The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

by Douglas Murray

To date nobody has suggested when over-correction might have been achieved or who might be trusted to announce it. What everyone does know are the things that people will be called if their foot even nicks against these freshly laid tripwires. ‘Bigot’, ‘homophobe’, ‘sexist’, ‘misogynist’, ‘racist’ and ‘transphobe’ are just for starters. The rights fights of our time have centred around these toxic and explosive issues.

How might somebody demonstrate virtue in this new world? By being ‘anti-racist’, clearly. By being an ‘ally’ to LGBT people, obviously. By stressing how ardent your desire is – whether you are a man or a woman – to bring down the patriarchy.

Our public life is now dense with people desperate to man the barricades long after the revolution is over. Either because they mistake the barricades for home, or because they have no other home to go to. In each case a demonstration of virtue demands an overstating of the problem, which then causes an amplification of the problem.

The products of the system cannot reproduce the stability of the system that produced them. If for no other reason than that each of these issues is a deeply unstable component in itself. We present each as agreed upon and settled. Yet while the endless contradictions, fabrications and fantasies within each are visible to all, identifying them is not just discouraged but literally policed. And so we are asked to agree to things which we cannot believe.

Perhaps these generational and geographical differences will diminish over time and the flattening effects of social media will make everyone equally sanguine. Or perhaps these tools have the opposite effect, persuading a gay in 2019 Amsterdam that they are permanently at risk of living in 1950s Alabama. Nobody knows. We live in a world in which every fear, threat and hope imaginable is always available to us.

And if a ‘gay gene’ was discovered would parents in time be allowed to edit the patterns in their children’s DNA to account for that? What would be the justifications for preventing them doing so?

One is the ideological bent that exists within academia. One 2006 study of universities in the US found that 18 per cent of professors in the social sciences happily identified as ‘Marxist’.

The same survey found 21 per cent of social science professors willing to identify as ‘activist’ and 24 per cent as radical.1 This is considerably higher than the number of professors willing to identify as ‘Republican’ in any field.

One of the traits of Marxist thinkers has always been that they do not stumble or self-question in the face of contradiction, as anybody aiming at truth might. Marxists have always rushed towards contradiction. The Hegelian dialectic only advances by means of contradiction and therefore all the complexities – one might say absurdities – met along the way are welcomed and almost embraced as though they were helpful, rather than troubling, to the cause.

Steven Pinker wrote in 2002, ‘Many writers are so desperate to discredit any suggestion of an innate human constitution that they have thrown logic and civility out the window . . . The analysis of ideas is commonly replaced by political smears and personal attacks . . . The denial of human nature has spread beyond the academy and has led to a disconnect between intellectual life and common sense.’

really works like this can be instantly presented with the library of intimidating evidence that the gobbledygook he is failing to comprehend is his fault and not the fault of the writer of the gobbledygook. Of course sometimes when it is nearly impossible to tell what is being said, almost anything can be said and exceptionally dishonest arguments can be smuggled in under the guise of complexity.

Worse is that we have begun trying to reorder our societies not in line with facts we know from science but based on political falsehoods pushed by activists in the social sciences.

Every day there is a new subject for hate and moral judgement.

But just because something is based on data doesn’t automatically make it neutral. Even with good intentions it’s impossible to separate ourselves from our own human biases. So our human biases become part of the technology we create.

If there was a genuine chance of diminishing racism, sexism or anti-gay sentiment, who would not wish to seize it with every tool and engine at their disposal? The one overwhelming problem with this attitude is that it sacrifices truth in the pursuit of a political goal. Indeed, it decides that truth is part of the problem – a hurdle that must be got over.

‘The original post contained the line “easy for a rich white man to say”’, admitted the LSE site. ‘This has been removed and we apologise for this error.’39 As well they might. For of course whatever the state of his income, Thomas Sowell is not a white man. He is a black man. A very famous black man – who LSE’s reviewer only thought to be white because of the nature of his politics.

The criticism of The Bell Curve demonstrated why almost nobody wanted to go over the evidence that suggests that intelligence test scores vary with ethnic group and that just as some groups score higher on intelligence tests, others must score lower.

Yet those who have surveyed the academic literature on IQ differentials across racial groups appreciate better than anyone that the literature in the area is – as Jordan Peterson has said – ‘an ethical nightmare’.65 And it was a nightmare which almost everybody seemed very keen to steer clear of.

The problem with the choice being presented this way – in the most catastrophizing light possible – is that it leaves no room for discussion or dissent.

A fixed set of ideas are being discussed. A fixed set of virtues are being celebrated. And a fixed set of propositions are being set up, laughed at and dismissed. The audience does not sit, listen and then ask questions as at an academic or professional conference. They cheer, laugh, snort and applaud in a manner which more than anything else resembles a Christian revival meeting.

Only in the world of trans ideology do the adults tell the children that the wand can be waved, the wishes can be granted and that if they want to be something enough then the adults can make the magic happen.

Moreover, why would their ages not keep going down, when the claims being made are backed up by so much threatening rhetoric, blackmail and catastrophism? Anyone mentioning the drawbacks or concerns about going trans is said to be hateful and either encouraging violence against trans people or encouraging them to do themselves harm.

The problem at present is not the disparity, but the certainty – the spurious certainty with which an unbelievably unclear issue is presented as though it was the clearest and best understood thing imaginable.

Perhaps it is just a version of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s dictum on human rights: that claims of human rights violations happen in exactly inverse proportion to the numbers of human rights violations in a country. You do not hear of such violations in unfree countries. Only a very free society would permit – and even encourage – such endless claims about its own iniquities. Likewise, somebody can only present a liberal arts college in America or a dining experience in Portland as verging on the fascist if the people complaining are as far away from fascism as it is possible to be.

As The Economist put it, ‘Having children lowers women’s lifetime earnings, an outcome known as the “child penalty”.’28 It is hard to imagine who could read that phrase, let alone write it, without a shudder. If it is assumed that the primary purpose in life is to make as much money as possible, then it is indeed possible that having a child will constitute a ‘penalty’ for a woman and thereby prevent her from having a larger sum of money in her bank account when she dies. On the other hand, if she chooses to pay that ‘penalty’ she might be fortunate enough to engage in the most important and fulfilling role that a human being can have.

I would not want to live in the same society as him. Yet we do live in the same society, and we have to find some way to get along together. It is the only option we have because otherwise, if we have come to the conclusion that talking and listening respectfully are futile, the only tool left for us is violence.

In an era without purpose, and in a universe without clear meaning, this call to politicize everything and then fight for it has an undoubted attraction. It fills life with meaning, of a kind. But of all the ways in which people can find meaning in their lives, politics – let alone politics on such a scale – is one of the unhappiest.

To assume that sex, sexuality and skin colour mean nothing would be ridiculous. But to assume that they mean everything will be fatal.