1./ Are our fiercest critics our unwitting best friends? I've almost finished the new book 'Madness of Crowds' by @DouglasKMurray It's full of things to disagree with but also much that is uproariously funny and genuinely insightful. No doubt he's said terrible things and he ....
...2./ should probably be non-platformed immediately. If he hasn't been already. Everywhere. And forever. But here's the thing. It has the sharpest potted history of Queer Theory and the grafting of Trans Rights on to left and liberal identity politics you're likely to hear..
3./ and this raises an obvious thought. Are activists (of all sorts) their own worst enemies because they increasingly refuse to engage with critics and criticism meaningfully? If trans activists had done the work of jousting with their critics might they have
4/ ...avoided the sheer insanity of gender self-identification? Instead any attempt to point out the enormous implications of self-ID was met by a wall of unbridled vitriol and virtue-signal grandstanding. "How very dare you?!" We're about to see how effectively ...
5./ 'how very dare you' works as a strategy as they and their "allies" face the wrath of a general public getting their heads round those implications in the real world. Implications like big burly guys who are blokes at 1pm but decide they're laydees at 10 past 1...
6./ just in time to visit the girls' toilets. Obviously it's not only trans rights where any attempt to challange groupthink and orthodoxy is now met with squeals of outrage. But it sets the template. A simple polite ...
7./ ..argument is often thrown back with a raft of suicide stats and a reminder that trans people are dying in their thousands...as if the polite tweet was some sort of global signal for a neutron bomb to be released. The suicide stats..
8./ by the way are hugely exaggerrated but that's another story. What if, say, the Brexit peeps had bothered to actually engage with the suduko of the Northern Ireland border in 2016...and not 2 weeks before we drop out without a deal? And yes maybe Remain...
9./...would have been a more effective campaign too if they'd bothered to limber up before a debate with ...actually bothering to grapple with some Brexiteers' genuine concerns. "Yeah hands up we have ignored northern towns...
10/ ...but that's our fault not the EU's and it needs to change." And still the refusal to listen to criticism goes on. Take the "brave eco warriors" of Extermination Rebellion and their new deadline for the effective dismantling of capitalism. Question this idea and you'll be...
11/.. painted as a Climate Change denier. This despite fact their prescriptions would mean highly regulated jobs in Britain with tough environmental safeguards would be sacrificed so we meet carbon-zero targets that could only be reached by importing products produced ...
...12/ ...by workers in countries without our tough environmental safeguards. That's insane. So what's the solution? When I worked as a producer of BBC's flagship science strand 'Horizon' we had a simple rule of thumb. We'd make it plain to any scientist we were interviewing ...
13/ that we'd also be asking their fiercest critic to take apart as best they could their theories and even their entire work. Anyone making a claim had to emerge triumphant from the toughest most complete demolition of often their most lauded ideas. They didn't always enjoy..
14/ ...it. I well remember a toe-curling evening watching a show go out in the company of a certain Stephen Hawking. We watched as a couple of contributors rubbished his theories, pointing out how little significant work he'd done for two decades. Afterwards he ...
15/ (slowly) typed his comeback..."What they don't...realise is I'm just getting into my stride". If only more people, more activists in particular, had the class and the courage to face criticism down. Their theories would emerge perhaps a little battered...
16./ but in the long run stronger and certainly more effective. So there you are go call your fiercest critic and ask them to tea or for a drink, and tell them not to hold back. They'll be doing you and your ideas (and the rest of us ) a huge favour.
