The passage of time has always shown
This is of course what they all think.
It’s what they all think, but it’s stupid. Which “social justice warriors” are we talking about? Lots of people see themselves as on the side of justice, including social justice in some sense. They don’t all call themselves social justice warriors (but then neither do all “social justice warriors”), but they of course see themselves as on the side of the right and good and true. The passage of time has not shown all such warriors “to be in the right.”
It’s Whig history again: the road always goes in the direction of progress, and we never ultimately fall off it or turn around and go the other way. Except, of course, when we do. There were quite a few years back in the last century when Nazis were quite confident that the passage of time had shown them to be in the right.
I get where the idea comes from, of course. The Civil Rights Movement, feminism, the movement for lesbian and gay rights, were all sharp attacks on a status quo, and they all had considerable (though far from complete) success. The status quo was The Older Generation and attacks on it were the younger one, therefore, trans activism is the younger generation being right while the older one is wrong, again. The kids have found another status quo that needs overturning, and the stupid oldies just can’t see it, because we’re so stupid.
That could be true, but on the other hand, if feminists were right when they changed the status quo, but they’re wrong now, doesn’t that make the pattern too eccentric to follow? If feminists were right then and are wrong now, how do the kids now know they won’t be wrong in forty years? If it’s all just Inevitable Progress why not just kick back and wait?
Anyway, even if there is such a pattern, the particulars matter. We still need to figure out exactly what kind of social justice we’re talking about, and for whom, and whether all relevant parties are being heard. We still need to know what constitutes being “in the right.” We still need to know how “anti-trans” is being defined.
Every movement for social progress has faced reactionary counter-attacks trying to stop and reverse it. The civil rights movement, women’s liberation, gay liberation, etc all ultimately succeeded but all faced such obstacles along the way. The trans ideology looks like the latest such reactionary counter-attack against women’s liberation.
The civil rights movement, the gay movement, etc didn’t routinely resort to rape threats, death threats, and suchlike tactics against anyone who opposed them. It’s the reactionary push-back movements that do that.
Prohibition was a social justice movement beloved of the progressives of the time.
The Weathermen weren’t on the right side of history as I recall.
That’s not how I see it. National and international labour movements used to be powerful and protect workers; now the labour movement is largely defunct. It used to be generally understood that one of the roles of government was, as it states in the US constitution, to ‘promote the general welfare’; now in many countries every individual is on his or her own. In the UK it was a given that the welfare state would support cradle to grave health care; this has been and is being gradually broken up and sold off, so that people can no longer expect to be treated well or fairly with respect to health services. Those are just a few examples off the top of my head. So no, I’m not seeing the ‘passage of time’ inevitably moving toward ‘social justice’.
Sendero Luminosa in Peru means “Shining Path”. They certainly saw themselves as a revolutionary vanguard on the side of progress. Enlightenment. No matter how many people they had to kidnap and kill along the way (not defending South American society, but)…
guest @ 4 – my point exactly.
Infidel @ 1 – I don’t think it’s true that “the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, gay liberation, etc all ultimately succeeded.” There is no “ultimately,” and all three have been undermined in various ways, along with making a lot of progress. If the civil rights movement had ultimately succeeded then Donald Trump wouldn’t have come within shouting distance of getting nominated, let alone elected. The pushback is always there, and some of the time it’s winning.
@guest #4
I was going to suggest labor also as a movement that once was strong but no longer is, and that it’s not necessarily a mark of labor justice being “wrong” after being, temporarily, “right.”
Inequality in the US has skyrocketed over the last several decades. The social justice vanguard might consider taking that up one of these days.
Perhaps they should make common cause with another supposed civil rights movement–the movement to protect “pre-born babies”.
It’s all so shallow. The social agitators which we now consider to be in the right are the only ones he has in mind, and so his comment is tautologous: the passage of time has always shown the social justice warriors to be in right right… if we only consider those that have since been judged to be in the right.
It’s not just the status quo of The Older Generation that they are struggling against, it’s also material reality itself that they’re up against, and it’s not nearly as heedful or responsive to threats and abuse as we fallible, stupid oldies. All the shouting and foot-stomping in the world will never make sex a spectrum, or produce a third gamete. Reality doesn’t give a shit. It plays the longest the longest game, and it always wins.
Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the Soviet Union purges of the bourgeoisie, the Reign of Terror in France, in which the People cheered on the guillotining of the aristocracy — and so forth. All were done in the name of social justice. Add this to various social panics and pseudosciences such as Satanic Abuse (“Believe the Children!”) Recovered Memory Syndrome (“Believe Me!”) and Multiple Personality Disorder (“Believe Us!”) and there’s no neat and obvious line of progression which never differs or goes off course.
David Bell explicitly compares the trans craze and the headlong way people are acting to Recovered Memory Syndrome in the Nolan Report.
Thermidor always seems to be scheduled by Amtrak/Connex South Central/.
Eugenics was once a favourite cause of progressives eg H G Wells, Marie Stopes. It was opposed by the Catholic Church.
I mean, you know what was a social justice movement? National socialism.
Oh, you already knew that. Carry on.
Daniel Davies (aka D-squared) had this to say about good ideas:
Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.
I’ll leave it to the reader to decide about how the passage of time has vindicated the claim that Trans Women are Women.
the western white buddy bubble cries for consideration!
the UK has a long history of spiralling downward socially (particularly when it finds itself lacking significant opportunites for foreign “adventure”) while frequently forgetting its objections to “Pythonian tarts with swords” and the inevitable backwards marches said tarts lead.
now the tarts – self-id’d with head tilts, died hair-dos, and odd wardrobes – have delusionally determined it is their life’s mission to impose the ideas of their few onto the lives of the many (please to note the telling lack of cis pronouns)
the foundation of the TRA movement is the revised (post 2015?) UK Stonewall. there lies the basis for virtually all of the revisionist “history”, bogus “science”, and mathematics-defying “statistics” that has piddled its way around the world to be focused on by people who are simply so self-centred that they are knee-jerkingly unwilling to up the real struggles of equality
conscription used to rely on economic deprivation, surprise, and physical force. now it apparently just requires a vague outreach to bored males served with a side dish of cheap titillation, a misguided sense of belonging, and a reliable internet connection
nobody expects . . .
If there is one thing a brief review of history, or even the timespan of my own mayfly existence shows, it’s that there is no grand arc of progress in which the World becomes a better and more just place.
Innocent people die and suffer in vast numbers in preventable ways. Species go extinct in frightening numbers on a daily basis. Our planet is being made progressively more hostile and dangerous by our own actions. Advances in racial equality, women’s and gay rights have been fantastic since the 60’s, but pushback has also been huge and in many respects I’d say that pushback is currently gathering force and there is little serious resistance to it. In the meantime, despite many people like us (waves arms around) having better lives than pretty much any humans ever in terms of wealth, security and healthcare; actual number of people living in poverty, want, insecurity etc have never been so high. Even in the west, the degree of inequality hasn’t been this great since perhaps some time around WW2. Not too many soy latte drinking activists seem to interested in voting for policies that will drive down house prices, increase taxes and share resources in a more equitable fashion. Oh, they’ll SAY they want them, but actually do fuck all to make it happen. Plenty of time to rant at feminists for wanting to protect female only spaces though.
How fitting that the tweet specifically refers to the “passage of time” since one of my favorite quotes – I really wish I could remember who said it – goes something like (from memory): “Progress isn’t caused by the passage of time”. Or as I like to say, to the vast majority of species that ever existed being “on the right side of history” means being extinct.
Even if it were true (which it is not) that all “social justice” movements triumph in the end, the trans movement in it’s current, terf-bashing form is not a real socical justice movement anyway, but more closely related to other pseudo-SJ movements like “incels”.
Every genuinely oppressed group can provide endless, specific, concrete examples of real, obvious, demonstrable harm done towards them that don’t presuppose blind acceptance of a million unstated premises and ideological dogma, or rely on endless chains of impossibly sloppy inferences and extrapolations (a “sort of” implies b, b “sort of” implies c, c “sort of” implies d, etc.. etc..).
If the perfectly ordinary use of pronouns is even among your main complaints, or if JK Rowling is even on your list of worst offenders, you’re almost certainly a spoiled, privileged, narcissistic, entitled brat and among the least oppressed people who ever lived.
And right and wrong about what, exactly? It’s easy to have been on the ‘right’ side after the fact.
For example, I haven’t changed my broad position over the years, I’ve always considered myself an ally of feminism, but my attitudes in that direction have changed as I’ve learned more and as society has changed. If, at some point, we declare that the feminists ‘won’, I suppose I can claim some kind of vicarious victory, but I bet you could take a snapshot of my views at any time leading up to it and demonstrate that I was not entirely aligned with what turned out to be the right side of history.
What I’m getting at is this: I’ve said here a few times that I suspect the gender identity extremism movement will peter out. The more insane demands will be watered down as people gradually understand what’s being demanded and some version of vaguely common sense will prevail. I hope. After the fact, most people will wonder what the fuss was about. Most people will think that the gender identity extremists ‘won’ because we awful TERFs didn’t get to genocide all the trans people. But in fact it will be we TERFs who won because boundaries will have been decided upon out in the open and in the courts, albeit quietly.
In the longer term, people will analyse history and see what really happened, but I suspect it will still look like we’re on the wrong side of history even after all this nonsense is settled.
This sort of thing is exactly why I hate all the ‘sides of history’ talk and the purity spirals and the denouncings and – frankly – movements.
This is unclear. I’m saying that in the short-to-mid term, we TERFs are going to look as though we were on the wrong side of history, even though we ‘won’ and were holding the just position all along. It will be future alien archaeologists picking over the ashes of humanity in about fifty years who will learn the truth.
Via Tony Judt, here’s French ex-Stalinist Pierre Courtade about being on the right side of history:
“You and your kind were wrong to be right; we were right to be wrong.”
In other words, you and your oh so valued truth shall not prevail over our wishful thinking.
Well, what is it implied to be won? Seems like winning is merely winning ‘mass approbation’ about the issue, because as far as I can tell, labour class is still in a condition that most people wouldn’t find appealling (even if it’s probably better now than before), salary and responsibility gaps are still abysmal between men and women (even if it’s probably better now than before), people of colour are still at greater risk losing their life over routine police controls (even if it’s probably better now than before), gays and lesbian are still at great risk being beaten or murdered over public behaviour of their orientation (even if it’s probably better now than before) etc. etc.
So I’m sorry, but it really feels like being on the right side of history is completely the position of the lazy creeps after the battle raged, especially if one is speaking out of a privileged and safe position. People feeling right about what they think is amateur posturing, if anyone is closely looking after the facts. They should know better than that. That they do not demonstrate a better understanding is very telling.