Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution

by Carl R. Trueman

As lesbians saw themselves as victims of a heteronormative, patriarchal society, so they now saw gay men as victims of the same.

both lesbians and gays (and bisexuals) assume the importance of biological sex differences.

in allying themselves with gay men, lesbians set aside the importance of biology (with its significance for how different sexes experience the world and relate to patriarchal society and to sexual acts themselves) in order to present a common front against a common enemy: heteronormative society. In retrospect, this was a critical move because it ultimately paved the way for the addition of the T and the Q to the alliance on the basis that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

To move from this rather obvious reality to the notion that sex and gender are separable and that the latter is simply a performance is a dramatic metaphysical leap, the plausibility of which depends upon a number of other prior factors.

First, inner psychology must have been granted ultimate authority in human identity.

Second, technology needs to have rendered the possibility of changing gender to be something th...

Finally, the idea needed a powerful lobby group and an attractive media presence in order ...

Other gay men have faced similar criticism for saying that, as gay, they do not find trans men to be sexually attractive.

Feminism is now bitterly divided between those who affirm trans women as true women and those who repudiate such, seeing them as men who are trying to deny the male privilege that has been their invisible birthright and steal false identifications with female victimhood. The latter have been dubbed TERFs or “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,”

the logic of the argument upon which trans ideology depends: because it assumes that the body is not of primary relevance to gender identity, it consequently excludes bodily considerations from the definition of what it means to be a man or a woman.

This is a circular argument.

While gay marriage has created problems for Christian florists and cake bakers, it is arguable that most of us have not found it to impinge uncomfortably upon our lives in any obvious way. Trans ideology, however, is different. This is because so much of traditional society has been shaped by the assumed reality of the gender binary.

The L, the G, and the B now look remarkably passé, assuming as they do the importance of biological sex for the gender binary. The T and the Q, denying this, have proved both parasitic upon the gains made by the LGB and ultimately destructive of the LGB, as well as of traditional feminism. The civil wars we now see opening up on the left over trans ideology bear witness to this.

Expressive individualism has a profound impact on matters of life and death for several reasons.

First, it tends to lead us to think about personhood as being something that requires a degree of self-consciousness. If the self is defined by how we think, feel, and desire, then we need to be at a stage of intellectual development where these things can take place in order to be a true person.

second implication: ethics of life and death in a world of expressive individualism tend to default to a form of utilitarianism.

While the speed of the sexual revolution has been shocking to many, perhaps the strangest and most disturbing developments over recent years have been the ways in which freedoms once considered to be self-evident goods—of speech and of religion—are now under pressure in many Western democracies.

Verbal insults, of course, are nothing new and have a history as long as that of humanity itself. Goliath mocked David. Cicero insulted Catiline. But with the rise of the psychological self, words have taken on a new cultural power, as witnessed by the fierce debates that now rage over pronouns. The use of a word deemed hurtful or denigrating becomes in the world of psychological identity an assault upon the person, as real in its own way as a blow from a fist.

When violence moves from the physical and the financial to the psychological, however, everything changes. Once oppression is seen to exist in its most insidious form at the level of psychology, at the point where culture shapes the individual’s ideas and intuitions, then a different notion of political freedom inevitably emerges. While many traditional conservatives and liberals are shocked at the current push against freedom of speech, it makes sense given the broader changes in society’s notion of the self.

In “Repressive Tolerance,” Marcuse presents the traditional liberal concept of freedom of speech as a confidence trick that gives the impression that true freedom exists. The ruling class officially allows freedom of speech and expression while quietly imposing severe limits on that freedom.

Freedom of speech as a broad, unqualified principle is thus for Marcuse something akin to the old “bread and circuses” of the Roman Empire. It is a way of distracting people from seeing the real injustices of the world in which they live.

What Marcuse is calling for here is the censoring of speech as a means of moving society toward a more just and equitable state. To allow speech that presents the injustices of the status quo—economic, sexual, racial, etc.—as legitimate or even natural is to offer support to those injustices. It therefore behooves the left, of which Marcuse is of course the spokesperson, to work toward closing down the avenues and opportunities for such speech.

To bring this into the language of the present day, there are those who offer narratives that reinforce attitudes and systems which are considered by those on the left to be unjust. Such people need to be silenced and their narratives censured and censored.

Traditional notions of education assumed that students were raw material in need of training which would shape them into adult members of society by imparting skills and knowledge necessary for fitting in to the larger social framework that is the adult world. This vision was not simply technical: liberal arts education also saw the teaching of the great classics of culture—literature, art, music, philosophy—as shaping the student’s understanding of what it means to be human. To be educated was to be transformed by exposure to a range of ideas, whether one agreed with them or not.

Marxists such as E. P. Thompson made significant contributions by highlighting the role of the working classes. African American history has done sterling service in pointing out that the history of the United States cannot be told simply from the perspective of white males, with everyone else playing little more than bit parts. Slavery shaped—and its legacy continues to shape—the experience of African Americans in the United States.

The voices of people of color are a vital part of the American story, both for offering perspectives on the dark side of American history as well as enriching discussion of one of the key motifs of the American experiment: the ideal of freedom and how it has, or has not, been consistently realized in American culture. And all historians should welcome challenges to their own viewpoints and interpretations. That is how we grow in our knowledge of the past and of what it means to be human. The expansion of the canon to include the previously dispossessed and ignored can only enrich the historical discipline, as it can other disciplines such as literature and music.

The problem, of course, is that the purpose of these canon wars is not to expand the canon but to replace it, or, perhaps more accurately, shatter the very concept of canon ...

The claim that certain narratives are psychologically oppressive is plausible to many because our modern intuitions are to see ourselves as psychological beings and anything that obstructs our psychological happiness, our sense of self, is inevitably bad, oppressive, and something to be opposed. Victimhood has an intrinsic virtue to it; and anything that can lay claim to the vocabulary of the victim has unlocked a major, even irresistible, source of cultural power. Freedom of speech and academic freedom are simply licenses to oppress and marginalize the weak. True freedom is found in closing down such traditional virtues and replacing them with a victim-centered authoritarianism.

While our notion of identity has become one where we are self-creators whose self-creations are not to be judged or criticized by others, it is clear that some identities must inevitably stand over against or in contradiction to each other.

The era when Christians could disagree with the broader convictions of the secular world and yet still find themselves respected as decent members of society at large is coming to an end, if indeed it has not ended already.

The first thing that we need to do is understand our complicity in the expressive individualism of our day.

Expressive individualism is correct in affirming the importance of psychology for who we are and in stressing the universal dignity of all human beings. We might also add that this accenting of the individual is consonant with the existential urgency of the New Testament in the way it stresses the importance of personal faith as a response to the gospel. Only I can believe for me. And that places the “I” in a most important place.

Philip Rieff: “Formerly, if men were miserable, they went to church, so as to find the rationale of their misery; they did not expect to be happy, this idea is Greek, not Christian or Jewish.”

Prayers, personal and corporate, tend to focus on the alleviation of misery, not being enabled to understand it. We tend to go to—to choose!—the church that fits with what makes us personally feel good.

How we can address this is not easy to

First, we need to examine ourselves, individually and corporately, to see in what ways we have compromised the gospel with the spirit of this age. Then, we need to repent, call out to the Lord for grace, and seek to reform our beliefs, attitudes, intuitions, and practices accordingly. Nothing less is required for a true reformation at this point.

Second, an awareness of our complicity should cultivate a level of humility in how we engage with those with whom we disagree on these matters. There can be no place for the pharisaic prayer wher...

Third, to be aware of our complicity at least allows us to engage in the future in appropriate self-criticism and self-policing on such issues. We cannot hel...

If we are to find a precedent for our times, I believe that we must go further back in time, to the second century and the immediately post-apostolic church. There, Christianity was a little-understood, despised, marginal sect. It was suspected of being immoral and seditious.

That is much like the situation of the church today. For example, we are considered irrational bigots for our stance on gay marriage. In the aftermath of the Trump presidency, it has become routine to hear religious conservatives in general, and evangelical Christians in particular, decried as representing a threat to civil society. Like our spiritual ancestors in the second century, we too are deemed immoral and seditious.

the analogy is not perfect. The church in the second century faced a pagan world that had never known Christianity. We live in a world that is de-Christianizing, often self-consciously and intentionally.

First, it is clear from the New Testament and from early noncanonical texts like the Didache that community was central to church life. The Acts of the Apostles presents a picture of a church where Christians cared for and served each other. The Didache sets forth a set of moral prescriptions, including a ban on abortion and infanticide, that served to distinguish the church from the world around. Christian identity was clearly a very practical, down-to-earth, and day-to-day thing.

lamentation for Christianity’s cultural marginalization, while legitimate, cannot be the sole response of the church to the current social convulsions she is experiencing. Lament, for sure—we should lament that the world is not as it should be, as many of the Psalms teach us—but also organize. Become a community. By this, the Lord says, shall all men know that you are my disciples, by the love you have for each other (John 13:35). And that means community.

This brings me to the second lesson we can learn from the early church. Community in terms of its day-to-day details might look different in a city from in a rural village, or in the United States from in the United Kingdom. But there are certain elements that the church in every place will share: worship and fellowship. Gathering together on the Lord’s Day, praying, singing God’s praise, hearing the word read and preached, celebrating baptism and the Lord’s Supper, giving materially to the church’s work—these are things all Christians should do when gathered together. It might sound trite, but a large part of the church’s witness to the world is simply being the church in worship. Paul himself comments that when an unbeliever accidentally turns up at a church service, he should be struck by the otherworldly holiness of what is going on. The most powerful witness to the gospel is the church herself, simply going about the business of worship.

I am not here calling for a kind of passive quietism whereby Christians abdicate their civic responsibilities or make no connection between how to pursue those civic responsibilities and their religious beliefs. I am suggesting rather that engaging in cultural warfare using the world’s tools, rhetoric, and weapons is not the way for God’s people.

The church also needs to recover natural law and a theology of the body.