[Andy_B]

There used to be a time when left wing theorists were concerned about minorities, the poor, foreigners etc. Seems academic leftism is all just feminism now, pretty much. Question is, when did this happen? It seems like a relatively new development.

[RawGod]

There could be something in what you're saying...there seems to be a lot less genuine care for the outsider in the left these days. For example, the media used to pay at least lip service to the Palestinian cause, but not so much in the last few years.

What I have noticed is that the sport of spotting "racism" and "sexism/misogyny" has really taken off recently. And I mean taking very mild examples of non-PC behaviour and shaming them through social media and so on. Young kids seem to love for example looking at TV ads from the past and being "shocked" at the concept of a housewife baking a cake.

[Excelsior]

(11-10-2012 06:52 PM)Andy_B Wrote:  

There used to be a time when left wing theorists were concerned about minorities, the poor, foreigners etc. Seems academic leftism is all just feminism now, pretty much. Question is, when did this happen? It seems like a relatively new development.

Feminism generally benefits white women. White women compose a disproportionately large segment of the electorate, vote at higher rates than other groups, have large disposable incomes, carry more social capital than any other demographic (more people place them on pedestals than any other group) and have interests (ex: birth control, abortion) that align solidly with policies on the left.

Their size and influence (combined with their economic clout) as a block makes them invaluable to the maintenance of political power while also making it extremely unwise to alienate them. The left thus chooses to court them, and feminism provides one of the most efficient vehicles through which to do so since its issues appeal to and primarily serve white women.

The right courts white women as well (and actually won them this past election), but does so with a more conservative type of feminism that doesn't appeal as strongly to younger, unmarried women (a reality that costs them politically).

Appealing to minorities and others folks with issues offers a lower Return on Investment, but that could change as demographics continue to shift over the next few decades and those minorities become increasingly prominent demographically. For now, their interests matter less than those of white women.
That's just cold, hard, calculated political calculus in action.

[Basil Ransom]

Athlone has a compelling explanation as to why feminism has become a centerpiece of modern liberalism. I don't disagree with him there. I'll just add that feminism is entirely of a piece with the rest of left-wing thought. For the same reason that leftists wish to believe that race, nationality and sexual orientation does not matter, and will try to silence anyone who does, they will do the same for sex.

See: http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2010/...heory.html (quoted below, but the formatting is shoddy). I'd recommend the chapters he has up, I will read them shortly. Keep in mind, these definitions are not a straw-man of liberalism, but conceptions of liberalism drawn from the liberal theorists themselves.

Quote:

Chapter 2: Autonomy theory
So what is liberalism? A key principle or aim of liberalism is individual autonomy. According to Professor John Kekes,

the true core of liberalism, the inner citadel for whose protection all the liberal battles are waged [is] autonomy … Autonomy is what the basic political principles of liberalism are intended to foster and protect. [1]

Professor Joseph Raz explains that,

One common strand in liberal thought regards the promotion and protection of personal autonomy as the core of the liberal concern. [2]

Similarly, Professor Bruce Ackerman writes of liberalism that,

The core of this tradition is an insistence that the forms of social life be rooted in the self-conscious value affirmations of autonomous individuals. [3]

And Professor Kok-Chor Tan defines liberalism as,

an individualistic political morality...concerned primarily with protecting and promoting the autonomy of individuals. [4]

But this then raises another question. What do liberals understand by the idea of individual autonomy?

According to liberal autonomy theory, a fully human life is one that is self-determined. What matters therefore is that individuals have a life and a self which are variously described as self-created, self-defined, self-authored, self-chosen or self-directed.

Here, for instance, is how Professor Raz defines liberal autonomy:

A person is autonomous if he can become the author of his own life.[5]

From a chapter description of the same work we get the following definition:

Autonomy is an ideal of self-creation, or self-authorship [6]

Professor Alan Ryan defines liberal autonomy in a similar way,

The essence [of liberalism] is that individuals are self-creating... [7]

As a final example, Professor Wayne Sumner connects the "traditional liberal value of autonomy" to the,

liberal conception of the person as self-determining and self-making [8]

Let’s say that you are a liberal who believes in this. What then becomes your political aim?

Your aim will be to remove impediments to individual autonomy. Whatever defines us in important ways that we do not choose for ourselves will be thought of negatively as something limiting and oppressive that we must be liberated from.

Liberals therefore have a strong motivation to launch campaigns to “reform” society. Over time the influence of liberalism on Western societies has been radical, arguably more radical than anything that has gone before.

This transforming effect on society has been presented to the general public by liberals in the most positive terms, as a progress toward freedom, equality and justice. When put this way, liberalism can seem difficult to challenge, even by those who sense that something is wrong with the direction of modern Western societies.

But if we go back to liberal autonomy theory, and look in detail at what it logically requires, then a more obviously negative picture emerges, one that is very much open to criticism.

What, after all, are the impediments to autonomy which liberalism seeks to abolish? They are those aspects of our own self and existence which we do not get to self-determine. And there is a lot that we don’t get to self-determine, including what we inherit as part of a tradition and what is given to us as part of an inborn human nature.

What is most significant to us as individuals has often survived over time as aspects of a tradition or of human nature. Therefore, liberalism has often found itself having to make what matters most not matter.

In this way liberalism has diminished our lives rather than liberated them.

But what exactly does liberalism not allow to matter? This is what now needs to be looked at more closely.