Brilliant article on The Tavistock by Lionel Shriver

I think anyone who is in favour of free speech and of heterodox thinking ought to be prepared to take issue with the nonsense espoused in Critical Race Theory. I think fearless thinkers will go there, and not care who it upsets in exactly the way gender critical feminists have had to be prepared to be accused of transphobia.

The arguments need to be parsed with the same care as the trans thing. To say "white fragility doesn't exist" is not the same as saying that people don't suffer racism. Just as saying "trans women are men" does not mean you want trans women to die.

I am no expert at critical race theory, or academic perspectives. And I am white. But the objective evidence is overwhelming- its pointless to go through them but range from maternal outcomes, who gets killed by police, job prospects... so I find it very ignorant to deny the lived experience of Black people.
We don't all have to agree on every aspect of course. But it does the GC argument no favours at all to muddy our arguments with minimising or denying institutional, systemic racism. It's clearer for me to leave it out for the sake of one sentence in an article. As if Lionel Shriver cares, but it reeks of privilege and ignorance.

She's written some excellent incisive articles about identity politics for the Times in recent years. Like this one about the unthinking adoption of USA preoccupations and the lack of knowledge of basic data about our country
(share token):

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9f8b3ed8-e1c0-11ec-baab-53d14c642149?shareToken=95dd66c319ebfe6bad17a7a168ff30c1

This article from Quillette.com is also excellent. quillette.com/2022/08/05/closing-the-tavistock-is-an-important-step/

A reminder that not everyone who is GC is coming at this from the same point of view.

Well of course. If you polled people who agreed with the statement 'The earth is not flat' you'd find a huge variation in the political affiliations and viewpoints of those people - left wing, right wing, centrist, far right, far left, atheist, buddhist, pro abortion, anti abortion.... Even racists know basic facts about the solar system.... Horrifying prospect for some, I know.
Imagine that - somewhere out there is a terrible, evil person who also agrees with a progressive, righteous person that the earth isn't flat. Such is life. 😆

Plenty of people disagree with assertions of structural racism in the West. The evidence doesn't seem convincing and does tend to rely on subjective interpretations. Lionel Shriver agrees with this stance, hence why she phrased it that way.

I agree it's a good article.

Pretty sure she doesn’t. She’s a grown up established author - one of her books was made into a critically acclaimed film and she was (is?) a journalist for the Economist. Have met her she is fearless and intelligent. She could wither a TRA with a glare from 50 paces.

Wow. Hope she handle the
Backlash surely coming her way but suspect she doesn't give a shit

The very nature of critical race theory is that it lionises subjective narratives over empiricism or attempts at objectivity. So she was completely correct.

Really good to see the point about us being embodied, not digital avatars.

And the point about us being distracted by this narcissistic tripe while there are far more pressing issues to address. I am so resentful of the energy fighting this has taken - when feminists have many other important things (that don't centre men) to focus on.

Oof. That’s a corker. Brava, Lionel!

being able to find some common ground and points of agreement (even if the agreement is partial, fairly superficial or you disagree with the motives of the other party) is useful in general. It’s the only real way to build any kind of consensus.

There’s no need for everyone to sign up to a full programme of anything.

I think this is true of any position. There will be people coming to it from all sorts of angles and holding all sorts of other positions alongside it. You aren’t ever going to agree with them on everything. And sometimes you will find that your views on one thing align with the views of people whose other views you find abhorrent.

I actually find the expectation that people should holistically hold the same views really troubling. You often see this used to dismiss a perfectly well made, reasonable point: oh but we can’t listen to that because that person also votes Tory/supports abortion/once said something racist/whatever else you’ve decided is unacceptable. If you see it in threads asking what ‘our’ position/argument is about X.

It’s always going to be a diverse coalition of people whose views align on particular topics. And that needs to be OK. The fact that people from across a broad range of spectra (on all sorts of issues) coalesce around an idea doesn’t invalidate that idea. It is actually pretty compelling evidence that the idea has wide support across society.

It’s likely that many white supremacists’s views on chocolate will align with mine, for example. That doesn’t make likening chocolate a bad or shameful thing. The chocolate isn’t tainted because people whose other views I find dreadful also like it. Being gender critical is a much less trivial example, but it is the case that my views on it are going to align the views of individuals or groups with a range of other views.

critical thinking about the peculiarities of specific issues is really important. Throwing the baby out with the bath water is not generally conducive to critical thinking.

'We’re on perilous ground when we mainstream bald-faced lies. We’re being asked to lie to ourselves and to each other, as well as to deny our shared perceptions of the material world.'

This is a really good response to the smug and lazy 'what does it matter to you what someone else's pronouns are?'

Brilliant article - every sentence was quotable.

I think many teachers and teaching institutions have like many medics and medical institutions been overly keen to go along with teaching gender woo nonsense, affirming and ignoring reality and science and truth

*news to me I meant.

Though it's probably also news to many.

"The NHS having just rechristened ‘gender dysphoric’ children as ‘early adopters’ is a bad sign; renaming is a flag of deceit."

This is news to many - does anyone know more about this or the context in which this terminology would be used?

It sounds very hip and modern, like surgeons who pioneered an improved surgical technique or people who were far ahead of me discovering the uses of the internet. Instead of a complete denial of the reality that they are talking about confused children.

Me too. And blaming teachers for the current situation.

A reminder that not everyone who is GC is coming at this from the same point of view.

So many parallels in history. Matt Haigs How To Stop Time draws this together well. Each few generations face similar issues but in different guises. The trans activists are the modern day witch finder generals/Spanish inquisition. Repeat our lies or you will suffer the consequences. We’ve been here before.

I ventured on to Tattle for the first time recently (drawn by a certain very very poor chef who’s very poor) and was pleasantly surprised by how GC it is.

Quite!

I'm on Tattle and is massively GC/TERFy. The TRAs don't seem to have cottoned on. I've heard it's the same at Kiwi Farms.

Excellent. Thanks for sharing.

I had a problem with that sentence too.

Its not subjective to say the West is structurally racist. I'd phrase it better- capitalism is structurally racist. And sexist.
I find that sentence in the article deeply problematic. The rest of the article is absolutely spot on, and needs to be said.