Aaronson Versus Dystopia

Despite broad agreement with me, Scott Aaronson plans to keep calling himself a “feminist.” Here’s his explanation and my critique. Scott’s in blockquotes; I’m not.

For purposes of his argument, Bryan defines feminism as “the view that women are generally treated less fairly than men,” rather than (say) “the view that men and women ought to be treated equally,” or “the radical belief that women are people,” or other formulations that Bryan considers too obvious to debate. He then rebuts feminism as he’s defined it, by taking the audience on a horror tour of all the ways society treats men less fairly than women (expectations of doing dirty and dangerous work, divorce law, military drafts as in Ukraine right now, …), as well as potentially benign explanations for apparent unfairness toward women, to argue that it’s at least debatable which sex gets the rawer deal on average.

During the Q&A, I raised what I thought was the central objection to Bryan’s relatively narrow definition of feminism. Namely that, by the standards of 150 years ago, Bryan is obviously a feminist, and so am I, and so is everyone in the room. (Whereupon a right-wing business school professor interjected: “please don’t make assumptions about me!”)

I explained that this is why I call myself a feminist, despite agreeing with many of Bryan’s substantive points: because I want no one to imagine for a nanosecond that, if I had the power, I’d take gender relations back to how they were generations ago.

I agree that calling yourself a feminist is a good way to avoid being mistaken for a villain from The Handmaid’s Tale. Unfortunately, it is also a good way to get mistaken for someone blind to (a) all the extra unfairness males endure in our society, and (b) potentially benign explanations for apparent unfairness against women. Scott, why are you so eager to avoid the former misperception yet so blasé about fostering the second misperception?

Bryan replied that >60% of Americans call themselves non-feminists in surveys. So, he asked me rhetorically, do all those Americans secretly yearn to take us back to the 19th century? Such a position, he said, seemed so absurdly uncharitable as not to be worth responding to.

Actually, I’m happy to talk about people’s “secret yearnings.” (Is Bernie Sanders a crypto-communist? Inquiring minds want to know!) When you want to understand what people really think, asking them is a good place to start. But that’s hardly the end of the discussion.

Reflecting about it on my walk home, I realized: actually, give or take the exact percentages, this is precisely the progressive thesis. I.e., that just like at least a solid minority of Germans turned out to be totally fine with Nazism, however much they might’ve denied it beforehand, so too at least a solid minority of Americans would be fine with—if not ecstatic about—The Handmaid’s Tale made real. Indeed, they’d add, it’s only vociferous progressive activism that stands between us and that dystopia.

A troubling thought, I agree. My honest guess is that you could get at least 5% of Americans to accept almost any dystopian scenario. Yes, that goes for The Handmaid’s Tale. But it also goes for the male extermination program of the Society for Cutting Up Men (S.C.U.M.) Manifesto.

Even so, the likely size of this crypto-pro-dystopian minority is some multiple of the share of the population that is openly sympathetic to the dystopian position. Since the share of the population that openly devalues men is much larger than the share that openly devalues women, we have strong reason to think that a larger share of people would be “totally fine” with a reverse Handmaid’s Tale than the regular Handmaid’s Tale.

And if anyone were tempted to doubt this, progressives might point to the election of Donald Trump, the failed insurrection to maintain his power, and the repeal of Roe as proof enough to last for a quadrillion years.

Bryan would probably reply: why even waste time engaging with such a hysterical position? To me, though, the hysterical position sadly has more than a grain of truth to it. I wish we lived in a world where there was no point in calling oneself a pro-democracy anti-racist feminist and a hundred other banal and obvious things. I just don’t think that we do.

And I wish we lived in a world where, for every issue, there was only one horribly evil position to avoid. But that’s not the world we live in. Can you honestly name any viewpoint untainted by at least a few fanatics dreaming of fire and blood?

When you call yourself a feminist, you do indeed mitigate the risk that onlookers will think you favor the unfair treatment of women. (Though the risk reduction is far from complete, as Scott has repeatedly discovered). But you also amplify the risk that onlookers will think you favor the unfair treatment of men. Given these multi-sided risks, I say the best bet is to be a proverbial straight shooter. Avoid argumentative definitions. Conform to standard English usage. Don’t be Straussian. In short, say what you mean and mean what you say. Unfair people will still manage to misinterpret you, but such is life.