Is Liberalism Really Anti-Authoritarian?

While this post is less explicitly feminist than others, it does deal with egalitarianism, a core theme of this blog. It also relates to the rationalist ideas from the last post.
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Introduction

Liberals sometimes use the term “authoritarian” to describe both conservatives as well as non-liberal leftists (including feminists) and to imply that all who oppose their highly permissive ideology want total control over all aspects of peoples’ lives. They view all their opponents as part of the same totalitarian, “sexually repressive” force.

I believe that it is possible to reject liberalism without buying into an authoritarian world view. In fact, this post will argue that the relativistic, liberal viewpoint, that anything goes with regard to behaviour and that no action (or belief) is ever right or wrong, is just another, highly individualistic, brand of authoritarianism. If the idea that extreme permissiveness is authoritarian seems strange to you, please read on. I encourage readers to consider my arguments and leave thoughtful (though not necessarily uncritical) comments, instead of just dismissing me as a dictatorial monster.

What Is Authoritarianism? 

Authoritarianism is the belief that one should rely on authorities to determine what is right or wrong, with regard to claims about both reality and moral goodness. For now, I will focus on the application of authoritarianism to moral claims (authoritarian approaches to understanding material reality may be discussed in another post). 

Authoritarians believe that there is an entity out there whose moral claims should be believed blindly, due to the entity’s supposed infallibility. Any action that the authority figure disapproves of is assumed to be morally wrong, while those which are not disapproved of are deemed morally acceptable and those which the entity commands are deemed obligatory. When authoritarians encounter rational arguments or experience inner intuitions that tell them not to obey a certain order, they will often force themselves obey it anyway. 

Liberals assume that all moral claims (or at least, all that involve labelling behaviours as “immoral”, “anti-feminist” or otherwise objectionable) are authoritarian and that the more moral claims a person puts forward, the more authoritarian they are. However, if one uses the more precise definition of authoritarianism that I provided above, it becomes clear that not all moral statements are authoritarian. A moral statement (whether it encourages or discourages controversial behaviours) is only authoritarian if it is justified purely through references to an authority (e.g. “you should not do this because the authority figure said not to”.)  

Those who attempt to support their moral statements (or claims about the world) through rational arguments, evidence and a concern for the welfare of humanity are not practising authoritarianism. This does not mean their positions are always right, but they cannot be accused of being unthinking sheep or dictators who command blind obedience (unless, of course, they are arguing for such things.) Nor should those who are perceived as making too many moral claims (or labelling too many actions as “immoral) be labelled authoritarians. The authoritarianism of a person or ideology is not determined by how many moral statements are made, but by how those statements are justified. 

It should also be stated that the strictness of a moral claim does not determine how authoritarian it is. I define a strict moral claim or rule as one that does not have many exceptions. For example, the belief that violence should never be used by progressive movements is a strict moral claim. The recognition that violence is generally wrong, but may be morally justified in cases where its use is necessary to achieve worthwhile aims (e.g. repelling a military invasion) is a less strict claim.  

While stern, difficult to follow rules are associated with authoritarian institutions (e.g. conservative churches) there may be valid reasons for making strict moral claims. I cannot think of a realistic circumstance in which the use of pornography will have significant benefits (either for individuals or society as a whole) thus I take a strict stance against it. I also refuse to make exceptions for milder versions of pornography (e.g. sexualised depictions of women in mainstream media). Though I recognise that milder practices are, in general, less harmful than the alternatives, their prevalence may encourage the more extreme practices. In either case, my strict positions are not justified through references to authority figures and thus are not authoritarian. 

Is Permissiveness always Anti-Authoritarian? 

Being permissive means refusing to lay down rules or moral principles and instead allowing people to obey any whim that occurs to them. Liberals believe that permissiveness is the opposite of authoritarianism. In reality, authoritarianism can be used to justify both excessive permissiveness as well as excessive strictness.  

A dramatic example of this is the “just following orders” defence, famously invoked by Nazi officers during the Nuremberg trials. Nazi Germany is often perceived as a strict society and to an extent this claim is accurate. However, the Nazi state also allowed and encouraged things that modern Western society often does not (such as blatant racism in the mainstream culture and unregulated, physical fighting among young males). In any case, the “just following orders” argument attempts to use the commands of an authority figure (in this case, the state) to excuse actions, rather than condemn them. It is thus an example of authoritarianism in the service of permissiveness. 

Fascists are not the only ones who believe that the state determines right from wrong. Anyone who argues that an action is morally acceptable, because it is legal, is guilty of applying authoritarianism. A non-authoritarian understanding of ethics leads one to realise that laws should be determined by moral principles, not the other way around. Liberals rage against the state when it condemns or outlaws behaviours or institutions which they like (such as the sex industry), but in cases where the state approves of or allows a practice, such approval is perceived as proof that the behaviour is ethical. Since liberals have more political influence than their “sex-negative” feminist opponents, liberals who appeal to the law are to some extent appealing to their own power. Thus equating power with moral rightness is a feature of liberal, as well as reactionary, thought. 

Another example of permissiveness coexisting with authoritarianism is liberal Christianity. The term “liberal Christian” is often applied to any Christian who is not conservative. I use it specifically to refer to Christians who believe that gay relationships, pornography consumption, promiscuous sex and other behaviours (wrongly or rightly) condemned by traditional Christianity are in fact morally acceptable, because their supposed god permits them. They say things like “God does not judge” and “God has forgiven me”. Whatever annoying cliché they decide to invoke, their argument can be summed up as “this behaviour is okay, because God thinks it is okay or, at least, will not punish people for it.”  Many argue that liberal Christians are less authoritarian than conservative Christians. I disagree. The belief that an action is permissible, because an authority said so, is no less authoritarian than the belief that it is wrong, because an authority said so. In either case, the words of an authority are viewed as the standard of moral goodness. 

Thus I do not believe that permissiveness is the opposite of authoritarianism, rather it is the opposite of strictness (as defined above). To reject authoritarianism, is to base all moral claims (including claims about the acceptability of a behaviour) on something other than an appeal to the statements of authority figures, such as concerns about the harms caused by allowing or disallowing particular actions. I do not know of an English word that properly conveys the opposite of authoritarianism (if you think of one, tell me in the comments), but I am pretty sure that “liberalism” and “permissiveness” are not it.  

Is Individualism Anti-Authoritarian? 

Not all liberals worship a god and few would admit to worshipping the government. Does this mean they are not authoritarian? No, they still can be. Conservative Christians accuse less religious people of making themselves into gods. I do not believe that this accusation applies to all non-religious people, but it does accurately describe liberals. While most liberals do not literally believe that they have god-like powers, they do view themselves as perfect authorities with regard to “their truth”. They also believe that any action they practice or permit another to practice upon them is acceptable, because they chose it. Thus liberals perceive themselves as infallible authorities (or metaphorical “gods”) with regard to their choices and their personal, so-called "reality".

One problem with this relativistic approach is that it cannot account for changed minds or regret. If everyone were a perfect authority on what was good for them (practically or morally), no one would ever willingly do something and decide afterwards that what they did was unwise. To change one's views or regret an action is to contradict one’s previous beliefs. If infallible beings actually existed, they would never contradict themselves.  

Liberals respond to this problem by claiming that remorse is always (emphasis on “always”) a product of "hateful", "moralistic", "sex-negative" social norms that infect the mind with “shame”. Of course, when other movements claim that “brainwashing” (or rather indoctrination) occurs in our society, they are accused of “denying agency”. Well, the liberal notion that all regret (or “shame”) is caused directly by social forces and never by a rational assessment of one’s actions (in accordance with common values, like equality and kindness) sounds like an appeal to “brainwashing” to me. That said, I do not belief that all "brainwashing" claims are false. In fact the view that society indoctrinates people into rejecting liberalism or feeling shame might make sense were our culture not dominated with pro-sex and generally individualistic messages. 

Furthermore the belief that every individual is an infallible authority with regard to their own actions, forces people to accept contradictory moral propositions. Two people, in the same exact situation, might make conflicting assessments of an action (one might label it as morally acceptable, while the other labels it as unacceptable.) If everyone were an infallible moral authority, both views would be accurate. Such contradictions can be solved only by employing relativism. Liberals claim that behaviours which may not be right “for you”, are nonetheless right "for him" or "for her" and thus we should not attempt to prevent actions undertaken by others (even if such attempt consists of nothing more than publicly expressing your objections to an act). 

Those who make this argument do not truly understand the nature of a moral impulse. Such impulses usually apply to the actions of humans in general. If a person genuinely believes that an action is severely immoral, they will not want others to carry it out. There is nothing virtuous about passively allowing actions which you recognise as wrong and thus refrain from. While liberals blindly praise “tolerance” and “acceptance” (their new buzzword), the reality is that such traits are only as virtuous as that which is being tolerated or accepted. To tolerate (or “accept”) genuine wrongdoing is to compromise one’s own moral character. Of course, one should tolerate behaviours which are not harmful or immoral (or at least, in the case of gay relationships or marriages, not more harmful than the alternative), but tolerating behaviours, while knowing that they are wrong, is nothing more than cowardice.  

Conclusion 

Liberals and conservatives who read this may wonder, “If I cannot trust the government or the god of Christianity (or any religion) or even myself to make perfect moral judgements, then who can I trust?” If so, they have missed my point entirely. There is no being whose moral judgements are infallible. The better question to ask is not “who”, but “how”. How do we determine right from wrong? This is the part that many liberals and conservatives fear, the part where you have to use your own brain, by which I mean the ability to reason and reflect upon what is in the interests of humanity.  

In spite of the “you view yourself as god” accusation (discussed above), I believe it is possible to reason about morality, collectively and independently, without viewing either ourselves or others as infallible. It is important that we critically examine our own thoughts, intuitions and desires along with those of others and devoid dismissing other people’s criticisms of our views and actions as “personal, subjective truths” which are relevant only to them and not to us. As individualistic as relativism and liberalism are, they are no less authoritarian than conservatism. The only true alternative is genuine critical (including self-critical) thought.
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While I will continue to write about feminism on this blog, I am considering expanding the focus of this blog to cover topics like rationalism, morality, revolutionary socialism and history. Let me know what you think of this idea.

Liberal Feminist Trope 2: Mind Your Own Business

I will confess that this post may seem a padded out. I wanted to make it roughly as long as the others on the site and I apologise for any repetition that may have been created as a result. I feel it was important for me to get this post out there since the "Mind Your Own Business" trope is used pretty frequently by liberals and I am curious about other people's experiences with it. If you have heard it used in a particularly obnoxious way, feel free to leave a comment describing the incident.
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 “A few large cities have sex clubs and S/M bars for lesbians, while pornographic magazines and videos produced by lesbians for other women have proliferated across the United States. Our sexuality has become as public as our tattoos and our pierced bodies.” Karla Jay, a liberal feminist, in ‘Dyke Life’. Quoted in "How Orgasm Politics Has Hijacked the Women's Movement" by Shelia Jeffreys

Type: Argument trope / Rhetoric trope, Clearly Liberal

Definition and Uses

The Mind Your Own Business trope is committed when a person shouts “mind your own business” or some other statement that implicitly accuses their opponent of violating someone’s privacy, when clearly no such violation has occurred or is likely to occur in the near future. It can be used as a rhetorical phrase to express anger or it may be put forward as an argument.

Use of the phrase “mind your own business” is of course legitimate in situations where actual attempts at privacy violation have occurred. To commit the Mind Your Own Business trope is to use the phrase in an illegitimate way, to go after someone who has not committed a privacy violation and is in fact either responding to a public proclamation of some kind (e.g. an individual bragging about their sex life online) or discussing a phenomenon that everybody knows exists (e.g. prostitution) in general terms, without referring to any particular individual.

This trope is most often employed by defenders of pornography, prostitution and BDSM, right after they’ve spent a paragraph bragging about how awesome their work/sex life is, only to find that not everyone is totally in favour of what they are involved in. When the trope is employed by liberal feminists is it usually used in relation to sex, but it can also be used in relation to other controversial behaviours (e.g. smoking.)

Generic Examples

“How dare you criticise porn/sex work/BDSM/beauty practices. You should all just be quite and mind your own business. Stop shoving your noses into other people's bedrooms/homes.”

“What I do in my bedroom is my business, not anyone else's. It is certainly not the business of some nasty feminist/politician/conservative. Those people should just stick to fixing up their own lives instead of getting so worked up about what the couple next door does.”

Exception Examples

Anti-Abortionist: “Why are you so pro-abortion, you’ve had one, haven’t you?”

Abortion Rights Defender: “Whether or not I’ve had an abortion is beside the point. I’m not interested in talking to you about my personal life.”

The above is not an example of the Mind Your Own Business trope, because the anti-abortionist really was seeking to obtain private information that he/she had no right to and that the abortion rights defender had no interest in revealing. Though the anti-abortionist in this situation is not using force to extract private information out of the abortion rights defender, the latter might still feel pressured to give in to the demand for information. Personal questions of this nature should not be used in the context of a political discussion, unless one has a very good reason for asking them.

Analysis

This trope is dishonest, because it contains an implied accusation that is not true. The right to privacy is of course very important, but when one uses this trope they often express a concern for their own privacy which borders on paranoia. Users of this trope seem to believe that mere criticisms of behaviours, which they or others publicly brag about, are morally equivalent to creating an Orwellian state in which cameras are placed in everyone’s bedrooms and everyone’s sex lives are closely monitored. Radical feminists have no intention of creating such a situation. They typically do not have much interest in learning the details of specific individuals' "empowered" sex lifes, either.

If one decides to speak publicly about their private life (remember, the internet counts as a public forum) they should understand that such a decision has consequences. Criticism is one such consequence. Those who cannot handle criticism should refrain from bragging about their “social boundary transgressing” sex lives in public. Those who think the entire world needs to know about how amazing their sex lives are should learn to deal with the fact that not everybody thinks about sex in the same orgasm-centric way they do.

The trope also ignores the way in which many of the behaviours defended by the trope are actually quite public (as illustrated by the above quote). Pornography is probably the clearest example of the “private” behaviour that actually has very public consequences. Then you have politically active groups, such as the BDSM community, who wish to transform mainstream culture in such a way so as to ensure that their sexual practices are promoted just as frequently as more conventional sexual behaviours. If political activists within the BDSM community had their way, depictions of (and imagery related to) their sexual practices would be almost unavoidable. I suspect that when the Fifty Shades of Grey film comes out next year we will have a hard time avoiding discussions of it and of BDSM. Opponents of BDSM and other supposedly "transgressive" sex acts cannot be expected to mind their own business, when other people's "business" is all over the place.

Proponents of such behaviours may contend that those who practice them are not responsible for what corporations decide to promote. Indeed it is true that not all people who practice a particular sex act want that sex to be promoted among the general public. Some BDSM practicers have even criticised Fifty Shades of Grey, but not on the grounds that it promotes violent, male-dominated sex (instead they take issue with the way in which BDSM is portrayed.) However, this does not change the fact that sex acts which are promoted in such a manner can no longer be considered "private" and thus the supposed privateness of a particular sex act cannot be used to defend it, regardless of whether those who practice it are responsible for making it public or not.

This is not to imply that violating the privacy of those who participate in BDSM is justified, though women who feel that their BDSM relationships have become abusive should be allowed to step forward and share their stories. In general, however, people have a right to keep their sexual behaviours to themselves. Opponents of BDSM focus on the practices themselves and not on trying to undercover the identities of those who practice them, because, frankly, the sex lifes of random strangers are not all that fascinating.

Conclusion

Use of this trope, by someone who claims to be a feminist, is a good indication that the person is a liberal (or fun) feminist and a paranoid one at that. Those who wish to challenge liberalism should uphold the right to privacy, while not falling into this trope by unfairly accusing people of commiting privacy violations. Before shouting, “mind your own business” or a similar phrase, one should ask themself whether their opponent is actually attempting to violate their privacy. If nobody's privacy is being violated then the phrase "mind your own business" is pointless, since the person in question is minding their own business, in the sense of not actively interfering with other people's private lives. Most of the time, the person simply has an opinion about a particular behaviour that they would like to express.

Since the trope does nothing to invalidate whatever criticism is being made, it should simply be regarded as a distraction or (as those familiar with logical fallacies might put it) a red herring. Even if a person was committing a genuine privacy violation that would not prove that their viewpoint was wrong, since the truthfulness of a viewpoint is not dependent on whether its proponents behave in an ethical manner. This trope is yet another attempt by liberals to silence dissent by making false appeals to genuine ethical principles.

Coming Soon: You Think Too Much (in which political analysis of “private” sex acts is seen as a bad thing)
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Please remember that I do not allow defences of liberal feminism on trope pages. Constructive criticism is fine. So far I have only had a few commenters (a big thank you to those who have commented) and none of them have been from political opponents, so for the moment I do not think it is necessary to establish more commenting rules, this may change in the future.

Note that a link to a particular piece of writing, even if it is referenced in a positive manner, does not indicate complete agreement with it or its author