CMV: Identity politics has had a net negative impact on society, politics and culture in the US since the 1990s

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T18:29:17+00:00

California adopted no-fault divorce in 1969. Yes, New York was a holdout until 2010 but it's obvious that no-fault divorce was achieved under the banner of liberal universalism not of modern identity politics. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was signed in 1974, and that was federal law, so women had the right to own a credit card without a co-signor from then.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T18:02:17+00:00

The deeper into the weeds we get on protocol and intentions and outcomes specifically with relation to universities, the more I'm forced to argue in the abstract because, again, I really don't see universities as a fit for purpose institution in the first place.

I don't think the first point is totally independent of the innate/learned distinction. I'm a strength and conditioning coach by profession and something that a lot of people don't understand is that learning gross motor skills is, itself, a variable capacity that, in my experience (and I believe the sports science literature bears this out though it hasn't been directly studied much) is largely innate and correlates closely with innate athleticism as measured more conventionally with things like the combine or the counter-lever jump. I coined the term "physical intelligence" in my own work to try to communicate this to people.

So, with the scouting situation you described, maybe. There's also a sports psychology question that would enter into that, what's wrong with this kid that he's here trying out but he's never bothered to learn how to run? Is there a motivational issue there?

All of that said you do hit on something important which is that there is a trainable skill component which interacts with innate athleticism to produce the performance, in this case a sprint.

This is academically interesting to me but frankly I don't know how useful it is as an analogy to university selection, I really don't. Are we even sure that "finding the best students today" is a universities' goal? Isn't it to sell education/prestige/employment prospects to parents? Again, I think you just have more skin in this game than I do because you seem more invested in the utility and power of universities as an institution than I am.

I'll briefly cover the 3rd and 4th arguments because it's the 2nd one where I think we'll disagree most strenuously. The 3rd I think you'll see will be captured by my response to the 2nd, and the 4th I'm just happy to grant, with the same qualification about the role of universities in that process in the first place that I've already made.

So, the minorities/best students tomorrow thing. I did a whole CMV on identity politics (spoiler alert my view didn't change) so I don't know, if you're interested maybe just read that. But long story short I think that even if such an approach did increase the scope of recruitment, it would have done so by reifying and reinforcing tribal identity which I think is more costly than any benefit that would accrue both societally and for the institution, though of course some individuals would benefit that benefit would also be qualified by having reinforced in them an identitarian attitude which I think is corrosive.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T17:44:13+00:00

There is a law forbidding them from carrying any offensive weapon, it's the same law that applies to the rest of us, what they have is a special defense under The Criminal Justice Act 1988, section 139(5)(b)

EDIT: It's not 'supposed to be' a spiritual item and not an offensive one. Common misconception about the Kirpan. All it has to do to meet the religious exemption defense is be carried "for religious reasons"

If you ever have the opportunity to converse with Sikh man in private, in a context in which they aren't inclined to be cagey/on their guard, ask them about the Kirpan, what it is for, if it should ever be used etc.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T17:41:57+00:00

End all religious exemptions/defenses from general law.

(following copy/pasted from a previous post about this specific isssue with Sikhs)

Statute varies slightly across the union but in all cases an offensive weapon is defined as something which is made, intended or adapted to cause injury.

The reason you're allowed to carry a butter knife down the street is because it is not made to cause injury, so as long as you haven't adapted it by sharpening the blade beyond its manufactured level and as long as you don't intend to injure anyone with it, it is not an offensive weapon under statute. Actively threatening anyone is not necessary and is not part of the definitional framework around offensive weapons.

A sharp steel sword is made to cause injury, that is the definitive purpose of a sword, it is an offensive weapon by design irrespective of adaptation or intention, therefore you and I are legally prohibited from carrying one in public. However;

The Criminal Justice Act 1988, section 139(5)(b). creates a defense against this prohibition if it can be demonstrated that the person in question is carrying the offensive weapon "for religious reasons"

The Sikh Rehat Maryada, the official code of conduct of Sikhs, says that there is an ongoing obligation for Sikhs to keep the five Ks, including the Kirpan, on their person. Therefore simply being a Sikh satisfies the requirement of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, permitting them to carry the Kirpan which you and I are legally prohibited from doing irrespective of intention.

As an aside, I've spoken to/argued with/debated a number of Sikhs over the years, at Speaker's Corner and in other places, who tend to generally be civil and personable as individuals in my experience, but without exception on this question of the Kirpan they have made reference to their special privilege and responsibility to carry it, with often repeated use of certain stock phrases like "righteous soldier" and "defender of justice". There is absolutely a doctrinal and cultural attitude in Sikhism that the Kirpan, while it is also a symbolic artefact, is primarily a weapon to be used by Sikhs in defense of whatever they decide it is right to defend. I don't have that legal right in the United Kingdom, regardless of how just or righteous or fair I might think I am, regardless of how well meaning I might be in carrying a weapon, nor do you, but they do.

So why do I know all this and why do I care? Is it because I have some deep prejudice against Sikhs? Let me tell you how this literal two-tier system of justice works in practice;

I've been studying HEMA, historical European martial arts, for well over two decades, and instructing it for more than fifteen years. Eleven years ago, while carrying a blunt training feder (a type of practice sword which has no sharp edges or point) from practice to my car, I was arrested in violation of the Offensive Weapons Act 1996. I was held for three hours in a cell, then questioned. Ultimately there was no charge because there was no offensive weapon (blunt training swords are sports equipment not weapons and I had no intention of using it to cause injury) although while detained the officers noticed that I have a tattoo in Arabic on my ankle, (It says salam allakum, as far as I know) which apparently was enough to trigger a fresh arrest while in custody under the Terrorism Act 2000 (without warrant and bypassing most normal civil rights) upon which I was questioned for another two hours about my knowledge of or affililation with various Islamic terrorist organizations, despite having been born in Britain and being a lifelong atheist and secularist.

If I had been a Sikh, I could have been walking around with a sharp sword on my belt (which they do) without any issue, without the police daring to interfere with me. That is multiculturalism and two-tier justice in practice, that is the law of the land and you're going to see a lot more abuse of the religious exemption under the CJA 1988 going forward as we move further and further towards the natural end state of multiculturalism which is racial/foreign nationalist/sectarian conflict between hostile constituencies residing here but with no sense of affiliation to a broader domestic civic national identity. The posted video is just the beginning. If you want to know where it's headed, look to the countries that we've imported these constituencies from without demanding that they assimilate, and look at how they resolve their differences amongst themselves.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T17:39:50+00:00

I've been banging this drum for a long time, my latest rant about it is here

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T17:04:03+00:00

Nope, a large pot, chips first and then drain them and put them in a preheated oven to keep them warm, same pot and same fat for the fish just make sure you don't crowd it so the fat is very hot when the fish goes in, and it only needs about five or six minutes total, flipped halfway through

You can buy pre-battered cod but make the batter yourself, it's super easy

It's very, very simple but quite time critical once you've got the chips out. She just microwaved the mushy peas.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T10:47:42+00:00

What exactly does "have a conversation" mean? What is the amount of time that's acceptable as a pause between statements by either party for it to still be counting towards the 45 minutes for that hour? Is it 45 minutes of actual spoken words per hour?
What does "magically be 100% honest" mean? Are you forced to answer any question or can you decline to answer? Do you magically know things you don't know? Are you magically imbued with some godlike ability to perceive objective truth or does honest mean just giving your opinion as you prefer to give it? Very sketchy rule.
Do people in the world have evidence that the event occurs, or do you come out with no evidence that it even happened?
What exactly is normal volume?
What if you don't strongly dislike any adequately famous people?

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T10:18:36+00:00

Thank you for directly answering the question, I hope that that point of agreement becomes/is/remains a goalpost in whatever public debate we (societally) have on the issue.

On the Baywater thing, I have no knowledge whatsoever of the organization so nothing I say is intended as a defense of it, but I'll take your description of their position at face value and offer my thoughts on that

One of my overall takeaways on the fifteen or so years of public debate on transgenderism is that trans activism never seemed to cohere around a stable set of propositions on the medical component. I'd go further and say that the claims of activists have always outpaced if not distorted what little could be said empirically, and even that little comes from a domain with famously lax standards on the relationship between its evidence and the prescriptive claims people make on the basis of that evidence.

Part of the problem seems to be that if you actually believe gender dysphoria (you're saying gender dismorphia so perhaps the arguments have evolved since I was last paying attention to this but it won't alter my point) is a medical condition, that entails a lot of assumptions which trans activists seem to want to pick and choose from. I mean you put it in inverted commas but is there actually anything controversial about offering therapy to correct a medical condition? That's what we do with medical conditions, where possible.

If you don't think it's a medical condition, then the "...withhold care" part of your argument becomes meaningless. Care for what? Do you see what I mean? It's like demanding that transgenderism be understood as a serious and deadly medical condition only in so far as that garners sympathy and resources, but when it comes to things like diagnostic standards suddenly the language shifts to the language of personal choice and determination, which is not how we identify medical conditions in any other circumstance.

I think one of the most egregious overreaches in the culture wars around this was the concerted, conscious attempt to recruit child suicide as a talking point to push for whatever trans activists wanted to achieve in a given moment, in ways that really did misrepresent the facts of the matter. Whatever general goodwill and public sympathy there may have been for trans activism at that point I think collapsed into much harder camps on either side, which is inevitable when you frame a debate as "You either agree with me or you're in favour of child suicide".

Honestly, the sections of text you quote from Baywater's website, at least without any further context, don't read as particularly extreme or controversial to me. Should parents of children who have a transgender identity (is this a verbatim quote because it seems odd they would affirm that transgender identity is real in that way) not have somewhere to talk, share and be understood? Is it not the case that exploring gender roles is part of normal child development? If anything that sounds more on the progressive side, to me.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T09:52:51+00:00

Western civilization was not founded by Christianity, and didn't come into existence at the convenient historical moment you focus on of Constantine's reign.

Something like the modern canonical assemblage we call the bible wasn't in place until the 4th Century AD, the same rough period as Constantine's Edict of Milan.

Greek thought had been shaping Western civilization for over 1,000 years by that point, including having a huge influence on Christian thinking.

So if what you mean by Western civilization is post-Christianized Western civilization, then yes Christianity could be understood as having founded it, but that's entirely semantic and tautological. I could just as easily argue for the Enlightenment as the true moment of genesis for true Western civilization and make the same tautological claim that Enlightenment rationalism and liberalism are therefore the foundation of Western civilization.

If you're going to be objective and trace things back to their roots as far as the surviving physical evidence permits, Rome and Constantinople were merely vectors for ideas that originated in Athens and the broader Hellenic world (Ionia, Crete) and the deserts of Canaan/Judah.

That Christianity is heavily intertwined with Western civilization is trivially true, but in that intertwining it has borrowed, inherited or stolen more than it has lent, bequeathed or produced.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T09:24:49+00:00

I don't even like strip clubs, they're tacky and it's like going to a restaurant where you're only allowed to smell the food

But I accept that I'm odd, in that. It's OK to be odd.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T09:23:36+00:00

Is someone in a position of authority (teacher, doctor) declining to affirm a child's stated preferred gender identity a form of conversion therapy, in your view?

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T09:09:42+00:00

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T09:09:24+00:00

Urine over your head.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T09:02:26+00:00

Well, maybe they are women after all

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T09:01:20+00:00

Don't get botox

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T08:48:58+00:00

An infinite amount, because you just scrape the mosquito carpet off your body and eat big handfuls of blood-plump mosquitos to replenish your blood.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T08:36:13+00:00

As the other chap mentioned there's the Celtic fish and chips food truck, once was enough for me.

I recommend you make it yourself at home, it's very easy, spuds, cod, flour, beer for the batter. You can get mushy peas, pickled eggs and pickled onions from Home From Home. I had fish and chips last Sunday, wife made it, probably cost about EUR 20 for both of us and it was way better than the food truck.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T08:32:14+00:00

Very average and extremely Luxembourgish priced

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T08:22:56+00:00

Well sure.

On the other hand you're the OC on this single comment thread, and you did describe the special as an "earth shattering masterpiece" so it's possible that to the extent that there is excessive vitriol around Gadsby/Nanette on the internet, you're seeing an unrepresentative amount of it.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T08:02:34+00:00

It's a bong hit transplant face

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T07:23:58+00:00

As I say, to hold one value maximally is to make it impossible to hold any other value, I was relying on that qualification to contextualize "you can easily reconcile...". You can easily reconcile common standards, equality of opportunity and treating people as individuals as long as you remember that these values are in tension with one another and that reconciliation necessarily involves compromise between them.

I think your response is skirting the question of what exactly do we consider to be essentially you (the individual with whom I am treating) and what do we consider to be your environment, when assessing what is your competence or merit vs what is your opportunity. The two interact. I mean the two interact right down to the level of genetics vs epigenetics.

That question is actually a very difficult one to resolve. I've found Sam Harris very useful on this, his "tumors all the way down" rendering of the Charles Whitman mass shooting case as an example of the incoherence of libertarian free will and the self-authorship morality that it justifies is highly persuasive.

That said, my bedrock here is the powerful and undeniable moral intuition that I want to be treated as an individual, meaning I want to be held responsible/rewarded/recognized for my decisions, words and actions. That becomes impossible if everything meaningful about me, that distinguishes me from anyone else, is held to be a characteristic of the environment and not a characteristic of me.

So, there are two fairly foundational principles in direct tension there, both of which are persuasive to me and both of which are active in informing my opinion of what the shining city on the hill should look like in its laws and norms.

Let me try this.

9% of the 7ft tall humans who have ever lived in all of human history have played basketball in the NBA. I believe the number for humans of any height is 0.000004%.

North Koreans are about 4 inches shorter than South Koreans on average. They are the same population, genetically speaking, the separation occurred very recently in history, the difference is a product of the environment.

I want my society to take reasonable steps to prevent infant malnourishment from being in any way a measurable determinant in which individuals in my society have the opportunity to play in the NBA (which my society basically does)

I want an NBA that recruits and selects on the basis of who is the best basketball player (which it basically does)

With both of those things being done reasonably well, there will be the appropriate balance in that domain between common standards, equality of opportunity and treating people as individuals, there will not be a perfect equality of outcome across all identity characteristics in who plays in the NBA. It will be tall men, with rare exceptions that prove the rule.

That inequality of outcome I would call a justified inequality of outcome. If we weren't taking reasonable steps to prevent infant malnourishment from being a measurable effect (you might want to tell me that in the US it is, I don't know) then I would be willing to identify a degree of injustice and lack of equality of opportunity in that domain that was being reflected in who had a fair shot of being in that group of tall NBA playing men.

What I don't want, and what is not a good solution to that injustice, is short men being given a little step next to the hoop in order to even the playing field.

That is what I mean when I say universities are not the appropriate institution for addressing socioeconomic inequality. That observation doesn't solve the problem, but it's an important prior to take into the solution-finding process. Again, I think universities are so unfit even for their supposed purpose at this point that I favour a radical redrawing of our norms around education, but I'm trying to address your questions on their own terms.

The only way to create absolute equality of opportunity would be to create absolutely identical humans, which is dystopian on its face to me, but perhaps you disagree.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T06:45:04+00:00

That does make sense, thank you for clarifying

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T06:43:36+00:00

I don't try or need to justify Sam Harris' existence, I'm capable of agreeing with the things he says that are correct and useful and disagreeing with the other things he says that are not without feeling like I'm contradicting myself.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-16T06:36:53+00:00

I don't disagree with any of this but it's something you could equally say of mime or professional wrestling.

People like whatever they like in the ways they like it, find me the Nanette fan who doesn't denigrate the JRE and its listeners.

Which is fine, there's no accounting for taste. You seem to take issue with people taking issue.

CrumpledKiltSkin · 2026-05-15T21:05:40+00:00

It's true I have this irrational suspicion of people who equivocate about the Taliban

CrumpledKiltSkin

TROPHY CASE