2023: Nuance Is Terminally ill

So, what do I mean by 'terminally ill' with regards to the word 'nuance'? In my mind, the word nuance may be the most important word in discourse regarding important issues. To paint the world in absolutes or black and white is completely and utterly apathetic in my opinion. Nuance allows us to consider different viewpoints and come to the best compromise or, in some instances, outright disprove certain positions. Now, in a world where irrefutable scientific facts are being challenged with arguments that have no basis in scientific reasoning and somehow people go along with it undeniably - it's easy to see where the issue arises. 

As for the intentions of this article. Generally speaking I am not politically inclined and very much consider myself centrist - if not a little right of centre but only marginally. I have a particular interest in 20th Century History and i'm fairly well versed in a lot of the events spanning the century through my education and own individual learning. Over the past two months I have spent a large amount of time listening to political commentators from both the left and the right on many issues to come up with some sort of nuanced and objective opinion on a few of the hot button topics of today. My research, whilst extensive, is not categorically conclusive and there are still gaps in my understanding - so if i'm ill-informed on certain topics or get particular things wrong or just in general you disagree with me - i'm happy to have an open and well intentioned conversations around the topics discussed in this article. As with the nature of trying to cover a lot of ground with thoughts - this article may become slightly tangential in its approach despite my best efforts to avoid this. I will revisit this article to change or alter certain points should I see fit to do so.

Trans/LGBTQ+ Rights Issue

Just about the most controversial topic you can touch these days to start off with. For me I have listened to a lot of what the mainstream media has said on this issue along with left leaning activists as well as what would be considered 'right leaning' activists on this. It's an incredibly difficult issue to legislate on because it involves peoples feelings and, in some cases, their entire personalities. In my experience and knowledge of the past up until 5 years ago; Gender Dysphoria was classified as a mental illness - not too far afield from anorexia and bulimia. Obviously since then, it has become more widely tolerated as part of an ever diverse societal norm in the western world. 

It's important to clarify that it is my belief, that this is the most tolerant society in human history. Does that mean it's perfect? No. Does it mean that racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes etc don't exist? Of course not - but that's where the word nuance comes into things. Maybe with a little perspective as well thrown in. I believe during my research it was Dr Jordan Peterson, when questioned on whether or not he believed in modern oppression - he simply retorted something along the lines of:

"Are you worse off than your grandparents? Or great grandparents?."

Which I think raises a great point. Oppression in the modern sense is not the same as the historical sense. Someone or a group of people 'deadnaming' you for example is not the same as lynching someone for simply being black. The nuanced part of that statement is obviously that feelings come into it and as previously stated it's probably impossible to properly and fairly legislate upon peoples feelings. For someone, being 'deadnamed' or addressed by the incorrect pronoun may drive them to kill themselves. Is that an appropriate response to what could've been an honest mistake? And then if you try to legislate that under hate speech then it becomes a slippery slope of who has hate rights? Do I, as a straight, white man, have the same hate rights as a black, transgender lesbian who is disabled and poor? If I am addressed as a white racial slur, such as a 'cracker', by a black man for example - do I then have the same rights to for example have them arrested for hate speech against me? It all becomes very messy when it comes to legislating speech.

This is all why I am in favour of speech should be an individual liberty issue. In order to discuss complex and sometimes controversial ideas, you have to risk being offensive. Me, writing this article is at risk of being offensive from drawing simple observations against societal norms. Linking back to my historical understanding - there becomes a real problem in countries when you start to legislate against speech because it's a slippery slope; it starts well intentioned to protect certain individuals from hate but doesn't factor in hate against other groups and from the get-go you're setting the precedent of inequality. Then it becomes, what groups and characteristics get protected and you go down the intersectionality rabbit hole pretty quick of who is more oppressed than who - who gets more oppression brownie points. The original point being, in both Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union - any word against either Hitler or Stalin (or subsequent communist leaders) landed you in a gulag or concentration camp. Now am I saying we are at that point at the moment? Of course not. But when the people of Germany voted for the NSDAP, i'm all but certain a majority didn't forsee the oncoming atrocities. My point remaining - it's a slippery slope if unchecked. 

As for the trans/LGBTQ+ issue as a whole - what are my beliefs. I believe in individual liberty; if you're a consenting adult, you are free to do whatever you choose as long as it doesn't affect/harm anyone else. As Martin Luther King once said; I will judge people on the content of their character. In words to affect, I am not an 'ally' to the LGBTQ+ community because the term 'ally' is a derivation of our tribalist instincts and I do not fully support everything that group stands for. Now, do I believe everyone who is a part of that group deserves the same rights with regards to employment, social tolerance and representation (representation in the sense of, acknowledgement they exist in society rather than an equality of outcome type of representation)? Absolutely. The problem I have personally is I feel that was all achieved incredibly quickly because it was piggybacking off of gay rights, minority rights and women's rights movements of the 20th century. The 'extra' part is where I personally draw the line. I'm happy if you're trans and you're nice to me, I will treat you with the respect you have earned from being pleasant and nice to me. But respect is earned, not freely given. So when I see proponents of this movement advocating for compelled speech laws - I start to worry about what precedent that sets. On a case by case basis, if a trans person I am friends with or a colleague for example requests that I use their pronouns in a polite manner, I will indulge them because they have done it in such a way that has earned my respect. If however, I have someone shouting and demanding that I use their pronouns otherwise i'm a hateful, vindictive bigot then either i'm either going to disassociate with that individual or i'm going to say 'no' - because they haven't respected me so why are they owed my respect? 

This is where the terms 'progressive' and 'conservative' come into play. Progressives wants to keep progressing towards more and more things - whether that means changing things or adding new things on. Conservatism wants to keep things the way they are and to maintain tradition. Obviously these are mass generalisations but that's why I believe I am centrist on this topic. I believe we have progressed to be the most tolerant society that has ever existed in recorded human history and I am proud that we live in a diverse and expressive society that is able to thrive and innovate. However, progress should always have an end point - a point where you've pushed just far enough; because I feel, if we maintain our current socio-political trajectory, we will over correct and the balance will become unequal in a big way. 

To conclude this mini chapter - it is my belief we are a tolerant society and thus need to accept the current state of equality as the best we're gonna get. I've not covered everything with regards to the Trans topic in this small chapter as it would take literal hours to compartmentalise every aspect of it. But in its simplest form - the issue of gender for me is an individual liberties issue. If you want to be trans and you're prepared to treat me with respect, I will treat you as you have to me. If you are disrespectful or harmful to myself or others then you will have nothing to do with me - the same for any other person on planet Earth. 

The content of the character is paramount. 

Intersectionality 

What is intersectionality you may ask? Intersectionality as a concept is the amount of traits you can assign to an individual to sort them into a group or community. So for example, I would fit into the broad categories of white, straight man. Obviously you could break that down almost an innumerable amount of ways to come to a conclusion about someone but the point is it's a paradoxical concept. What do I mean by that? 

Intersectionality is being used currently by society to sort people into groups. If you have applied for a job recently you may have been presented with a diversity sheet to fill in. Most of these involve race, sexuality, gender and disability as the main pillars of intersectionality. In the next chapter i'm going to talk about equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome but the two topics are intertwined. Other uses of intersectionality, as previously mentioned with compelled speech, are that it is used to determine how oppressed someone is or has been historically which in my mind is completely and utterly ridiculous. How could you possibly justify/manage how oppressed or in the opposite case 'privileged' someone is? Because if you did it based on all of history and broke it down intersectionally against every aspect of ones being you'd find that pretty much every human of every section has been oppressed or discriminated against in some capacity - and then the whole argument falls apart. 

In what way is intersectionality a paradoxical concept? The well intentioned idea behind the concept is a way to group individuals and protect them from historical injustices is the short answer. In reality; it creates mass division among the populace. A way to pit groups of people against one another. Now at what point does it get paradoxical? It gets paradoxical when you have identity groups like LGBTQ+ and BLM (the group not the movement) where the main unifying part of their group is a certain identifiable trait that they believe is still widely discriminated upon. They have built groups around their intersectional belief that a certain characteristic has been discriminated against and that's the sole reason they have been discriminated against. However when you start breaking down into single trait groups, you then get the argument for example: 

"Women were also discriminated against therefore black women were treated worse than black men and white women" because they satisfy two of the traits of someone who has been oppressed. This is where intersectionality becomes paradoxical. You can do an oppression chart of all the characteristics you can fit in about yourself physically, mentally and politically and you can break it down so many times that at the end, you end up as an individual. So the people that wanted to fit into a group and be part of their 'tribe' end up sending themselves back to individualism anyways. Which is why I believe this intersectional labelling for both employment and 'oppression brownie points' is completely and utterly nonsensical. 

With regards to employment, it leans into 'box-ticking' and 'tokenism' in my view and is completely and utterly demeaning to those of non-white backgrounds who get hired because of their characteristics and not their merit. I'm firm in the belief that the best qualified person should be hired for a particular job. If you have a white person who is slightly less qualified than a black person then the white person should not get the job. Equally, if the roles are reversed then the white person should get the job because they are more qualified. It's not fair to either party to make a decision based on any other characteristic besides merit.

With regards to oppression, as stated earlier in this chapter and in previous chapters, it is physically impossible to impose any retroactive benefits/punishments for the injustices of yesteryear. The only path forward is to live in the present; you can acknowledge the sins of the past of course - those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it - but if you spend your days letting it define you; you will always be a victim. With regards to gender pay, it's a multi-faceted problem that in my opinion has been 99% solved in most cases (barring blatant sexism in the workplace that obviously exists in some varied capacity). But in my opinion and in the opinion of some of the people I researched - gender is certainly part of the reason a gender pay gap exists but it's not the sole nor the largest reason it exists. I'll refer to Dr Jordan Peterson's interview with Kathy Newman on Channel 4 for a more holistic breakdown but again there are other things at play besides your one chosen intersectional trait you cling to. 

Ultimately, I believe intersectionality completely and utterly undermines and harms nuanced discussion and debate by placing absolute labels on people. For example, me writing this article giving my thoughts and opinions may be ridiculed; not because some of it is factually incorrect or objectively wrong; but because i'm a white man, i'm not allowed an opinion on determining someones oppression. So instead of me being able to say intersectionality provides a net negative for society as a whole; I would be silenced or shouted down on the basis that my skin tone and gender aren't an oppressed enough subset of the concept to weigh in on the very concept i'm trying to refute.

Equality Of Opportunity vs Equality of Outcome

It amazed me the other day when I had to educate my mother and father on the difference between these two concepts because they believed, along with another work colleague, they were the same thing. For those who are unaware:

- Equality of Opportunity: Every person is considered equally for a job (for example) and are employed based on merit alone.

- Equality of Outcome: The proportion of people should be equally distributed across professions based on gender, race and sex (generally those three, other characteristics can factor in). 

Now in my mind, it is a no-brainer that the first is incredibly more desirable for a functional society. You will have the most qualified people doing the proper jobs; employment based on merit. However, society has angled more towards the second option in what is again, a well intentioned move, to be more inclusive. Personally, I believe this is a guise and absolutely the wrong way to tackle any issues regarding disparity in pay or representation. 

As referenced in my previous section, Dr Jordan Peterson's conversation with Kathy Newman touches on this fact. In the interview (being a psychologist of over 30 years) Peterson refers to the literature and his own understanding of sex based proclivities. When arguing about the pay gap, he mentions one of the biggest reasons for women, on average, earning less than men is due to personality traits. They tend to go into professions that pay less than men. Newman retorts by saying 'why don't we get women into those jobs' to which Peterson replies (not verbatim) if women are prepared to work as hard and as long and adopt some masculine traits to compete with men then they will be as successful. 

That last point is one of my biggest takeaways from research on this particular topic. Of course there is still sexism in workplaces which would prevent women from progressing - but it's not as rife as it might've been in the past. But generally its a good message with regards to the two concepts in question; if you're prepared to work as hard as your competitors and be ruthless enough to get somewhere, chances are you will get to the top (or wherever you want to get to) regardless of your lot in life (within reason of course). For example, if a double leg amputee says they want to be the UFC Heavyweight Champion - it's highly unlikely they will. They could be the exception and work exponentially harder than everyone else and devise an excellent game-plan to get there; but the law of averages would suggest they wouldn't. But that limiting factor couldn't then apply to say being the best MMA coach in the UFC. They put all their time and knowledge into that they can probably achieve that because they aren't limited by their own individual merit. In the same way, i'm not smart enough to be a NASA scientist because my merit isn't up to scratch, but if it was, and I put in a lot of hard work to get there, I could become one. 

On paper, equality of outcome looks great because it allows under represented minorities into workplaces. In actual fact a lot of the reason those minorities don't work there is because they don't want to work there in the first place. Sure, if they applied and their merit lined up with what was needed to be considered then they would be hired under the pretence of equality of opportunity. But if they applied under the pretence of equality of outcome, they may receive a job they weren't the most qualified for, simply because of a protected characteristic of intersectionality. 

Concluding Thoughts