Since I’ve been out of communication for so long, I thought I ought to re-state my position and some of my core values, while continuing my long-running diatribes.

Everything I write, these days, seems to align me with the intolerant, conservative right-wing, in Britain. Honestly, I’m not one of them.

Ever since I was a student, I’ve aligned myself with the left. It is my natural constituency, but that’s why I am concerned by the direction their journey has taken them. You can’t expect the right to do the right thing, but when the civil rights movements lose their way, who is left to stand for justice and truth?

I believe every individual human being is equally valuable because each contains a small, flickering flame of human consciousness, of sentience: by far our most precious asset. The same flame, of the same brightness and quality, seems to burn in each of us, and we crave communion – a merging of these tongues of fire – but we are condemned to live alone, because we don’t have direct access to each other’s experience.

Our sealed-in individualism makes us self-serving and overly indulgent of our own needs, but also flawed and limited in our abilities. We need to co-operate to survive.

We should, therefore, strive to build and maintain societies that foster empathy and compassion, that demand equality of respect for all individuals. In other words, I am a socialist: a believer in the virtue of civil society. 

Such societies need to be organised and administered. Its members need to agree on a set of rules that all will follow, because we can’t be certain to always make the right decision, no matter how sincerely we believe in our perspective on a thing. This is The Rule of Law, and it needs to be inviolable. To take the law into your own hands, even if you truly believe that your position is morally justifiable, is to break the pact with the other members of your community. If sincerity of belief allows you to break the rules, then, presumably it allows everyone to break the rules.

One thing we should have learned from Donald Trump’s America, from Charlottesville and the storming of the Capitol, is that the far right is always going to be more willing to take direct action to more violent extremes because, by definition, the left enshrines respect and care for others, and the right does not. So, if we resort to methods of unilateral violence, if we pursue conflict, we are enabling the far right and they are likely to be more ruthlessly destructive than we are. The fact that they are short-sighted in their violence, and will live to regret it, will be no comfort to us when they have dismantled everything we value and have worked for. 

We should remember, in our antipathy to society that it was Mrs. Thatcher, our most ultra-capitalist political leader who stated that there was “no such thing as society.” The Alt-Right have adapted very easily to the role of the rebels. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so ready to celebrate Social Justice Warriors. Warriors live by, and spread, conflict and division. Conflict and division will destroy us.

Happy New Year, Guys!

On the 31^st of December, I splashed small amount of tea over the top right-hand corner of my keyboard. The screen instantly went black. I immediately turned it upside down to drain the liquid, but it made a soft hissing sound, like milk gently seething in a pan, and refused to turn on again. I immersed it in a tray of rice, to dry it out. In fact, I had to buy a second big bag of rice to cover it, but to no avail. My laptop was dead. 

So, I’ve been rushing around trying to find somebody, at new year who would recover my data, to spend huge amounts of money buying a new one (sobs!), but now I’m back! And ready, once more to do battle in the great arena of the internet. Hello, again, non-existent readers!

fhfh

My previous post was a response to a long article by Gary Younge, in The Guardian’s “The Long Read” series (“What Covid Taught Us about Racism”, 16/12/21) It is, of course, an excellent piece: well researched and reassuringly sensible in most of its conclusions. It identifies the glaring inequalities that beset British society, and the correlations between race, poverty and the negative outcomes of poverty that led to an increased vulnerability to Covid 19 among people of colour. He also points out that none of these issues are new or newly identified, yet they are urgent and (still) need to be addressed.  

Gary Younge is a wise, veteran commentator on race and society in Britain. Yet the pull of Americanised Social Justice seems to drag even his, usually highly incisive, work just a little out of focus. It just feels, you know, a little blurry, a little self-contradictory. For example Mr Younge talks about “the urgency and clarity of this moment” (my italics), while admitting “there was no representative entity to make concrete demands” and that this can lead to “a lack of democracy, clear direction, consistency or permanence” with different groups laying out “alternative visions for how the world might be understood.” There are moments,” he says, “when Britain appears engaged not so much in a debate about racism as a litany of race-based tantrums… Terms such as ‘woke’ and ‘culture war’, deprived of any meaning they once may have had are tossed about like confetti.”

Mr Younge’s perceptions, here are similar to my own, so obviously I applaud his analysis and his courage in identifying problems with a movement he seems to find heartening and exciting. 

But it doesn’t sound like “clarity” to me. 

The famous left wing English film maker, Ken Loach made a piece of propagandist frippery in 2006 called The Wind That Shakes the Barley. It was about the Irish War of Independence and it attempted to recast the murderous campaigns of the thoroughly right-wing West Cork Brigade of the (Old) IRA as some sort of Social Reform movement. This is, of course, an act and product of dreadful cultural imperialism: the imposition of a British perspective onto an Irish struggle, making Irish history conform to the simplified fictions of the English class system. (It is also, perhaps, cultural appropriation.) 

Of course, we Irish were completely unable to resist it. It starred a young Cillian Murphy, for Christ’s sake: probably the most beautiful man in the world! (He was unable to resist taking the role.) The IRA men were just so damn glamorous in their trench coats, flat or baker-boy caps and long, bolt-action Lee-Enfield rifles. Clearly the inspiration for Peaky Blinders, but with added moral integrity! To hell with our own history – Ken Loach can have it! 

The Wind That Shakes the Barley became the highest grossing independent film on (Irish) record, and was universally praised. Mind you, this is less embarrassing than the fact that the grotesque anti-Irish insult that is Ed Sheeran’s “Galway Girl” topped the charts in Ireland. (Have we no pride?)

I am reminded of these examples reading articles by impressive social commentators of such as professors David Olusoga and Gary Younge. They seem to have succumbed to the energy and excitement, and the heady sense of belonging, that comes with embracing the modern racial justice movement. Even Lenny Henry has started using the language of social justice and celebrating its successes, talking excitedly about “complicity” and “starting the conversation.”

I find it disturbing to be even slightly at odds with my intellectual and educational superiors. The chances are that I’m just plain wrong. In a disagreement between me and David Olusoga, who’s more likely to be talking sense?

Almost everything they say is still cogent, tolerant and relevant. I’m almost entirely in agreement with them. The inequalities they record are stark and undeniable. These are the people from whom I get my best points and statistics for slapping down conservatives, after all. 

But, I have tiny reservations, often just about certain word choices. This may seem hair-splitting, but words are important. 

It seems to me they have been enticed off the path of true social justice, and of their better judgements, maybe only a little, by the sheer excitement of the moment. Their thinking on some details of race relations in Britain do seem less clear than they used to be a couple of years ago. 

I think I understand why they have been drawn into this. It must be virtually impossible to resist the camaraderie, the sense of elated achievement, of making serious progress, breaking new ground, that comes with being swept up in a movement. 

And these are public intellectuals who rely on being able to communicate with mass audiences, often younger than themselves. 

How disingenuous is their support for the woke generation? They are like wise, elderly teachers, trying to banter and ingratiate themselves with their unruly students, so they can get them to refocus on their studies.

 It never works.  (I should know: I work in a school.)

In identity politics, rather than reaching a conclusion that accommodates the science, the verifiable truths of biology are ditched in favour of fancies and groundless convictions. Rather than admitting, “I am male, but I feel a great desire (or curiosity?) to act out the role of a (stereotypical) woman. Why might this be?” We are told we can be what we want to be; we can transform the world simply by wishing it so. Anyone who denies this is an evil minion of the system and must be destroyed, because they are not Truth Tellers. And this is because the truth can be whatever you wish it to be and to deny somebody’s truth is to oppress them. 

But, as I mentioned in my previous post, that’s like calling your oncologist a bigot because he tells you that your biopsy showed that not all the cancer cells had been removed, when you really, really wanted to be free of cancer. Or calling your history teacher a Nazi because he teaches a module on the holocaust and suggests that antisemitism still exists. 

Objective truth exists, even if it is unpleasant to hear, and it is important. It may be difficult to discern, even impossible, sometimes, but that makes it all the more precious and all the more worthy of striving for. 

Rather than coming up with proper, science-based solutions to their anguish, transsexuals are expected to simply “transition” and then celebrate their “liberation”, angrily rebutting anyone with genuine concern and reservations about how sensible this is, as if they were horrible Nazi trolls.

But this attitude is unfair and unsupportive of the real-world problems transexual people encounter. It would be irresponsible to tell somebody with gender dysmorphia that they can be transformed wholly, like some real-world Pinocchio, into a man or woman, indistinguishable from those born genetically male or female. That will not help them deal with the prejudice and resistance, suspicion and ostracism.  More importantly, it will not help them deal with the brutal fact that they cannot become wholly identical to biological members of their chosen gender, or the existential angst and loneliness that may derive from that. 

Identity politics also demands an almost medieval belief in the difference between the body and the soul, but without the Christian’s submission to a ruling god. Its sacred text must be William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus”. You know: “I am the master of my fate/ I am the captain of my soul.” (etc.)

For these activists, the self is an act of pure will that appears out of the void, with no antecedents, or constituent parts, like the Big Bang. The self lives as a sacred flame in the corrupted shrine of the body, but is wholly unconnected to it. Or the body is an ugly beast of burden, reviled or ignored, a sort of ill-formed donkey, that serves only to carry the self from place to place. 

It seems a misguided approach. The body is the author of the earliest sense-impressions that coalesce to become you. The body collaborates in forming who you are and how you experience being yourself at this moment, in this world. We shouldn’t ignore that. Gender is inescapable. If someone is inescapably male, but wishes desperately, obsessively, to enact their perception of “femaleness”, they should be loved and supported and accepted for who they are. We should strive to use the pronouns they wish us to use, out of kindness, but we should not deny the brute facts of their biology, just because they wish it so desperately to be otherwise. 

I’m not saying we should ram it down their throats, unnecessarily, but truth is important. We would not say, to a cancer sufferer who desperately, obsessively wanted to be free of cancer, “Alright, then, if you say you are free of cancer, then you are.” Or if we did, we’d know we were lying to them. 

I think, when I was young, liberal humanists were more progressive and more accepting of individualism than we are now. (Even the conservatives, though more entrenched, seemed less vituperative.) Everybody wore their older brothers’ and sisters’ hand-me-downs; boys frequently had long hair, not as a statement but because their parents couldn’t bear to cut their beautiful tresses. 

Now, however, everyone is encouraged to join a defined identity group as early as possible, and then to conform to the definition of that group, denying all aspects of themselves that might conflict with that definition. 

My son has opted to grow his hair very long. It stretches right down his back, almost to his waist. He is repeatedly asked, at school, if he is “trans.” He is only 13 and not fully pubescent. Meanwhile, some of his pre-pubescent friends are claiming to be gender fluid or gay although (because?) they don’t feel sexual attraction to anyone, yet, have only just become aware of gender constructs, and know little of current affairs. 

Of course, children should be free to explore these issue and to debate and discover their extent and power. However, they should not be pressurised into coming to definite conclusions about gender constructs and sexuality when they are not even fully familiar with them. 

Nowadays, if someone is unhappy with enacting the expectations of their biological sex, they are encouraged to think they can, and should, become another, by force of will and consciously learned behaviour. This, ironically, makes gender as superficial, stereotyped and rigid as the most conservative societies of the 1950s: girls look and act in one way; boys look and act in another. If you are unhappy with your tribe (Beer! Football! Porn!), you must abandon it totally and wholly adopt the trappings and behaviours of another (Make up! Fashion! Relationships!) 

Because femininity has been more flamboyantly advertised in our patriarchal society, many male to female Transsexual people seem to spend years wandering uncomfortably through the liminal borderlands between genders but only by adopting very definite parts of feminine body-semiotics. (fake eyelashes, a sashay.) Their lack of ease comes, perhaps, as much from the difficulty of working out how to be truly womanly, than from rejection by their society. It seems a little easier to be a Female to Male transsexual, as the less explicit focus on the outward appearance allows them to merge much more easily with the “non-binary.” That’s a much more easily tenable position.

Except that, if non-binary people were really so uncaring about gender stereotypes, surely they would be happy admitting to their biological sex? Maybe they could refer to themselves as Liberated Men or Liberated Women (“Libs”.)

The modern plethora of online “communities” seems, at first, like progress towards a more tolerant society. Yet, these groups promote the idea that they are separate from, and at odds with, the wider community. Members define themselves in opposition to the norm, and celebrate a spirit of combative intolerance of intolerance. They valorise antagonism and fearless confrontation, ignoring the fact that you don’t change the world by shouting at it. They feel solidarity in their mutual resentment of the wrongs done to them by others and in the support they can offer each other. 

If, therefore, you are part of the “gender envy community”, your alienation from your biological gender will be reinforced by a network of like-minded people: Your People: Your tribe. This gender envy will become part of your identity as you begin to experience the world as such and as it responds to you as someone with that identity. 

Online communities reinforce separate identities and so promote division.

It is no coincidence that this mind-set has been nurtured online. It is in big business’s interest to define and compartmentalise us, for marketing purposes. And social media was developed (if not invented) as a marketing tool, one that is now so powerful that it can create the categories, and thus the appetites and markets, it originally aimed to define and target.  

The belief that being the opposite sex would be far more fulfilling is (ironically) further evidence that a complete transition to maleness or femaleness is impossible. For how can you identify as a man without ever having experienced the limitations and humiliations of being male? Part of being a man is to know, at first hand, how unfulfilling, distressing and embarrassing it is, and to feel solidarity with others who have had such experiences. To be a woman is, I assume, similarly unsatisfying, and women feel a bond of fellowship with others who menstruate, give birth, are patronised by men, and so on. 

We cannot completely transcend our bodily limitations. This is a truth of the human condition, not just in terms of gender. While it is common to envy the perceived advantages of other types of humans (richer, taller, slimmer, whiter, more talented), most of us learn to live with who we are. It is a sign of maturity, but, then, we have no other option. 

Feeling so completely envious of the other gender as to want to become it, is to ignore the fundamental difficulty we all share of being a small, individually powerless, fallible, ignorable human being who is all alone in the world, plagued by degrading physiological urges and afflictions, and fated to die soon. This afflicts us all, even the beautiful people. Failing to recognise this in other people means you are not seeing them as fully human in the same way as you are, even as you envy them. Desiring to be what you conceive of as not fully human is a desire for self-destruction: existential lobotomy or suicide. 

The belief that it is your inalienable right to choose your gender, to destroy yourself, is a neo-con consumerist myth: the fundamental rights of humankind have degenerated into the shrill demand to be allowed to buy whatever you fancy.

Thinking that all your existential problems would be solved by transitioning would be naïve. Transgender people must feel driven to follow their goals, despite knowing how difficult the road will be, and how incomplete their successes. That is why some are so sensitive to other people’s scepticism.

However, the idea that adopting the trappings of another gender as any sort of solution, no matter how approximate, reinforces modern dehumanising generalisations about “the other.” 

Assuming that another gender offers a greater sense of existential wholeness, or that another racial group is having a much better time than you are demonstrates just how alienated we have all become. Advantages are largely seen not in the experience of individuals, far too bound up in their own problems to notice. The absence of all the things we don’t suffer from is eclipsed by the presence of all the things we do. That is why all those who condemn white privilege could equally be condemned for exhibiting able bodied privilege or non-downs-syndrome privilege or non-haemophiliac privilege, and so on and on.

By the noughties, a belief in the equality of all people, and in multicultural acceptance of difference, had narrowed the distance, if not bridged the gap, between some racial, ethnic and religious groups, between genders and between some sectarian political groups, between some majorities and minorities^[1]. Many legal battles had been won. We were making progress. 

Now, however, encouraged by the impersonal abstractions of online living, the distances have grown, once more. Rights advocates no longer agitate for equality, but for retributive and redistributive advantage for their tribe: a rebalancing of the statistics. 

Statistics do not deal with the complexity of any single person’s experience. They are numbers, averages that do not equate to anybody’s experiences. Yet the inequalities they show are used to attack individuals: living, breathing, warm-blooded, emotional, aspirational human beings just like you. This is unfair. 

We should have enough empathy to realise that nobody is having a particularly good time. 

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^[1] Bearing in mind that anyone can be part of a majority in one aspect of their identity or behaviour, and part of a minority in another.