Julie Bindel - a follow up

In yesterday's post I described the views of an English feminist, Julie Bindel. She takes the radical and generally unpopular view that women should choose to be lesbians. However, as I pointed out, she is at least being logically consistent. If a feminist believes that men, as a class, act to oppress women, then why would women love men? That would be akin to sleeping with the enemy.

Anyway, a reader (Elizabeth Smith) made the following perceptive comment:

Lesbianism is just the logical conclusion of the complete autonomous project for a lot of feminists (particularly the sex-negative types).

In what sense is that true? Well, if you believe that autonomy is the highest good, and therefore the aim is to be self-determining, then you will want to choose your sexuality rather than have your sexuality be an unchosen biological destiny.

And that's the position taken by Julie Bindel. She writes:

To me, political lesbianism continues to make intrinsic sense because it reinforces the idea that sexuality is a choice, and we are not destined to a particular fate because of our chromosomes. I also suspect that it is very difficult to spend your daily life fighting against male violence, only to share a bed with a man come the evening...

I think it's time for feminists to re-open the debate about heterosexuality, and to embrace the idea of political lesbianism...Women are told we must love our oppressors, while, as feminists, we fight to end the power afforded them as a birthright. Come on sisters, you know it makes sense...

Most feminists don't quite take that leap. But they draw near to it. Like Julie Bindel they see the feminine as inferior to the masculine, and yet to be heterosexual they need to be feminine beings attracted to masculine ones. I don't suppose it's always easy being such a heterosexual feminist - you would always feel somewhat conflicted, as you would want to connect with a man on a masculine/feminine basis and yet at the same time you would see the feminine as inferior.

In Sweden the man alone is guilty

A couple of news items from Sweden.

In the Swedish town of Kalmar three girls ran out of money on their night out. So they came up with a plan to replenish their purses. They would go to a local hotel, offer sex for money, but then run off with the cash. They knocked on one hotel room door, but the man refused them. The next time their offer was accepted. They got the cash, undressed, the man went to the bathroom, they attempted to dress and flee with the money but were too slow. The man demanded his money back before letting them go.

The upshot of all this? The man has been charged with attempting to buy sex. But as there is no law against attempting to sell sex, the women have been let off scot free.

Apart from how tawdry the whole scenario is, what's striking is the legal bias. It was not the man who sought out a prostitute - it was the three women who went knocking on hotel room doors looking for the man. And it was the women who attempted a deception for financial gain, with the man being the targeted victim of the deception. And yet it's the man alone who is considered guilty under Swedish laws.

Is this sex equality Swedish style? Can we really say here that men and women are being treated equally under the law?

The second item concerns the extent of lesbianism in Sweden. An online survey of 900 young Swedes has produced an interesting result. According to the survey, the extent of male homosexuality/bisexuality in Sweden is not so high. Only 3% of the men have ever engaged in any kind of same sex activity (a result which accords with other large-scale surveys from other countries).

But 13% of Swedish women claim to have had same sex experiences. That's way above what previous surveys in other countries have shown.

Of course, the survey itself could be flawed and misleading. But if it's accurate, then it raises the question of why a cutting-edge feminist society would produce a higher rate of lesbianism.

The researchers themselves give a standard liberal answer. Sven-Axel Mansson, a professor of sociology, explained that,

We are seeing a greater openness among young people, particularly among young women. There is an increasing interest in experimenting and pushing boundaries, and a growing resistance to defining oneself as heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual ...

Many [women] no longer wish to be tied in to rigid sexual identities, they want to be open and free as people and as sexual beings. That is my interpretation ...

The assumption here is that we should be autonomous, self-determining beings, which means that we should not be limited or restricted by any particular sexuality, but should instead break norms, taboos and impediments and adopt fluid, open sexual identities. That's just orthodox liberal autonomy theory.

But what else could explain a high rate of lesbianism in Sweden? If individuals identify positively with their own sex, they usually go on to have a heterosexual orientation. In Sweden the female sex role has been cast in very negative terms as an oppressive and artificial construct. So perhaps if women can't identify positively with a feminine sex role, it then becomes more difficult to relate in heterosexual terms (after all, heterosexuality is the attraction between the masculine and the feminine).

That's all speculation on my part. I think the issue is worth considering, though, as Sweden is held up as a model of what the future should be like when it comes to relations between the sexes.

Nothing will change?

Tony Blair converted to Catholicism two years ago and is now offering advice to the Pope on doctrinal matters.

Asked if he agreed with the Pope's attitude to homosexuality, he told Attitude:

'There is a huge generational difference here.

'There's probably that same fear amongst religious leaders that if you concede ground on [homosexuality], because attitudes and thinking evolve over time, where does that end?

'You'd start having to rethink many, many things. If you went and asked the congregation, I think you'd find that their faith is not to be found in those types of entrenched attitudes.'

He added: 'Organised religions face the same dilemma as political parties when faced with changed circumstances.

'You can either A: Hold on to your core vote, basically, you know, say "look, let's not break out because if we break out we might lose what we've got, and at least we've got what we've got so let's keep it".

'Or B: You say "let's accept that the world is changing, and let us work out how we can lead that change and actually reach out".'

Blair seems to think that the Church should follow along with changing and evolving attitudes. People decide to think one way, so the Church should follow. I wouldn't want to belong to a church which operated this way. I would want a church to hold me to a standard of right, even if it went against the temper of the times.

In other words, if Blair wants to argue for an acceptance of homosexuality he should really be claiming that the Church was wrong in the past and should now admit its mistake - rather than blather on about evolving attitudes.

However, even if we accept Blair's approach to the issue, his claim that accepting homosexuality would extend the reach of the church is doubtful.

Blair is taking a very common position here - one that is worth criticising. There are many people, most of them non-radical and well-intentioned, who want to apply the non-discrimination principle and who genuinely believe that by doing so nothing significant will change.

In other words, they sincerely believe that in not discriminating they will keep all the traditional goods that they and society enjoy and will simply extend these goods to other groups who were previously excluded.

It seems a no-brainer to them: if we are inclusive we will allow others to share in goods which were previously irrationally denied to them.

Blair is not a radical who wants to smash the Catholic Church. He wants the Catholic Church to continue and to grow in influence. His approach, though, is much more dangerous to the Church than he realises.

We already have an example of a major, formerly mainstream Christian church which has taken the Blair road. The Episcopal Church in America is dedicated to non-discrimination and is accepting of homosexuality. Has this church stayed the same but with a more inclusive outlook and a wider audience?

In fact, it has changed radically and suffered upheaval and schism. I described some of these radical changes in my last post. The Episcopal Church has appointed as the new dean of one of its seminaries Dr Katherine Ragsdale. Her main activity has been to lead a political think tank called Political Research Associates (PRA). The papers published by this think tank, and endorsed by Dr Katherine Ragsdale, are aimed at attacking the heterosexual nuclear family, fathers and marriage.

Dr Ragsdale is a lesbian minister in the Episcopal Church. It makes sense for her as a lesbian to attack the traditional family and to press instead for alternative family types. If homosexuality is the equal of heterosexuality in the Episcopal Church, then why should she accept that fathers are a natural part of the family? Logically she can't accept such an idea - otherwise her lesbianism would be taking second place. Similarly, how can she accept that the heterosexual nuclear family is the natural form of the family - if she accepted this, she would be denying that homosexuality was equal to heterosexuality.

So in accepting homosexuality the Episcopal Church must, as a matter of logic, deny that fathers are a natural part of the family. The Episcopal Church must also deny that the heterosexual nuclear family is the natural form of the family. And if it isn't the natural form of the family, why has it been held to be so in the past? The answer given by many will be that it performed some sort of exploitative, oppressive role from which we are now being liberated by the modern, politically correct church.

If homosexuality is equal to heterosexuality then which culture should predominate? Should homosexuals aim to become more like heterosexuals? Or heterosexuals more like homosexuals? The Rev. Dr. Marvin Ellison, an ordained Presbyterian minister, was invited to give a keynote address to the Episcopal Divinity School last year. He argued that heterosexuals should assimilate to homosexual sexual norms:

Considerable evidence suggests that the majority heterosexual culture is coming to resemble gay culture with its gender flexibility, experimentation with family forms, and celebration of the pleasures of non-procreative sex ... This process may be thought of as reverse assimilation. The lesson, Bronski suggests, may be that "Only when those in the dominant culture realize that they are better off acting like gay people will the world change and be a better, safer, and more pleasurable place for everyone."

But, complains The Rev. Dr. Ellison, there is a stumbling block to this better future:

"The Religious Right with its notorious "straight agenda" is hardly enthusiastic about queering the church or world."

The Rev. Ellison wants to inspire us with these words:

Celebrating our common humanity requires making an odd, decisively queer turn toward radical equality and plunging in together to rebuild a vibrant, just and wildly inclusive social order.

The "inclusive social order" requires a "decisively queer turn" in which fathers are no longer considered a natural part of the family; the heterosexual nuclear family is no longer the social norm; gender identity is no longer fixed into the categories of male and female; and sexual morality changes to embrace a more promiscuous, homosexual style sexuality.

Can we really be surprised that the Episcopal Church is beginning to break up? The church lost 115,000 members in the years 2003-5; 800 out of 7000 parishes in North America are exploring future options; and four bishops have taken their diocese out of the church in recent years:

Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker argued for the split from the national church. He's repeatedly argued that the Episcopal Church has abandoned orthodox Christianity for a liberal social agenda.

"The Episcopal Church we once knew no longer exists. It's been hijacked," Iker told the Dallas Morning News.

The Episcopal Church we once knew no longer exists. Following a principle of non-discrimination did not mean keeping the church and extending its reach. It meant losing the church.

Tony Blair's advice to the Pope is not sound. Blair is not deliberately intending to harm the institution he supports. He is not motivated by radical malice. His fault is that he assumes too casually that non-discrimination cannot do harm, that it merely extends a good more widely, rather than undermining that good.

And Blair has this fault because it is so common, so assumed, within political debate and discussion at the moment. It is part of the reigning political mindset.

What makes heterosexuality legitimate?

Feministe is one of the larger feminist websites. There was a post recently at the site titled "What Does a Feminist Relationship Look Like?". Readers were asked to respond to the following question:

How do you work feminism into your relationships? Do you think it’s even possible to have a fully feminist, egalitarian heterosexual relationship?

There was a range of answers, but I couldn't help but notice response no.54 from Allyson:

I would like to suggest that women (and men) struggling with what an egalitarian heterosexual relationship looks like refer to Christine Overall’s Heterosexuality and Feminist Theory. The feminist philosopher argues that it is possible to have a feminist heterosexuality, if it is separated from institutionalized heterosexuality. She suggests that this is accomplished by each partner taking a critical perspective, becoming aware of the privileges attached to their relationship and then rejecting that privilege and striving against heterosexist oppression.

In addition, she argues that a feminist heterosexuality can only be present when it is a conscious choice; in other words, she argues that a woman must engage in critical reflection, identify that she is attracted to men and act accordingly. A feminist heterosexuality cannot be one that is automatically assumed because self-determination is not present there.

Dr Overall is apparently a big thing in Canadian academia: the Queen's University website declares,

Dr. Christine Overall is one of the world’s foremost feminist scholars, particularly in the field of reproductive ethics, and is regarded as a pioneer in the field of feminist philosophy.

(By the way, what are the chances of a pioneer in feminist philosophy being called Dr Overall - conjuring up images of the appearance of 1970s style feminists.)

So, on Allyson's reading at least, Professor Overall believes that women can be legitimately heterosexual, but only if they choose this heterosexuality self-consciously after a period of "critical reflection". If they fail to do this they haven't self-determined their sexuality and it becomes illegitimate.

This is a logical, if unusual, application of liberal autonomy theory. Liberalism sets autonomy as a primary life aim and therefore seeks to remove impediments to individual self-determination. But there are a lot of significant things we don't self-determine, our sexuality being one of them (along with our ethnicity and our gender). Some liberals therefore claim that heterosexuality is not fixed and naturally predominant, but that sexuality exists fluidly in multiple forms along a continuum.

Dr Overall's solution seems to be a bit different: she wants people to go through a conscious process of choice to make it seem as if their heterosexuality is voluntary and self-determined. (Note how closely connected feminist philosophy is here with the basic concerns of liberalism.)

Marriage: an oppressive human right?

Is marriage a good thing or a bad thing? Progressive thought doesn't seem to provide a consistent answer to this question.

On the one hand, patriarchy theory tells us that marriage is an institution designed to uphold the privilege of men as a class over women. It is therefore a key institution enforcing the sexist oppression of women.

So you might think that progressives would hold marriage to be a bad thing. However, progressive thought also holds that if gays are not allowed to marry they suffer a major loss of human rights. If gays can't marry, the argument goes, they are being excluded from a vital human institution - which then makes marriage sound like a good thing.

So we end up with a mixed message about marriage. But what would happen if a progressive was forced to confront this inconsistency?

The Rev. Elder Nori J. Rost, a pastor at a community church in Colorado Springs, has written an article discussing the issue. She begins by claiming that marriage was created as an instrument of the patriarchy:

As basically the only means of survival for women, marriage was clearly a restrictive yoke placed on them that assured the continued domination by men in society.

This was still the case at the time of the Reformation:

... marriage was still not about love ... This in itself served to continue to control the bodies of women, but the other implication was that marriage was still primarily a contractual agreement about the current property of the bride and future property of any offspring.

It was only in the mid-1800s, claims Rev. Rost, that love started to have anything to do with marriage. Nonetheless, even today marriage is an oppressive institution:

when heterosexual couples marry, they participate in a patriarchal system that has, at its foundation, control and subjugation of women and children. Moreover, they continue to enforce the perception of marriage as normative and healthy and alternative arrangements as suspect and inferior.

The Rev. Rost then asks what really motivates opposition to gay marriage. She believes that the right opposes gay marriage because it threatens the patriarchal order in three ways.

First, it would help to destroy gender roles:

Two men or two women who choose to share their lives together ... will have to figure out their unique roles ... those roles can be created without the underlying assumption of what the man's role and the woman's role is to be.

Second, it would promote the idea that sex is for pleasure not procreation:

The only purpose of sexual intimacy in gay and lesbian relationships is that of pleasure. I believe this is fearful for the right-wing element to contemplate ...

Third, gay marriage would weaken the wider structure of society:

If, however, we legitimize those relationships by sanctioning same-sex marriage the right-wing people unconsciously fear that such blatant disregard for patriarchal norms will seep over into the heterosexual community like a virus, challenging other old ways of being. In other words, perhaps the conservatives are right: same sex-marriage does threaten the fabric of society.

So to this point we have learned that the Rev. Rost believes that marriage is oppressive and that the right fears gay marriage because it represents a threat to the social order.

Does she therefore support gay marriage? At first, the answer seems to be no. After describing the ills of marriage she complains:

Yet it is this somewhat scurrilous goal that many gays and lesbians are now vociferously seeking.

You might think, having described marriage as a "scurrilous goal" that she would advise gays to stay well clear of it. Yet her final word on the matter is not so straightforward:

Which brings me to the unasked question: Should gays and lesbians be seeking marriage rights at all? ... Is marriage, in its current form with its nebulous history, the prize we should all be eying?

Clearly, there is no easy answer. Early on I was tempted to say that the struggle for marriage is one that is a fruitless waste of our energy and resources. However, I am now more inclined to see it as a step in the right direction ...

While in many ways I think we are climbing the ladder of same sex marriage only to find it is propped against the wrong wall, I also recognize that it is the ladder we seem to be facing. At the end of the day, there is much more to be done ...

Perhaps the means in which marriage is disentangled from the entitlements is by the allowing of same sex marriage and the affront to the patriarchal norms that are so entrenched in the current institution of marriage. Marriage needs to be de-constructed so it becomes iconic of "just" love ...

Her answer is confused and hesitant, but she seems to think that marriage, despite being a bad thing, should still be sought by gays because it will be undone by gay marriage and replaced by a more "just" form of love.

I won't launch at this point into a criticism of the Rev. Rost's patriarchy theory (though I would not want to be defending her claim that love was not an important aspect of marriage prior to 1850). My purpose in this article has been to show the difficulty in the progressive position on marriage: marriage is treated as both an oppressive and unnatural patriarchal construct as well as an important human right from which no-one should be excluded.

If you really believed in feminism ....

What would you really commit yourself to if you took feminism seriously?

Let's go through it step by step. Feminism begins with the liberal idea that we can be more or less human depending on how autonomous (self-determining) we are. Therefore, if women as a group are less autonomous than men as a group, if they don't have the same "agency" as men, their status is not fully human.

Second, autonomy means being unimpeded in choosing what to do or be. Our sex is something we don't get to choose, so gender becomes something that makes us less human. If you believe that women are an oppressed class, deliberately denied autonomy, then it makes sense to think that women are the "sex class" - the ones who bear the burden of having a "sex" attached to them, unlike men who form the "human" class.

Third, if you believe that men have more autonomy than women, and are therefore a dominant class, it's reasonable to think that men have organised society to uphold their own power and privilege over women. Why would men do this unless they harboured negative feelings toward women? And how could women assert true self-determination in a society organised in a systematic way to deny them autonomy? And how could things change without a revolutionary, radical overthrow of the whole system?

Enter "Twisty", the "spinster aunt" who runs a popular radical feminist website called "I blame the patriarchy". Her great virtue is her willingness to take political positions which flow logically from the theory. She is an intellectually consistent feminist.

When Twisty tells us that women who attempt to be physically attractive "get sucked into the Femininity Hole, never to be human again", she means it. It fits the theory, that gender is something which impedes our autonomy and that this loss of autonomy deprives us of human status.

There is a logic, then, in Twisty insisting that women ought to reject femininity. Similarly, there is a theoretical consistency in Twisty maintaining that women in a patriarchy, lacking agency as they must, cannot truly consent to sex. Twisty herself explains this as follows:

... in a patriarchy, the cornerstone of which is a paradigm of male dominance and female submission, women do not enjoy the same degree of personal sovereignty that men do. This oppressed condition obtains a priori to all other conditions, and nullifies any presumption of fully human status on the part of women. A woman, therefore, cannot freely "consent," because her will is obviated by her status as a subhuman.

But if sex is rape then men are ... rapists:

all humans are conditioned to despise women. A woman ... can never be humanized. The American legal system, as a matter of fact, effectively outlaws humanity for women. It does this in many ways ... One of the most insidious is its assertion that women are in a perpetual state of 'consent' ... It is by this cunning method ... that the future of rape as the cornerstone of human social order is secured.

... It is by popular demand that, decades after American women were first deemed "liberated", the countryside remains infested with unjailed rapists. These freely roaming rapists are patriarchy's enforcers.

Now, as admirable as I find Twisty's commitment to theoretical consistency, she has arrived at a difficult position. First, it's not an easy politics to sell to young women. Twisty herself is fully aware of the problem; she says of the idea that women cannot freely consent to sex that,

I suspect that the rampant unwillingness among young feminists to deny this grim truth stems from the wholly untenable position into which it thrusts'em. They're young, they're fit, they wanna boink; who can blame them if they just aren't ready to accept that nothing short of an exhaustive, uncompromising overthrow of the social order will put them in complete control of their own selves?

Similarly, Twisty explains the existence of an alternative "sex positive" feminism as follows:

It reassures women who fear the burden of true liberation that femininity is a legitimate identity.

The burden of true liberation? Can you really have a burdensome liberation? Isn't that a tautology which suggests that the wrong sort of liberation is being aimed at?

There's another problem with Twisty's consistency of theory. It's not only difficult to live by in practice, and unappealing in what it demands, but it doesn't seem to correlate well to reality. This is what the more moderate feminists object to. A feminist blogger named Holly wrote a post criticising Twisty, partly because it's just not her own experience that the average man is a woman hating, privilege enforcing rapist:

Some of my best friends are men. The vast majority of the men I see every day are kind, hard-working, intelligent people who respect women. In my world at least, hooting fratboys or growling wifebeaters or crazy fundies are outnumbered 10 to 1 by ordinary Joes doing the best they can to be decent people.

Nor does she feel like she's a member of an oppressed subhuman class:

Call me a rich white het cis privilegebunny, but I don't feel very oppressed. Sometimes insulted, sometimes worried, sometimes concerned for the oppression of people in other places, but in my own life I just don't feel the boot on my neck. At work, at school, socially, nobody acts like I'm less than human or tries to enforce the Patriarchy on me directly. For me, in my daily life, I don't feel like being female is difficult or painful.

So Holly is more of a realist than Twisty. Unfortunately, she lacks Twisty's intellectual rigour. She sticks with the feminist theory, even as she rejects the political positions drawn logically from the theory.

For instance, she welcomes a comment from a male commenter on the basis that,

Your hereditary membership in traditional oppressor classes doesn't make you personally a bad person unless you choose to be, and it shouldn't exclude you from dialogue.

Holly believes, therefore, in the underlying theory that men have acted as an oppressor group dominating women. She writes too that the proper focus of feminism is "advancing the cause of female strength and independence" (i.e. autonomy) and that gender is a source of oppression:

I'm a feminist. I really am, dammit. Our culture is permeated with weird ideas about femininity (and masculinity!) and it desperately does need to change.

So we're back with men as an oppressor group denying women autonomy via an oppressive construction of gender. This despite the fact that Holly has just told us that she herself doesn't feel oppressed as a woman and that the men she meets personally are hard-working people who respect women.

Holly doesn't want the political positions drawn from the theory to become unpalatable or unrealistic; she's more of a pragmatist than Twisty. She nonetheless shares with Twisty the same basic political theory.

I don't think that conservatives should rush to support a Holly type feminism just because it's more pragmatic and less overtly hostile to men. In some ways, a Twisty feminism teaches us more by unfolding the logic of feminist theory for us.

If we don't like where the theory takes us, then we ought to critique the theory itself, rather than the political positions it leads to.

We ought to consider the following questions:

a) Is it true that our status as humans fluctuates, or is it something permanently invested in us?

b) Is autonomy really the one overriding good? Is it the organising principle of society? Or is it something to be held in balance with other important human goods?

c) Are human relationships really structured around a contest for autonomy and power? Is this the core meaning of family relationships? Of communal traditions? Of manhood and womanhood?

d) Have the actions of men throughout history really been to the detriment of women and for selfish purposes?

Heterosexuals just 10 percent?

During an otherwise standard sex education lesson, I was astonished to hear the teacher in charge claim that heterosexuals make up just 10% of the population. She chided the students for their mistaken belief that heterosexuals were a majority. The students were told that for 80% of the population sexuality was fluid and changed in any direction over time.

This has to be one of the more extreme instances I've observed of redefining reality to fit your own ideological purposes. Presumably the sex ed teacher is following the ideal of liberal autonomy in which we are supposed to be self-determined in all things which matter. If our sexuality is fixed it can't be self-determined, so it helps the theory if our sexuality can be made fluid.

This is the basic idea behind queer theory, which has been promoted widely in schools in the US:

For the queer theorist, all unambiguous and permanent notions of a natural sexual or gender identity are coercive impositions on our individual autonomy - our freedom to reinvent our sexual selves whenever we like. Sexuality is androgynous, fluid, polymorphous ...

So we shouldn't be surprised if activists aim to overturn heterosexual norms. I hadn't, though, expected the bold move of relegating heterosexuals to minority status.

She wears a suit to work so it must be OK!

What do TV ads tell us about modern morality? In the case of the Nando’s commercial, quite a bit.

The idea behind the ad is that the company's chicken is so addictive you have to wear Nando’s patches or chew Nando’s gum to reduce the cravings. It’s a clever concept, but the advertisers decided on a controversial way of presenting the idea.

They made an ad in which a pole-dancing woman, naked except for a g-string, thrusts her rear end toward a male customer, but doesn’t get the tip because she is wearing a Nando's patch. So she changes to Nando's gum, and next time the happy client slips money into her g-string. Later she is shown in a happy family scene in which she and her family enjoy a chicken dinner together.

The ad attracted a number of complaints to the Advertising Standards Bureau. Some of these complaints were:

This ad was played in a popular public cinema at what is clearly a child friendly session time … showing sexually based advertising content to a young audience is totally inappropriate.

Shows and glorifies strip joints and venues that are R18 in a cinema full of children.

It was sexual and provocative and inappropriate for children to view.

Young children are shown it is acceptable for men to pay for gratuitous behaviour/performances. It promotes working in a strip club as an “ordinary” acceptable vocation for loving, family oriented mothers. It devalues the worth of women into sex objects.

How did Nando’s respond to these complaints? First, they argued that the nudity in the ad wasn’t “gratuitous” because it was “central to the idea” of the ad and ensured “authenticity”.

Second, they claimed that the ad, rather than being degrading to women, was the opposite because it showed a woman,

who was clearly in charge of her own destiny. The woman we depict in the commercial is shown to be intelligent, in control and making her own choices. She is not being coerced by the man in any way. She is acting in accordance with her own free will … Many women see the open display of female sexuality as a forthright display of empowerment.

This defence of the ad gets right to the heart of things. The company is invoking what is currently the ruling concept of morality, one based on liberal autonomy theory.

According to this theory, what matters is that we are self-determining, autonomous agents (as this is what is thought to make us human). So it is not what I choose which counts in terms of morality; it is that I am autonomous in choosing it.

That's why Nando's goes to such lengths to describe their pole-dancing mum as a self-determining agent: she is "in charge of her destiny," "in control," "making her own choices," "not ... coerced," and "acting in accordance with her own free will".

But should Nando's be portraying a woman who is engaging in a form of prostitution as a motherly role model? The company gives this answer:

We don't believe that it is our place, nor our audience's, to make a judgement about a woman's fitness as a mother based solely on her professional choices. The woman is not engaged in any activity that shows her being a bad mother. Indeed, she is clearly portrayed in the final scene as an ideal mother who cares for her family.

I hardly know where to begin my criticism of this statement. First, note the taboo placed on "judging" by Nando's. Again, this makes sense if the real aim of morality is to maximise autonomy. If we judge a choice negatively and make it morally illegitimate then we are placing a limit on someone's will, on their ability to determine for themselves how to act.

Hence the seeming arrogance of Nando's in solemnly telling us that we, the audience, must not make judgements about the choice of a mother to support herself by pole-dancing.

Note too the unrealistic, nihilistic conclusions that this leads to: that the woman is "not engaged in any activity that shows her being a bad mother" and that she is, in fact, an "ideal mother" who cares for her family.

In the Nando's world it would be impossible to uphold any moral standards. Individuals could behave however they liked, and as long as they could show they weren't coerced, their choices would be considered moral. Furthermore, it would be thought wrong to judge individuals for the moral choices that they did make.

Which leaves the Advertising Standards Bureau in a tricky position, as there isn't much for them to do without the possiblity of standards.

As it is, the ASB finding was laughably incoherent. The ASB dismissed the complaints against the ad, in part on this reasoning:

The Board noted the complaints that the advertisement vilified women by depicting the woman pole dancing and therefore as a stripper or prostitute. The Board considered that the depiction of the woman pole dancing was not a depiction of a sleazy or overtly sexual woman and that there was no suggestion that the woman was a prostitute.

A naked, pole-dancing woman shoving her genitalia toward a male client isn't "overtly sexual"? A woman accepts money for such a service and there is "no suggestion that the woman was a prostitute"? There is a radical redefinition of reality going on here. And what of Nando's claim that their pole dancing woman was engaging in "an open display of female sexuality" as an act of empowerment? How do you square this with the ASB denial that there was anything overtly sexual happening?

Then there is this ASB classic:

The Board noted complaints about the inappropriateness of stripping or pole dancing being shown in conjunction with images of a happy family and the disconnect between poledancing or stripping and family values. The Board considered that poledancing was not incompatible with family values.

Are we supposed to laugh out loud at this point? But then we get the explanation for the seemingly out of touch comments:

The Board noted many complaints about the depiction of a mother and wife as a pole dancer/prostitute and considered that this vilified women. The Board considered that this advertisement depicted a strong in control woman who went about her work in a professional manner (wearing a suit to work), enjoyed her work, enjoyed being 'sexy' and enjoyed time with her family. The Board considered that this advertisement depicted the woman as being a strong and empowered woman. The Board considered that the advertisement did not vilify women by portraying a woman in both roles or in a manner that demonstrated that she was 'sexy'. The Board considered that such a depiction was not improper as a depiction of someone who was also a mother and wife.

So the Board too follows autonomy theory morality. What matters is that the woman is an uncoerced, self-defining agent. She is a "strong in control woman" who "enjoyed her work" and who is "empowered" (rather than lacking power and therefore being coerced in her choices by someone else).

Again, the consequence of adopting this approach is that the concern is simply to be non-judgemental and permissive (as this places the fewest limits on individual choice). There isn't a focus on the inherent goodness of an act, nor a realistic assessment of the effects moral choices are likely to have.

At times, it seems as if the Board is content to press the right theoretical buttons, and to be unconcerned with the contradictory arguments this generates. In the last quote, for instance, we are told that the ad is OK because the woman enjoys being sexy (and is therefore uncoerced) and just a few lines later we're assured that the ad is fine because the woman is not being depicted as "sexy".

So at least Nando's have done us one favour. They have brought into the open the uselessness of the ASB as a body charged with upholding standards.

Note: to read the ASB finding you have to click here and go to the findings for June 2007

Fathers, autonomy, models

Personal political is the website of an Australian lesbian feminist who is raising a young son with a female partner. She recently wrote an entry on the topic of role models for boys. I found it interesting in revealing some of the ideological contradictions at play.

The writer is clearly into autonomy theory. This is the mainstream idea within liberalism that what matters is that we remain unimpeded (and therefore autonomous) in choosing to do or be anything we wish. The emphasis is usually on the self-determining, self-creating individual.

The writer's brother gave her son a book about boys who have achieved great things. Her instinctive feminist response to the book is this:

It's a strange kind of book. I mean, does anyone - including boys - really need to be told that "boys can do anything"?

This is the usual feminist assumption that since autonomy is what matters, and since men have power in society, that men must have autonomy.

However, the writer then backtracks and adds:

Which isn't to say that boys face no obstacles in being and becoming anything they want to be ...

This comment clearly reveals the writer's commitment to autonomy theory. But why backtrack? If I reproduce the quote in full, the answer is revealed: she believes that boys are restricted by masculinity itself:

Which isn't to say that boys face no obstacles in being and becoming anything they want to be - or even in getting to the point where they might feel a wish to somehow step outside of the accepted masculine constraints.

One thing to note here is that autonomy theory turns something that most men take to be a positive (their masculinity) into a negative (as masculinity is thought of as a constraint on being anything you want to be).

This is an undesirable feature of autonomy theory but not a contradiction. The contradiction comes at the end of the entry when we learn that the writer doesn't really want her son to be anything he wants to be after all. The writer has definite preferences for her son which she is actively guiding him toward. In her own words:

... we do take care to point out to Olle positive examples of men and boys. What, for me, is a positive example? I suppose it does incorporate men doing atypical things like dance ... I lean towards drawing his attention to men who are able to use their bodies with sensitivity, men who are expressive and intellectually creative, as a counterweight to all the bottled-up boofheads who get the mainstream kudos in our society.

What happened to the "be anything" ideal? The writer is here being quite particular in pointing out what she takes to be ideal types of character and behaviour for her son to follow, and reprehensible types to be shunned.

So even someone who is highly committed to autonomy theory doesn't stick to it in a consistent way in practice. The instinct to raise a child according to a positive ideal of character and behaviour proves too strong after all.

This means that the important issue, the one normally hidden by an emphasis on autonomy, is what a worthy ideal for boys is. There doesn't have to be a single, simplistic answer, of course, but nor is it helpful to deny the reality that such ideals will be brought forward.

The other area of ideological confusion in the entry concerns role models. The writer tells us, first, that she doesn't like the notion of role models. She believes that the formation of gender is much more complex than copying masculine or feminine behaviour. Therefore, she doesn't believe that her son, by having no father, is missing out:

That is, of course, why the claim that sons of lesbians are missing the essential role model has always struck me as nonsense.

Again, she then quickly backtracks when she adds:

(Which is different from the proposition that boys need men in their lives.)

So boys don't need a paternal role model, but they do need men in their lives.

Later, though, she states:

I don't think parenthood requires anything especially different from mothers or fathers.

I suppose this could all fit together subtly. It's not easy to put together, though. If there is no purpose to gender in our closest and most formative relationships (with our parents) then why do boys need men in their lives at all? In other words, if it's not important to our socialisation whether our primary carers are male or female, then why should it matter to our socialisation if our lesser relationships involve males or females?

I might be wrong, but I wonder if the writer is trying to justify her son having no father, without drawing the very radical conclusion that men aren’t needed in family life.

This, though, is the logical conclusion to draw: if two women are as likely to raise a son as successfully as a father and mother, then fathers aren’t necessary to family life. If men and women were truly to believe this, then the intrinsic motivation for men to feel responsible to stay with their families, and for women to encourage them to do so, is considerably weakened.

In short, the writer isn't able to present a view of gender and parenting which is both moderate and coherent (and she does seem to be trying to be moderate).

Love & dependence

How has love been viewed in Western culture?

Love has often been compared to a merging of two souls into one. The Empress Alexandra of Russia said as much when writing to her husband, Tsar Nicholas II, in 1914 that "We make one."

Similarly, the philosopher Alberti praised marital love in 1432 for the "close bonds and united will" existing between husband and wife. In 1958 the poet Sylvia Plath described her love for her husband as a feeling of being "perfectly at one" with him, whilst a much earlier female poet, Anne Bradstreet, wrote in 1678 that she and her husband, even when apart, were yet "both but one."

A final example of the "two makes one" ideal of love is that of the seventeenth century English poet John Donne, who wrote to assure his love that "Our two souls ... are one."

A similar way to describe love in Western culture is as an intertwining of two souls. The Ancient Roman philosopher Plutarch compared the joining of a husband and wife to "ropes twined together." The American philosopher William James declared to his wife in 1882 that "I feel your existence woven into mine;" whilst Agnes Porter, a governess, wrote in 1791 of the children she loved that "they entwine around one's heart."

This raises a problem. Western societies are dominated by the philosophy of liberal individualism. According to this philosophy, the most important thing is that individuals are left independent and autonomous so that they can create themselves in any direction.

But if love is thought of either as a merging or an entwining of two people into one, then love is in conflict with the above aim of liberal individualism: the achievement of an autonomous, unimpeded individual will.

So what happens? How do liberals respond to this conflict between love and individual autonomy?

There have existed liberals who, in theory at least, have taken the logical step and rejected love. My favourite example would be the Spanish anarchists, representing a radical wing of liberalism, who passed a resolution that for those comrades experiencing "the sickness of love ... a change of commune will be recommended."

The Australian/American pianist and composer Percy Grainger was another who was willing to reject love (in favour of lust). He once declared,

That's why I say I hate love ... I like those things that leave men and women perfectly free ... The reason why I say I worship lust but hate love is because lust ... leaves people perfectly free.

Another example concerns the writer Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), most famous for her novel Out of Africa. A biographer, Judith Thurman, has noted that,

The most compelling heroines in Dinesen's tales ... make a sacrifice of sexual love for some more challenging spiritual project─self-sovereignty, knowledge, worldly power─which enables them to be themselves.

As a final example there is the more recent case of the New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke. She managed to shock even some feminists when she justified her decision to remain childless by asserting that,

You've got better things to do with your life, unimpeded.

Notice the terms used to justify the rejection of love (whether maternal, marital or sexual). The aim is to be unimpeded, to exercise individual freedom, or to claim self-sovereignty - all of which relate to the basic goal of liberal individualism of being an autonomous, self-creating individual.

To be fair, it's unusual for liberals to reject love in such a blatant fashion. It's more usual to try to somehow combine the goal of love with the goal of autonomy.

At a basic level you can see this in the fashionable slogan of single girls in the 1990s that "I might want a man, but I don't need a man." This makes love acceptable within the framework of liberalism by turning it into an act of individual will.

The "solution" of the above slogan, though, is only a face-saver. It papers over the reality that most young singles do experience a need to find someone to love in order to feel complete. This is something inborn and resistant to individual will and reason, which is why it's hard to openly acknowledge in a liberal culture.

A more sophisticated attempt to marry love and individualism has been made recently by the Australian sociologist Don Edgar. Now remember, the task for a liberal like Don Edgar is to somehow imagine relationships in which our individual reason and will would not be impeded. How does he do it?

What he suggests is that there be no external authority in how we choose to express relationships, no restraints, but that instead there should be an "intimate negotiation" between two persons, and a "careful construction of an agreed but unique modus operandi."

Edgar likes the description by Anthony Giddens (another sociologist) of the shift toward more open and negotiated human relationships as the coming of "plastic sexuality," where every permutation of sexual behaviour is acceptable provided it is based on mutual respect, disclosure of personal feelings, an equal negotiation of what is acceptable and not an act based on power or coercion.

The funny thing is that Edgar announces at the end of all this that "I'll personally stick to hetero marriage." And this gives away a major weakness in his convoluted attempt to try to make love acceptable to sovereign will and reason.

Most of us reach an age in which we experience an instinct to settle down and have a family. What we then seek is a happy marriage and not just "some intimacy, some form of commitment" which is all that Edgar is prepared to bequeath to the younger generation.

What the older generation owes to the younger is to uphold the conditions in which it's possible to marry successfully, rather than to leave it to millions of competing wills to negotiate a relationship in a climate of self-serving individualism.

It's not plastic, open or unique relationships that young people need, but stable, secure and workable ones, in which some measure of independence can be sacrificed to a healthy and natural interdependence.

First published at Conservative Central, 18/10/03.

Gay marriage - what is at stake?

Why should we resist the push toward gay marriage? The answer is set out best by Andrea Burns, in an article for the Melbourne Herald Sun ("Why do we fear love?" 11/06/06 - not online).

Andrea actually writes stridently in favour of gay marriage. But she does so in a way which betrays the destructive nature of progressive thinking on the issue.

Andrea follows the liberal line that what matters is that we are unimpeded in choosing who we are and what we do. Therefore, she advocates the idea that sexuality and gender are not fixed and unchosen, but fluid and individual. She writes:

The fluidity of sexuality is more relevant to this young generation than ever before. Gay, straight and bisexual are all labels that have become less applicable in a young society where roles are changing and gender ideals are being questioned.

What sort of message does the Government’s stance send to so many young Australians?

It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that Mr Howard is saying it is not acceptable to follow an individual path and you will be disadvantaged if you question the norm.

Similarly, for Andrea Burns the traditional family is the oppressive fixed impediment which ought to make way for more open, freely chosen living arrangements:

Young people are growing up in all kinds of family environments these days. Mr Howard is our Prime Minister and yet he seems unaware that the days of the white bread, nuclear family are over. There are many ways to commune, love and create a home.

All young people want is a loving and supportive environment in which to grow up. It does not matter who that love and support comes from, as long as it is there.

It’s inconsequential who makes up that circle of love, whether it’s one widowed old lady and her Jack Russell, or a lesbian couple and their gay male friend expecting their first child together.

What matters is that there is a loving home, a stable environment and a legal contract that protects that commitment.

The first thing to note about this liberal way of justifying gay marriage is that it confirms the slippery slope objection. It is not only gay marriage which Andrea Burns wants to institute. The logic by which she accepts gay marriage also leads her to accept any kind of living arrangement in which there is a “loving and supportive environment”.

Andrea has argued herself into a position in which there is no principled way to object to polygamy. On what basis can she discriminate against a man who wants legal recognition for his relationship with two women, if all that matters is that the three of them make up a “circle of love.”

Note the examples that Andrea herself gives of possible “circles of love” forming a family: a lady and her dog, and two women and a man.

However, it’s not only the slippery slope which reveals the inadequacy of Andrea’s argument for gay marriage. There’s an even deeper problem.

Andrea’s liberal ideal is that we should not be impeded in determining who we are according to our own individual will. This leads her to assert that the nuclear family is redundant; that ideals of gender should be overturned; that there are no certain forms of sexuality; and that it is not especially useful for a child to be raised by both a mother and father.

These assertions, though, are a frontal assault on heterosexual culture. The heterosexual norm is to be attracted to the opposite gender in a relatively fixed and uncomplicated way; to have an innate sense of what is masculine and feminine; to find traditional gender qualities sexually and romantically attractive in the opposite sex; and to understand fathers and mothers as having distinct and necessary roles within a family.

So the liberal position outlined by Andrea Burns is incompatible with a society in which heterosexual norms dominate culturally. It is actually more in line with homosexual norms, in which gender identity, sexuality and family arrangements are relatively uncertain.

Ultimately a society has to choose which culture is to be “normative”. It’s not possible to reconcile both, one must dominate. For instance, is a child generally advantaged if it lives with its biological mother and father? A heterosexual culture will answer in the affirmative.

But what if the state accepts a homosexual union as an equal basis for family life? This means that the state has consented to the idea that children don’t do best with both a father and mother. The state has accepted that a father is redundant in the life of a child or that a mother is redundant in the life of a child.

It is right for the heterosexual majority to resist the state accepting such notions. First, because of a conviction that it is untrue that fathers or mothers can be considered merely optional. Second, because a 97% majority forms such a basis of a society that it is both reasonable and necessary that the culture it operates by be accepted as normative.

You cannot abolish discrimination on this issue. Someone is going to be discriminated against. Heterosexuals will find their own lives best fulfilled when their own understanding of family, gender, sexuality and morality is allowed to form the social norm.

The only way you can not discriminate against gays is by discriminating against heterosexuals: by forcing heterosexuals to abandon their own norms, and substituting other norms in their place. There is no "justice" to this and it would be foolish for heterosexuals to accept this process, whether it is driven by liberals like Andrea Burns or by homosexuals themselves.

Gender traitors?

There have been more developments in the Swedish feminist party, Feminist Initiative.

First, Susanne Linde, a leading figure in the party, has resigned after being bullied by another leading member, Tiina Rosenberg. Rosenberg, a professor of gender studies, taunted the more politically moderate Linde, by saying that "a good moderate is a dead moderate". When Linde spoke of resigning Rosenberg said "I'm glad that our intelligence reserve won't fall with you." Linde said of this "I felt so violated I started to cry."

Now, this kind of bickering is not unheard of in political parties. But remember, feminists keep telling us how much nicer and more peaceful the world would be if only they could run things, instead of nasty men. But it seems that feminists can't even keep the peace in their own little party, let alone on the world stage.

The second development also concerns Tiina Rosenberg. She is reported to have said that, "women who sleep with men are traitors to their gender."

This statement is a real blast from the past. It harks back to the feminism of the 1970s and early 1980s. I caught the tail-end of it when I was an undergraduate uni student in the mid-80s. On the housing advertisement board, there used to be ads for women only communes. Within a few years, though, feminist separatism had run out of steam.

And now it reappears in Sweden. It is a wildly perverse attitude, which runs directly counter to healthy human instinct and social solidarity. I can only presume it has its origins either in lesbianism, or else the left-liberal idea that there are oppressor groups (men) who have set up artificial categories (male and female) in order to achieve a will to power of their own group over a deprived and oppressed victim group (women).

If you were to take such an ideology seriously, then perhaps you might see men and women as enemies locked in combat, so that a heterosexual woman could be castigated for "sleeping with the enemy."

But what a dreary, life-wasting philosophy! Imagine relegating the differences between men and women to the realm of "oppressive, artificial, social construct". This does not fit well with heterosexuality, in which it is precisely the masculinity or the femininity of the opposite sex which we love. Nor does it judge fairly the real motivations of men in working hard to establish and provide well for their families.

In a way, Rosenberg is right: if you follow the logic of the leftist view, a woman would be led into the hopeless situation of rejecting heterosexual love and the traditional family.

You would think that someone led to such a position would reconsider the ideology being pursued. But perhaps Rosenberg is a lesbian and so has little to lose from rejecting heterosexual love and family life.

Celebrating Partner B Day

A couple of interesting items on the issue of homosexuality.

The first is a story on David Akinsaya. He is a BBC journalist who has lived as a gay man for many years, but no longer wishes to do so.

Why? Because he doesn’t like the lack of fulfilment of not being able to have a wife and children in the normal way. He says,

what I long for is a nuclear family – wife, kids, the lot. I just want to be normal ... In my present way of being, no one depends on me and I, myself, have no one to rely on. When you have a wife and child, they’re yours and you are theirs.

There are gay couples who have children, but I don’t want to be one of them, as I don’t think it’s fair on the child ... The only way it would feel right for me to have a child is if I’m in love with their mother.

Here we have a recognition of two things. The first is that the liberal ideal of individual autonomy is not all it’s made out to be. David Akinsaya has the opportunity to live an independent lifestyle, but finds it unsatisfying. He wants to make the deeper commitments, and to take his place within an interdependent family.

The second is that homosexuality, by its very nature, is not equal to heterosexuality. Homosexual men have limited options in forming families. As David Akinsaya acknowledges, a child needs a mother, as well as a father who loves the mother. A homosexual man cannot meet such requirements. Homosexuality therefore imposes a radical restraint on human potential which heterosexuality does not.

The other interesting item on homosexuality has a very different theme. Here in Melbourne a booklet has been produced to challenge the “homophobia” of ..... kindergarten children!

The taxpayer funded booklet has been sent to over 2000 children’s centres. It encourages staff to use books, posters, games, dolls and role plays to “promote awareness of homosexual issues” amongst pre-school children.

The booklet even suggests that Father’s Day should be changed to “A Day for Someone Special” and that the terms Partner A and Partner B should be used on forms instead of Mum and Dad.

These last two facts are a reminder that there are points of conflict between heterosexual and homosexual culture. In other words, if homosexuality is to be treated as equal to heterosexuality, then important aspects of a heterosexual culture will have to give way.

I recently wrote about a Melbourne University queer officer who wanted to abolish the very categories of man and woman.

Whilst less extreme, the homosexual activists in this case want to abolish Father’s Day as well as references to mothers and fathers. So again, in order to be “inclusive” of homosexual parents, the normal expression of a heterosexual family culture has to be repressed.

The heterosexual majority should not stand for this. We need to assert the primacy of heterosexuality and the culture deriving from and supporting a heterosexual family life.

No man or woman?

The Melbourne University Student Union has a queer officer by the name of Alex Ettling. Ettling has joined the ranks of those who are pushing to abolish separate toilets for men and women and instead create "pan-toilets" to cater for "all gender possibilities". Why? Ettling told The Age newspaper today that,

Part of our intention is to break down the belief that there is just man and woman. Ideally we'd like to see a world where there are so many gender expressions that you just don't see there being man and woman any more.

Now, you can understand why a gay man would dislike the existence of just two genders, male and female. Being gay doesn't only mean having a sexual orientation toward other men, it also often involves a confusion of gender identity. A gay man might not adopt a fully masculine gender identity, nor a fully feminine one. So he may feel alienated by the idea that there are just two sexes.

But, of course, there are two sexes and it is at the heart of heterosexuality to appreciate this fact. Most men not only want women to exist, they want very obviously feminine women to exist. And women for their part are attracted to the masculine qualities of men.

So we have a clash between what some gays would want as part of their ideal society and culture (the breaking down of the categories of man and woman) and what the heterosexual majority would assert as their ideal (the upholding of a distinctly masculine manhood and feminine womanhood).

It is therefore naive for people to believe that homosexuality will be seamlessly integrated into a heterosexual culture. There are areas in which the two are incompatible, so that the claims of only one can win out. And the heterosexual majority needs to proceed with the confidence that its own claims should be the ones to dominate society.

Some people might object at this point that the homosexual objectives are so unrealistic that there is no chance that they will ever be of influence. But there is a problem with this argument. The gay men who want to abolish the categories of man and woman have a powerful ally. Their goal fits in all too well with the reigning philosophy of liberalism.

Remember, liberals start out with the idea that we are human because we have the freedom to choose for ourselves who we are and what we will do. This makes liberals hostile to those parts of our identity which we don't have the power to choose for ourselves. And this includes our sex: the fact of being man or woman. We don't get to choose this for ourselves, but are born either man or woman as part of our "biological destiny".

So liberals have already tried to make gender "not matter" by attempting to reverse traditional gender roles. For a liberal it is a positive thing for a woman to break gender "stereotypes" by playing football or working as a bricklayer and for men to do the same thing by staying home to look after babies.

So what gays are advocating is simply a more radical application of an existing principle. Instead of denying the legitimacy of traditional gender roles, they are denying the legitimacy of traditional gender itself.

The claim that you can abolish the categories of man and woman seems ridiculous. But people take seriously a similarly unlikely claim: that masculinity and femininity are merely socially constructed and an impediment to human freedom. For many years liberals have asserted that "the mind has no sex" when it is a biological fact that it does.

So obvious biologicial facts can't be relied on to win political arguments. Mr Ettling may still get to see his wish fulfilled and to have politicians repeat the mantra that there is no man or woman.

How to lose fans

My wife has been a big fan of celebrity liberal Susan Sarandon. So she was keen to read the April edition of The Australian Women's Weekly featuring an interview with the American actress.

The interview includes some fairly standard fare, including the the following defence of the actress's political activities,

Susan makes no apologies for her activism. She believes celebrities have no reason to abstain from practising responsible citizenship - if anything, they can use their visibility to create awareness. "Social justice has always been a big part of my life. Often [as a celebrity] I can act as a small flashlight to illuminate information that is not making the news."

Well, my wife almost fell off the couch when she read one of Ms Sarandon's attempts to be a small flashlight. This is Ms Sarandon's considered opinion on the issue of children and sexuality:

I've embraced the fact that my kids were sexual beings from the time they were born. It's one of those things that nobody talks about, but from the time that kids come into the world they're sexual, it doesn't kick in at adolescence. I've always been comfortable with that ...

Say what???? Kids are sexual from the time they're born? Has Ms Sarandon been reading too much Kinsey?

Well, my wife is no longer such a big fan. As for me, I just hope that the Sarandonites of the world are not going to make this idea a trendy lefty one. It really is time for the likes of Susan Sarandon to practise responsible citizenship and to think carefully about the consequences of the ideas they choose to "illuminate".

Catholicism at the crossroads?

Sometimes I wonder which way the Catholic Church will go. It could be such a force for resistance to modern secular liberalism, but at times it looks like collapsing into it.

For instance, I was surprised by the comments made last week by Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson. He spoke in support of a a new parliamentary bill which extends property, superannuation and inheritance rights to homosexual couples. He said,

We clearly regard marriage as being a unique type of relationship ... but at the same time we recognise the fact that there are people in society who live in other kinds of relationships.

I wonder if this comment, as it stands, really does represent the new position of the Catholic Church (perhaps Archbishop Wilson simply expressed things clumsily and clarified his thoughts later on).

As they stand, though, his comments represent a surprisingly open acceptance of homosexuality by the church. Archbishop Wilson is now only interested in defending the uniquely heterosexual status of marriage. Homosexuality is for him, simply an "other kind of relationship", rather than something "objectively disordered" which, as I understood it, used to be the considered view of the Catholic Church.

Anyway, of more concern is an item reported by Lawrence Auster at View from the Right. The supposedly Catholic Georgetown University gave an honorary degree to Jordan's King Abdullah. During the ceremony who did the American Cardinal choose to make his prayers to? To Allah!!!

Is the church losing itself in a sea of liberal relativism? Time will tell, but some of the signs are not good.

There's always a more radical liberalism

Another item brought to my attention by Jim Kalb's terrific website Turnabout is the following.

Harvard puts on a "diversity" show each year called Cultural Rhythms. On February 28th the Harvard newspaper published a celebratory account of this year's show, the highlight of which was a speech by actress Jada Pinkett Smith.

Upon receiving an award from Harvard, Pinkett Smith tearily gave thanks and then shared the following "life lesson" with the audience:

Don't let anybody define who you are. Don't let them put you in a box. Don't be afraid to break whatever ceiling anybody has put on you.

Women, you can have it all - a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career. They say you gotta choose. Nah, nah, nah. We are a new generation of women. We got to set a new standard of rules around here. You can do whatever it is you want.

Not surprinsingly, the Harvard representative at the show, Dr. S. Allen Counter, the director of the Harvard Foundation, was delighted by Pinkett Smith's comments. He said that Pinkett Smith was "the best we've had thus far".

And why wouldn't he. After all, Pinkett Smith's speech was a popular expression of the liberal philosophy which universities like Harvard live by.

The basic liberal idea is that we are made human by the fact that we can create ourselves through our own will and reason. This requires, exactly as Pinkett Smith claims, that we should define our own identity and that we should do whatever we have a will to do.

For a liberal, this is what our humanity rests on, it is how human freedom is understood, and it is the starting point for how equality and justice are understood.

But it's wrong. We don't get to entirely define for ourselves who we are. Much of our self-identity is inherited rather than freely chosen. For instance, our masculine identity as men is something we are born with. So too is our cultural identity something that is not pulled out of thin air, but is a product of the time and place and tradition we are born into.

The problem with asserting the liberal view is that it gives inherited forms of self-identity a negative connotation, as being impediments to individual will. In a liberal society, there will almost inevitably be an attempt to deny or overthrow unchosen forms of human identity.

This process occurs gradually, with each generation asserting a more radical position. And this is what has put Jada Pinkett Smith and Harvard in such a difficult situation.

In the following week's issue of the Harvard newspaper, the celebratory tone of reporting about Jada Pinkett Smith's comments gave way to an apologetic one. It seems that some homosexual students objected to Pinkett Smith's assumption that women wanted a career plus a man and husband rather than another woman.

This, asserted the offended students, was "extremely heteronormative". And they have a point. If the highest aim of life is to be self-defined in whatever way we choose, then it is a kind of faux pas to assume people to be heterosexual. This is society imposing an inherited expectation, rather than establishing an entirely blank canvas for people to choose for themselves.

Hence, the Harvard authorities have already stepped into action to rectify things. The Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations has begun to work together with homosexual groups to "increase sensitivity toward issues of sexuality at Harvard" and the Foundation has also pledged to inform future speakers of the sexual diversity of their audience.

Jada Pinkett Smith was undoubtedly liberal in her views, but she didn't see the next, more radical version of liberalism lying in wait, the version of liberalism which won't even allow an assumption of heterosexuality to restrict the freely self-authoring liberal individual.

Depraved hero?

The film Kinsey has just been released in Australia. From reading the reviews in the press, a certain picture of the life of Alfred Kinsey emerges. He was a dedicated scientist, meticulously researching the lives of wasps until he discovered how ignorant Americans were about sex (he learnt this from his own virginal experiences on his wedding night, and from reluctantly being given a marriage class to teach as a young professor at Indiana University.)

Determined to gather scientific information about sex, he set about his pioneering work to study the sex lives of Americans. In 1948 he published his work Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male which revolutionised attitudes to sex by showing how common a wide range of sexual practices were, such as homosexuality, pre-marital sex and adultery. Kinsey is therefore to be regarded as a courageous scientist, who overcame ignorance so that people could enjoy sexual liberation.

What a great view of the man! Trouble is, it's bunkum. The real Kinsey was something very different, as the following facts demonstrate.

1) Kinsey was not some innocent, sexually naive wasp scientist who was "accidentally" made aware of the sexuality issue when given a university class to teach. According to a biographer, James H. Jones, Kinsey as a teenager was already a nudist, a masochist and had same-sex attractions. According to Jones, Kinsey wanted early on to have his sexual preferences regarded as normal, and realised that to achieve this it was best if he cast himself in the role of a "detached scientist".

Kinsey was not, in fact, the first to follow this path. In Germany, the homosexual Magnus Hirschfeld had campaigned to decriminalise homosexuality in the 1890s. In 1919 Hirschfeld established an Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin, along much the same lines as Kinsey's own later institute at Indiana University. As one supporter of Hirschfeld has admitted,

Although he preferred to project himself as an objective researcher and scientist, Hirschfeld himself was gay and a transvestite, and participated in the gay subculture of Germany. For these activities he gained the epithet "Tante Magnesia" - "Auntie Magnesia".

2) In 1948 American culture was not exactly sexually innocent. An older, more conservative sexual morality seems to have broken down in the early 1920s. Miles Franklin, an Australian novelist, wrote in her biography that,

When I returned to New York in 1923 Freud had swept the field. The Puritan dams were broken ... Margery Currey said all the numerous office girls with whom she was in contact had 'been through it'. The lid was right off virtue, men told me.

When American soldiers arrived in Australia in the early 1940s, the strength of the "playboy" ethos amongst them was strongly noted and criticised. (It was still considered unmasculine in Australia at the time to be a "ladies man".)

So Kinsey was not really courageously swimming against the stream, but rather pushing on an existing current. That's one reason why his work Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male was so well received in America, despite its tremendous flaws.

3) Important aspects of Kinsey's work are unscientific and inaccurate. For instance, Kinsey claimed that 10% of people are homosexual and up to 35% of people are bisexual, thereby demonstrating how "normal" homosexuality is. These figures, though, were not obtained by random sampling. Instead, Kinsey interviewed volunteers, whom he sought from various groups, including sex offenders in prison and male prostitutes.

There have been many large-scale scientific studies since Kinsey, none of which come even close to claiming that 10% of the population is homosexual. There were two major surveys in the 1990s, one from Britain and one from France, which both arrived at a figure of 1.1% for men. If you include men who have ever in their lives had homosexual sex, the figure (in the French study) rises to 4.1%.

4) Kinsey was not a mild-mannered scientific type, engaged in a detached observation of people's sex lives. He was an extremely depraved man, even by today's standards, determined to prove that all sexual behaviour was normal (he once said that there were only three sexual abnormalities: abstinence, celibacy and delayed marriage).

As examples of Kinsey's unwell condition, consider the following: Kinsey crudely attempted to circumcise himself with a pen-knife, he was once hospitalised after another particularly severe masochistic incident, he once tried to force a tooth-brush into his own urethra, he encouraged his own wife to commit adultery with a co-worker, and most disturbing of all, he believed that children were sexual from birth and he trained pedophiles to record information about the responses of children they were raping.

So the image presented by the media of Kinsey doesn't fit the facts. Why then do so many journalists persist in looking up to Kinsey as an admirable figure? Herald Sun film reviewer, Leigh Paatsch, for instance, claims that the film Kinsey examines his life "even-handedly" and that,

The man's only mistake was to speak loudly about sex when the moral majority preferred it to be whispered as a dirty little secret.

In other words, Leigh Paatsch not only fails to condemn Kinsey, he effectively says that Kinsey made no mistakes except to upset the prudish majority.

The reason why Kinsey still commands respect, I think, is that his work fits in well with the basic liberal principle, so influential today, that there should be no impediments to individual will. Most intellectuals have accepted this idea, and this makes them sympathetic to the direction of Kinsey's work. Kinsey, after all, tried to prove that restrictions on human sexuality were simply "repressions" established by nothing more than irrational social convention.

If Kinsey is right, then there are no justifiable limits to individual will in the field of sexuality. It becomes a case of "anything goes", in which we are free to choose, according to our own will, in any direction.

It is a shared commitment to this ideological principle which leads reviewers like Nicki Gostin to praise Kinsey for his "respect for individuals" or Phillipa Hawker to note Kinsey's discovery that sexuality is "not as fixed" as might have been supposed or Phillip McCarthy to claim that Kinsey "helped end the tyranny of one-size-fits-all-sex".

Such reviewers are more interested in the liberal morality of an unimpeded individual will, rather than the more conservative belief that there exists an objective morality for the individual to live up to, and that some forms of sexual behaviour are less healthy, less elevated and more destructive than others.

Love & dependence

How has love been viewed in Western culture?

Love has often been compared to a merging of two souls into one. The Empress Alexandra of Russia said as much when writing to her husband, Tsar Nicholas II, in 1914 that "We make one."

Similarly, the philosopher Alberti praised marital love in 1432 for the "close bonds and united will" existing between husband and wife. In 1958 the poet Sylvia Plath described her love for her husband as a feeling of being "perfectly at one" with him, whilst a much earlier female poet, Anne Bradstreet, wrote in 1678 that she and her husband, even when apart, were yet "both but one."

A final example of the "two makes one" ideal of love is that of the seventeenth century English poet John Donne, who wrote to assure his love that "Our two souls ... are one."

A similar way to describe love in Western culture is as an intertwining of two souls. The Ancient Roman philosopher Plutarch compared the joining of a husband and wife to "ropes twined together." The American philosopher William James declared to his wife in 1882 that "I feel your existence woven into mine;" whilst Agnes Porter, a governess, wrote in 1791 of the children she loved that "they entwine around one's heart."

This raises a problem. Western societies are dominated by the philosophy of liberal individualism. According to this philosophy, the most important thing is that individuals are left independent and autonomous so that they can create themselves in any direction.

But if love is thought of either as a merging or an entwining of two people into one, then love is in conflict with the above aim of liberal individualism: the achievement of an autonomous, unimpeded individual will.

So what happens? How do liberals respond to this conflict between love and individual autonomy?

There have existed liberals who, in theory at least, have taken the logical step and rejected love. My favourite example would be the Spanish anarchists, representing a radical wing of liberalism, who passed a resolution that for those comrades experiencing "the sickness of love ... a change of commune will be recommended."

The Australian/American pianist and composer Percy Grainger was another who was willing to reject love (in favour of lust). He once declared,

That's why I say I hate love ... I like those things that leave men and women perfectly free ... The reason why I say I worship lust but hate love is because lust ... leaves people perfectly free.

Another example concerns the writer Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), most famous for her novel Out of Africa. A biographer, Judith Thurman, has noted that,

The most compelling heroines in Dinesen's tales ... make a sacrifice of sexual love for some more challenging spiritual project─self-sovereignty, knowledge, worldly power─which enables them to be themselves.

As a final example there is the more recent case of the New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke. She managed to shock even some feminists when she justified her decision to remain childless by asserting that,

You've got better things to do with your life, unimpeded.

Notice the terms used to justify the rejection of love (whether maternal, marital or sexual). The aim is to be unimpeded, to exercise individual freedom, or to claim self-sovereignty─all of which relate to the basic goal of liberal individualism of being an autonomous, self-creating individual.

To be fair, it's unusual for liberals to reject love in such a blatant fashion. It's more usual to try to somehow combine the goal of love with the goal of autonomy.

At a basic level you can see this in the fashionable slogan of single girls in the 1990s that "I might want a man, but I don't need a man." This makes love acceptable within the framework of liberalism by turning it into an act of individual will.

The "solution" of the above slogan, though, is only a face-saver. It papers over the reality that most young singles do experience a need to find someone to love in order to feel complete. This is something inborn and resistant to individual will and reason, which is why it's hard to openly acknowledge in a liberal culture.

A more sophisticated attempt to marry love and individualism has been made recently by the Australian sociologist Don Edgar. Now remember, the task for a liberal like Don Edgar is to somehow imagine relationships in which our individual reason and will would not be impeded. How does he do it?

What he suggests is that there be no external authority in how we choose to express relationships, no restraints, but that instead there should be an "intimate negotiation" between two persons, and a "careful construction of an agreed but unique modus operandi."

Edgar likes the description by Anthony Giddens (another sociologist) of the shift toward more open and negotiated human relationships as the coming of "plastic sexuality," where every permutation of sexual behaviour is acceptable provided it is based on mutual respect, disclosure of personal feelings, an equal negotiation of what is acceptable and not an act based on power or coercion.

The funny thing is that Edgar announces at the end of all this that "I'll personally stick to hetero marriage." And this gives away a major weakness in his convoluted attempt to try to make love acceptable to sovereign will and reason.

Most of us reach an age in which we experience an instinct to settle down and have a family. What we then seek is a happy marriage and not just "some intimacy, some form of commitment" which is all that Edgar is prepared to bequeath to the younger generation.

What the older generation owes to the younger is to uphold the conditions in which it's possible to marry successfully, rather than to leave it to millions of competing wills to negotiate a relationship in a climate of self-serving individualism.

It's not plastic, open or unique relationships that young people need, but stable, secure and workable ones, in which some measure of independence can be sacrificed to a healthy and natural interdependence.

(First published at Conservative Central 18/10/2003)

Liberalism & queer theory

Homosexuality has been a kind of last frontier for liberalism. It wasn't really until the 1970s that liberal principles began to be applied to homosexuality; today we are witnessing these principles being applied in full.

You get a sense of this from an article written by Marjorie King for the American City Journal (29/5/03). Called "Queering the Schools" it describes the success of gay activists in promoting homosexuality in American high schools.

Marjorie King points out that in the 1980s gay activists still sought legitimacy by claiming that homosexuality was genetic in origin and therefore unchangeable. However, in the 1990s a radical new academic theory emerged called "queer theory" which claimed the opposite: that gender identity and sexual orientation are a product of society, not nature, and can be changed as we wish.

There is a remarkably close connection between queer theory and liberalism. Liberals have for centuries now followed the principle that we should be self-defining, autonomous individuals, subject only to our own will and reason, and free to create ourselves in any direction.

Compare this to Marjorie King's description of queer theory that,

queer theory takes to its extreme limit the idea that all sexual difference and behavior is a product of social conditioning, not nature. It is, in their jargon, "socially constructed." For the queer theorist, all unambiguous and permanent notions of a natural sexual or gender identity are coercive impositions on our individual autonomy - our freedom to reinvent our sexual selves whenever we like. Sexuality is androgynous, fluid, polymorphous ...

This is a very logical application of liberalism: a fixed and natural sexual identity is judged to be oppressive because it means that we are defined by something we did not choose for ourselves.

One organisation pushing queer theory is GLSEN (pronounced "glisten"), which is short for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Educational Network. GLSEN has managed so far to form some 1700 gay support clubs in American high schools.

GLSEN effectively promotes to children a radical version of liberalism in which it is considered liberating to make up your own sex identity and sexual orientation. For instance, a panelist at one gay advocacy session explained to participants that "Gender is just a bunch of stereotypes from society, but I am completely personal, and my gender is fluid."

Similarly, a book recommended by GLSEN called Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology has a 16 year old contributor who declares that "My sexuality is as fluid, indefinable and ever-changing as the north flowing river."

Given the close correspondence between these kind of views and the liberalism on which modern Western societies are based, you would have to say that the queer theorists are likely to enjoy considerable success.

Conservatives, however, will remain in opposition to queer theory. This is because conservatives don't share the liberal belief in the self-defining individual. This allows conservatives to accept, and celebrate, that being born a man leads naturally to a masculine self-identity and a heterosexual attraction to women. Conservatives don't consider it a "coercive imposition on our individual autonomy" that we don't consciously choose this process.

(First published at Conservative Central 07/06/03)