on progressives, feminism, and gay rights

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OCTOBER 2012

A march of follybyKenneth MinogueOn progressives, Feminism, and gay rights.

Burkewas right!Support TheNew Criterion

The basic question in life is hat is actually going on"# and itoften requires a great deal of time to pass before one can find the

answer. That is why $ have only %ust begun to understand what is

actually at stake in the proposal to recogni&e civil partnerships as

marriages.# 'nd the clue came when $ discovered that

(tonewall, the homose)ual rights group in Britain, was

proposing a memorandum that the terms husband# and wife#

should be removed from the *+- arriage 'ct and replaced by

parties to the marriage.# This apparently trivial bit of semantics

carries a large moral significance.

$t is part of a two/stage operation. $n the first stage, some newliberating move is proposed, and anyone with an eye for personal

freedom0libertarians and conservatives alike0will support the

move. But then comes a new development1 the propaganda that

seeks to persuade us0and usually also the luckless children in

schools0that the new situation must change our attitudes to the

world. Freedoms, in other words, become parado)ically entwined

with the repressions of political correctness. 2et me elaborate

this thesis.

e associate the *+34s with a set of liberations# that set the

seal on a decent way of life, opening up choice and a clean sweep

of out/of/date restrictions on our conduct, especially in se)ual

matters. 'bove all, it is associated with Feminism as liberating
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women from the household, conceived of in those terms as a kind

of prison. 5hanging attitudes and technology had been opening

up new areas to women for at least a century, but now came a

breakout by a set of female graduates who wanted to liberate theentire se)0or should we say gender. 'nd the best they could

think to do was to demand that women should advance into the

workforce. To become a unit of production, to acquire a boss

6and perhaps eventually become one7 was not everybody8s notion

of liberation, but there8s no accounting for tastes. en, it was

thought, were respected for the work they did, and women in the

workforce would get the same respect.

This vast pro%ect had a number of important dimensions. One

was that family life moved from the center of female life to the

margins, requiring important ad%ustments in social life and a

massive reconfiguration of the duties of men as well as women.

9or of course were all women happy about this move. :ven those

who wanted to have it all# often had their doubts. Feminists,

one should remember, may claim to represent# women, but this

is bluff; no one ever legitimi&ed such a claim. 'nother vitaldimension of feminist liberation consisted of a passionate

re%ection of the chivalric idea that women, as physically

vulnerable, were to be protected by husbands, fathers, and men

in general. (uch complementarity between men and women was

thought to entrench the idea that women, because weaker, were

not equal to men. The solution was to switch the issue from one

of fact to one of legal and moral status.

Both kinds of status were covered in the dominant

codification of the moral life in recent times1 namely,

declarations of rights. The basic assumption of the moral life as

the en%oyment of human rights is that all human beings are


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vulnerable creatures, as no doubt they are, and that tolerable

lives depend on respect, by individuals but especially by

governments, for a set of rights. These rights kept on getting

more numerous, and they continue to do so. They began in thephilosophers8 labs 6as it were7 as freedoms from interference, but

modern versions 6such as the


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to be matters of choice at all. :veryone, meaning especially all

women, had to fall in with this new line.

The idea of liberation# has many problems, but the crucial onein this case is that the position of women had been changing fordecades before the *+34s, partly in response to feminist

pressures, but much more importantly because of developing

attitudes and advancing technology 6medicine and press button

machinery, for e)ample7. omen had been e)ploring new worlds

for over a century. The violent and resentful presentation of

these changes in the *+34s, as if they were unprecedented

uprisings against oppression, was no more than melodramatic

public relations. 'nd it served to obscure the fact that women#

as a class of persons were now losing elements of feminine

identity because they were embracing an essence in which they

were notionally non/gendered units of production in a modern

economy.

The idea that women in general could move into the

workforce was certainly more plausible in the later twentiethcentury than it could possibly have been at any earlier period of

history. Before, agricultural work and craftsmanship required

physical strength, life was shorter, and the family world itself was

vitally different. By the twentieth century, as we have seen,

advancing technology had transformed these earlier realities. $n

the modern world, women could certainly take up about A4 or +4

percent of the %obs men did because these %obs now seldom

demanded physical strength, and there were certainly plenty of

bright and capable women available. $n a few areas such as

building skyscrapers or furniture removal, for e)ample, women

could not really replace men, and in a variety of other %obs such

as servicing motor cars they had very little desire to do so. $n


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combat situations women were certainly not appropriate, but

feminists insisted that they should be trained to work on

destroyers and fly high tech airplanes. That being said, if you

were putting down a riot, only male policemen were really ofmuch use.

'll of these changes, however, were standard features of

developing modern societies. They did not seem to signify

modifications in our culture. But other changes were emerging.

One of them was the march of welfarism, which compassionately

took up the travails of young pregnant girls without a man to

support them. They were accorded places to live along withsubsidies, and became an increasing class of person. 'nd they

came to be described, by an e)tension of the term family,# as

one/parent families.# hy not"# one might think. Dlenty of

actual families, through death or divorce, operated with one

parent.

'nother development was the removal of all criminal

sanctions attaching to homose)ual conduct. This, again, was animpeccably liberal pro%ect. ho could seriously support the

criminali&ation of whatever consenting adults might do in

private" 'll of these reforms were no problem in a liberal society.

The significance of their con%unction only emerged a little later.

The industriali&ation of women was widely accepted, and themost evident repression associated with it was the re%ection of

se)ism,# an offense covering any suggestion that women were

not, in whatever relevant respects were advanced, the equals of

men. $t did, however, involve significant unrealities, many

resulting no doubt from the brutishness of men, which required

some legal concern with these vulnerabilities. (e)ual harassment


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legislation is, of course, in principle universal but its main impact

is to allow women to get redress for male aggression or for

failures in promotion. aternity leave raises problems for

employers, and had to be entrenched in law, and thensupplemented by paternity leave in order to sustain the

presumption of equality. But it took the gay rights movement to

make progressives8 agenda entirely clear, for it generated in its

wake politically correct campaigns 6often targeted in the first

instance at schools7 affirming 6for e)ample7 that se)ual

preferences were merely matters of taste, and one preference was

as good as another. :very liberal reform, it turned out, came now

to demand attitudinal conformism. 'll these forms of conducthad to be recogni&ed as equally virtuous. To prefer some to

others was merely a survival from illiberal dogmatism.

Dre%udice, however, remained, because many people regarded

the heterose)ual family marriage as the basic institution of

society. (o, too, did 'rticle *31- of the uman ?ights. >eterose)ual family life was obviously essential

to society in a way that homose)ual unions were not, because thenotional basis of marriage involved the likelihood of requiring

the disciplines involved in the nurture of children.

>eterose)ual unions were, further, unique because they

incorporated both male and female e)perience in the way they

worked. By contrast, homose)ual unions were the formali&ation

of desires that were certainly covered by the right of choice and

privacy, but were eccentric in terms of the basic drives thatsustained a society. They no doubt might well be admirable in

many ways, but there was no obvious reason why they should be

officially recogni&ed and accorded some respectable status,

beyond what happens in an individualist world of personal

inclinations. (ome people taking this view were 5hristians, but


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members of other religions often e)pressed a much more violent

revulsion against this new order. 'nd that, perhaps, provoked

the new development.

The suggestion that the law should give some recognition tohomose)ual unions is, again, an admirably liberal thing to do,

and civil partnerships were recogni&ed. e have now, however,

reached the ne)t stage of the march through the institutions, in

which the demand is the one tiny step forward of recogni&ing

gay marriage.# The proposal is in fact the desire finally to

remove the distinction between men and women entirely from

social recognition. >usband# and wife,# as we saw, must go,and in (pain, it seems, that father# and mother# must also go.

(ince a law of 44C, they have been superseded by Drogenitor

'# and Drogenitor B.# $ imagine soon the toddlers will have to

call the old folk progs.#

But0one must not deride, mock, disapprove, %udge, laugh at,

etc., any of these new categories, because that would be

discriminatory, and indeed a whole barrage of laws hasdeveloped to sustain illusions about the non/vulnerability of

women and the respectability of these various forms of conduct.

$n other words, the advance of these notable forms of liberation,

this moderni&ation# of our society, demands a servile response

from all of us. (laves knew very well not to deride, mock,

disapprove, %udge, or laugh at their masters, and so must we. The

long march through the institutions is in part a matter of

engineering the right attitudes, and the servility which that

entails.

hat then does this sequence mean for estern societies" $t isincreasingly clear that the central point of *+34s feminism was in


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fact the destruction of the idea of women altogether. Feminists

assimilated the class of women, in all essentials, to men. The

feminine as traditionally understood had to go, because women

were to be recogni&ed as se)ually undifferentiated or genderlessunits of production in the workforce. The economy here becomes

the fundamental aspect of society from which all other

%udgments must flow. $t is very odd, but certainly significant, that

the basic assumption of liberatory feminism, as of (oviet

communism, was that the conceptions of economic production

must take precedence over everything else.

The movement advanced itself as enhancing the choices made

by women, but that is misleading. Eohn (tuart ill had arguedthat one ought to be free to act as one wished provided one did

not harm others, but, as philosophers such as =erek Darfitt have

pointed out, ill8s question is not 6or may not be7 enough. The

basic question ought to be1 ill my act be one of a set of acts that

will together harm other people" 'nd of course the vast

movement of liberated women into the labor force in the second

half of the last century obviously so depressed returns to laborthat many women who would have preferred to stay in family life

6with the freedoms and enterprises that family life makes

possible7 also found it necessary to get %obs. >ere was indeed a

slippery slope.

$n the course of little more than half a century, our

conception of human beings and of the structure of society has

been steadily transformed. $n the inherited conception, humanbeings were as male and female moral agents, and responded

both to their desires on the one hand, and to ideas about what

they ought, rightly or honorably, to do, on the other. $n this

conception of human life, both freedom and love were disciplines

that certainly needed to be worked at. Freedom was our self/


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regulation in terms of the rule of law, good manners and

consideration for others, a form of independent life unique to

:uropean societies. This self/discipline set clear limits to the

powers that states might claim in order to sustain peaceful order.ithin the law, we, as sub%ects of civil society, disciplined

ourselves. 2ove required the discipline of commitment beyond

the initiating desire. Only such an institution could give its

members both a memory of the past and a commitment to the

future. 'nd in this conception of human life, male and female

were recogni&ed as the indispensable components of the family

as the institution on which our social order rested. $t is that

recognition that is now under attack.

$n that world, being a man or being a woman had an

anchorage in nature, and these roles entailed a certain

institutional discipline, along with the generali&ed respect that

went with it. anliness# went with a sense of responsibility 6in

ideal forms approaching the model of the gentleman#7 while

womanliness# involved a sense of decorum along with

e)pectations of a specific kind of human understanding. encontrolled their tendency to use vulgar words of language# in

the presence of a woman. $t is significant that both of these ideal

forms of complementary respect between men and women have

been significantly weakened, most notably in se)ual conduct, and

in such phenomena as binge drinking.# omanliness# as a

discipline has been abandoned as oppressive.

e are now, then, for these and many other purposes, no

longer to be understood as either male or female, but as

essentially human and sub%ect to universal human rights. (ome

of us are hetero, some homo, some bi or trans. But all of these

are equal as legitimate preferences in the en%oyment of affection


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and pleasure. They are all modes of relating# to one another

amid the ceaseless group/grope of a population of identicals bent

on e)ploring the many ways in which we may en%oy satisfactions,

including se)ual satisfaction. e belong to a single all/inclusivecontinuum.

$t is not altogether easy to follow the many odd ramifications

of this new conception of what we are and how we live, and ought

to live. But there is no doubt that the central concept is the all/

inclusive continuum of human beings who must not be

differentiated in terms of se)uality or of se)ual preference. $t is a

very abstract conception of what we are, and one may wellwonder where it begins and where it ends. For in the (panish

parliament, the idea has been seriously floated that the higher

primates0gorillas, for e)ample0share with us some of the

specifications of personhood, and ought therefore to be accorded

human rights. 'nd at the other end of this inclusive chain of

humanity will be found a parallel idea that newborn babies have

not yet attained the 6presumably 2ockean7 identity of

personhood, and therefore might, if necessary, be sub%ect to whatare apparently known, in the reflections of some ethical think

tanks, as post/natal abortions.# >ere, then, is a fascinating new

world of quite remarkable possibilities. 'nd all of this seems to

hang on nothing more formidable than a tiny semantic

modification of how we use the term marriage.#

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