree that the future may change this, but I think for now this criteria works pretty well. We're even usually more conservative than the actual viability (delay in France in 14 weeks).
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As for trans rights, I agree some questions are legitimate, but I do think it's useful to know who asks them, for two reasons :
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- Knowing they have a larger agenda and history of discrimination questions their honesty not only in the data they present (if they even bother to do that), but also in the way they frame the questions.
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- The mere fact of talking about these questions further their agenda. Should we not talk about them just because of that ? No, but we have to be wary of what it creates. I think a good way of doing that is not only to be evidence-based (of course), but also to balance that with other trans rights questions where their stances are just unreasonable, and to put them into context.
My worry is that someone reading about it and not being very knowledgeable on the topic might fixate on specific issues (purposefully put forward by the right as an ideological trojan horse) and forget about all the other more simple questions.
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For example, the right is straight up prohibiting discussing the topic in school, they have a weird fixation on drag shows (and conflating that with trans rights because they don't know what they're talking about), and should we talk about the recent misgendering and harrasment of Imane Khelif ?
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And even when they're talking about topics where we should indeed look at the evidence, they're routinely dishonest about the topic.
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1. Changing rooms :
If they were really honest about minimizing harm, they wouldn't be supporting policies to exclude trans women from women's rooms. Because we have two choices :
- Trans women in men's bathroom : very likely to lead to more sexual assault of trans women
- Trans women in women's bathroom : would you care to share your data point ? I couldn't find it. Although if there's only one data point (when there's many reporting higher rate of sexual assault against trans women), I think the most reasonable stance in absence of more data is to support trans women in women's rooms.
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There could be the solution of a third room, but that's probably not realistic, and also feels segregatory, as it would out trans people. Also I've never seen the right defend that. Probably because they don't really care about people's safety from sexual assault. They just weaponize that to exclude trans people. Otherwise they would talk about trans women being assaulted.
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2. Sports :
This is a more complicated issue I agree. I don't have an opinion on this as I don't know how much it influences the result, depending on the sport, the precise process of transition, etc.
I haven't looked at the data yet. Do you have date showing it's a very common issue ?
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Because it doesn't feel like there are a ton of trans women suddenly taking over women's sports. As far as I know there has been no case of a trans woman getting an olympic medal this year (despite the right losing their shit about Imane Khelif).
And Hergie Bacyadan is a trans man but competed with women in the Olympics (because he didn't undergo any gender affirming care if I understand well), and didn't win a medal anyway.
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I'm only focusing on the Olympics (but after all they're supposed to be the best of the best), but it doesn't look like it's a huge problem.
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Is it a question ? Yes.
Is the right suddenly really interested in women's sports to further their anti-trans agenda ? Evidently.
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3. Child transition
Generally the right uses a pretend will to protect children to further their agenda, but I don't think it stands to scrutiny.
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The right presents gender affirming care in the younger population as "they're mutilating children", but in reality :
- genital surgery is never performed before age 18
- hormone therapy is rarely started before at least late adolescence, and after extensive evaluation (and is partially reversible)
- puberty blockers might be prescribed, which is good because they're reversible
- social transition may also happen, which is reversible too
(https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-08/gender-affirming-care-young-people.pdf)
- it's far from being distributed left and right. Reality is : it's very difficult to access for people who need it. We need more, not less !
https://consensus.app/papers/adolescent-caregiver-perspectives-receiving-sequeria/25ac62f6ffd65e1facf0d3236c46f5e3/?q=gender+affirming+care+children&synthesize=on&copilot=on
https://consensus.app/papers/difficult-find-stressful-navigate-parents-experiences-kidd/22b1217b76a25e6ab55d3d8b99e2412b/?q=gender+affirming+care+children&synthesize=on&copilot=on
Same in the UK : https://consensus.app/papers/like-came-back-experiences-trans-people-families-seeking-carlile/c4c7eb6d9e8d5090ae4f4248a28fe404/?q=gender+affirming+care+children&synthesize=on&copilot=on
So why not wait longer ? Because this is harmful. Not only trans children have a bigger rate of suicide, suicide ideation, self harm, depression, but these rates grow with age (https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/146/4/e20193600/79683/Mental-Health-and-Timing-of-Gender-Affirming-Care). Early intervention is better.
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Plus I think you agree we should listen to professionnals on medical issues. And the consensus seems to be gender-affirming care is overwhelmingly a good thing, even in kids :
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/153/1/e2023064292/196236/Prohibition-of-Gender-Affirming-Care-as-a-Form-of
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So my stance on this is pretty simple (and as you can see largely supported by data) : the reality is way milder than the right pretends, and I trust mental health professionnals more than very very biased politicians to make individual decisions on kids health.
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Also, there's a very important data point to me.
As stated by Pr. Robert Sapolsky in a lecture (relevant clip here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ, full lecture there : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOY3QH_jOtE), it appears there's a biological origin to transidentity (which doesn't surprise me at all, as there seems to be biological markers to sexual preference too).
I believe the study he refers to is this one : https://www.nature.com/articles/378068a0
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Basically : biological men and women have visible differences in the brain, and one of them is the size of a region call the "bed nucleus of the stria terminalis". It's bigger in male than females. Study shows that trans people have a region the size of their perceived gender (even without undergoing hormone therapy, so it's not a consequence but a cause, or at least correlated to a cause).
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To me that's a very important piece of information. The right focuses a lot on saying trans kids are just influenced by the media, and are basically denying the reality of transidentity, but the science shows there's a biological origin to it. So to me, considering the data we have, the most obvious conclusion conclusion is trans people, including kids, should receive gender-affirming care adapted to their age and mental health, under the supervision of trained professionnals.
That's NOT what the right are supporting. They're not "asking questions", they're straight up forbidding it. They're basically killing children by doing that, as we've seen before.
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So to summarize : every time I dig into these supposed issues, I find that it's either anecdotal, or that the scientific consensus is pretty clear, and (surprise surprise) not agreeing with the right.
And it's very obvious to me the right is hijacking the public debate with these supposed "reasonable stances" that are mostly baseless, because they know they sound reasonable at first glance.
I find myself in complete agreement with everything you wrote. That worries me a bit (because I like to think of myself as moderate even though I have clearly become left-leaning) but also gives me comfort. Thank you for taking the time to provide such clear arguments. I thought you might like to know that someone read and appreciated them.
Thanks, it does feel good that someone beside Tomas read my lengthy comments ^^
I have learned to stop putting a label on my political leaning. The overton window widened so much in the past few years that nothing makes sense anymore. Also it varies wildly depending on countries and issues.
I use to think myself as a moderate too, but the center has disappointed a lot. I'm french, and Macron was supposed to be exactly aligned with my politics, until he took a sharp turn right 2 years into his first mandate. I do think a lot of politicians pretending to be in the center are just traditional right (aka not complete lunatics). They had to relabel because the right parties became more and more conservative, but they're still rightwing.
For individuals it's different, but I have to agree with people to the left of me when they say centrists are generally just right-wing, because in many cases, I think authentic centrists are scammed by the right and then start to lean right (or maybe they were already leaning right). I've seen that happen many times, and I'm glad I escaped from it. That's also why I'm so vocal about it.
I don't think my political stance is represented by a party at all, so I generally define myself by my stance on some precise points. And if it's time to vote, any form of support to discriminations is a deal breaker for me, as it's a core value of mine. So I end up voting for the left, even though they sometimes say stupid shit (but anyway all politicians say stupid shit).
I think there's also a fundamental difference between the left and the right :
- the right, by definition, wants to keep things as they are (conservatives) or even go back to what they were (reactionaries). There are not many ways to do that, so they agree on most things.
- the left, on the contrary, want to change things. And there are infinite ways of changing things. Having only two significant parties in the US kinda masks that, but in most of the western world at least, there are many left parties, with different stances on different things, and different priorities. In the US I think they mostly constitute different camps within the Dems.
But they do form strong alliances when needed, as we've recently seen in the french elections (the left alliance ended up first in the elections, even though they're far from having the majority).
In any case, leaning left doesn't mean you have to agree with everything. I do agree with basically everything the left says about systemic oppression, but I also think communism is stupid, and I think the government should be strong in certain areas and even some public services should be state-owned, while also thinking the state should generally be weaker and less prone to make laws for absolutely every tiny detail of everything.
The problem with the label "moderate" is people often think it means "being kind in the middle about everything", when for me it means most "I agree with the people some call ultra woke on some issues, and I agree with the center right on others". That's why I can't identify with it any more. I'm half "fuck nazis" and half "capitalism is mostly good", that doesn't make me politically friendly to many people xD
What an interesting thread that developed from your patient and thoughtful response to Laurent! As I was reading his first comment I was dismissing him as a condescending ahole looking for a fight at best, but your more nuanced reply resulted in a well reasoned exchange. Impressive. Now I must subscribe, as I’ve wanted to for a long time, but have to justify every new expense with my accountant-wife.
Glad you like the final result ! A few things though :
- The well reasoned exchange stemmed from the combination of a well researched and argued comment that took me like an hour (albeit angry), and Tomas' openness to exchange.
I do laud his reaction too, but it's permitted because there are actual arguments being made too.
- Being angry doesn't make someone condescending or wrong (or right either). Being angry only indicates emotional investment (that I detailed later because I realize Tomas heard "you're right wing" when what I was saying was more "don't get scammed by the right, you're better than that !"). It doesn't directly correlate with being right or wrong.
Actually, I think "condescending" is often used to dismiss justified anger because it can serve as a tactic to undermine the legitimacy of someone's emotional response or the validity of their grievances. When someone labels another person's reaction as "condescending," they are implying that the person is talking down to others, acting superior, or being disrespectful. This shifts the focus away from the actual content of the criticism or complaint and instead highlights the perceived attitude of the speaker.
- And if I wanted to be a bit snarky, I could argue that calling your wife an accountant is condescending 🙃
Thanks for the detailed answer, and for taking that as I hope you would, despite the heat :)
1. Ok, in that case I do agree on principle. I just think it wasn't expressed in the clearest of ways (which is the basis to many disagreements, so I'm glad we can clear that one up).
2. Just from a logical point of view, it can't be a misinterpretation on my end if you admit it was the wrong word ^^
But this is hair-splitting, and to get the core : indeed, some discriminations are less emphasized than others. But as said in other points, this is kind of a natural mechanic in progressivism imo. You can't fight on all fronts at the same time.
One could have (rightfully) argued 10 years ago that trans rights were taking a back seat.
I think another component is how difficult or how pervasive those discriminations are. Height for example, is probably generally less important than gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. I'd say beauty is way more important, but it's difficult to actually determine how pretty someone is, unless we ask everyone to participate in PhotoFeeler. Whereas being a woman or being racialized is more black and white (no pun intended).
3. I wasn't clear : I didn't say you quoted his book, just that his book gave me enough insights of his understanding of politics to stop respecting what he had to say about it (although I could still enjoy if he was writing about something else I guess, even though it taints my view on the quality of his research).
I think Tim, like you, leans center. I used to think I leaned center, but seeing what the center has become, I can't identify with it anymore. There's too much leeway given to the right even though they're going absolutely batshit crazy and the overton window is apparently now back to literal nazism. I think many center liberals have their liberalism hijacked by the far right, and become unwilling allies because they're intellectually scammed to think freedom of speech is actually threatened by "wokism".
And I do think Tim and you show signs of that.
I would absolutely welcome fair criticism of the left, but I do think it's significant Tim wrote a book about the culture war, supposedly to talk about both sides, but ended up criticizing mostly the left, with very bad arguments I could easily disprove with a search.
The fact he's written one post about the right years ago doesn't seem a very valid argument to say he's leaning left.
I don't identify with fundamentalist social justice. In fact, I've already been called a fascist for stating fact (and a woke for literally the same thing 🤷♂️). I'm well aware some people are just cray-cray.
I just think the few cray-cray on the left are used as a general strawman to discredit the entire left, pretending their opinions are mainstream on the left. And I do think you're contributing to that phenomenon, in that case.
I honestly think "math comes from White supremacy" is a fringe view. But of course you're summarizing it with a one liner, so I asked ChatGPT to elaborate :
https://chatgpt.com/share/bf2793e2-5338-49cf-8054-3bc5ec2e1291
And of course, it's way more subtle than that. I doubt anyone is actually pretending that 1+1 comes from white supremacy. But I have to agree that the non-white origins of some advances in math are generally not taught, that (bad) science has been used to justify many forms of discrimination in the past, and other things. I intuitively don't agree that math isn't objective, but I'd have to read a detailed argument to know what they say.
In any case, this is a big strawman. Nobody is seriously pretending "math comes from white supremacy". These arguments are honestly a pretty standard analysis of a field under the lens of systemic oppression. They're talking about the culture around maths. Fair enough.
The fact that you think this is an actual argument of the left, to me, doesn't show a great understanding of the political stance of today's left. Either the person misunderstood something and is not very clever, or just straight up didn't explain what they meant.
But I think it represents well what my criticism is in this case : cherry picking the most stupid claims on the left and label them as a cultural phenomenon. Which is what the far right is doing. This is text book anti-wokism without even toning it down.
Even though 1) they're fringe, 2) they're not influencing any policy at all.
Whereas the most stupid claims of the right are actually influencing policy and actually hurting people. Can you show me a source saying maths have stopped being taught, or anything related to maths that's actually hurting people or society ?
4. In matters of sexual assault, I do agree most are inconclusive. I think that's unfortunately something that's inherent to these crimes. They're by nature difficult to prove : they often happen without witnesses, it's often difficult to even prove sex happened, unless the victim does exactly the right things AND isn't met with police skepticism, and even then, how do you prove the absence of consent ?
I think this is one instance where patriarchy does play a role (doesn't help women coming forward, filing a complaint, ...), but even in a perfect society, it would be difficult to prove anyway.
So, a low number are proven to be true, and also a low number are proven to be false. And as you say, we must make estimates.
But I don't understand yours. You're still basing it on ONE judge's opinion. And on a hunch that it's "significant".
But if we want to make an estimate, we must analyze what could provoke more false positives, and more false negatives. And I don't see how anyone could conclude the circumstances are not overwhelmingly in favor of false negatives.
Factors for false negatives :
- As we said, inherent lack of physical evidence
- Delayed reporting (well known to happen)
- Memory impairment (common in traumatic experiences)
- Potential relationship of the perpetrator to the victim (most sexual assaults are committed by someone known), which can cause fear of retaliation, peer pressure not to report, etc.
- Poor investigation (the unwillingness of police to take complaints is well known)
- Easy defense for the accused : "she consented" can't really be proven wrong
Factors for false negatives :
- Inconsistent testimonies (for example not seeing the perp well and then "recognizing" him). This is not specific to sexual assault though, and as most perps are known, can't be influencing most.
- Coercion during interrogation leading to a false confession
- False accusations
Considering publicly accusing someone of sexual assault still has MAJOR negative consequences for women coming forward (although they generally receive support, they're also systematically harassed at the same time, which is obviously hard to live, specially because of human's negative bias).
So honestly, this conclusion seems REALLY hasty to me. The most reasonable estimate would be that false negatives FAR outweigh false positives. I welcome counter arguments though, maybe there's something I'm not seeing ?
5. Ok it seems I haven't been clear enough : I'm probably to the left of you, but not that far. I agree with almost everything you said in this part, including being against communism. I think capitalism is great with some safeguards.
But what I see happening is centrists like you, Tim, some friends of mine (and not me, even though I share your opinions about society), is thinking "the left went too far", for reasons that don't seem based on facts to me.
Like, how specifically the Dems went too far left ? Which policies precisely ? Forgive me if I'm wrong as I don't live in the US so I don't have the daily detail of things, but I don't see Biden as a radical leftist.
But I can definitely tell you how the right went too far, both under Trump and in red states.
I sincerely don't know where the left went too far exactly. I generally don't read precise claims, and when I do, they're revealed to be wildly exaggerated when I check them.
Could you give me a few examples ?
2. You should look at data on the premium for height and beauty! The discrimination is staggering!
Math: I haven’t looked at it in detail; but everything I read about the California Math curriculum seems maddening.
Yes the conclusion on sexual harassment seems hasty because I have a full article on it but can’t really publish it! So sorry for that. But if you’re interested I encourage you to look at the evidence. Swedes and Danes have interesting data.
I’ll be very specific on instances where I believe the pendulum went too far because the proposal was positioned as a no-brainer when in fact it is a difficult topic, or in some cases just plain wrong:
Trans: changing rooms, sports, child transition, placing non-transitioned trans women (biological men) with a track record of rape in women’s prisons
Blacks: Affirmative action in air pilots to the point of tweaking the tests to lower standards
Completely disregarding test results in university admissions
Admissions discrimination against overperforming minorities like Asians
CRT in K-12 school curricula, across all disciplines
Considering math, rationality, and / or science as White
The concept of settler colonialism (assholes all the way down)
The concept of cultural appropriation
I might not be educated enough on some of them, so happy to hear good and compact arguments on either. But what I’ve found so far has been unimpressive, and doesn’t support the stances.
Do you have data on the premium for height ?
I'm finding things like a 1.8% to 2.2% increase in wages associated with each additional inch in height, or $789 being the annual increase in income per inch of height. (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1344817)
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Beauty privilege I do believe the premium is high, but as I said i think the issue is beauty is not on/off, so it's harder to see and even act on it.
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About math : I find it surprising that you're stating that they say "math is white" (which is kind of a ludicrous claim) and at the same you haven't look at it in detail. The more ludicrous a claim, the more it should be looked in detail before talking about it.
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I don't know where you've read things about the California Math Curriculum. I've just read two posts about it, and it seems far from "everything is maddening" to me. Some points might be debatable, but a lot of things seem pretty reasonable to me. What specifically maddens you ?
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About sexual harrassment, could you just link your sources ? (or dm them if you prefer) I couldn't find anything related to Sweden or Danemark, but I might have had the wrong keywords.
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About the pendulum going too far, thanks for being specific. I think that's more helpful. Of course I doubt it NEVER exists. What I challenge is the idea that's it's very common, and a core tenet of the left.
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- Trans people : I've already answered in the other comment. I don't think the data shows a problem for the first three. The last one sounds worrying, but do you have a US case ? I could find two cases in the UK, and also that the law has been modified since.
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Also it seems like 60% of sexual violence in prisons is perpetrated by the staff (https://rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence), which unfortunately doesn't surprise me at all.
This is a separate issue of course, but it seems insincere to me the right is all of a sudden very concerned with inmates safety, while at the same time treating like animals in discourse and policy.
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- Affirmative actions for black air pilots : do you have a source on lowering standards ? All I can find is some airlines have lowered their minimum experience requirements for applicants in recent years, but this was largely due to pilot shortages after COVID, and also that there are programs aimed at increasing diversity in aviation, but these focus on outreach, mentorship, and providing training opportunities - not on lowering standards.
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- Tests in uni admissions :
From what I can find, it seems only some universities did that, and some went back to tests. I think students who want to be tested can just choose a uni still doing it (I'd assume the majority is still doing, unless you have data showing otherwise ?)
But I fail to see how that's a problem : if a uni think tests don't predict student success well, shouldn't they be allowed to try that ? Won't the market just correct for that ?
If it really lowers the level, these universities will just become less valuable on the market.
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Honestly, I even think this is an interesting hypothesis to try. When I was in my master's degree, I could see first hand how the selection process was mainly based on test results, which tested more for memory than intelligence. And how it could select people with very good memory but mindblowingly stupid and who should never have been at that level.
So, why not ?
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- Admissions discriminating asians
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Do you have a source on that ? I could only find sources saying asians were discriminated against white students, and that athletic performance might play a role, but nothing more.
That sounds like something the left would be against btw.
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That also sounds like the right using asians as yet another ideological trojan horse to lobby against affirmative action.
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- CRT in schools :
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Could you precise how you define CRT precisely, and why do you think it's a problem ? From what I read it's just a pretty modern understanding of society, and I think kids should get taught a modern analysis of the world.
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The claims I see against it seem to come from a misunderstanding of it (and often times a purposeful misinterpretation for political purposes).
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- Math thing : as I said before, I have yet to see any proof that such a wild claim is more than a fringe view.
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- As for the concepts of settler colonialism and cultural appropriation, what's your issue with them ? Do you think they don't exist ?
I think they're useful frameworks to think about society.
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Also, as a general summary : I think my general problem with your argument is two things :
1) I think most of the instances you're quoting are at the very least completely blown out of proportion.
And they're all instances where the far right is using them to further their agenda. Hence my anger about a centrist being intellectually scammed by them.
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2) Even if they were all true, I think it's not enough to conclude to a general "the woke pendulum has swung too far".
At any times, ideas get floated in the public opinion. Some survive, some don't, some will re-emerge later when people are ready. A lots of ideas seeming obvious to us today were considered wildly woke at some point in history (they didn't use woke, but it was the same idea).
So, of course you're gonna find some crazy ones.
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But I think the most important is to take a step back to see the bigger picture. Mostly :
- What are the core values of the left and the right today ? And which seem more aligned with your values ?
- What are the actual real world consequences and policies that each camp were capable to implement.
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Let's do the exercise for each example you gave :
- Children wellbeing and mental health : Republicans voted against the Mental Health Matters Act, which aimed to expand access to mental health services in schools. Some Republican legislators and governors have called for bans on social-emotional learning and new restrictions on school counselors.
- Air safety : Republicans have pushed for a later age of retirement for pilots, and historically opposed increased regulatory oversight by the FAA, arguing it hampers business freedom.
- Equitable access to college : A lot of republican states pushed or already voted for a stop on grants and scholarships based on a student conditions (race included). Unless you think there's already an equality in chances, this reduces equitable access to college.
- Teaching facts in school : There have been various pushes by the right to stop the teaching of facts in school, using different strategies such as a very narrow definition of fact, discussing the "strength and weaknesses" of well established science under the guise of critical thinking (again using centrists liberalism against them btw), teaching creationism as en equivalent to evolution, etc.
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I get that you're for children wellbeing, air safety, a fair access to college, and that school teaches only facts. So am I.
What I'm questioning is why you're focusing on alleged attacks of the left on that (which I think mostly don't stand to scrutiny or don't have many effects in the real world), while in the process involuntarily repeating far-right propaganda, and not focusing on actual real policies put in place by the right which actually hurt those goals.
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I understand where you come from : you see the culture war and you wanna talk about it. But in the end, it's about values. I align with your values.
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I just think that when taking a step back and checking who's ACTUALLY threatening those values, it's clear it's the right, by far.
Laurent,
It isn’t the positions the woke left is taking that’s the problem, it was/is the brute intimidation taken against any even minimal dissent. You’re not in the US and maybe this hasn’t occurred in France, but the wave of cancellations, verbal attacks and name calling reached a point where people in many professions simply kept their heads down to try and survive. The cancellations hit people for the most absurd reasons and were not moderated by reason, a sense of proportion or some degree of humanity. See what happened to the truck driver who was sacked after being photographed for making an apt right finger gesture. He wasn’t given his job back after he explained that the gesture had nothing to do with politics. The cancellations were frightening and reminded me of the Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution.
I am used to being among people with different political opinions. I have a quite different ideology than most of my friends and family, but it’s not a problem because I consider them rational and well intentioned people. We agree to disagree. The character of Wokism strikingly resembles proto totalitarian movements and for that reason I consider an extremely dangerous one. It’s qualititatively different from moderate liberalism.
You are a very rational person and have made rational arguments for your positions, but what I see missing is mention of the tone and vehemence in Wokism. That’s the dangerous part.
(One step in the anti Woke reaction no one seems to mention is the opening scene in the film, “The Three Body Problem,” a gripping and powerful depiction of a public humiliation in China in the 60s. The scene is so memorable to me because it evokes in a more extreme form what the US has been like in the last decade. I am not saying Wokism is as strong as the Cultural Revolution, but it has too many similarities with it to ignore.)
I just searched about the truck driver story, and this indeed absolutely stupid. But the main problem I see is not with "wokism", but with the employer.
This wouldn't happen in France not for a lack of people trying, but because we have like, laws protecting workers ? You can't be fired for bullshit reasons like that, it's just not happening. It would have to be very serious and corroborated allegations to even think about it.
(As a tongue-in-cheek but maybe not-so-much, the side who would promote laws to protect workers the most is the woke side 🙃)
Apart from that, I get that you can always find an example to support your point, but I am once again asking for data. I know some people FEEL there's an epidemic of people being unjustly canceled and all that, but what is the data saying ?
Because honestly, last time I had a debate around so-called cancel culture, my conclusion was overwhelmingly that the right is canceling just as much if not more. I gave a link in another comment with my combined research about it (my comments are in french but most sources are in English).
I'm sure SOME people are going too far (this is basically always true for any movement), but I doubt it's a big part of it.
Out of curiosity I just googled is Ansari was actually canceled after the Babe post about the sexual assault, and apparently he got a Netflix special just after. So basically there was no consequence for him ?
I still think the testimonial very much describes sexual assault, but I don't understand how one can take his example when literally nothing happened to him ?
Because either he's not guilty and the system is functioning as intended, or he is and the system is not punishing enough. But in no world does this indicate it's "going too far".
Really, I see what you state here repeated over and over again, but I NEVER see any data to support it, and only anecdotes, even when coming from people who are supposedly moderates and evidence-based. The ockam's razor conclusion to this is : this is an intellectual scam from the far right.
(See Innuendo Studios great video series "The Alt Right Playbook")
What's bewildering about your Roe v Wade mention is not that you take a side in it, but that you present it as an example where a reaction to injustice has gone so far that the other side has responded. But where did Roe v Wade go too far? The problem with your argument is that it is essentially the same argument SCOTUS made: to wit, they said that abortion was an issue that should balance the rights of the mother with the rights of the unborn child, and acted as though Roe v Wade had tilted the pendulum too far towards the rights of the mother by allowing abortion. This is a straw-man argument, as it ignores that the Roe v Wade decision WAS the effort to balance those rights. The justices chose "fetal viability" as the point at which the rights of the unborn child exceed those of the mother carrying it. In other words, if the unborn child could not survive unassisted outside the womb then the mother's rights are the stronger rights, but if the child could be expected to survive then it's rights become supreme. This is the definition of a reasoned decision. The problem of the continued assault on abortion rights is that those who oppose abortion believe (or claim to) that ALL abortion is evil, and therefore there is no pendulum on which to balance here.
Then, more confusing still is your conclusion to this point. You write "I'm in favor of the state not deciding about abortion...." and follow that up with "...is not incompatible with the overturning of Roe vs Wade. That literally said 'the federal government has no say in that matter.'" But the STATE government does. I'm not sure what semantic game you are playing here. Are you arguing that state governments represent the individual's right to choose? I would argue a) that in modern American history that the governments which have oppressed individual's rights have overwhelmingly been state governments as opposed to the federal government; and b) living here in Texas I don't think many people feel that they have a choice about abortion as the state has not only made it illegal but allowed for enforcement of this policy by allowing citizens to sue other citizens with an incredibly stacked legal process in their favor (a technique borrowed from the Fugitive Slave Act, one of the worst legal acts ever passed in the history of the United States).
I recognize that this line is, essentially, a throwaway example in a much longer thought-piece, but your decision to defend this makes me confused as to what your whole point is.
Can't speak for Thomas here, but I read the Roe vs. Wade comment as an example for a reaction to progressive forces, since their successes/influence motivated a strong movement/pressure to select conservative judges which had an effect later in e.g. this decision. I don't think Thomas makes a moral judgement here, it is purely descriptive.
I'm not entirely sure now, but I've interpreted this as Tomas saying "there should be a law legalizing abortion, so individuals would have the right to choose".
I was confused by this as well. Perhaps Walter's and Laurent's more charitable perspectives are accurate but I found Thomas' statements to be contradictory or at best incomplete.
A couple of points about a couple of the points:
4. I think the question of the true false positive rate for sexual assault/harassment accusations is a really interesting one, so I'm excited to hear that you have (as yet) unpublished research about it. Definitely interested in hearing about that work. Meanwhile, a quick search brought me to this link (https://www.thejusticegap.com/just-how-rare-are-false-allegations-of-sexual-assault/), which is a more in depth analysis of the point you're making. This articles suggests that the judge you quote estimate is too high (the researchers cited in this article do say that real number is less than half), but it explains why the number @Laurent points to is the lower bound and not the actual number.
5. I think the idea that the "NY Times is a joke" is kind of ridiculous. The Times is easily far and away the most important and best source of news in the world (at least for those primarily interested in America). It and The Economist are indispensable. It's fine to ignore the OP Ed columns if those aren't your cup of tea (although I would argue that Krugman, Friedman, Brooks, Klein, and Douthat are all the top of the field of opinion journalism), but overall the NYT is amazing. Doesn't mean it doesn't sometimes get things wrong, but describing it as "a joke" is way, way off base.
I thought so until about 1-2y ago. I stopped my subscription during the war in Gaza, because I knew what I was talking about better than they did, and their bias was too flagrant.
Their news are good, but if I can’t rely on them for the most important news, then what’s the point?
I am left with the economist.
I see your response to #5 as the problem. A huge swath of the US, including me, sees the Times as a partisan spin factory. Look at there coverage of Harris. Are they doing stories about why she won't talk to the press or article after article about how smart the Dems were to do what they are doing. This is why the left total missed Trump in 2016.
Thanks for that study, very interesting !
I think the next question would be : among these 10-15% of false allegations, what are the consequences for the falsely accused ?
I think we're biased to the high-profile cases. If a youtuber is accused of sexual assault (and I don't know about the US, but in France it happened A LOT in the past few years), it's generally really bad for them, but generally only life-shattering when they're actually convicted.
When they're not (or before they are), they generally have enough of people supporting them to still thrive.
I can think of several cases :
- Léo Grasset, who was accused by multiple women. He lost all sponsorships and his channel was demonetized, but he gathered enough money to live through his Patreon. Certainly hard for him, but not life shattering, even though several victims came forward.
- Norman Thavaud, who was accused of sexual misconduct with several minors. He went silent for years, and has just recently posted a video after the investigation being closed (he was not trialed and judged innocent, they just considered there were not enough material elements).
This went way too far as his wife and kid were harassed (people are shit), and the guy looks broken, but let's also say he's definitely not entirely innocent. He admitted to what he called "goujaterie" ("boorishness"), which still sounds like he admits to bad behavior, and now he's producing content rather than being on camera.
I'm sure he went through a tough phase, but there were too many women talking for it to be complete bullcrap, so 🤷♂️
So even though the general discourse is "they're unjustly canceled", it feels in a lot of cases their life is worse but not entirely shattered, they still gather a significant amount of support, even when there's concording testimonials (but not enough to convict).
So I'd be curious what researchers could find out about the long-term consequences on the lives of the confirmed false accusations.
I don't mean to excuse them, it's a very shitty thing to do to someone, but I think it'd counterbalance the general discourse around this.
Many lives are destroyed by these false accusations. People lose their jobs, families, and lives. In Spain, they are preemptively jailed. This is no joke.
Do we have data on this ? I find it hard to believe that Spain prevently jail people without proof honestly.
It's hard for me to find anything to criticize about you because I think you're one of the greatest thinkers and communicators on the planet, but maybe because of that, I hold you to a higher standard.
I appreciate your comprehensive response to Laurent's bullet points and found myself nodding in agreement to both of your comments. I also found myself shaking my head. For instance, you wrote "Don't say 'You're dumb, here is the TRUTH". Literally three sentences earlier, you committed an entire paragraph to saying: "So you are wrong" followed up with accusing him of blatant hypocrisy (which struck my as ironically hypocritical on your part).
I found most of your rebuttal to be well-founded but I felt that you sometimes you lacked self-reflection and condescended to him, especially when accusing him of bias: "consider this as another instance of your bias" and "So I think I’m pretty balanced. The fact that you think I am not makes me think you might be biased leftwards." Almost everyone considers themselves "balanced" but it's bad form to accuse people of bias simply because they disagree with you. It may be true, but it also may be true that your perspective is biased.
So maybe a little more humility is all I'm saying. I don't have enough of it myself, so I'm no stranger to hypocrisy!
I think that there are some very valid criticisms here, although I'm guessing that a day between reading and commenting may have aided in tone. I've noticed in many recent articles that the research seems to be almost intentionally superficial (e.g. I couldn't find the answer easily, or I'm guessing that, etc.). It almost seems like this article is a great base to start to mold a view of the culture war situation, but it needs some critical debate to form something that can hold up to scrutiny?
I agree! And I hope that we can do it together because it’s not human to consider a single person can handle it. Tim Urban took 6 years in a corner and look at the result, according to Laurent.
So let’s not put the bar too high: nobody will write something that everybody agrees with. Instead, let’s iterate together. I put the strawman out for people to beat it and build on it.
I sometimes wonder if posts like this might be better broken up into multiple smaller pieces. There was a lot to chew on here. And so many points to question and strengthen. When you receive extensive feedback, it becomes a bit of a blur to me. I wonder if you could have written one article to establish the base for everyone to agree on: (1) The strong often take advantage of the weak, (2) This is wrong (for reasons that you could go into), (3) We should do something about it (for reasons that you could go into), but (4) Sometimes it can go too far and is harmful (for reasons that you could go into). Very poorly and probably inaccurately put, but you get my drift. If you establish these points as valid, then subsequent articles could possibly flesh out where people disagree, why, and how to make sense of it all. I guess it depends what the purpose of the post is meant to be - if we want to understand how we all see things differently and we want to understand how to better live with and prosper together, this might be a way to go about it. But it might also be a boring slog that no one wanted to read.
Valid point.
I guess I wanted to iterate: put it all out there fast to get more feedback.
I do agree that in order to bring the nuance I wish there was here, each point would have probably needed its own post of the same length of this one.
Hi Laurent. Nothing you have said is wrong, by the letter of the law, but it’s missing the point - the spirit of the law.
Clearly humans have the capacity to be entirely wrong. I don’t think this is what Tomas is teasing at.
The clue is in the title - the pendulum. There isn’t really a pendulum about facts. As we uncover more ‘truths’ they become foundations. They don’t really swing back the other way (apart from total loons).
What we’re looking at here is cultural and human interactions where there isn’t a total right or wrong but more like a shallowing cosign to something we recognise as a more, if imperfect, system of fairness.
I do recognise that everything you’ve said is factually correct, but I don’t think Tomas’ piece was about absolutes. I approached his piece with utmost caution and found myself on the back foot when he used the term ‘woke’, which immediately makes me think he has a bias against progressiveness. Which he may well do, but I think he acquitted himself well in delving into a foray where you can do much wrong and little right.
The image of the ‘pendulum’ is misapplied here. Better to think of ‘sublation’, an important part of Hegel’s historical dialectic, where opposing viewpoints learn from and absorb ideas from the other position.
Excellent balanced take on a difficult and complex series of issues. I really admire your willingness to tread in those perilous waters. I think we are all well served by thoughtful contributions like this.
Thanks!
Brave man getting into culture wars! A balancing act, if ever there were one. I think the pendulum metaphor is pretty spot on and what you’re teasing at primarily.
You asked about topics we might want to see you delve into. Kinda per your examples, I’d love to read some ‘universal theory’ that encapsulates financial inequality, immigration, the rise of the right in Europe, the rise in populism globally and its extent, the impact of culture wars, echo chambers, infinite complexity, AI, fertility, pandemics, global warming... My completely biased opinion is that these all feed off each other and the current state of affairs is indeed another pendulum where the visibility and complexity of our existence is leading us to swing back from the Age of Enlightenment and demand ‘simple’ solutions, I.e. A new Endarkening…
Just my musings. Culture wars is probably not a bad lead into this…
A key principle of Uncharted Territories is that the big forces that drive humanity are interconnected, so to nudge it in the right direction, we need some generalists who can look at all these big trends at the same time. That's what I'm trying to do with UT, and why it touches on so many different topics.
It looks like you also see connections between important topics. Here you mention some of these topics, but fail to mention your hypothesis on how they're connected. If you do, it might help me get some inspiration!
I was hoping to leave the big thinking to brains more educated and less frazzled than mine, but at risk of a sound bite, perhaps something along these lines. Obviously none of this is based on data - I’ll leave this to better minds like yours to prove, disprove or more likely, sensibly ignore ;-)
‘The evolutionary utility of intelligence at small scale and the utility of ignorance at scale, manifested culturally, biologically and ecologically - and perhaps even expressed genetically
Tomas and John, Are you familiar with Ian MacGilchrist's Master And His Emissary- the first half a compilation of research on how the brain works and the second half applying this to different time periods as a way of understanding the interplay and alternating dominance of right minded, Hidden Brain (Shankar Vedentam's term), unaware worldview processing and left minded, aware brain, rational, rationalizing processing.?
No?
No, I try to avoid reading for fear of bias but I make exceptions. Right vs left hemisphere sounds curious if, well, curious. It sounds interesting. An undercurrent of biological systems, on a macro scale, that we don’t understand in the slightest, wouldn’t surprise me at all. Tomas, for example, explained how we can’t explain well why fertility rates are dropping. There are loads of seemingly sensible hypotheses but they don’t actually stack up under examination so there may be underlying forces that we are simply oblivious to
Sorry I wrote a comment right after you posted this, but it never made it.
Some years ago, I was involved in a messy business breakup and it left me wondering how one can devote 20 years to making things better only to have it end like that. It put me on a journey to grasp this better and eventually this pointed me to the research on how the brain operates to better grasp how people form their opinions. I even wrote a book on this, although I'm not trying to pitch a book here. Only to say, that this book by MacGilchrist was very informative as part of my journey. The insights about our brain operating system really gets to the heart of the matter.
This is a great article. I once heard another good take related to this talking about how nuance doesn't scale very well. I can't remember the source, but to paraphrase (I hope without ironically losing too much of the original nuance!), one example of how nuance doesn't scale could be cultural appropriation. One person wears an item of clothing that is very sacred and has particular religious importance to another culture, and is only used in a very specific ceremony by people who have been granted the right to wear that item of clothing. Someone from that culture points this out, and asks politely for people outside of that culture to not wear this particular piece of clothing.
This message doesn't spread very far, but a few people talk about it and pass it on. Each time the message is forwarded it gets simplified, until a fairly extreme right wing conservative picks it up (in this example, but for other cases it could equally be an extreme left wing liberal doing something equivalent) and either purposefully or accidentally misinterprets the message and uses it as a way to attack left wing liberals, claiming "Liberals are saying you can't wear clothes from other cultures now!". That isn't what the original argument was at all, but this version gets people angry, and spreads a lot.
Extreme left wing liberals then fight back, claiming that "Yes, that's right, it is wrong to wear clothing from other cultures!", and the entire argument continues like this, completely stripped of all nuance, with both side arguing unreasonable positions. The most extreme statements are the ones that spread, with nuanced takes being drowned out.
That’s so interesting. I had never thought about it. Thank you! Yet another reason to try to keep nuance.
Ed is pointing out an effect that cannot be explained by the pendulum model. Declining trust (and hence rising polarization) among people and higher status-anxiety in a longer timeframe can, as researched by Wilkinson & Pickett (The Spirit Level - 2009 - and more). As it can explain overall growing polarization over the last decades as societies get by growing economically more unequal.
Caveat: I do not intend to say declining trust is the one and single possible explanation as the 'silver bullet' that puts all discussion to an end. But the data driven work of Wilkinson & Pickett sheds a relevant light on the issue of growing polarization as a result of declining trust among people.
This is an excellent read
Hi Tomas,
As a long time reader, I have greatly enjoyed your content. This topic seems incredibly important and I am glad you are tackling it. You offer different insights than Tim Urban although your theses appear aligned. I don't think I agree with everything but I look forward to having ever more presuppositions peeled back by data.
A couple of comments I wanted to offer on this piece. I think the biggest part I am grappling with is section 4 "The Woke Pendulum" and the examples cited as evidence of a pendulum swinging back against Wokism (rather than, per step 4 of the opening section "4 Steps of Social (In)Justice", examples of Anti-Woke reactionaries doubling down to fight equality). I think the biggest difference between those options is a pendulum seems to imply that Wokism has gone too far and by overtreading it is inadvertently amplifying support for the Anti-Woke side; whereas if Anti-Woke sentiment is actually just reactionaries trying to double down to fight equality, then Wokism needs to step up the fight further (per step 3 in the opening section: 'People Fight Oppression').
Specifically:
1) Using Aziz Ansari as an example of #MeToo going too far. I admit that I never dug deeply into this story at the time and have not explored what may be fabricated on either end. However, the account that you linked to, if even 50% true, is nauseating. To portray repeatedly groping a woman who has verbally stated she does not want a sexual encounter as "on the grey area of standard courting practices" I find frankly appalling. It is definitely nowhere on the level of Bill Cosby rape, but something that I don't believe civilized society should ever tolerate. So I see that example as #MeToo doing its job, rather than overstepping. I look forward to your future article about false sexual harassment claims because I would like to understand the data around the scope of the issue. I am sure there are many greyer areas of #MeToo claims.
2) Under the heading "The Woke Pendulum" I thought in (1) Weaker Support for Wokism, the graphs on instances of cancel culture and publications on bias was a great example of a pendulum swing.
3) I think in (2) Scope Creep, using the expansion of LGBT is not a great example of pendulum overswing. As pointed out by other commentators, smaller forms of discrimination are unveiled as bigger forms of discrimination are reduced. LGBTQ+ is basically a catch-all for minority sexual identities-- I think it would be odd if there was like an LG society, a B society, then Ts and Qs have to make their own. I guess my point is that it seems like a very natural expansion of sexual identity recognition, not an overstep that would trigger Backlash and Intersectionality Conflict. Maybe I am misreading, in that Scope Creep is not being cited as a negative component of Wokism or a source for Backlash/Defection/Intersectionality Conflict but rather just a neutral observation of what happens on the path of growing Wokism.
4) Under (3) Backlash I am troubled by the statement "the legitimacy of the movements will be weaker, and people will fight back". I guess my question is to whom is the legitimacy decreased? Certainly not in the eyes of the Wokists. The examples cited seem to be areas that progressives would all feel quite aligned on, and conservatives would see as illegitimate. But I think 30 years ago progressives would have been quite aligned, and conservatives would have considered them illegitimate as well, so I don't think these examples imply the Woke Pendulum has changed public sentiment. E.g.:
a) Anti-immigrant sentiment is pervasive in US and Europe. I don't know any data so I can't offer any real critique here but anecdotally progressives I know largely support immigration and conservatives largely don't.
b) Roe v. Wade overturning -- this was a fluke based on inconvenient Supreme Court Justices death timing. Public sentiment still supports Roe v. Wade so I don't think the Woke pendulum has pushed back here. If anything, more people support Roe v. Wade than used to. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/07/06/majority-of-public-disapproves-of-supreme-courts-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/pp_2022-07-06_roe-v-wade_00-04-png/
c) Affirmative Action overturning -- once again Supreme Court Justice fluke, not public sentiment. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/317006/affirmative-action-public-opinion.aspx
d) I don't have an opinion on the Olympic ceremony and I'm uninformed about CRT opponents.
e) Budweiser boycott -- at face value, this seems to depict that conservatives may disproportionately drink Bud Light and oppose trans rights. Again, I don't think their opposition is any stronger now than it would have been 30 years ago.
5) Under (4) Defection, I once again am not compelled by these examples as evidence of defection.
a) From that 2022 exit poll data I think it would be helpful to see a comparison to prior exit poll data to see if people are really defecting. I looked back at 2020 (https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results) and it appears that in those exit polls married men & women were predominantly Republican and unmarried men & women were predominantly Democrat. The "defectors" then are unmarried men (not married women defecting from their oppressed Women group, as this point seems to imply).
b) Fewer women identify as feminists but only white women were divided into liberal and conservative. It strikes me that liberal black and hispanic women might also still identify as feminists. Perhaps what this graph is catching is that conservative women are increasingly less likely to identify as feminist.
c) The Google Search data only implies that interest in tradwives is increasing, not support. I think a lot of people like myself are fascinated by their 2024 existence and research them out of curiosity especially after high profile articles published about them. This does not imply more women want to have traditional gender roles -- just that those who do so garner a lot of Instagram views :).
d) Re: the black thought leaders, I don't know enough to add much here, other than your reply in the comments that you didn't mention the overwhelming number of black voices in support of wokism because that seems implied. However- are more black voices really supporting Anti-Wokism, or are they just getting platformed by Fox News etc.? I don't really know - I could see either being true, but I would feel more compelled by data than a few figureheads that might not be representative of black thought leaders at large.
6) For (5) Intersectionality Conflict, this seems to be a very complex issue that I definitely agree is exacerbated by expanding Wokism. What do we do about trans or intersex athletes? No easy answers that I can see. I look forward to more data and commentary as you go forward.
In the end, I guess my take is this: There are many examples you cite that seem to be positioned as Backlash and Defection triggered by Wokism going too far. I am not compelled by these examples and I wonder if a lot of them could also be explained by ongoing Anti-Woke sentiment among conservatives who would like to covertly fight certain kinds of equality. I don't think the difference between those two possibilities is easily teased out but the answer is quite different. Do Wokists need to step back and take some letters out of LGBTQIA+ and support more traditional gender roles, or do they need to double down to call out oppression?
I hope this is helpful at least as a different way to view those examples and to maybe help you further position future examples. For instance, it might be more compelling to give more graphs of data changing over time -- e.g. are more men/women/conservatives/liberals supporting or opposing xyz over time. Thanks again for your work!
Such a fantastic comment. Thank you so much for offering your time and insights!
Trying to react point by point to make sure I don’t miss anything:
Yes I think both things can be true at the same time: reactionaries fight back (first part of the article) and they’re fueled by an overreach from wokes (hence the pendulum being too far).
1. I hear you on that point. This is a very interesting and important point. I didn’t dive into it because it was besides the point, as I believe everybody would agree it’s not illegal, which was the main point.
I have written but not published a full article on consent, informed by the series on Game Theory of Sex, and my conclusion on it is that what he did was probably not deft, but is not far off from common and useful courting practices. The key idea that should not be dismissed there is that women have an incentive to portray more chastity than they desire. I think disregarding this point can easily become virtue signaling, which makes the conversation really hard. So I will probably not go farther in that argument, but might do so if I publish that article.
2. Thanks!
3. Fair. Let me update my stance: I understand why they add more groups, but this has the risk of weakening the alliance by getting into problematic stances. For example, the gay right to marriage is a no brainer. The ability to want to change your sex is a no brainer. The ability to be safe when transgender is a no brainer. The legitimacy of wanting to be called by the gender you associate with is fair. But some other stances on transgender rights are more debatable, such as sharing changing rooms, participating in the same sports, getting male serial rapists who identify as transgender but haven’t gone through sex change into female prisons, or changing the sex of children without parental approval. The extension of LGBTQ+ means that gays who have fought for a long time for their rights end up having to defend these positions, which are harder to defend, and that might put them in a precarious situation of a social backlash.
This is not just fantasy. This is exactly what happened in Germany in the 1930s. The sexual freedom of the 1920s, from what I read, was huge, and some of the more radical practices might have fueled the Nazi backlash.
So gays could say: “OK we’re mostly done with our rights. Now we can support the rights of the transgender as a different problem to solve” and that would be good for them and to avoid scope creep. Or they could say “we’re going to defend the same rights as we got, which is to recognize our freedom.” But the examples I mention above are of a different nature, as they impinge on other’s rights (women and parents), so that’s a different type of problem. The scope creep might prevent them from even seeing the difference in nature of these problems.
Does that make sense?
And to be clear I’m not saying trans people should not have the rights mentioned above. My current opinion on the topics is not informed enough yet.
4. I think the mistake there is to assume 100% of people are one or the other. In fact, I think a much more accurate read would be to say that 10-20% of people are squarely on one side and 10-20% are on the other side. That means 60-80% are in the middle, swayed in one direction or the other based on what they see and hear. So when I say backlash, what is implied is not that the hardcore reactionaries suddenly swell, but rather that their support grows from the people in the middle, either because former moderate works defect, or unaligned people moderately support them. Is that sensible?
a. I don’t have enough data either, but I think the disagreement appears bigger than it actually is, based on incendiary rhetoric. Here are statements that I think most people would agree with in the US and Europe:
- Inmigration of highly educated and capable people is welcome
- legal immigration is welcome
- immigration of people who won’t contribute to crime, will integrate, and will contribute financially more than they will take is welcome
- immigration of criminals is not welcome
- taking some genuine asylum seekers who will not cause crime is welcome
That narrows down the issue tremendously. The rest of the issues might have very hardcore defenders on each side, but the people in the middle might not see things as clear. Should we get illegal immigrants without studies if we knew they were not going to cause crime and they would integrate and contribute financially? Harder question. Most people in the middle would say yes I reckon.
b. Fair point. I take it.
That said, most people don’t understand roe vs wade. They misinterpret as either banning abortion or withdrawing support, when it’s more specifically a “it’s not for me to judge” thing.
c. Thanks for the links! I see most research there stops in 2018. My contention is that the pendulum has been swinging back majorly since 2022, so I’d be curious about more recent data.
e. Previous boycotts didn’t work. This is the first time one worked so well AFAIK
5.a. This sounds possibly true. In that case, I’d update to say that the defection is from Dem men. I’d be curious to look at the evolution of conservative women numbers though.
B. Maybe! My prior is that women of other races have followed suite, albeit maybe less markedly.
C. Fair! If like to look at data. My prior is that we’d see it in the date, but I might be wrong.
d. Fair! Would love to see data too.
6. This is your overall point, and I think it’s very valid. I take it, and will ponder for future articles. Thank you!!
Thank you for the long and thoughtful reply!
1) Similar to Laurent, this example still doesn't sit well with me. The area has seemed very black and white - no means no, yes means yes. But I will sit tight for your future article on consent, as it wouldn't be the first time I learn an additional layer of nuance through Uncharted Territories. Glad you are planning to dig into this further.
3) That makes a lot of sense! I could see people going "I'm against that whole LGBT thing" when they're actually ok with gay marriage, they're just against some component of trans rights. Not that it's okay that they oppose trans rights, but it ends up hindering gay rights in the meantime while we wait for the conservative end to catch up to accepting trans rights. Point taken!
4) That makes sense! I think that helps define the issue: are Woke stances pushing the middle more to the left or the right? Support for particular issues over time seems like a useful proxy.
a) Yes I agree most people on either side would agree with those stances. I think illegal immigration is the flash point in the US. I think this would warrant an article!
c) Yeah that makes sense that this might be an extremely recent phenomenon. The 2024 election data will probably be the next telltale data point.
e) Agreed this seems uniquely successful in the modern era. Found this quote: "Brayden King, a professor of management and organizations, gave an interview to CNBC calling the Bud Light boycott an outlier in the right's attack on "woke capitalism" because it is the first one to actually harm the company's sales. King studied 133 political boycotts from 1990 to 2005 and none of them accounted for more than a 1% drop in sales for a company; the Bud Light boycott had resulted in an estimated 18% drop in all AB InBev sales."
6) I think one point was that each individual issue gets very complex so I look forward to seeing how you work through it. My overall point has consolidated as I've noodled for the last 24 hours:
Seeing backlash and Anti-Wokism may indicate that Wokism has gone too far and is pushing moderates away. Alternatively, it may be that a lot of "moderates" were really conservative on social issues, and the more prominent the Wokist agenda becomes, the more those people are pulled out of the woodwork.
Whether the progressive agenda has gone too far is, I think, a value judgment that should be assessed on a case by case basis from first principles. It can't be judged purely by how strong the conservative backlash becomes. For instance, when the Civil Rights movement took off, centrists could have made similar claims: "These activists are pushing the Civil Rights agenda too far, the pendulum is swinging back and now there are all these anti-Civil Rights conservatives launching counterprotests." Now in hindsight we look back and see that clearly the progressive agenda was morally right and needed to forge through the backlash.
I guess my bottom line is: I don't think backlash and defection on an issue inherently signal the Wokist side has gone too far. It may be that a lot of people still have backwards ideas and the issue needs to be advanced until society catches up. Each issue needs to be taken from first principles. This seems to be your tack in general and what you recommend at the end of the article. I look forward to future articles and I just hope that increased resistance from conservatives or conservative-leaning moderates forced to finally take a side isn't taken to automatically indicate a flaw in the Wokist agenda.
(However there certainly could be flaws in the Wokist agenda! Looking forward to learning more on trans rights, affirmative action, CRT, etc)
100% agree with your last point : historically, the right has ALWAYS said ANY social justice claim was going too far. And then people were very vocal or even violent about it, and with time, society adapted, and social justice advanced.
I think it's a very narrow point of view to say that woke stances are pushing the middle to the right. Historically, it has never been the case. It just takes time, and there might be some setbacks (such as the repeal of Roe v Wade), but when you unzoom, the trend is pretty clear. And I assume that's why the right are so mad : they know they're losing long term.
I've just read other comments and stumbled upon this one and the Ansari case. I didn't know about it, but following Nolan comment, I read about the case, and honestly I'm pretty worried about 1) the way you describe it in the post, and 2) your answer to Nolan.
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"After some texting and a date, a single woman accused him of pressuring her into sex. When she declined, he accepted and she left."
This is NOT what happened. She clearly states she said no in verbal and non-verbal ways for 30 MINUTES, and he kept going. The signs she gave were pretty clear, and Ansaris behavior is 100% unacceptable.
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The fact you consider this "is not far off from common and useful courting practices" is very worrying. First, common doesn't mean ok, that's a very obvious logical fallacy.
Also, "not illegal" is up to debate (to me this 100% fits the definition of sexual assault, and even rape in some countries including France), but also, it's not the point.
It's clearly not moral.
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The fact that "women have an incentive to portray more chastity than they desire" is NOT an excuse for sexual assault. "Portraying" more chastity is not what she did. She clearly said a firm and clear no MULTIPLE times.
Portraying more chastity is flirting by being falsely coy, slowing things down a bit, teasing the other person. I've seen that in play multiple times, where I've first had a no and then an enthusiastic yes. I'm not stranger to the notion, but the appropriate reaction to a woman wanting to slow things down is to slow them down.
In Ansari's case, it was pretty simple to have "useful courting practices" without violating her consent :
- escalate but more slowly
- when she says no to immediate sex, the appropriate reaction is not to briefly give oral and ask for oral, it's to say "ok, do you want to keep kissing though ?". It would probably have been a yes btw. She just needed more time.
I do realize the necessity for men to persist, but there's persisting and there's pretending to be deaf. Slowing down when she clearly asks is not unsexy, it's just standard consent.
It shouldn't be rocket science for a 34 years old man who probably has had sex with more women than most.
The idea that Ansari's date with "Grace" (https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355) was sexual assault is absurd. It was clearly a case of miscommunication that BOTH parties were responsible for.
When a man invites a woman to his apartment after a date (or vice versa), it's essentially an invitation to have sex. Agreeing to go signals, if not consent, at the very least interest. And if within minutes of entering the apartment, both parties are voluntarily naked and performing oral sex on one another, that obviously is a (screamingly loud!) sign of consent as well.
Of course, consent can be withdrawn at any time. But when things have reached that stage, the party that is no longer consenting needs to be clear about it. Sending gentle, non verbal clues will likely not be enough. Ansari is certainly guilty of being a bad date who either didn't get the signs that Grace was giving him or intentionally pushed through them because he was hoping Grace was still interested but just wanted to take things slower.
What Grace should have done is what she eventually did: clearly say she wasn't interested in anything further that night and leave. The reason it took her 30 minutes to do so is pretty obvious. She was excited about dating a celebrity and was hoping to avoid the awkwardness that comes with cutting the night off in that way that would make Ansari feel rejected and potentially not want to date her anymore. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too; in this case, gain a celebrity boyfriend without having to sleep with him. Unfortunately, she lacked the self confidence to trust that Ansari would continue to be interested in her if she was clear she didn't want to have sex with him and the self esteem to be ok with it if he didn't.
Now there is, of course, nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has that self-confident and self-esteem. Just as there is nothing wrong with someone wanting to have sex with someone on a first date.
But when there are mismatched expectations in this way, both parties need to be clear about what they want. Ansari was very clear about what he wanted. Grace was deliberately ambiguous about what she wanted because she didn't want Ansari to stop being interested in her. And while that may make Ansari guilty of being a bad date or potential boyfriend, it definitely does not make him guilty of sexual assault.
You either can't read (because there were WAY more than "gentle non verbal clues") or you're gonna be "canceled" one day and whine about it on the internet, even though you refused to be educated on very basic consent understanding and communication skills.
Laurent: Let's review what actually happened on the date after they returned from dinner and how Grace communicated with Ansari (and note that this is an account 100% based on Grace's memory what happened, so we're getting a version of what occurred that is the most sympathetic to her perspective):
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- Immediately upon returning to his apartment Aziz began to kiss Grace, undress her, and undress himself. She goes along with it until he says he’s going to get a condom, at which point Grace says "Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill."
[Note that she doesn't say "no"; she doesn't say she's not interested, and she doesn't put her clothes back on.]
- Aziz then performs oral sex on her and asks her to do so on him. She does, although for unexplained reasons not for very long. [We’re told total time in the apartment at this point is about ten minutes.]
- Then, for the next 30 minutes, she moves to different places in the apartment, still naked, and Aziz (also still naked) follows her. He apparently keeps doing this thing where he puts his fingers in her mouth, wets them, and then fingers her. Here is how she described her response to this:
“Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points,” she said. “I stopped moving my lips and turned cold.”
[So apparently, at some points while he's doing this, she is moving her lips and hands (presumably in ways that demonstrate interest) but eventually she stops doing so. And that’s the extent of her communication. She doesn't say "stop"; she doesn't say "no" or she's not interested, and she doesn't put her clothes back on.]
- Aziz asks a number of times “where do you want me to fuck you?” She doesn’t respond at first but eventually tells him “Next time.” He says, “oh you mean on a second date; Well, if I poured you another glass of wine now, would it count as our second date?” and then pours her a second glass of wine. She goes to the bathroom.
- She returns from the bathroom, still naked, and he asks if she is ok. She replies “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you.” He responds “Oh, of course, it’s only fun if we’re both having fun.” He is sitting naked on the couch. She sits down next to him on the floor, also still naked. He sits back on the couch and points to his penis. She goes down on him again. He then pulls her up on to the couch and begins to kiss her and says “Doesn’t seem like you hate me.”
- After kissing for awhile, Aziz says she want to show her something. Still naked they walk together to a mirror. Aziz then “bends her over” [no idea what that means; over a bed?] and says ““Where do you want me to fuck you? Do you want me to fuck you right here?” while ramming his penis against her ass and pantomiming intercourse.
- She responds “No, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this.”
[At last a clear “no”!]
Aziz suggests they put on their clothes and chill. They get dressed, return to the couch, and watch Seinfeld. Eventually he kisses her again, puts his fingers in her mouth again, and tries to unbutton her pants. She says “‘You guys are all the same, you guys are all the fucking same.” Aziz asks what she mean, but when she tries to respond he kisses her forcefully.
- Grace then walks over to her phone and says she will call a car. He hugs her and kisses her goodbye. She pulls away and Aziz says he’ll call her a cab and does so. And she leaves.
End of time her time in the apartment and seeing Aziz.
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To describe this series of events as sexual assault I believe makes a mockery of the term. There is no doubt that Aziz was obtuse and missed the signals that Grace thought she was giving him, but there is also no doubt thatthose signals were mixed and unclear.
For the first hour they’re in the apartment, naked essentially the entire time, Grace’s only three comments indicating any hesitations or concerns were: "Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill."; “Next time”; and “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you,” while twice going down on him and never suggesting she wanted to leave or even trying to put on clothes.
And then, after she finally is clearer about the fact that she isn’t interested in doing more that night, Aziz suggests they get dressed; they do; they hang out for awhile clothed, he makes one more pass; she gets up and says she is going home, he hugs and kisses her goodbye, and she leaves.
And not once, even though the story is told through Grace’s eyes, is there ever the implication that she feared that she was physically at risk.
Grace was indirect because she feared the consequences for the relationship if she were more clear about her lack of interest in sex that night, not because she feared for her safety. And while I understand and can even empathize with the fine line she wanted to walk, I still believe that describing this as a sexual assult makes a mockery of that term and infantilizes women. It’s not too much to ask women to be much, much clearer than Grace was.
One last point Laurent. The entire relationship between Aziz and Grace was captured in this telling vignette at the very beginning of the date.
"After arriving at his apartment in Manhattan on Monday evening, they exchanged small talk and drank wine. “It was white,” she said. "I didn’t get to choose and I prefer red, but it was white wine.'"
Grace prefers red wine and is upset that Aziz doesn't ask her preference. And I would certainly grant that it would have more polite for him to have asked. But, of course, Aziz is not a mind reader and Grace could also have let him know she preferred red. That is what an adult would have done. But instead, Grace just stewed about it.
And there is the relationship in a nutshell: Aziz was a self-centered star who was not attentive to how Grace was feeling (although I thought it was interesting that she says she did most of the talking at dinner). Meanwhile, Grace was a star struck child, who expected Aziz to know what she was thinking without her telling him.
A bad match: absolutely. Sexual assault: absolutely not.
En mi opinión lo que ocurrió en el caso Ansari debería situarse en el límite entre la torpeza y el abuso, considerando “abuso”, como la acción de “hacer algo de modo excesivo o indebido”, no como una figura penal que describe un “delito” que amerita encarcelar al torpe abusador, y mucho menos con todo lo que implica privar a una persona de su libertad, quizás durante años, y sumergiéndola en un medio más parecido a un lugar de tormentos que a uno de aprendizaje y readaptación.
Personalmente, siendo naturalmente un hombre tímido frente a las mujeres, mi torpeza fue rutinariamente la contraria a la de Ansari, y ante el hecho de que las mujeres, por eso de que “poseen un incentivo para mostrarse más castas de las que en realidad son”, no suelen manifestar su deseo de una forma abierta tal como es bastante común en los hombres, ante la primer negativa yo solía dar un paso al costado y retirarme, cuando quizás con algo de insistencia, la cual, por otro lado, sería una manifestación genuina de interés, el resultado del encuentro podría haber sido otro.
Para entender lo sucedido entre Ansari y “Grace”, creo que sería útil en primer lugar, presuponer una cierta subjetividad en el relato de quien luego de aquel encuentro se asume y presenta como víctima. Si de la historia contada por Grace en https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355 hiciéramos abstracción de todas aquellas palabras que describen las sensaciones personales de Grace, y también omitiéramos los diálogos que, según Grace, ellos habrían tenido esa noche, y nos quedamos solo con los hechos, tal como si estuviéramos viendo una película sin sonido, creo que estaríamos mucho mejor posicionados para interpretar lo que sucedió realmente en ese encuentro.
Entonces, si tomamos como ciertos los hechos que surgen del relato de Grace, tenemos un primer encuentro en el que Grace se acerca a Ansari y podemos ver que inician una conversación que se convierte luego en coqueteo que incluye “intercambios de miradas”. Esta primera escena concluye con nuestros “actores” dándose los números telefónicos para seguir en contacto y volver a verse.
En la escena número dos se produce el siguiente encuentro entre Grace y Ansari. Los vemos cenando en un restaurante, toman algo de vino y rápidamente la escena se traslada a la casa de él. Apenas entrar en este tercer escenario, comienza a desarrollarse una acción de creciente contenido sexual. De los besos se pasa rápidamente a los manoseos, mientras ambos van quedando desnudos, primero ella, luego él. De los besos pasan al sexo oral, primero se lo practica él a ella, luego ella a él. El moja sus dedos en la boca de Grace antes de introducírselos en la vagina, llevando la mano de Grace hacia su miembro entre cinco y siete veces. Estuvieron jugando así durante unos 30 minutos, a veces ella se levantaba pero él la seguía y la historia se repetía. Se producen algunas pausas entre estos juegos, los podemos ver conversar, pero recordemos que no los podemos escuchar. La escena continúa en un sofá, luego frente a un gran espejo en donde Ansari la inclina y “le apreta el pene contra el culo”. Finalmente se visten, y luego de ver algo en la tv, Ansari quiere reiniciar el juego sexual, pero Grace se levanta y sale de la habitación. Él la sigue, conversan, se besan por última vez y finalmente ella se va en un uber que habían llamado antes.
Si dejamos de lado las manifestaciones de inconformidad que Grace ha expuesto en la nota de “Babe”, lo que queda es un guion típico de millones de encuentros sexuales entre hombres y mujeres comunes y corrientes.
Probablemente Ansari haya sido algo torpe, quizás Grace nunca estuvo del todo a gusto pero tampoco ella supo, si es que realmente deseaba eso, frenar la situación, muy probablemente sus sentimientos fueras más ambiguos de lo que su relato indica. Lo que no debería haber ocurrido tras estos hechos es ventilarlos como si se tratase de un delito de abuso sexual.
A lot of words to justify sexual assault 🤷♂️
Me limité a tratar de exponer los hechos, basándome en el propio relato de la denunciante, del cual no surgen indicios claros de que el acusado hubiera utilizado violencia, sino quizás más bien lo contrario.
En primer lugar, ella se acerca a él. Luego, cuando comienzan los juegos sexuales, ella tiene un rol activo cuando le practica sexo oral a él. Estos juegos no duran 2 o 3 minutos, sino que, según ella, duran aproximadamente 30 minutos, media hora en la que no se describe ninguna acción de retirada o desagrado, ni mucho menos de forzamiento. Tras una pausa, en la que ambos están sentados en un sofá, conversando, se reanuda la acción, mientras ambos -según lo relatado por "Grace"- continúan estando desnudos. Recién luego entonces, se visten y ella va a otro cuarto, donde incluso se besan por última vez antes de despedirse.
Todo esto surge del relato de la propia y supuesta víctima. Entiendo que para vos esto es una agresión sexual, de modo que si de ti dependiera, el acusado debería estar preso...
No creo que existan pruebas concluyentes de lo que la denunciante manifestó a posteriori que SENTIÓ que ocurrió.
El arrepentimiento por haber tenido relaciones puede ocurrir y muchas veces ocurre, por distintas razones, lo mismo que pasar a convertirse en denunciante. No podemos conocer con certeza, a través del mero relato de la supuesta víctima, ni lo que ocurrió, ni qué motivos la llevaron a exponer el caso como una denuncia. Por lo tanto creo que tenemos que ser más moderados antes de juzgar implacablemente las acciones de otras personas. Los delitos y sus autores deben probarse, más allá de toda duda razonable.
Tal vez esto sea apropiado aquí
https://youtu.be/hj8qHXvg-jk
You've been very brave in addressing such an emotionally charged topic, and I appreciate your efforts to foster meaningful dialogue. However, I'm concerned about the use of your personal experience as a basis for creating graphs, especially when there isn't solid evidence to support your claims. While it's fine to share your personal experience, it may not be necessary or particularly relevant to the broader discussion. What stands out most to me is that by making these graphs based solely on your experience, it creates a misleading impression of evidence where there isn't any. It would have been more appropriate to either choose a different topic with actual data to support your analysis or, if discussing this topic, to make it clear that the lack of data is the key point—not the graphs you've created. Thanks again for sparking this important conversation!
Thank you Cristina!
Point taken on the graphs.
I think maybe what’s confusing here is that I usually abstain from topics that are more philosophical or are so contentious. Usually, science is pretty settled on what I write about. Not here. That’s why the subtitle says this is my opinion rather than the truth.
It sounds like you take issue mostly with the data on false reports of sexual harassment. Is that accurate? If so, just know that I do have data on this, I just haven’t published it yet because it’s even more fraught than this article!
I would be very interested in seeing the data you mentioned and letting it shed light on this issue. My concerns aren’t just about false reports but also about the extent of harassment that goes unreported. To truly understand this problem, it’s crucial to have data on both aspects. While I recognize that gathering accurate data on unreported harassment can be particularly challenging due to its nature, it’s essential for making a meaningful comparison and understanding the full scope of the issue. Thank you again!
Thank you! I was one of the people who wrote hoping you might take this topic on. I was hoping your very specific kind of intelligence and inside/outside perspective could be brought to bear on this territory. You were initially reluctant in the reaction to the language of woke that caused such a surprise in the response provoked by using the language. I was initially exasperated and sad that it seemed you were rejecting the idea of going to this territory. So this is a breath of fresh air that is badly needed. In order for us to talk to each other we need shared frames of reference. There can be debate within those frames but without them we will continue to talk past each other. There are more rich seams to explore in this whole arena. But if this ends up being your only foray into culture war debates it has already been refreshing and a delight to see you tackle with your customary courage and integrity. If you do more work in this area I would love to hear your take on the following other currents in Western Culture: 1. Marxism. How many of our ideas about inequality are rooted in the rise of Marxist ideology for good or for ill? 2. Christianity. Was Marxism a form of Christianity that became as complicated and compromised as the religious wars of the Reformation and the resulting cruelty and oppression of both sides? Or was it a form of secularism that divorced culture from the sacred and resulted in horrific mass murder and even worse inequality and oppression? 3. Class. The intersectionality of class seems to cut across some of the ideological divides on Left and Right. There are Leftists who think the focus on race and gender has destroyed class solidarity and resulted in a splintering of coalitions that enabled elite groups to emerge within oppressed communities, and has splintered unemployed white communities away from the narrative of oppression. There are Rightist who believe that the language of oppression is itself oppressive. Do they both rely on white male power as a default and fear the obliteration of the dominant group? 4. Imperialism and colonialism. How much does the history of ideas about what social justice means impact the way we think about the rights of people with whom The West does business? 5. The binary. How do we navigate the tendency of human thought toward creating binary opposites of good and bad ? Where does this come from? 6. Brain hemisphere theory. Is this a good way of framing the binary? Our brains are constantly sifting information between the chaotic flux of information that the Right hemisphere must process and the formalistic shapes that the Left hemisphere uses to create harmonious patterns that explain how and where to process that information? 7. Progress. Implicit in your framing is a narrative of progress in history. Is that accurate? Is that a Left brain narrative? Or a Western narrative? Are there other narratives that also have explanatory power? 8. The end of communism and the decline of Christianity. This might explore how the catastrophe of Marxist regimes brought both a realization of the dangers of binary oppressive logic, yet also allowed for the collapse of relatively functioning societies into immiseration and resulted in rising authoritarianism in Russia and the adaptation of capitalist economics in China? 9. China. Is it communist or capitalist? Or is the new authoritarian model the CCP have created a different kind of threat? Is the new China more insidious as the CCP have penetrated social media in the West and cemented power in Western finance? How did the CCP cause The China Shock which devastated the industrial heartland in the USA? 10. Mental illness. How much of the time are the narratives you discuss steered by people with Cluster B personality Disorders? When are we listening to people who have Anti Social Personality Disorder and who have hijacked social movements? Or are some forms of social organization more vulnerable to the influence and power of those people? What about other kinds of mental illness and how that may bias any of us? Are the mentally ill an oppressed minority or is the idea of mental illness itself a dangerous narrative?
I think your comment was the tipping point for me to tackle this! I apologize for the reaction: You’re right that it appeared unwelcoming, even though it did make me think.
On that note, maybe my subconscious will work in parallel on the other topics you mention. For now, I feel ill-equipped to address most of these issues, except the China one. Maybe I should write an article on it.
FWIW my next themes on this topic are:
Is Diversity Good?
Freedom of Speech
The Rise of the Right in Europe
Consent
Understood. I also apologize for my tone. I could have expressed myself more productively. Perhaps my list here is more my areas of fascination that aren’t currently your in your beam of interest. It’s all good. I look forward to reading the next pieces. I’m a huge fan of your work and the way your mind works. You are always generating stimulating, creative and productive debate. The way you have decided to tackle this is very smart and interesting. It feels like it points us in a direction to think about how we might engage in difficult or polarized social issues in mutually beneficial ways. I wonder how much of the contentiousness of the current culture wars are to do with the way, say, Twitter/X encourages and structure the social conversation? I decided to come off that platform as the version of myself that was on there was too reductive and amygdala driven, and it compressed the actual complexity of how I experience things into a kind of sloganeering that put me on a “side” when often I feel I see many sides. Also do you know “Justice” by Michael J. Sandel? I think you might enjoy. He’s a political philosopher at Harvard who reframes the culture wars as philosophical debates. So he brings a different frame of complex thinking, and uses data and thought experiments to challenge us to recognize that many of these debates have no “right” answer-rather they invite us to engage with apparently irreconcilable conflicts in good faith. This turns unproductive purity tests and self righteous mud slinging into philosophical enquiry. Perhaps also the frame you offer here helps us see that we probably all oscillate between liberal and fundamentalist perspectives on different time scales. Many of us change our minds entirely. In other words we are not static. But do we need static frames to orient ourselves and recognize where we are situated culturally at different points of the journey of our lives? And I would love to hear your take on China. A massively important global threat which feels under theorized, and where none of the old frames of reference seem to serve us well, when deeper and clearer comprehension is required.
Thanks!
“Justice” sounds interesting, but scary because it sounds like a lot. Is there one specific article you’d highly recommend?
Understood on China!
Justice is a fairly short paperback book and any of the chapters are self contained but they do carry a thread though of an evolving idea—that there are many ways of defining justice and there is no one answer. But by engaging with all of them we can ask more probing questions of ourselves. But I just found this link which is a good condensation of the arguments: https://pbsinternational.org/programs/justice-whats-the-right-thing-to-do/#:~:text=In%20this%2012%2Dpart%20series,are%20never%20black%20and%20white.
Just bought the audio book!
I think you have a similar way of perceiving reality, a similar ability to zoom out on complexities to see deeper structures at work, and a similarly empathetic but tough minded perspective on our various human foibles and delusions.
I look forward to your next themes regarding this important topic that touches everyone in the U.S. to some extent.
Perhaps discuss what does 'Diversity" mean. Ethnic? Racial? Class? Educational? Ideological? Intellectual? Religious? Emotional? Psychological?
You’ll like this week’s premium article!
The topics are interesting, although I think the question "is diversity good" is better frame as "is the absence of diversity bad ?" (or at least it should be asked both ways)
On freedom of speech, as it's a part of a culture war series, and a war implies attacks from both sides, I do hope you're planning to talk about the numerous attacks on free speech from the right ?
Which ones are you referring to?
I'm gonna outsource this to my past self and give you this extensive collection of examples of far right "cancel culture", that I originally made 3 years ago to debate with a friend :
https://apprendrelaphoto.notion.site/Cancel-culture-d-extr-me-droite-b94f092d748c41158e29a59e999f2e8a?pvs=4
(so the sometimes snarky tone was intended for him, this time ^^)
[for other people who'd read this, it's in french, but most sources are in english]
My point was basically that "cancel culture" is not a left thing, and actually more a right thing, or at least they're more successful.
It's up to you to consider which cases you include in freedom of speech per se, but it sure as hell ain't none of them.
I am particularly interested in #10, how personality disorders and mental illness plays a part in politics and in confusing and manipulating people, their viewpoints and their votes. Might be too thorny a topic to tackle, but if you did it would be interesting and informative.
I find this topic very interesting and would appreciate you writing more, especially on the challenges of intersectionality. It can be so complex. I have found that the MeToo movement quickly got overshadowed by many other movements but you point out many other interesting situations as well.
Thank you for the encouragement!
How did you perceive the MeToo movement's overshadowing?
It might be helpful if you started from first principles: what's the basis for discrimination? I'm not an anthropologist but I'd surmise that the kernel of discrimination is identification: humans, like many species, evolved to identify with those most like and discriminate against based on the degree of unlikeness, with family being at the core, radiating out to encompass friends and neighbors, same dwelling, same tribe, same race, same species. etc. Then you need a theory of justice to determine, now that we are consciously aware of our programmed biases, when is it ok to discriminate and when is it not?
Disagreement might be rooted in (i) beliefs around the existence of such programmed biases; (ii) different notions of justice; and (iii) the extent to which the state or other societal groups should enforce our notions of justice. It's likely helpful to tease out the basis for disagreement in searching for consensus.
Interesting. Yeah I didn’t dive too much into that. I’ll think about it. Thanks!
You might be interested in the podcast Where There’s Woke - while the hosts are strong leftists, the show provides some useful deep dives into cases that are reported in popular media as “wokeism gone too far” that are at best misleading and at worst outright lies
Thanks!
My lifestyle doesn’t allow me to listen to podcasts. But is be happy to hear your summary of their main points that are relevant to this conversation!
Could you just download them and have AI make a summary ? I don't listen to podcasts either, but today I just use AI a lot of the times to know more about long form content I don't have the time to listen to normally.
I can get a quick summary and then ask AI to dig deeper on some points.
I'm incredibly disappointed by this essay. I've come to expect better and truer essays from you and was excited to see this essay.
Wokeness incorporates different movements & political & personal actions.
But the obvious reason for many types of what's called wokeness is "disparate impact".
Why are certain groups less present in certain roles (e.g. white basketball players or women garbagemen). Overwhelmingly biology (in the largest sense) is the primary cause.
However, that fact undermines the basic anthropology of modern western societies.
So societal disparities must be the results of discrimination.
Once all discrimination has been removed & the disparities still exist, what do you do?
Keep your anthropology & find more discrimination.
So now you have implicit bias, or racist jokes, or objective standards are the discrimination causing disparities.
It's an endless race that will always find new sources of discrimination because of a fundamental rejection of reality.
I agree with your take!
I have a hard time understanding how it supports your statement in your first sentence though.
I’m glad to see people disappointed on both sides though. I might be doing something right.
I will tackle some of the things you say in a future article.
My first (instinctive) paragraph was unrelated to my third paragraph.
Throughout this essay you made many sweeping generalizations without any attempt at subtlety or nuance.
Furthermore, you lump together different movements ("MeToo", DEI, etc.) together as "Wokeness" without any distinctions.
If you need further examples let me know.
You do realize that your claims are entirely contracted by an entire field or research, right ?
Like this is Harry Potter level of fiction.
There are many instances where biological differences don't explain anything.
"once all discrimination has been removed" is still complete utopia, so the rest of the conclusion is completely made up in your mind.
Which field of research?
I'd genuinely appreciate a list of rigorous studies (either here or via DM).
The field of research that contradicts the simplistic biological determinism you’re suggesting includes sociology, psychology, and intersectional studies, among others. These disciplines have produced a wealth of rigorous studies that demonstrate how social, environmental, and structural factors contribute to disparities observed in society, often independent of biological differences.
Sociology: Research in this field has shown that societal structures and institutional biases significantly influence outcomes for different groups. One classic study is William Julius Wilson's work on the structural causes of urban poverty, which highlights how economic shifts, social policies, and residential segregation create disparities.
Psychology: The concept of implicit bias is supported by a large body of psychological research, including studies by Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, who developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure the unconscious biases that can affect decisions in ways people might not be aware of.
Intersectionality: Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on intersectionality explores how overlapping identities (race, gender, class) interact to create unique modes of discrimination and privilege. This field illustrates that disparities often arise from complex interactions of social categories rather than simple biological differences.
Labor Economics: Research by Claudia Goldin and others in labor economics has shown how gender disparities in the workplace, for example, are not solely due to biological differences but are also significantly shaped by discrimination, social expectations, and policy frameworks.
Education Research: Studies on educational disparities, such as those by Sean Reardon, have demonstrated how race, socioeconomic status, and school funding inequalities contribute to achievement gaps, countering the idea that biology is the primary determinant of academic success.
Lol!
Do you know why there's no Replication Crisis in Sociology?
Glad I guessed your request wasn't genuine, and that I asked ChatGPT to write this whole thing in order to avoid wasting time.
People asking this question are ALWAYS dismissing entire fields of science as soon as it doesn't fit their view of the world.
You're not gonna brandolini-law me, bye ;)
I deeply admire your intelligence and your willingness to take on hard issues. I can tell by your willingness to take input and your genuine willingness to learn that your intentions are very positive. You have a unique intelligence and the way you go about your research and writing is always valuable. I’m interested in learning about the things that you think are important, even if they may spark controversy. So I would like to see more on this topic, if you’re up for writing more.
Thank you Kay! I appreciate, and take your feedback in.
Tomas, I admire your courage in walking into the lion's den. My sense is that the term "wokism" arose on the right as a derogatory description for efforts by progressives to advocate for maginialized groups like trans, and in response to the me too movement. Wokism is now used by the right as a blunt hammer to dismiss any effort to speak on behalf of any discrimnated group, whether it be immigrants or redheads. As you say, there has always been discrimination against some "out" group over human history and the right's woke meme is just the latest form. As a biologist I'd speculate that this impulse arose from the social nature of human culture. It is likely that early hominids lived in extended kin groups which conferred an advantage in raising infants who are helpless for years and in gathering enough food. A sense of belonging to a group, which differentiates your kin group (good!) from other non-related competing groups (bad!) may be the basis for discrimination. If there is any validity to this speculation, then humans may always view societies in terms of those in and outside your group. As humans came together in large numbers at close quarters with the development of agriculture and defended cities, there must have been a continual tension between the kin group impulse and trying to integrate into a much larger group which may include individuals who look, speak, and believe differently. From this perspective discrimination isn't surprising and only the targeted out group changes. For much of American history Blacks have been viewed as different, as have immigrants at different times. As other groups have become more visible and vocal in demanding rights, like women, gays, lesbians, and trans, they become the target of the deeply seated impulse to discriminate between in and out groups. This is a long winded way of saying that "wokism" is nothing new and therefore perhaps not worth your detailed analysis. I will caveat the above by saying that I'm a biologist, not an anthropologist or sociologist, and much to most of what I said may be fatuous.
Thank you!
Woke is very much not a right-wing thing. It has a very long tradition in the Black rights movement. The fact that the right uses sarcastically doesn’t make it negative. I chose to use it very much because everybody knows what it refers to, and both sides broadly agree on it, even if one side sees it positively and the other negatively.
I think your biological explanation is probably valid!
Yes, I understand why you used the term. Discrimination long pre-dates this right-wing.
Rich and fair analysis. The author may wish to consider two further points: i) ‘wokism’ is apparently confined to Western or westernised societies, resulting in an increase distance between such societies and the rest of the world, eg as measured by value surveys; ii) (more speculative) wokism
seems to be part of a wider trend that is also behind societies’ inability to reproduce themselves, as measured by (well) below replacement fertility rates.
Thanks for adding the first point. It’s true!
I’m not sure I follow on the second one. Low fertility is a global phenomenon…?
The global dimension of the decline in fertility (outside of Africa)has been recently highlighted in a widely reported article in the Lancet: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00550-6/
By contrast value surveys tend to show an increasing differentiation between the West and the rest. Therefore I would actually suggest that drivers of the collapse in fertility go well beyond cultural influences subsumed under ‘wokism’.