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Written by David Thorstad , Global Priorities Institute, Junior Research Fellow, Kellogg College
This post is based on my paper “High risk, low reward: A challenge to the astronomical value of existential risk mitigation,” forthcoming in Philosophy and Public Affairs. The full paper is available here and I have also written a blog series about this paper here.
Derek Parfit (1984) asks us to compare two scenarios. In the first, a war kills 99% of all living humans. This would be a great catastrophe – far beyond anything humanity has ever experienced. But human civilization could, and likely would, be rebuilt.
In the second scenario, a war kills 100% of all living humans. This, Parfit urges, would be a far greater catastrophe, for in this scenario the entire human civilization would cease to exist. The world would perhaps never again know science, art, mathematics or philosophy. Our projects would be forever incomplete, and our cities ground to dust. Humanity would never settle the stars. The untold multitudes of descendants we could have left behind would instead never be born.
This thought has driven many philosophers to emphasize the importance of preventing existential risks, risks of catastrophes involving “the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development” (Bostrom 2013, p. 15). For example, we might regulate weapons of mass destruction or seek to reduce what some see as a risk of extinction caused by rogue artificial intelligence.
Many philosophers think two things about existential risk. First, it is not only valuable, but astronomically valuable to do what we can to mitigate existential risk. After all, the future may hold unfathomable amounts of value, and existential risks threaten to reduce that value to naught. Call this the astronomical value thesis.
Second, increasingly many philosophers hold that humanity faces high levels of existential risk. In his bestselling book, The Precipice, Toby Ord (2020) puts the risk of existential catastrophe by 2100 at one in six: Russian roulette. Attendees at an existential risk conference at Oxford put existential risk by 2100 at nearly one in five (Sandberg and Bostrom 2008). And the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees (2003), puts the risk of civilizational collapse by 2100 at fifty-fifty: a coinflip. Let existential risk pessimism be the claim that per-century levels of existential risk are very high.
Surely the following is an obvious truth: existential risk pessimism supports the astronomical value thesis. If we know anything about risks, it is that it is more important to mitigate large risks than it is to mitigate small risks. This means that defenders of the astronomical value thesis should be pessimists, aiming to convince us that humanity’s situation is dire, and opponents should be optimists, aiming to convince us that things really are not so bad.
In my paper, I argue that every word in the previous paragraph is false. At best, existential risk pessimism has no bearing on the astronomical value thesis. Across a range of modelling assumptions, matters are worse than this: existential risk pessimism strongly reduces the value of existential risk mitigation, often strongly enough to scuttle the astronomical value thesis singlehandedly. (See end notes for examples, and see the full paper for further details).
In the full paper, I explore a range of models and argue that there is only one viable way to reconcile existential risk pessimism with the astronomical value thesis. This is the time of perils hypothesis on which levels of existential risk are high now, but will soon drop to a permanently low level if only we survive the next few perilous centuries. However, I argue, the time of perils hypothesis is unlikely to be true, so there is likely an enduring tension between existential risk pessimism and the astronomical value thesis.
This tension has important philosophical implications. First, it means that unless more is said, many parties to debates about existential risk may have been arguing on behalf of their opponents. To many, it has seemed that a good way to support the moral importance of existential risk mitigation is to make alarmist predictions about the levels of existential risk facing humanity today, and that a good way to oppose the moral importance of existential risk mitigation is to argue that existential risk is in fact much lower than alarmists claim. However, unless more is said, matters are exactly the reverse: arguing that existential risk is high strongly reduces the value of existential risk mitigation, whereas arguing that existential risk is low strongly increases the value of existential risk mitigation.
Second, there has been a wave of recent support for longtermism, the doctrine that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. When pressed to recommend concrete actions we can take to improve the long-term future of humanity, longtermists often point to existential risk mitigation. By the astronomical value thesis, longtermists hold, existential risk mitigation is very important. But this paper suggests an important qualification, since many longtermists are also pessimists about existential risk. As we have seen, existential risk pessimism may well be incompatible with the astronomical value thesis, in which case the value of existential risk mitigation may be too low to provide good support for longtermism.
The core modelling claim of the paper is that (1) at best, existential risk pessimism is irrelevant to the astronomical value thesis, and that (2) in most cases existential risk pessimism tells strongly against the astronomical value thesis. While full technical details are contained in the main paper, here are some models to illustrate claims (1) and (2).
On (1): To illustrate the best case, suppose that humanity faces a constant level of risk r per century. Suppose also that each century of existence has constant value v, if only we live to reach it. And suppose that all existential catastrophes lead to human extinction, so that no value will be realized after catastrophe. Then, it can be shown that the value of reducing in our century by some fraction f is f*v. In this model, pessimism has no bearing on the astronomical value thesis, since the starting level r of existential risk does not affect the value of existential risk mitigation. Moreover, the value of existential risk reduction is capped at v, the value of a single century of human life. Nothing to sneeze at, but hardly astronomical.
On (2): Making the model more realistic only serves to heighten the tension between pessimism and the astronomical value thesis. For example, suppose that centuries grow linearly in value over time, so that if this century has value v, the next century has value 2v, then 3v and so on. Keep the other modelling assumptions the same. Now, it can be shown that the value of reducing existential risk in our century by some fraction f is fv/r.
In this model, pessimism tells against the astronomical value thesis: if you think that existential risk is now 100 times greater than I think it is, you should be 100 times less enthusiastic about existential risk mitigation. Moreover, the value of existential risk reduction is capped at v/r. For the optimist, this quantity may be quite large, but not so for the pessimist. For example, if we estimate per-century risk r at 20%, then the value of existential risk is capped at five times the value of a single century – again, nothing to sneeze at, but not yet astronomical.
Bostrom, Nick, “Existential risk prevention as global priority,” Global Policy 4.1 (2013): 15-31.
Ord, Toby, The precipice (NY: Bloomsbury, 2020).
Parfit, Derek, Reasons and persons (Oxford: Oxford, 1984).
Rees, Martin, Our final our (NY: Basic Books, 2003).
Sandberg, Anders and Bostrom, Nick, “Global catastrophic risks survey,” Technical Report 2008-1 (2008), Future of Humanity Institute.
This article received an honourable mention in the graduate category of the 2023 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics
Written by Lucy Simpson, Nottingham Trent University student
Throughout the catalogue of work produced by Jeff McMahan, he has discussed what constitutes a being’s moral status, and has advocated the theories of moral individualism and reflective equilibrium intuitionism.[1] It is not my intention in this paper to dispute these positions. Instead, I argue that if we accept McMahan’s position, then logically, we must accept that a being’s moral character is a morally relevant property which we ought to consider when determining their moral status. As I will explain, this therefore means that moral status is not static; it is fluid. Further to this, in the latter stages of this paper, I consider that if we do accept that moral status is action dependant, then there might be negative moral status. On the topic of negative moral status, I do not aim to give any in-depth arguments either for or against its existence, but rather just flag this as a potential avenue for further exploration if we do indeed follow McMahan’s theories of intuitionism and moral individualism.
I argue that by accepting that being’s actions affects its moral status, this resolves intuitional conflict felt when we consider so-called marginal cases (i.e., any being that is typically thought to sit on the edge of a moral status threshold).[2]
For the sake of clarity in this paper I take moral status to mean the following: If a being has moral status, then we have obligations to treat it in certain ways for its own sake. This is contrasting what I label ‘relational status’, in which means the following: If a being has relational status, then we have obligations to treat it in certain ways for the sake of some other being (which has moral status).[3] In this paper I exclusively consider the moral status of beings. This moral status is attributed to the possession of morally relevant intrinsic properties or characteristics possessed by a being, and often includes properties such as: Possession of consciousness; ability to suffer; ability to use complex language or communicate; ability to be altruistic; possession of rationality.[4]
I begin by outlining the view that moral status is action dependent if we follow McMahan’s position:
McMahan’s position is that there is no singular morally relevant intrinsic property which is not solely possessed by human beings, nor is it possessed by all human beings. This means the egalitarian position — that all human beings are of an equal and same level of moral status — cannot hold to be true. Instead moral status is seen to be attributed as a result of an individual being’s possession of (some, or all) of these morally relevant intrinsic properties.[5] We can test this intuition through the use of a thought experiment:
There is a burning building, and trapped inside of this building in two separate rooms (equidistant) from the only entry and exit point are two beings. There is no personal risk to entering the building, and which ever being is not saved has no other means of escape.
Case 1:
In room 1: A statistically normal human being
In room 2: A statistically normal dog
Which being do you save?
Our intuitions in this case (1) show that we ought to save the human being in room 1. Why? Because (to phrase it in the same way as McMahan) the human being in room 1 possesses more morally relevant intrinsic properties, and greater time-relative interests and so will suffer greater harm than the dog.[6]
Case 2:
In room 1: A statistically normal human being
In room 2: A severely cognitively disabled human being
Here, the intuitions become less clear. If we follow McMahan’s intuitionism — and if we exclude any relational value held by either human being — the severely cognitively disabled human being in room 2 possesses fewer morally relevant intrinsic properties than the human being in room 1. However, this leaves one with a sense of uncomfortableness. Consider the following case also:
Case 3:
In room 1: A statistically normal human being who has committed only good acts, and is a morally good person.
In room 2: A statistically normal human being who has committed morally repugnant acts, and is a morally bad person.
Here, our intuitions are less uncomfortable. It seems clear that we ought to save the morally good human being in room 1, over the morally bad human being in room 2. In fact, this is a case that McMahan himself considered:
‘When I ask my students about these cases, they are unanimous in thinking that one ought morally to save the virtuous person and, in the second choice, kill the murderer’. (McMahan, 2007: 102).
The unanimity of the students shows that this intuition – that morally good persons are of a higher value — holds. By McMahan’s own subscription to the reflective equilibrium methodology then, this ought to lead us to revise our belief that moral status is based solely upon the intrinsic properties that a being possesses, and accept that our actions do matter. Instead, he makes the following comment: “All this leaves me profoundly uncomfortable.” (McMahan, 2007: 104).
It does, however, seem clear that this intuitional discomfort can be explored further, consider:
Case 4:
Room 1: A severely cognitively disabled human being
Room 2: A statistically normal human being, who has committed many morally repugnant acts, and is – without a doubt – a morally bad person.
Here we are comparing the value of a severely cognitively disabled human being and a morally abhorrent (but otherwise cognitively normal) human being. In this case the intuitional discomfort is not as present. It seems that we would, ceteris paribus, save the human being in room 1, over the thoroughly morally bad person. This does therefore show (using McMahan’s theoretical framework) that moral status is — in part — action dependent. This therefore raises the following question: If moral status is action dependent, then is it also fluid? (I.e. can it change up or down?) This will be explored in the following section.
At the beginning of this paper I stated that I would argue that moral status is fluid, and is not static as it is currently thought to be. This point requires additional clarification, as I note that there is a possible objection to my statement here: This being that moral status is not argued to be strictly static by moral individualists. In the view held by McMahan it is accepted that if a being’s morally relevant intrinsic properties change, then so can their moral status. This means that if I — a conscious, rational being, capable of suffering — am involved in a tragic accident in which I suffer irreparable brain damage, to the point my ability to be rational or conscious or to suffer is lost completely, then my moral status would be lowered. This, I accept.
However, as I will now go on to explain, if moral status is considered to be (at least in part) action dependant, then no such tragic accident will need to occur in order to change a being’s moral status. Instead it will change fluidly based upon the individual actions a moral agent commits. As case 4 demonstrates, our intuitions show that a morally relevant difference is the moral character of those human beings. If a being has chosen to commit morally bad acts, then intuitionally we see them to be of lesser moral importance. In short: Our actions affect our moral status. This amendment to McMahan’s position solves the intuitional conflict we face when considering marginal cases.
We can express this view as the following principle:
Moral Modification Principle (MMP) – A being’s moral status can go up and down depending on their deliberate choice of actions (i.e. whether they commit good or bad acts).
As we believe a non-moral agent cannot be held accountable for their actions, then this naturally excludes the marginal cases I discussed earlier: The severely cognitively disabled, infant children and non-human animals would all be excluded from the MMP. After all, we do not blame a cat for killing a mouse according to her instincts, nor do we punish an infant child who without knowing any better inflicts deliberate harm on another. As such the MMP would only apply to moral agents, such as you and I.[7]
Fluid moral status does raise an additional consideration: If moral status is fluid, and can go down based upon the morally bad actions a being commits, can a being have a negative moral status? I will consider this briefly in the following section.
I do not have room to explore the view of a negative moral status in depth. It is, however, important to consider this. As moral status is seen to be discussed as an entirely positive matter (i.e., if a cat has moral status then we have obligations towards the cat which protects her rights and limits her suffering), the view of a negative moral status would has (as far as I can discern) not been considered.[8]
Above I have argued the line of intuitionism used by McMahan allows for the intuition that moral status is action dependent. If the moral status of a moral agent can reduce based upon the morally bad actions they commit, then it stands to reason that (potentially) the moral agent can commit so many bad acts that they reduce themselves to a negative moral status value. Exactly what these acts would have to be are beyond me, and it is not my argument that there be a considerable number of moral agents which would ever fall below this threshold. But let us presume that such a morally bad being exists and they have reduced their moral status to a negative degree, what would this mean?
Well, reasonably we can assume that our positive obligations towards this being would cease to exist. We would not be obliged to protect them from harm, to protect their freedoms and rights, or to treat them in ways which avoid their unnecessary suffering. Additionally we must ask that, if we have a negative duty towards them, would we ever have a duty to harm them? On this, I give one final case:
Case 5:
Room 1: A thoroughly morally reprehensible being, who has willingly committed numerous morally abhorrent acts.
Room 2: An empty room. There is nothing else to save.
In this case (5) we have the choice to either save one (morally bad) being or to not save anything at all. In such a case — where a being has lowered their moral status substantially (so much so that it is negative) — then do we have any obligation to save them even when we have nothing else to prevent us from doing so? May we allow them suffer, to inflict a non-direct harm on them because of this moral status level? Here I cannot give answers. However, I am struck that it leaves me with the same “profound uncomfortableness” felt by McMahan. Perhaps we should abandon the framework altogether if this where our intuitions leave us.
I have argued that if we are to fully develop McMahan’s theory, then we ought to accept moral status is action dependent. I have argued this solves the intuitional conflict we face when comparing the moral status held by rational agents and marginal cases. I argued then that if moral status is action dependent, then it is also fluid.
Following this, I introduced the possibility of negative moral status. This, I have briefly discussed, is an implication of action dependent moral status. As such, it seems plausible that if a moral agent commits numerous moral atrocities then perhaps we have negative obligations towards them. So, we ought to abandon our positive obligations of protection towards them that moral status ordinarily affords. Again, here, I postulate that if this theory of negative moral status violates our intuitions and we cannot revise it using the reflective equilibrium model of intuitionism, then perhaps we ought to abandon the framework altogether – but if we do not, and then the profound uncomfortableness felt by McMahan is unjustified.
[1] For McMahan’s work on intuitionism, see: (2013), and for his work on moral individualism see: (2002).
[2] E.g., some non-human animals, the severely cognitively disabled, and infant children.
[3] For greater discussion on the distinction between moral status and relational status, see: DeGrazia (2008)
[4] An extensive discussion of these morally relevant properties is had by Rachels in his (1999) book Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism. This is of particular interest as McMahan cites the work of Rachels in his own work, and argues for the same (albeit weaker) position of moral individualism.
[5] I will not discuss in detail egalitarian accounts, due to space constraints. However, for more on this see: Waldron (2008), Scanlon (2000), and Dworkin (1981). While all vary slightly on what they ground the notion of human equality in, they share the characteristic of advocating for the same and equal moral status of all human beings.
[6] By “greater time-relative interests” I mean the human being can plan for the future, fear about it’s well being of its future self.
[7] I am aware that there is more to be said on the cases that are excluded from the MMP, as I believe there is a strong argument that psychopaths and the mentally insane ought to excluded also (as they are, arguably, non-moral agents also). Additionally I accept that if we alter a non-human animal to possess the ability to be a normal agent that the cat, in the above case, would be subject to the MMP.
[8] More so, the view held by many is that moral status is a “all or nothing” situation. So, you either have moral status, or you do not (see: Kant (2017) for an account on this). Additionally moral status has been argued to come in degrees (see: DeGrazia, 2008), but this is the view that moral status degrees come at varying points between nothing and full moral status – without a consideration of a negative moral status.
The transformative power of values-enacted scholarship is only really felt in lived-experience. Just before spring break, and only two weeks after the mass shooting on the MSU campus, a small group of staff, directors, and chairs gathered in a conference room in Linton Hall to consider how we might begin to work together in the wake of significant changes to the budget model connected to summer teaching.
Over the next few years, MSU will be moving to an all-funds budget and to a hybrid model that will include elements of responsibility centered management (RCM). We convened the committee to help us discern how to put our values into practice as we determine how to distribute funds connected to summer teaching and learning.
The experience we have gained over the years in bringing the HuMetricsHSS initiative to life in the College of Arts & Letters and through our Pathways of Presencing grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Social Science Research Council shaped our approach to the difficult work this committee has to undertake at this difficult time. So, Sonja Fritzsche and I asked Penny Weber and Bonnie Russell from the HuMetricsHSS team to help us develop a process that might best be called a “values-enacted committee charge.” Our approach is rooted in the recognition that transformative change is only possible when values are intentionally woven into every aspect of university life. Each interaction, each encounter, offers a new opportunity to put shared values into intentional practice. Indeed, values are enacted in every action we undertake. Whether we recognize them or not, values express themselves in action. Yet, too often the values that implicitly shape our institutional practices are not aligned with those we say we care most deeply about.
So to begin our work together as a committee, we replaced the traditional “charge meeting” with a set of activities designed to identify the core values of the group and to open a meaningful dialogue about how these shared values would be put into practice both in their work together as a group and in the recommendations they were being asked to make.
Following adrienne maree brown’s advice in *Holding Change*, we began with a deep breath. “Use breath to cultivate patience in yourself and in the group,” brown writes, “Values get lost in haste.”1 We then went around the room with a one-word check-in to begin to establish trusting connections among the group. The prompt we used was: “In one word, what is the value that has been most helpful to you as you have navigated the last few weeks?”
This short practice of breathing together and checking in with one another opened a space of trust among the group and prepared us for the work of surfacing the values that would shape the work ahead.
In preparing for the meeting, the leadership team identified three values that we thought would need to be activated in any successful work of a committee focused on reimagining the summer budget model: Equity, Inclusion, and Trust. So in framing the next phase of the meeting, we were explicit that these were the three values the leadership had identified. We invited the group then to consider other values that might be important to them in their work together. We asked: What values are missing and would you like to replace any of the proposed values.
We received a beautiful list of new values to consider, including: honesty, wholeness, responsibility, diversity, opportunity, listening, transparency, trust, consistency, humility, joy, and heart.
From this list, we reduced the values the group identified as shared to the following: Equity, Inclusion, Trust, Vulnerability/Patience, and Community.
Articulating Principles
With these values in hand, we took the last 35 minutes of the meeting to consider how we would enact these values 1) in our work together and 2) in the recommendations the committee would make. The HuMetricsHSS team has learned over time how important it is to be clear before the practical work begins about what these values mean in practice.
The conversation deepened as we moved into this phase of the discussion as colleagues began to imagine how they would activate these values in their work together and in the work they would produce. Let me provide two examples here, one for how the group agreed to put equity into practice and one for how they agreed to enact the value of trust.
So, for example, we agreed that Equity in our work together means:
We agreed that Equity in our recommendations would mean:
We agreed that in relation to our work together, trust would mean:
In relation to our recommendations, we agreed that trust would mean:
Moving from the abstract practice of identifying values to a concrete account of how these values would be put into practice deepened the trust the group was committed to cultivating.
We ended the meeting with one-word check-outs, asking each person to offer the values with which they were leaving the meeting. For me as Dean, my word was gratitude, both for the time our colleagues committed to this meeting, but also for the wholeheartedness they bring to the work we are doing together.
“I think one of the most profound effects that we could have… is to give people practice in having productive conversations about important issues that are unclear to us and that we disagree about.”
[Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, “Three Women Conversing” (detail)]
I think one of the most profound effects that we could have—which I think is shared with other kinds of philosophy we teach—is to give people practice in having productive conversations about important issues that are unclear to us and that we disagree about (for which, at least in some cases, the stakes are pretty high). We have discussions, try to reason together about things where the issues are not settled beforehand and we care about the answers. For example, a lot of people care about the relationship between the mind and the body, how we are to live together, or whether or not God exists. In many of those discussions the personal and social stakes are high, we disagree about the answers and we don’t even know what the rules of the game are.
Having an intellectual discipline where we can do that, and not only do that but practise… I think that’s a very profound and special thing to be able to learn… and something the world needs more of! I know I sound preachy… but that’s why I teach philosophy. We just practice doing this, and hopefully we learn how to do it better and better, and we can learn the merits of understanding what’s getting said when somebody gives a reason for something. And what I try and get my logic students to do is to understand the different ways you can clarify things by understanding the difference between: (i) ‘I disagree with you just because I think the conclusion that you’ve said is wrong’ (aka ‘I just want to reflect on the fact without really knowing what to say about the path that you’ve taken to get to your conclusion’) and (ii) ‘I actually agree with you about your conclusion but I don’t think there is a really good reason for it, and here’s why’. Being able to change the way we work together and think together is meaningful. When we do that well, does it change the way we view the world? Hopefully, yes.
In response to another question about misconsceptions about philosophers, Professor Restall emphasizes the creative aspects of the discipline:
I think the biggest misconception that people have about philosophers, or at least as I would like philosophers to be, is that we are the kind of people who are sitting back and evaluating and criticising everything rather than engaging in conceptual creativity for themselves and for others. I think that the most interesting critical work in philosophy is critical in order to open up space for creation of new possibilities and understanding. And that’s where the fun, the life, and the interest lie, in opening up forms of possibility and understanding for people.
You can read the whole interview here.
Gender and sexuality are a spectrum. In common discourse, we lose sight of what that means. Very Online approaches to gender and sexuality seem to say that gender and sexuality are a spectrum, but everyone is at a very specific and static spot on that spectrum. That fits with the more everyday discourse that was able to absorb the normalization of homosexuality on the condition that every individual clearly fits into one specific box. But that’s not how it is, and everyone probably understands that. Even among people who are exclusively heterosexual, there is a spectrum of how attracted they are to the opposite sex — how many partners they seek, how much monogamy is a struggle for them, how sexually motivated they are at all, etc. Enough people seem to be able to rest more or less content with monogamy that the whole thing basically “works,” but if we’re being honest, there are some people for whom it was never going to happen and who therefore never should have been expected to get married or have exclusive relationships.
Everything relating to sex and gender is like that. On the spectrum of same-sex desire, for instance, there are those for whom it’s a non-negotiable exclusive preference and others who could make a basically heterosexual lifestyle work, and a whole range in between. We see this from history — there are a lot of men, for instance, who were known to be primarily same-sex attracted but were able to hold together a marriage and have children. By the standards of the time, those marriages may have even been relatively happy! And on gender identity, there are people who absolutely need to transition or else their life will be constant suffering and others who can tolerate living in public as their assigned identity as long as they have some private release, and a whole range in between.
The political strategy of the “closet” was to require those people who exist in the more liminal spaces to hide, then relentlessly stigmatize and persecute the people for whom conformity was simply never going to be an option. The latter incentivizes the former — you’d only choose to live as homosexual or trans if the cost of denying it was worse than the social costs of acknowledging it. All but the youngest generations are familiar with this dynamic at first-hand. Every 80s kid, including myself, looks back and is horrified at the casual homophobia that was flung around the schoolyard in those tense days just before public acceptance of homosexuality gained critical mass. We were being groomed, from a very young age, to be homophobes. And the goal of that project was emphatically not to convert homosexuals or trans people, at least not among intelligent conservatives. The goal was to use the non-negotiable homosexuals and trans people to make sure that everyone who could stand to conform, would conform. Those who couldn’t conform and were never going to be able to conform were made into living sacrifices to normative heterosexuality.
That’s why the strategy of coming out of the closet was so powerful. The entire system depended on the idea that sexual minorities were freaks and monsters, and the majority could sustain that belief because so many people with those inclinations kept them secret. Once they stopped keeping it secret — often at great personal cost to the earliest generation of activists — the dynamic could no longer hold. Sexual minorities were not those strange scary outsiders. Everyone knew someone who belonged to a sexual minority, often intimately. The strategy was so powerful that it led to the legalization of gay marriage by a conservative Supreme Court — a move that would have been unthinkable in my childhood, but seemed obvious and long overdue when it finally happened.
Now the first generation of children is growing up for whom this new regime of gender and sexuality is normal. And what many — including myself — would now like to see is an inverse of the strategy of the closet. Instead of a default assumption of conformity unless the non-normative is totally irresistible, the approach should be to allow young people to experiment and see what really works for them. Hence young people should ideally be allowed to follow their curiosity and attraction before claiming a sexual orientation. More kids will wind up dating or even having some intimate contact with people of the same sex than wind up “being” homosexual in the long haul, and that’s okay and natural.
The same would apply to gender identity. In the past, only those who were in indisputable agony could pursue some kind of gender reassignment, and only at the cost of pathologizing themselves. Now, however, people who are uncomfortable with their gender identity — which, if we’re honest, includes almost everyone, at least at some times and to some degree — should be able to experiment, including living publicly as a member of the target gender (i.e., “socially transitioning”). The assumption is that more people are going to experiment than wind up adopting a gender identity other than the one assigned at birth, and especially more than wind up surgically transitioning. And that’s okay!
In contrast to the closet system, which aimed to churn out as many passable cisgendered heterosexuals as feasible, this system aims to make sure that no one whose life would have been enriched by non-normative gender or sexual practice is missed. The reality of evolution probably indicates that the majority of people will still remain other-gender attracted and have gender identities that correspond with that assigned at birth. But the number of people who wind up claiming non-normative identities will be larger than it was under conditions of systematic persecution and repression.
And the number of people who temporarily try out those other identities can be expected to balloon, given the realities of the teenage libido and the quotidian body-horror of going through puberty. More people are going to pursue that faint stirring of attraction to someone of the same sex when they don’t have to worry about being beaten up after school (including by that cute boy or girl) and more people are going to see if living as the opposite gender is the solution to their discomfort with their own body than they would in a situation where such a thing would have been simply unthinkable — both conditions that held during my lifetime (meaning during the lifetime of people who are raising young kids today).
All of that is happening now, at least in areas where policy enshrines some kind of openness to gender and sexual minorities. The fact that it is happening was predictable, and it is good. It opens up a situation where fewer people have to live lives of quiet despair for the sake of fulfilling an arbitrary role. It is the one way in which our children’s lives might be better than ours.
And so of course, a vocal minority of parents absolutely hate it. In response to this massive, positive social change, they are trying to reinstitute the closet. The strategies are the same as always — tarring all sexual minorities as pedophiles, equating all non-normative practices with the most extreme (e.g., acting as though social transitioning is tantamount to irreversible surgery), stripping gender and sexual minorities of basic political rights, etc., etc. The goal cannot be to eliminate homosexuality and trans experience — every intelligent person knows that’s impossible. The goal, rather, is to make the cost of expressing homosexual inclination or trans identity so high that the marginal few who could go either way find a way to make conformity work. In other words, a hard core of people who have no choice but to express homosexual inclination or trans identity will have to live thwarted, persecuted lives to marginally increase the odds that some bigot’s son or daughter will suck it up and settle into a “normal” marriage and produce a grandchild or two, so that the next generation can in turn suck it up and conform as well.
It’s an ugly political strategy that draws in ugly people and makes them uglier. People are going to die — whether by vigilante violence, or “gay panic” or “trans panic,” or suicide — because of this. And all to perpetuate a form of life that isn’t really making anyone happy at the end of the day. Why would people spend their lives and tarnish their souls for this? They claim it’s out of love, but I think it expresses a profound hatred of their own children, or at least of what their children might be or become apart from them. Perhaps it’s even a hatred of the part of themselves that wishes it could have had free range to experiment! It’s probably not helpful to speculate about that too much in individual cases, though. The larger reality is that the political strategy of the closet was a brutal, violent system, and a brutal, violent system produces brutalized, violated people who go on to be brutal and violent.
And it is by no means obvious that they will fail in their ambition to reinstitute the closet! The strategies are right there, familiar and ready to hand. For all but the youngest generation, they are a sad kind of muscle memory. All it takes is for the forces of repression to seem stronger and suddenly a lot of people will find a way to conform — as we can already see in the rank cowardice of most ostensibly “liberal” politicians and commentators on trans issues. Surely we are all old enough to know that progress is not automatic, that social justice does not depend on the date on the calendar, that every gain is reversible. The acceptance of minority gender and sexual identities was a contingent historical achievement, and allowing those gains to be reversed will have been a contingent historical failure — on the part of people who responded to irrational hatred with a pose of “reasonableness,” flinching in the face of a bully just as most of us did in the schoolyard.
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akotsko
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