Lazy Thinking and Harm

A friend of mine used to wear a t-shirt that said: “Start a Revolution.” It annoyed me, but for the longest time, I couldn't figure out exactly why. As a leftie, I ought to be on board with whatever revolution he was proposing.

That was the problem, though. What revolution was he proposing? Are things really that bad? Here, in the West, with the relative freedoms and affluence we enjoy? What system did he find more appealing? “Implement Some Reforms”—that would have made a more appropriate t-shirt. Revolutions are bloody. We ought to have a damn good reason before undertaking such a project.

Before this guy, I had an anarchist friend. He belonged to the poly triad I describe in my book. It seemed to me that true anarchy would quickly devolve into the larger people robbing and murdering the smaller people, I told him. He thought that just wouldn't happen. People can be trusted to cooperate, he'd say, and find new ways of being. But what about criminals? I'd ask. If even one criminal managed to exist in this new world, he could rob and murder everyone with impunity. Anarchists would need a way to solve that problem. Would they solve it with violence? Is that a good outcome? My friend shrugged, pretty sure that sort of thing just wouldn't happen. “We'll talk it through sometime,” he would say. He was a smart guy, so I looked forward to his explanation. It never came.

Other revolutionaries have entered my life, too, with other edgy, counterculture ideas—each suspiciously unable to articulate how those ideas would work in practice. “Burn it all down,” one of them said. “What will you replace it with?” I asked. He hadn't gotten that far yet. As a woman I met at a retreat this spring said: “So easy to tear things down. So hard to build something new.”

“Never work!” exclaimed another iconoclast, citing Guy Debord in defense of a poorly conceived socialism. But even in a much more simplified economy, I told her, someone has to pick the berries. “Defund the police!” said yet another. But that raises the same questions as anarchism.

Then there are the postmodernists. I'm convinced that those who cite this philosophy as real and important—as opposed to those who merely enact its tenets for personal gain—are lying to themselves and/or others. Repeating passages from abstruse French intellectuals merely imparts upon them a feeling of superiority, I contend. If it's counter-intuitive and hard to grasp, the thinking goes, it must be brilliant. But what holds for a difficult mathematical theorem does not hold for Judith Butler, who, it turns out, is simply talking nonsense.

To be clear, I'm not saying that socialism or some such thing can't be defended. I'm saying that the people in my life who've vehemently argued for these things, for whatever reason, could not back up their claims.

A friend of mine recently talked about the etymology of the concept “right,” as in right-wing. It once implied something like “follows the rules” or “doesn't rock the boat.” Thus, one can be an extreme rule-follower in relation to left-wing positions. This goes a long way in explaining horseshoe theory. It also explains some of the contradictions in current “liberal” thought—people aren't seeking internal consistency, but belonging and social identity (as so often explored by Jonathan Haidt).

I've been a victim of sloppy thinking myself. In my office lies a paper I wrote for an undergrad philosophy class, defending pornography as an enlightened and liberating choice. I didn't think that hard about it; I simply read the assigned reading—Andrea Dworkin, I think—and formulated a response. “Critiquing” a thing is valued in its own right in today's world, and especially in academia. I probably had four classes to study for, two papers to write, and an upcoming midterm. Intro, three points in favor, conclusion, done. Quick, unthoughtful prose. But what we slap down on paper or announce on Twitter has consequences.

There is such a thing as real harm. Can we agree on that? That thousand years we spent breaking the feet and toes of toddlers in China, for example. That period in which we treated mentally ill patients with an ice pick to the brain. If we can say that anything at all is harmful—misgendering, for example—surely we can say that excising the genitals of girls to enhance their “marriageability” falls in that category.

Over at Blocked and Reported, in a thread for paid subscribers, someone asked why furries, who often claim to “fully identify” as a particular animal, don't—in the “literalness” tradition of other trans identities—defend sex with actual animals of their chosen species (which currently, they publicly argue against).

Give them time. The lazy thinking of queer theory has brought us from “reject oppressive gender roles!” to “cut the breasts off preteen tomboys” in short order. If trans women are literal women, aren't trans foxes literal foxes? If trans women can expect success on lesbian dating apps, can't trans foxes pursue actual foxes as mates? Furries’ liberal interest in “consent” was proffered as an explanation for their official position, but the comments on this survey reveal that at least some think consent is possible with male or active animals (as opposed to female or passive animals).

Sloppy thinking that leads to harm is nothing new. I'm reminded of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian. A set of dogmatic assertions of his time, i.e. that controlling reproduction was wrong and that women must submit to their (sometimes unfaithful) husbands, led to a preventable epidemic of disabled, syphilitic babies.

Here's another example: “Words are violence.” If that's the case, then violence in response to words is nothing but justifiable self-defense. That argument is being made far too often, unfortunately. Then there's the call for moral relativism. If all moral theories are equal, then liberalism is no better than the Westboro Baptist Church. Sexism, racism, homophobia, misgendering—these hold no more moral valence than any other cultural activity that's come and gone.

Postmodernism, from which queer theory is derived, is unconcerned with these internal inconsistencies. It sees logic and reason as patriarchal and white supremacist. It considers "language play" sufficient argument. That's all well and good, when you're “deconstructing” art or writing a paper for your gender studies class. It's not so good when it comes for its pound of flesh.