Important article by Lionel Shriver

[FarriersGirl]

Leading article in the Times today by Lionel Shriver. She has long been a critic of woke but really doesn't pull any punches. In particular she highlights the fact that far from being progressive the era of woke has been the opposite.

www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/ditching-woke-brain-rot-transgender-pronouns-58g8dpxnp

Yes I liked the piece overall but I read it through an American lens. The DEI culture is so embedded in American culture in Democrat states that it's difficult for us to understand. It is outrageously unfair at an individual level, even if the original intention behind it was good.

I did cringe at some lines (including the filmed in Nigeria reference!) but the overall jist of the piece made sense to me. But I have American friends who have turned away from the Democrats because they are tired of living in the world LS is describing, especially in the very blue states. So, the piece rang true to me.

Yes this is the danger. It breaks my heart that young people are turning away from social progress because of pendulum overswing. I've applied for training run by American trainers and been astonished by the 'list your diversities' questions.

What enrages me is that the TRAs have basically pushed the pendulum to breaking point and started the reverse swing BUT they will just wipe off the lipstick and return to their old lives. Their primary affliction is narcissism and it will simply change form and expression. Meanwhile all the other protected groups (LGB, disabled etc) will have to watch cultural support harden against them.

I have seriously wondered for several years if TRA ideology has been funded by the far right as a way of 'breaking' the liberal, leftist mindset of Western societies. We'll probably never know.

I have seriously wondered for several years if TRA ideology has been funded by the far right as a way of 'breaking' the liberal, leftist mindset of Western societies. We'll probably never know.

It must have been funded by someone to become so influential so quickly. TRAs appear to have infiltrated all our major institutions (NHS, universities, trade unions, local government, corporate bodies etc) - that doesn't happen by accident.

Not necessarily the far right, though - could be other national governments that are benefited from destabilising Western societies.

Interesting to read what posters here got out of Shriver's article.
She still reads to me like an inverted TRA. I agree with PP who said Shriver embodies identitarianism - it's just a different constellation of markers.
Maybe I should have read past the Pol Pot analogy. But how is Shriver making this appeal to the other side's genocidalityness any different to TRAs doing it?
@TempestTost I think that Harvad wasn't just weighting applications differently based on race of applicants, I believe they had a set number of Asian applicants they would accept per year. We should be outraged by that, and identity politics generally. But I don't think Shriver is insightful here.

I also think it would be a shame for readers to think this is all that conservative thought has to offer. It's really not.

Interesting discussions on this thread. Lionel Shriver is in my view, deliberately divisive, but I am encouraged that her column was given a prominent platform in the Times. I don't think that would have been the case 12 months ago. The debate in the comments section of the paper was heated and not always respectful in places [unlike MN] However at least there was a debate. The Times are prone to shutting down the comments for controversial topics.

Thank you for the reply, CoteDAzur, and the four namechecks - MarieDeGournay - so good they named her twice. Twice

I read and understood your original post and wasn't particularly 'challenged', by it. It was what it was, and my reply was what it was: I replied in the context of the LS article which is almost entirely about the USA - apart from a comment about John Lewis ads and Nigerian, she's quoting Walmart, Target, Silicon Valley, MSNBC, Harvard, University of Michigan - and her critique of what is going on in some US universities.

So what LS says may be valid about Harvard or Michigan, but that doesn't mean it's valid for the UK, where core features like admission requirements and assessment regulations are not 'moveable feasts', and that important fact shouldn't get swept away in LS's US-focused polemic.

So I have to disagree with you when you say 'The situation in the UK isn't better' - I think it is better, at important fundamental levels, like entrance and assessment.

Higher ed in the UK has its own problems, but it also has a world-wide reputation for the rigour and consistency of its qualifications, which is a valuable asset. I think this is reassuring, and it would be a shame - and detrimental to hardworking students at UK universities- if the accusations made by LS about US institutions were to cast a shadow on the value of UK higher ed qualifications.

I said in my post that I believe the rigour and consistency of academic qualifications should not be changed for anybody, and that disadvantage should be addressed 'upstream' in better preparation for third level ed.

MarieDeGournay is OK for other examples and explanations, thanks all the same, got it first time

Yes, just because I'm a feminist who wants to keep female things female, doesn't mean I want to be racist and hate on disabled people. I am not pleased if the word retarded is coming back.

Untangling the damage that trans ideology has done to genuine social progression will be tough.

I don't think she's saying they've been given too much leeway or power. I think she's saying that oppression hierarchies are toxic, and that giving people important privileges, like internships, based on race or sex, is racist or sexist.

It does show where one of the fault lines in GC thinking is, which is that some people are find with that kind of thing apart from gender, which they think is bogus, while others see it as an unjust approach overall.

Agreed!

I had an experience which I can relate to the Nigerian comment which made it seem both a somewhat funny example as well as not ill-intentioned, but I think it was probably unwise because it won't strike a lot of people that way.

A few years ago a TV show was filmed in my home city, where I was born and raised and visit frequently. The main character was a black woman, who in the story came from a historically black neighbourhood in that city. So lots of the regular characters from the neighborhood and particularly her family were black. The group of people in her workplace were also notably racially diverse in a way that was a little unlikely but which is generally accepted in TV shows as a kind of shorthand for different parts of society. All well and good, it was quite nice to see the area I grew up in shown so affectionately in a TV show.

What was weird though, were the many scenes out and about in the city, or where she was meeting various people through her job. Now, this was always considered a city with a relatively high black population, but she would be at a major bus terminal and fully two thirds of the people waiting around were black. Similarly, the people she met going about her job were only about 1/2 European descent, which is way out of proportion to the actual demographics at the time.

It didn't make the show bad, but it did start to be really funny, because it almost seemed like she was in some places like New Orleans with a radically differernt demographic profile. And you start to wonder, what is the point of that supposed to be? Was there some kind of problem with the actual make up of the population from their POV? Was it supposed to be aspirational?

It never really made sense, but it does seem to be part of this overall idea that it's not enough to reflect the real population as it is, it has to be made more diverse. I can see why some people feel the implication is that there is something wrong with the people who actually live in a place.

However - that does not seem to be the way most people take her comment in that piece.

I don't think this is a "fault line in GC thinking". I think it's that many of the people posting here are left wing and some of them are in favour of initiatives to help groups which have traditionally been disadvantaged. Men pretending to be women are not a disadvantaged group.

You've put this really well if I may say so.

I can't say what LS' intention was, but this is pretty much how I'd taken what she wrote. (While acknowledging that it's really easy to take it a different way and a writer as precise as she can be should be able to anticipate that.)

But that is exactly what a fault line is, a gap between two groups.

Even among those on the left, this kind of approach where it is ok to disadvantage individuals according to their group membership is a significant fault line, and it's created a major fracturing in leftist politics generally.

The progressive left does have a problem IMO. Identity politics across the board is not positive 'progress'. It is always worth remembering that sometimes progress is negative or neutral. It could benefit some and harm others. When it comes down to it, progress just means change. The idea that we are all marching towards a Utopia, and that each 'progress' is slowly taking us there is a huge fallacy. There is no Utopia.

When I think of Martin Luther King's dream and I think of judging a person by the content of their character (rather than by how much melanin they have in their skin) I can see that modern form of anti-racism is 'progress' of a negative kind as it moves away from that idea. I want us to get back to MLK's dream:

'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.'

I don't see how this is a "fault line in GC thinking". What has GC got to do with it?

this kind of approach where it is ok to disadvantage individuals according to their group membership is a significant fault line, and it's created a major fracturing in leftist politics generally

Are you including all initiatives to level the playing field for women in this? Because I think one of the reasons that many people start going along with this is because it's obvious that women aren't equally represented at the top level in government, business, anywhere really, so help for women to participate equally seems like the right thing to do. It then seems like a natural progression to extend this to people in other disadvantaged groups.

It's a fault line because we can see that among people who are against gender ideology, even if we only include those on the left, there are those who believe that it is acceptable to grant privaledges on the basis of group membership, and those who don't. And these represent a very basic difference in their thinking.

As far as women's issues specifically, there is a fairly significant element here which is that there is an inherent material difference between women's bodies and men's bodies that sometimes can require, or really benefit from, in a justifiable way, some kind of special treatment. Something like a carve out for women's sports would be a good and very widely accepted example of that. Accommodations for disability would be similar.

That's different in kind than programs that are designed to give a benefit directly with the idea that this will compensate or correct other underlying problems. Which tends to be where racially directed programs end up because there isn't actually anything inherent to being white, or Asian or any other ethnic group, that necessitates that people of differernt races should be judged on a different basis. In particular we can see programs like this tend to create other injustices - where people who are well off or privileged are helped on the basis of their race while others who are underprivileged have no access to such programs.

There are programs ostensibly to help women that are arguably of this kind, and I don't particularly support those. I'm not crazy about all women shortlists for political positions, for example.

In any case, undermining the principle that you don't discriminate against individuals on the basis of group membership is basic, if you've sacrificed that you are in a whole different playing field, where discrimination is ok, the only question is who it is ok to discriminate against.

The fault line is that the belief in positive discrimination for 'oppressed' groups, which many here still seem to think is a good thing, is what allowed men who pretend to be women to claim oppressed status and gain special treatment.

You are arguing they are not oppressed, which we should actually be irrelevant, instead we should simply state that they are not women.

They used the left wing oppressed/ victim hierarchy belief to their advantage, and it has had very negative outcomes.

The left feminists still seem to believe that the oppressed/ victim narrative and discriminating based on this is a good thing, it just went wrong in this case.

What Lionel Shriver is saying is that it all stems from the same fault line in thinking: when you view all politics through an oppressor/ victim narrative and believe that discrimination based on group identity is a good thing we get to hell pretty quickly.

All that's left to argue then is who is most oppressed and who can we care less about and discriminate against.

The TRAs used this very successfully for a while.

And many here still don't seem to see the dangers in this approach, or the fact that the back lash against this approach is on, and just saying rit is biogoted won't work anymore, because it's not based on biogtry it;s based on a belief it's wrong: morally and politically and will lead to very dangerous places.

Her comment about Nigeria is not racist, a bit on the nose perhaps as is her style, but would only be racist if you believe that the population of Nigeria is not mostly black, or that saying it is is racist.

Her point is that in Nigeria a majority black representation in advertising would be normal. Here it represents something else deliberate and political.

The point she is making is that it's become apparent that diversity in advertising has disproportionately over represented minority groups in the UK for political reasons. Many are now rejecting of the political beliefs are being promoted by these corporations though DEI, and the implications of that.

The point isn't that she or those who agree with her, doesn't want black people in adverts , she and many others, don't want corporations adopting a political stance the majority reject and forcing it on us.

Calling this racism is as simplistic as calling the criticism of the Jaguar advert transphobic, and fails to understand what is happening culturally and politically or why.

Being anti-BLM or CRT is perfectly compatible with being GC. BLM is monetized racism against non-blacks and CRT is racist e.g. in suggesting that we group children together by race - how is that not racist? The idea that if you are not white you are a victim is also racist.
NB Calling her stance 'gammony' is both racist (only applies to non-blacks) and classist.

Again I see what you are saying, but again I disagree. Somethings do not need context to interpret. She implied that black families should not be used to represent a UK company. She celebrated the use of a really offensive and damaging term for disabled people. What context explains this away?

Is she wants to make more nuanced points then she needs to spend the time explaining what she means rather than making racist and bigoted comments and leaving the reader to fill in the blanks.

You may choose to read between her lines, I choose to see what is plain and simple in her words. Racism and bigotry.

The point she made was that an advertisement that features mostly black actors aimed at a country 86% white is a bit of an own goal. It's not racist to point this out.

I didn’t get this line at all as my recollection of the John Lewis adverts is that they are all very recognisably in the UK, not set overseas and I came back to the thread to say what the fuck is she in about and then I see this and get that of course, she means there were black people in the ad. So unfortunately I’m out, this is so racist I’m not interested in anything else she has to say.

This is a really long winded way to try and justify something that is just racist.