Important article by Lionel Shriver

I think some posters are raising concerns about GC viewpoints being lumped in with viewpoints that reflect intolerance to diversity

But TRAs complaining about this has been going for years, with a multitude of other candidates than Lionel Shriver, with a multitude of other perspectives, and specifically to this forum on an inordinate number of threads. It’s nothing new.

And it’s perfectly easy to combat such rants about “being aligned with [insert villain du jour]”, because it’s been done an inordinate number of times. It’s quite trite.

I don’t know why people worry about what TRAs think. Personally I give zero fucks about what TRAs think about who I “align” with. It’s funny to see them tie themselves in knots about it. GC views align with a myriad of people, what with them being grounded in material reality and all. It’s just a wasteful tactic that isn’t worth worrying about IMO.

"It's an opinion piece. One woman's opinion. They might think she's a nasty bigot, and some people posting here would clearly agree with them, but do you really think anyone's going to read it and think it represents the view of all other women?"

I think some posters are raising concerns about GC viewpoints being lumped in with viewpoints that reflect intolerance to diversity. Many people with GC views consider 'trans rights' issues to be fundamentally different to rights based issues faced by other oppressed/minority views. Each time a 'big name' known to be GC lumps them together, this provides more fodder for TRAs to lay claims to GC views to be dismissed.

It is absolutely the case that one women's views does not represent anyone else's. It is also the case that the underpinning rationale for being GC differs widely. These points represent the inaccuracy of TRA claims that the GCs are all conservative and/or religious zealots.

what a bunch of nasty bigots we are

Who is this "we"?

It's an opinion piece. One woman's opinion. They might think she's a nasty bigot, and some people posting here would clearly agree with them, but do you really think anyone's going to read it and think it represents the view of all other women?

While I’ve admired her novels - So Much For That is a searing critique of the US health system - I find her extreme and rigid in her opinions as expressed in articles like this, in interviews and on the radio (e.g. Question Time).
I think she’s found a niche here where she’s courted and promoted, whereas in the US she’d just be another right wing commentator among many. I find it odd that she chooses to stay here when she quite blatantly belittles much of our societal norms. I found her views on those who opposed Brexit insulting and unpleasant.

" I know it can sounds a bit platitudinous, but I support free speech, even the speech of people I can’t stand and the speech I vehemently disagree with. Societies are stronger when ideas are expressed and allowed to be robustly challenged. We have to learn to be able to hear things we disagree with without wanting to immediately remove or restrict the rights of others to speak"

I don't think many posters have expressed views that the article should not have been published, nor that Shriver had no right to share her views.

It's interesting to think about the motivations of polemicists and contrarians. Some do it just to make money or to garner attention, some do it to try and drive social change, others simply enjoy being divisive. My guess is that a combination of all these motivated Shriver to write that article.

Why has she? She wrote an article. Personally I like it, I think she’s right in many places and it’s funny that her aim to provoke has been successful. But why does that mean TRAs can “cite” her as an example of anything other than Lionel Shriver?

Who cares what TRAs think about what other think of Lionel Shriver?

This is common-or-garden right-wing culture warrior twattery, I'm afraid. There are plenty of sensible and nuanced views on these issues from the right, but sadly not much of that on show here.

I notice the weird rightist belief that Trump Will Solve Everything cropping up. Why do these people put so much faith in this awful, incompetent man? Did left-wing identity politics go into decline during his first term? It did not (arguably the opposite). Why are these people so convinced things will turn out differently this time around?

Well said. I whole heartedly agree. I'm cheered by the eloquence and sophistication of each post.

Shriver is ID politics embodied. She identifies as British for starters

but was born and educated in America and currently lives in Portugal

shes a professional contrarian who may well “identify” as British (I mean really??) but still sees everything through the politics & culture of America and seems not to notice despite living in other countries that fir example America’s race politics
are considerably different to other places

I gave The Times a go recently, but articles like this are why I stopped my subscription. The only thing that grinds my gears more than the fawning approach of the likes of the pro-TRA Guardian journos is the sanctimonious and hyperbolic right-wing pundit who acts as though pronouns on emails is a sign that Western society is in a state of total moral collapse, and that anything left of hard-right social Darwinism is effectively communism.

Contrarians may provide a refreshing jolt of stimulation to jaded readers and listeners (I guess that's what "shock jock" means). But they're also, by definition, utterly derivative. They react to whatever progressive cultural excesses are getting the most goats. These boards here contain more brilliance, creativity and genius than a million Shrivers.
I'll be disappointed if the promised land of free expression turns out to welcome us with the words, abandon editorial standards all ye who enter here.

Thanks Lionel. You’ve provided a cracking bit of evidence for a TRA to cite whenever they’re trying to prove what a bunch of nasty bigots we are.

ffs

For someone who wrote "we need to talk about Kevin" with such skill and nuance this article is surprising for its clunky broad brushstrokes and leaps of generalisation. Won't ever buy anything of hers again - a grasp for the trumpian populist applause leaves me disappointed in someone who was once so eloquent.

Shriver is ID politics embodied. She identifies as British for starters. A particularly narrow and almost parodic type of British. Thinks you are doing British all wrong. Londonistan. The EU recast as a new Soviet menace. The Irish peace agreement is treason.
The fanaticism of a convert perhaps. But people don't see the Woke when conservatives do it. As Kenan Malik observes : culture wars only benefit the Right. They only serve to confuse and deflect from the whole raison d'etre of the Left , to improve the material conditions of the working class.

Agree with you.

I absolutely hate GC views being conflated with being anti- EDI etc.

She seems to have lost the plot.

Contrarians are often the ones who stand up and say something when everyone else is just too caught up in being socially acceptable. They don't care if you think they are jerks.

But I am a bit surprised so many seem to think that race and sex identarianism are ok and fine, it's only gender identarianism that is a problem.

There is a reason the "body positivity" movement, and autism groups for parents, and the neurodiversity movement, and BLM an danti-racism, etc, have become so completely toxic across the board, and produced such ineffective political policy, and seen a huge increase in ill-feeling between differernt social groups - and it's because they have zero to do with the principles that enlivened things like the civil rights movement.

I agree.

And, as much as they make your teeth itch or your eyes roll, society also needs contrarians to speak out as a safety valve when an authoritarian or elite social group is caught up in totalising or ideological thinking.

I know it can sounds a bit platitudinous, but I support free speech, even the speech of people I can’t stand and the speech I vehemently disagree with. Societies are stronger when ideas are expressed and allowed to be robustly challenged. We have to learn to be able to hear things we disagree with without wanting to immediately remove or restrict the rights of others to speak.

I think this is what is discombobulating me. I have always turned to Lionel Shriver to have hugely insightful, nuanced thoughts on any given matter. Reading this article makes me feel like one of my heroes has just been revealed to be one big joke 😓

It's worth remembering that in the UK there is not nearly so much problematic stuff going on with what you are calling "racial inclusion" as there is in the US and Canada. Where, for example, it's completely legal for employers to overtly choose or dismiss employees on the basis of race, or to require higher test results for people of certain races, or to only give grants to scientists who have lab assistance of certain races., or where it's seen as ok to talk to elementary school children about the problem of whiteness.

Yes, I can actually remember when it was a normal term where I live, the same as saying something like "developmentally delayed". Now we have people saying that you can't talk about using retardant in your concrete, and it also has made a comeback in schools as an insult. I think these things are related.

But the investors are doing that, and it does show a change in how people are behaving.

Apart from that, ultimately the management needs to make the case to share folders and their representatives that these kinds of initiatives are more than virtue signalling, that there is long term benefit, and they haven't really. To the point where they've clearly lost the confidence of the shareholders.

I will not be buying any more of her books.

If she were to write a brilliant book again, I would buy it, despite her idiotic stream of cuntishness in many columns. I don't really care about her as an individual, except in a passive-aggressive "You ok hun?" kind of a way. I'm just worried about how her casual racism etc might taint perfectly unexceptional critiques of gender ideology.

It is bizarre, though, that she should have become so crass. We Need To Talk About Kevin was remarkable for at least two reasons: the way in which she was able to hold uncertainty (about who was 'in the wrong', which interpretations bore scrutiny, etc ), and the way in which she was able simultaneously to critique and permit her central character's harsh and withholding nature.
I fully travelled with her in both of these sets of nuance. It is completely disorientating that she has so comprehensively rejected nuance and reflection now.

But I've no idea how it works. There's no such thing as matter apparently. Just a bunch of whirling electrons and empty space. I'm not jumping out of any windows though!

She had a back surgery go wrong, has been in a lot of pain and is not yet recovered. Perhaps she seems a bit off for this reason?

She's really said all the things there, wow.

I disagree that she "just happens" to be right about GI and the other stuff is nasty - they are all a package. Identity politics Is one set of ideas - the other ideas she is talking about aren't more sensible. They are just as bad, and just as full of contradictions and injustices. And will fail due to those things.

She's right too that the identarians are neither non-conformist nor original thinkers, but are very invested in believing they are both.