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

[RainWithSunnySpells]

I'm sure that this isn't an original thought (it's probably been suggested before) however once I thought about this it made a lot of sense of the weird phrase TRSoH.

I always wondered how anyone can be on TRSoH in the present. Surely it is the people in the future who will judge that when they look back at the past? Therefore, does TRSoH essentially mean or is an equivalent to 'God is on our side'?

It's about the most historically illiterate and foolish phrase I cam imagine. But yes, there are echoes of Judgement Day in there.

It's just a way of trying to convince yourself and others that you're right without ever considering the other side of the argument lest you realise you are wrong.

God is on our side is shit logically too. If you've got a god who will do the bidding of fallible humans, he/she/it can't be much of a God.

It’s a ridiculous phrase.

I suppose the implication is that 'we are doing God's work'? But yes, it's a bit cheeky to anoint oneself the chosen special person whom god likes best.

Wokeism and idealistic political ideologies all stem from the religious impulse - but expressed in secular ways. The belief in a better world where there will be no suffering, everyone will be equal, and everyone will be looked after by a benign and loving entity ( The State).

But as with religion the shadow element of human nature; the darker, more animal instsincts and impulses are projected outside onto some form of devil or enemy - which then has to be fought or vanquished.

Idealism and theoretical thinking are very much compromised by practical reality.

Yes, it's also the 'even if we do awful things along the way, that doesn't matter because the end goal is 'holy' and therefore anything we do to attain that is fundamentally good' thing.

Self justification fallacy. Yep.

This is probably changing the subject, but with something like trans women in women’s sports, I don't really care if I end up on "the wrong side of history".

Firstly because it's possible for people to be wrong, and secondly because morality may be partly subjective anyway imo.

Also some modern "human rights" claims are equivalent to, "my god has given these commands and you have to follow them".

I apologise because I cannot remember where I first heard the following, but it is a good question, so I shall pop it on this thread.

I response to someone who is laying out their vision of a future utopia, it is always wise to ask 'what are you going to do with the people who disagree?'

Cross posted, but I think we are circling around the same question of how do you force people to do/follow something that they disgaree with and not become authoritarian?

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

You can look at someone like the Universal Friend and say 'look, nonbinary people have always existed!' or you can read even a paragraph about them and find out that they were a woman called Joanna who claimed to have risen from the dead and was keen to lead a new religious sect as a prophet. You can note that angels have always been said not to have a sex and discuss what that means theologically. Trying to slot Joanna into a 'side' is so disrespectful and careless.

It's an interesting thought OP.
My entry point in to all of this was the medical scandal that is impacting a whole generation of children. So when I think about TRSoH, I'm imagining future books written by by future historians which examine gender identity belief through this lens.
We've already got countries like the UK, Sweden and others (increasingly so in the US - although mostly that's a state thing and the forced teaming with political hot potatoes like abortion rights is still very strong) and I can only see this going in one direction.

The other issues are important (women's safety, transwidows' coercion, women's sports) but when it comes to TRSoH, I can't imagine any other scenario than the pro-transition of kids doctors and WPATH etc being left high and dry on the wrong side of it all. Even when they themselves call out the harms (e.g. Marcy Bowers talking about children never experiencing orgasm as adults, WPATH talking about there being limited evidence on long term use of cross sex hormones) they still push on through and do more harm. I can't imagine any scenario where they are the ones that come out looking like heros in the future history books.
And when this clear-cut pillar falls, the rest are all left looking very fragile.
People can, and will, argue about safety, dignity and biology for years. But nobody can hide a whole generation of sterilised children, many of whom will go on to (or have already) remove healthy body parts and become lifelong dependents on synthetic hormones... who then go on to realise that they no longer believe in gender identity.

The other issues are important...

Gah. I missed quite a few very important other issues in my list above:
The impact on gay and lesbian people's boundaries, the erasure of the word woman.
There will be many others for the list too.

OJ's piece was triumphalism as he thought victory was in sight

The main driver for the current backlash is the government’s proposals – backed by Labour – to reform the Gender Recognition Act, which currently imposes a degrading, bureaucratic, medicalised two-year process on trans people before a panel can grant a gender recognition certificate

^amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/15/trans-backlash-anti-gay-zealotry-section-28-homophobia^

Now we have both Labour and the Tories rowing away from the idea as it has become increasingly unpopular with voters.

OJ probably thought that by 2023, the GRC would be reformed, everyone would be laughing at the sad old feminists and that Lily Madigan would Prime Minister.

I think you’ve misunderstood. It’s got nothing to do with God.

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

I know that TRSoH is nothing to do with 'God'. 🙄

No, the people who say this kind of thing genuinely believe that the people who advocate for trans rights will be vindicated in the future just as the people who fought for gay rights in the past are vindicated now.

It's all based on a false analogy between gay rights and trans rights.

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.

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.

Your first post was odd then

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

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 😁

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'.