Candace Owens interviews Douglas Murray

by LoveUniHateExams 39 Replies latest social current

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  Simon

  So can we return to traditional definitions of gender and sexuality without undoing the entire economic system which has produced the instability in the first place?

  Countries with the most rights and freedoms for women tend to have more women in the most 'traditional' gender roles when they have the ability to chose.

  Feminists and cultural marxists hate it, but it's a fact that men and women differ in group characteristics and the 'traditional' roles tend to match those characteristics more than the ones they try to promote.

  Modern culture doesn't necessarily do much for women - go out to work so you can pay someone else to look after your children? I think most women would naturally prefer to care for their own kids if they had the free choice.
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  slimboyfat

  I know Murray would prefer to have equal rights and common sense definitions of gender and sexuality at the same time. I am suggesting that may not be possible, because the same economic forces that gave women the vote and decriminalised homosexuality also destabilised the family unit and called into question the boundaries of gender and sexuality.

  We may be in favour of having cake and eating it, but ultimately sometimes you can’t have both. Destabilised definitions of gender and sexuality may be the inevitable price for liberal freedoms. Or to put it another way, the only way to stabilise definitions once more may be to roll back certain liberal reforms, which no one but perceived religious extremists seems to be advocating.

  There is a certain inexorable logic to gay marriage under the current liberal dispensation for example, yet it nevertheless seemed to take many of us by surprise how quickly what once seemed like a very odd idea became completely orthodox overnight. It’s strange times we live in, as Murray documents. But what the solution is, if we need a solution, I don’t know. I don’t think Murray gets to the root of the problem because he is not a Marxist so he doesn’t have access to a materialist understanding of history.
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  LoveUniHateExams

  Modern culture doesn't necessarily do much for women - modern culture maybe lies to women to some degree, too.

  It effectively says to young women 'you can go to uni, get a PhD, become a director of the board, AND have as many babies as you want.'

  Well, ladies, you can't. Only a tiny number of people (men and women) are that capable, and even they get where they get to by making sacrifices.

  Y'know, some of my mates from childhood are now married with kids. When I look at their wives' FB page, it'll say something like 'full-time mummy and proud of it'. They are happy. They want to be mums to their kids, like most women do.

  Of course, let ambitious people realise their ambitions, or have the best possible chance to realise their ambitions.
  
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  LoveUniHateExams

  because the same economic forces that gave women the vote and decriminalised homosexuality also destabilised the family unit and called into question the boundaries of gender and sexuality - no, I don't think so.

  Women got the vote and homosexuality became decriminalised. I don't see how either would destabilise the family.
  
• 

  Simon

  I am suggesting that may not be possible, because the same economic forces that gave women the vote and decriminalised homosexuality also destabilised the family unit and called into question the boundaries of gender and sexuality.

  I think this is conflating different factors just because they happened in the same rough timeframes. Women getting the right to vote (only shortly after men got it) didn't destabilise the family unit, economics, war (where women went into the workforce en-mass) and the sexual revolution of the 60's did.

  Women have been sold a lie that being free with their sexuality is "liberating" and "empowering" but there is evidence that most happy people with stable marriages have fewer sexual partners, have kids and live more traditional lifestyles.

  Unfortunately, politicians have built a system that drives women to abandon their kids early to someone else's care. This is done by government subsidies of childcare places (which drives up prices) and it's all part of the mantra that your job is to breed and then hand your children to others to be brought up and 'educated' (indoctrinated).
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  slimboyfat

  There are gay men who in times past would have married and had a family, now choose not to do so because they feel free to live life as they would rather it. There are women would have stayed in unhappy marriages in times past now have greater economic freedom and choose to not to stay in such a marriage. Those may both be positive developments, yet they clearly also undermine the frequency and normativity of marriage.

  Gay marriage clearly destabilised the whole notion of what marriage and family are. Whether one supports it or not, that seems straightforwardly the case: one of the truths that Murray is prone to point to and say no one can admit yet is obvious.
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  LoveUniHateExams

  There are gay men who in times past would have married and had a family, now choose not to do so because they feel free to live life as they would rather it - this is true, and it's good.

  There are women would have stayed in unhappy marriages in times past now have greater economic freedom and choose to not to stay in such a marriage - ditto.

  yet they clearly also undermine the frequency and normativity of marriage - this is correct, although such number of cases wouldn't be large.

  Gay marriage clearly destabilised the whole notion of what marriage and family are - no, I don't think so.

  We've taken to gay marriage relatively smoothly. It was even a Tory PM who passed it through Parliament.

  I think something else has been used to attack the traditional family.
  
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  Simon

  The gay population is only around 3.5%, they are not really a significant cause of destabilising the family unit. They get far more attention and airwaves than is warranted because they are significantly over-represented in the media.

  https://news.gallup.com/poll/183383/americans-greatly-overestimate-percent-gay-lesbian.aspx

  https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Gates-How-Many-People-LGBT-Apr-2011.pdf
  
  
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  slimboyfat

  I wasn’t suggesting gay marriage is being used to “attack” the family. Gay marriage destabilises the concept of marriage regardless of the intention. The idea that gay marriage has no impact on the concept of what “marriage” is, is the kind of ridiculous proposition that Murray ridicules as one of the things nobody believed until yesterday.

  It's possible for gay and women’s rights to be a “good thing” and undermine traditional family at the same time. One doesn’t exclude the other. Good things can have unintended consequences.
  

  People are living longer, for example, and the incidence of cancer is increasing as a result, because cancers increase with age. We don’t say longevity is a bad thing because it results in more cancers.

  It just shows the world is a complex thing and that good and bad effects combine in dizzying and confusing mixtures.

  Postmodern instability in definitions of gender and sexuality may be a price we pay for the liberal freedoms of late capitalism. I don’t see that there is any way to square the circle.

  Incidentally Murray tackles the issue of gay percentage of the population, noting estimates have ranged from as low as 1% up to 10% or more. Murray makes a good argument that of all the methods used, searches for online porn are probably the most reliable indicator. This methodology suggests around 5% of the population is gay.
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  Simon

  Murray makes a good argument that of all the methods used, searches for online porn are probably the most reliable indicator. This methodology suggests around 5% of the population is gay.

  That is also a commentary on how most measurements of "unique users" for websites always overestimate the figure, so IMO it matches the self-identified figures of 3.5-4% (the real number). I can see how someone unfamiliar with the ins and outs of tracking internet visitors would imagine that 5% actually means 5%.

  Postmodern instability in definitions of gender and sexuality may be a price we pay for the liberal freedoms of late capitalism. I don’t see that there is any way to square the circle.

  That's exactly the point. Why should society and language change over 0.3% of the population who declare themselves "trans"?

  Society should be based on the 99.7% and there is no circle to square. A circle isn't a square, whatever you call it :)

  But it's not just limited to someone wanting to be called a certain name, it's the idea that the power of the government should be used to force you to comply OR where it can be used to make normal and reasonable behavior into a crime, allowing the law to be used for malicious purposes.