A newsletter by a trans woman dedicated to real liberalism and opposed to critical theory Wokeism.
Welcome to the first ever TaraElla substack newsletter!
So who am I? I am an author and a musician. I am a liberal who is against critical theory and its associated mode of activism. I am a trans woman in my mid-30s. I am also non-white, so I think I actually score all of the 'oppression olympics' points, but I fundamentally reject that kind of thinking. And I have written quite a lot of books and articles about what I believe, my perspective, how I see the world. It would take too long to summarize all of that here, so go read it elsewhere if you are interested. I recommend starting with The Moral Libertarian Idea, if you want the basics of my beliefs.
Anyway, let's get to the more important point: what is this newsletter for? Let's start with how I came to pay attention to substack as a platform. As I previously stated, I am a liberal who is against critical theory. By the way, it should be clear, by definition, that a liberal would be fundamentally against critical theory in all its forms, but let's leave this for later. Anyway, I have been paying quite a lot of attention to anti-critical theory thinking and writing, what I call the 'anti-criticalist scene', in the past few years. In 2019 and 2020, I noticed that many anti-criticalist writers were starting substack newsletters, while anti-criticalist voices were being increasingly drowned out on many other platforms.
Fast forward to last month. I noticed that many people were talking about certain big personalities on substack being anti-trans. Some were even talking about an anti-trans group of writers coming together on substack, and that the platform should be held responsible for this development, something I strongly disagree with. Anyway, I don't see all the allegedly transphobic personalities and ideas as transphobic. Certainly, I think several of them are, but many of them clearly aren't. What I see instead, is a heated debate and discussion around trans issues from an anti-criticalist point of view, often by people who don't entirely understand the issues, but it is an interesting, and overall well-meaning discussion nonetheless. So we have a discussion about trans issues from an anti-criticalist point of view. Guess what? It means I'm in!
A Truly Liberal 'Anti-Woke' Perspective
In this newsletter, I will be talking about both cultural and political issues from a liberal, anti-criticalist point of view, and trans issues from the same point of view. More importantly, I will thoroughly explore the link between the two.
I think we need more emphasis on the liberal point of view in the anti-criticalist scene. Liberal, as opposed to conservative. Liberalism has fundamental commitments to liberty and equality at its heart, that all other liberal values like free speech are ultimately derived from. As a Moral Libertarian, I believe that the core characteristic of liberalism is that it is committed to an equal distribution of liberty in some form. This core commitment is shared by all liberals, from progressive left-liberals to right-leaning thin libertarians, and is the fundamental reason many on the illiberal right oppose liberalism, including mainstream conservatives like Patrick Deneen and Sohrab Ahmari as well as more fringe movements like the Neoreaction.
As a liberal, I oppose criticalism because of my liberal commitments. While I don't pay too much attention to them, I basically oppose Deneen and Ahmari style conservatism for the same reasons, and just as strongly. Moreover, I'm not a reactionary, because being a liberal is not compatible with being a reactionary. There is a good reason why liberalism is considered a form of progressivism, why liberals sat on the left in the French Revolution political spectrum. One who is not on board with change and reform towards liberty and equality is fundamentally not a liberal, classical or otherwise. Too many people in the anti-criticalist scene are basically reactionary conservatives, who are opposing change for the sake of opposing change, and in some cases, even not shy about potentially using authoritarian means or supporting authoritarian politics (like Trumpism) if it means stopping change. They are basically Deneen-Ahmari conservatives, and are just using liberal arguments for free speech when it suits them. Their lack of commitment to real liberalism is, in my opinion, hurting the liberal movement against critical theory.
While I consider myself 'anti-woke', because I consider 'woke' to mean criticalist in the contemporary usage, I am far from anti-social justice! When I say I want to achieve a colorblind world, I truly mean it. When I say I am a classical feminist who wants real gender equality for men and women alike, I truly mean it. Indeed, it is because the criticalist method of social justice would require denying immediate moves towards colorblindness and equality, that I am so opposed to it. Criticalist activists believe in a pseudo-Marxist theory of change that requires more division, more inequality and so on in the name of 'class consciousness' and 'class struggle', and this is directly opposed to the liberal model of social change, based on continuously reforming society towards more liberty and equality for all. I believe we should be given the chance, and the clear air, to present our model of change to those who desire social justice, free from the contaminative influence of reactionary conservatives whose words and actions would only discredit us. If given this chance, I'm sure many social justice minded young people would turn away from criticalism and towards liberalism. This would be instrumental to defeating criticalism.
A Truly Fair Discourse On Trans Issues
In the same vein, I think we need to pull the trans discourse in the anti-criticalist scene back towards one that is fundamentally supportive of trans lives, and fundamentally based on the clinical and scientific evidence. I mean, there are definitely issues that need to be talked about when it comes to how society can accommodate trans people while taking into account the concerns of other stakeholders. This discussion needs to take place on a level playing field, in a calm and rational manner, and in good faith. I also respect the free speech of everyone, at all times. But bad faith arguments, often promoted by those who actually want to harm trans people (see below), need to be pushed back upon in a strong and swift manner. It's called defeating bad arguments with good arguments, and it's the fundamental reason why free speech is so great in the first place.
Let's not deny this: the current state of the trans discourse in the anti-criticalist scene is that it has a certain bias. There is too little criticism of arguments that try to invalidate trans people using oversimplified eighth-grade biology, where there is simply no attempt to take into account the nuance in things like the relationship between genotype and phenotype, and in the human endocrine and neurological systems. I mean, these people have been allowed to call themselves 'biological realists' with little pushback. Come on, this is as anti-intellectual as those who argued against gay rights and gay marriage from a pseudo-Darwinian perspective! Worse are those who promote essentially conspiratorial thinking about the medical profession's broad acceptance of trans people and sympathy towards those with gender dysphoria. This sounds way too much like the far-right's age old argument that 'they only removed homosexuality from the DSM because the activists forced them to'. In reality, doctors practice 'evidence based medicine', and there are very strict rules regarding what is accepted as evidence! The point is, if we want to be truly scientific and evidence-based in our discussion of trans issues, we should stay away from oversimplified pseudo-science and conspiratorial attitudes.
Furthermore, there is a surprising and alarming level of acceptance of 'gender critical' arguments from people who otherwise staunchly oppose all other forms of critical theory. For the people who rightly reject critical race theory and critical queer theory, but are surprisingly okay with gender critical ideas, I have news for you: you are being logically inconsistent. 'Gender critical' is basically the application of the critical theory framework to the concept of gender, just like how 'critical race theory' is basically the application of the critical theory framework to the concept of race. Gender criticalism sees the world as men being the oppressors and women being the oppressed, just like how critical race theory sees white people as the oppressors and non-whites being the oppressed. It's all the same pseudo-Marxist analysis that has its roots in the failure of Western Marxism in the 20th century. You can't logically accept one while rejecting the other. Going forward, a major theme of this newsletter will be to argue against gender criticalism using the same anti-criticalist arguments that we use against other forms of critical theory. I strongly believe we need to be able to place the folly of gender criticalism within the broader family of the folly of critical theory, alongside critical race theory, for example.
Finally, this newsletter will ruthlessly expose the hypocrisy displayed by the bad actors who want to make trans issues into a culture war political football. Now, many well-meaning people in the anti-criticalist scene still aren't aware or don't believe these people exist, but trust me, they do exist. It will be the job of this newsletter to present the evidence and convince the unconvinced of the harms of these bad faith actors. These people basically don't have a problem with making the lives of trans people hellish, all they want is to build a coalition that is politically useful. That's why they will hypocritically court gender critical feminists, the religious right and the anti-criticalist scene at the same time, hoping to forge an unholy alliance of anti-trans politics between them. This alliance can't survive the most basic test of logical consistency, and can and should be challenged and taken down by facts and logic.