'The right side of history' = 'God is on our side'?

The human urge for morality and transcendence is what lies behind the religious impusle too. They are intimately connected. Wokeists believe they are on the 'right side of history' because they see the concept of 'progress' as a moral curve arching towards righteousness, with time.

not a good analogy. It doesn’t capture BE

Gender critical ideas are critical of gender. Which is to say, they question the idea that sex necessitates stereotypical ways of being. The opposite of biological essentialism.

To paraphrase someone else's analogy:

Biological essentialism: women should do the washing up
Feminism/Gender critical: sex has no bearing on who does the washing up
Genderism: if you are washing up you must be a woman.

there is plenty of introductory reading matter out there on the web. Start with “biological essentialism”

As a feminist I spent a long time fighting the idea that my life should be limited by my biology. However, I never for a minute thought that it was limiting to say that i HAD a woman's body- quite the opposite.

That’s a great way of putting it @PermanentTemporary . I think a lot of women have got it backwards. Acknowledging your biology does not mean accepting culturally imposed limitations. Without acknowledging it, it’s impossible to tell the difference between what is a cultural limitation and what is an actual limitation that needs to be worked around or accommodated.

@GodessOfThunder I don't agree that GC ideas are biologically essentialist but I do know what you mean in that acknowledging that women are a sex class can lead to promoting the sacredness of women on the home and all that bullshit. What I'm suspicious of is ideas that are promoted as definitive moral progress by the great and the good when you can track obvious downsides. Right now, the idea of gender identity overriding sex has that status. As a feminist I spent a long time fighting the idea that my life should be limited by my biology. However, I never for a minute thought that it was limiting to say that i HAD a woman's body- quite the opposite.

The idea that history has 'sides' is illiterate anyway.

Well quite. When people say 'on the right side of history', it's almost as though they assume that those future people who will be judging us will be a perfect hive mind of justice and moral rectitude, whereas they will obviously just be fallible humans like us, with a wide range of different views and biases.

How are you working that out?
Male =/= female is not the same as 'sterilise the underdog'.

Eugenicists were biological essentialists. As such they have more in common with GC folks than Trans advocates.

I'll have to reread it (never a chore).

Sure

@kilopascal maybe you're right, she was certainly Christian enough not to be kern on it (though there were Christian eugenicusys, weirdly). But in Gaudy Night wasn't Harriet perfectly fine discussing the sterilisation of the unfit?

Many popular figures were keen on (eugenics), eg look at the books of Dorothy L Sayers

Was she keen on it? The only mention I can remember is her taking the Mickey out of an American postgrad for her enthusiasm for it.

People tend to assume that society is gradually becoming more tolerant and permissive. In some ways it is, but it‘s not that simple.

Decades ago, representatives of PIE attached themselves to gay rights activism and were allowed to discuss their (abhorrent) views on BBC TV. Attitudes to paedophilia have not exactly become more relaxed since then.

Mary Whitehouse turned out to be on the wrong side of history when it came to gay rights, and some of her religious beliefs seem very outdated today. However, she was ahead of her time in realising the link between pornography and sexual violence and correct in predicting that women would suffer as a result. She was also right about the dangers of allowing children to watch sexual or violent content.

Regarding gender ideology, I hope that as many more people learn about it, more will recognise its inherent misogyny and the conflict with women’s rights.

It’s a phrase that expresses a prediction of what is likely to be seen as moral in the future.

Sure. A prediction based on that persons beliefs and biases as to what they consider 'moral' now.

Oh incidentally eugenics was also hugely popular in the Labour Party. The Fabians were soaked in it, as were the Bloomsbury Group. So I never believe that one party has the moral high ground either.

I'm perhaps influenced by the strength of eugenics in the past as a way of looking at life, science and the world. My mother's family were enthusiastic eugenicists and wrote books about it between 1890 and 1914. Many popular figures were keen on it, eg look at the books of Dorothy L Sayers and Josephine Tey just as examples, or the children's book Dear Enemy, the sequel to the huge seller Daddy Long Legs. My family members wrote books about so called positive eugenics - the idea that educated, healthy white women should have lots of children, basically. The shadow of deep racism and 'negative' eugenics (the sterilisation of the 'unfit' and the institutional care of the 'useless', the belief that it was 'kinder' not to try too hard to keep residents of those institutions alive) lies across those books but wasn't expressed openly in the same way. Still, if pushed you can still get members of my family who were born in the 30s to express some of those views.

Eugenics was popular science back then. It was 'proved, 'modern. Lots of people advocated it. There were pressure groups, charities. The great and good believed passionately that eugenics reduced suffering and promoted health - that they were on the right side of history. There genuinely were links with other movements such as the push for contraception and legal abortion, though eugenicists were less keen on abortion because they thought rich white women would abort rather than have more babies.

And then the world found out what happens if you regard groups of people as lesser and advocate for their lives being worth less; the T4 programme, and the death camps. And there was a huge revulsion, the secular human rights movement came into being.

Which means that I react with enormous suspicion to the concept that an idea, however convincing, can ever be definitively 'on the right side of history'.

All very good points.
The essence of this what was right in the back of my head in some kind of jumbled mess without any substance to cling on to when I said above that it was a very interesting point raised by the OP.
Thank you for articulating this so clearly. I feel more intelligent now, albeit by proxy 😁

You all seem to be struggling a bit to comprehend it though - I’m happy to have given you a more accurate definition ;)

Your first post was odd then

It's also predicated on a false progress narrative - the idea that the future will always be better than the past. Often called the Whiggish version of history, although this is probably a little unfair to some of the actual Whigs!

To people who say this, if in 50 years the majority of people believe in gender identity, this would be proof that it's Right and True. The newest ideas are always the correct ones.

Anyone who has studied history will realise that although many things have improved over time, it's very far from a straight line forward. People have believed in all sorts of strange things that their ancestors didn't.

I do see that quasi-religious fervour to it as well. Anyone who stands in the way of the shiny new ideas is a sinner who should repent enemy of progress.

I think perhaps you've misunderstood.

We are discussing possible parallels and similarities between concepts/theories.

Comparison of different things is quite a common way to consider different positions, and can often be useful to show up different viewpoints and angles.