On 26 September 2023, the X handle of Pakistan’s Aurat March tweeted: ‘It’s important to keep in mind that menstruation is a biological process & biology is different from gender (which is socially constructed). Not all those who have a uterus are women & not all women have a uterus. Reducing a woman down to a uterus is misogynistic.’

Aurat March, or ‘Women’s March’, is an umbrella group led by feminist activists, which organises demonstrations across Pakistan’s major cities on International Women’s Day, and engages in other forms of rights activism across the rest of the year. Aurat March’s tweet sparked the customary backlash against the group in Pakistan, but also led to more constructive critiques from certain quarters, including a BBC Urdu article. The article cited concerns raised by certain women over Aurat March’s tweet on the grounds that it erased the biological reality of women, while also quoting the Aurat March organiser’s defence of their message.

Aurat March’s message echoed the claims of gender identity ideology, which are at present the subject of bitter disagreement in the West. The ideology claims that a person’s gender, unlike the biological sex they are born with, is down to that person’s own feelings and hence entirely subjective and a matter of self-identification: as Aurat March’s tweet puts it, that gender is ‘socially constructed’.

While evidence of gender dysphoria, and individuals identifying outside the male and female binary, can be found across human history, consolidated transgenderism emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century. Western gender identity ideology differs from clinically diagnosable variance, or the earmarking of a third gender used to categorise individuals who do not fit the binary across the world. Instead, it seeks to synonymise those born in a particular sex with those identifying as such from the opposite sex, while paradoxically allotting them separate ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ labels respectively. Perhaps its most contentious assertion remains that ‘trans women are women’, which is the essence of the above-cited tweet by Aurat March and of narratives upheld by many women’s rights organisations in the region, such as Feminism In India.

It should be self-explanatory why ‘trans men are men’ never became the transgender rallying cry: quite simply, biological men are less likely to be concerned about invasion of their spaces. As the philosopher Alex Byrne put it in an interview for the Freethinker, ‘Generally speaking, men could not give a fig about whether trans men are included in men-only sporting contests or use men’s changing rooms or are in the male prison estate.’

On the flipside, regardless of where one stands on the gender debate, modern-day transgenderism quite evidently clashes with hard-earned sex-based rights that women activists have toiled for over the past century. In the West, concerns over female physical and reproductive integrity, and the desire to retain women-only spaces, have transformed bathrooms, prisons, and sports competitions into gender ideology battlegrounds. But while the simmering debate over the clash between transgenderism and sex-based rights is founded over a largely egalitarian bedrock in the West, the thoughtless imitation of gender identity ideology has much more perilous repercussions in the Indian subcontinent, with its predominantly patriarchal culture.

Attitudes to women and the opportunities available to them differ between the South Asian states. However, as a regional bloc, these states are among the lowest ranked on global gender indices. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023, six of the seven SAARC states, namely India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, ranked lower than 100 in the 146-country rankings; India did so despite staking a credible claim to being a global power. Across South Asia, institutionalised gender disparity, upheld by state-backed radical religionism, as well as skewed cultural norms, and ethnic, racial, or casteist divides, has made it more critical than ever for local feminists to take up a united front against the patriarchal forces which are still very much alive. However, the influx of gender identity ideology has polarised subcontinental feminism to a point where, in a bitter irony, violent misogynists have a clearer understanding of who or what a woman is than organisations dedicated to safeguarding women.

I spoke with over 100 feminist activists across the Indian subcontinent to discuss the influence of gender identity ideology on South Asian women’s rights movements. The investigations have unveiled ominous patterns. Most activists in leadership positions tended to be proponents of gender identity ideology: this reflects the almost unanimous espousal of this ideology across major feminist organisations in the region. For instance, veteran Indian women’s rights activist Urvashi Butalia, co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house, insists ‘trans women are essential to Indian feminism’.

Many gender critical feminists whom I spoke to preferred to remain anonymous, fearing backlash within their organisations and movements. What was also evident was the urban-rural divide in the endorsement of narratives, with many from smaller towns critiquing the predominantly Western-educated feminist leaders for enforcing ‘foreign ideas’ that were detached from the ground realities of these countries.

In fact, it is simply not possible to initiate an egalitarian debate on gender identity in traditional rural communities like those scattered across southern Asia. In these communities, there is institutionalised gender inequality. Their religionist laws render women insignificant or unequal in familial matters, or half as worthy as men in legal matters. Indeed, the entire course of your life may be predetermined if you are born female. In such communities, women are second-class citizens. Given this codification of gender disparity, the idea of campaigning for the right of men to identify and be legally treated as women would simply be met with incredulity.

On the other hand, in the current legal landscape, there are good reasons why women might want to identify as men: so as to receive better treatment. Many gender critical feminists I spoke to insist that this is happening already. The Indian film maker Vaishnavi Sundar covered the topic in a 2021 documentary on the effect of gender identity on women and girls, especially in developing countries, entitled Dysphoric: Fleeing Womanhood Like a House on Fire. Some feminists I spoke to in Bangladesh also said that women are being encouraged by sexist Islamic inheritance laws to identify as men, given the sharia provisions tilted in men’s favour. Of course, there are then complications when trans people want to detransition – but that is another story.

This does not mean that an idea or ideology should be rejected in south Asian countries simply because it has its origins in the West. Doing so would simply pander to the hypernationalist or religionist rhetoric that labels all foreign ideologies that differ from a local community’s values as a conspiracy that aims to destroy their religious or cultural beliefs.

This consideration has led to a dilemma for gender critical feminists in South Asia, who want to challenge the sweeping enforcement of Western gender identity ideology, while at the same time being determined not to ally themselves with religionist bigots who advocate violence against marginalised communities at home. Making dissent even more complicated is the fact that even those South Asian feminists who have criticised the gender ideology pervading left-leaning Western media have used a religious or cultural relativist rationale to justify their position. For instance, they have deployed oxymoronic terms like ‘Islamic feminism’ to advocate for movements more palatable to the masses. Yet the idea that a religion that is explicitly misogynistic by modern standards could be inherently feminist is ludicrous.

Put simply, gender equality is widely considered an unpalatable foreign idea in South Asia. When faced with two unpalatable foreign ideas that conflict with each other – gender equality and gender identity ideology – feminists, in their efforts to resist hyperconservative backlash, are truly between a rock and a hard place.

My investigations have further exposed the role played by the plight of South Asia’s hijra or khawaja sara community in the acceptance of the prevalent transgender ideology in progressive circles. The hijra have been institutionalised as the ‘third gender’.

In South Asia, the ‘third gender’ has historically denoted intersex individuals and eunuchs, and has therefore been grounded in biological reality. However, both historically and today, many biological men and some women have also identified as the third gender, which also overlapped with homosexuality. In short, the ‘third gender’ has been used as a broader umbrella term to incorporate all identities that did not align with the heterosexual male or female. Critically, however, it has never clashed with sex-based rights or gender critical feminism, since it has not attempted to impinge on the categories of male and female gender. In contrast, Western transgender ideology negates this idea of a third gender, insisting on self-identification even for the determination of who a man or woman is. Yet having a third category actually helps to address many of the conflicts within genders and movements, not least because the hijra or khawaja sara community do not stake a claim to women’s spaces.

Surprisingly, numerous local feminists interviewed for the piece were unaware of western transgender ideology; instead, they equated the term ‘transgender’ with the indigenous hijra or khawaja sara. This tendency to identify the foreign concept with the local one also explains the passage of transgender rights legislations in some South Asian countries, even though homosexuality is still criminalised or violently punished in those countries, and many crimes of conscience are still punishable by death. In Pakistan, for instance, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 was passed as a codification of the fundamental rights of the hijra community as a third gender. However, its phrasing, which endorses the right for anyone to identify as a man or woman, regardless of their biological identity, led to it being struck down by the Federal Shariat Court as ‘un-Islamic’ on the grounds that it ‘promotes homosexuality’, which is criminalised in Pakistan.   

For many South Asian liberals, to question transgender ideology would simply be to endorse the brutalities and discrimination that LGBT people of all kinds continue to face in South Asia, ranging from taboos surrounding their existence to gruesome murders. In the light of the physical threats faced by the local transgender or khawaja sara community, even gender critical feminists have been forced to reconsider their critique of transgenderism.

In this turbulent context, it is easy to view Western transgender ideology as simply another cause that is trampled on by local prejudice, along with homophobia and misogyny. However, in reality, doing so can muddy the waters still further.  

Many activists, especially those outside South Asian urban centres, insist that the ideological polarisation imported from the Western culture wars needs to be countered by movements that are clear and cognisant of the differences that shape communities in the Indian subcontinent, and which channel their activism accordingly.

‘The gender debate has indeed polarised not only the West but [societies] all over the world. The conflation of the hijra community with the transgender identity [is a] complex issue. It is crucial for organisations to recognise and address the unique challenges faced by the hijra community [and] emphasise the importance of nuanced understanding,’ says Dr SN Sharma, the CEO of the Rajasthan Samgrah Kalyan Sansthan, a human rights organisation based in Ajmer, India, which is dedicated to supporting the marginalised.

In a 2017 BBC documentary, Inside Transgender Pakistan, members of the khawaja sara community expressed their condemnation of western transgenderism as a threat to their right to identify as the third gender. Today, that hard-won identity is being labelled ‘problematic’ in progressive circles in South Asia itself, from Nepal to Bangladesh. Prominent hijra activists in the Indian subcontinent now are echoing western transgender narratives. One explanation for this, which is perhaps pragmatic rather than idealistic, is the growing support for transgender rights as a whole among non-governmental organisations, which often rely on Western funds for their sustenance. The funding and its concomitant influence from the West are a critical factor for such organisations in the region, especially those geared towards fighting for human rights. This necessary influence inevitably aligns the activism compass of feminist movements to the West as well.

This alignment with human rights values in the Western tradition largely results in important work being done on the rights front. Yet at the same time, it inadvertently puts the urban Western-educated elite at the helm of local progressive movements. Many working class feminists and senior women’s rights figures whom I spoke to underlined the fact that, in the past, rights activism was often voluntarily undertaken by women in parallel with full-time jobs or family lives. Today, however, rights activism has become an entire profession and a livelihood for many individuals. This situation reaffirms the stranglehold of the elite over human rights in India, Pakistan and elsewhere. These urban, Western-educated leaders face little challenge from less Westernised subordinates, often from smaller towns, who are unwilling to challenge narratives dictated from the top, out of fear that it might jeopardise their own position – and employment.

‘Not only narratives, they also promote fellow feminists from their urban inner elite circle,’ journalist and activist Tehreem Azeem, who has worked for numerous rights organisations, told me. ‘They are Western-educated and follow woke ideas and this reflects in their narratives, especially on social media. We often don’t know who is making organisational decisions, you are not allowed to enter that circle.’

This takeover of the Westernised elite results in indigenous rights movements even echoes Western language, often quite literally. One prominent example is that many feminist organisations across the subcontinent ask participants at events and trainings to list their preferred pronouns in the English language. This, many feminists from smaller towns insist, is a regular practice even in rural areas where English is not as commonly understood.

‘In many workshops and conferences they would ask participants to introduce themselves and then share their pronouns, which I always felt was extremely bizarre, given the context of our setting,’ says Azeem. ‘Even if you are importing something from the West, you can try to bring it in the local context.’

More than the categorisation of preferred pronouns, the fact that this exercise is done almost exclusively in the English language is perhaps the biggest giveaway in identifying the disconnect between the values of the human rights elite and the masses. The most commonly spoken languages across the Indian subcontinent, including over a hundred regional languages and Hindi and Urdu (the most widely understood), are intrinsically gendered and devoid of gender neutral pronouns and phrases once conjugated with the subject. Those displaying English language pronouns, especially those who are not transgender themselves, seem less invested in founding ungendered language at home than they are in finding commonality and acceptance within elite Western circles.

Many feminist workers told me that the leaderships of their rights organisations feel a need to align themselves with foreign narratives, because a large proportion of the funds for such groups comes from Western countries. Some workers said that it is pressure from Western donors that compels local organisations to align their narratives accordingly. Others argued that even though the foreign funders never explicitly dictate the ideology of local groups, there remains competition among organisations within the same country to win Western grants: this pushes a need to find connectivity and validation among them, not least by speaking their language and swallowing their values whole. Furthermore, the South Asian political left is virtually camped in Western institutes: they are educated in the West, have lived there, and spend a considerable amount of time in Western leftist circles.

This inevitably results in an inflow of West-centred arguments. Ironically, many of the postcolonial narratives are churned out by universities based in former colonising countries such as the UK, and readopted by the university-educated elite in their former colonies. 

People in South Asia who condemn feminist organisations from the outside, such as influential  figures like Jagadish Vasudev or Zakir Naik, predominantly come from a position of opposing women’s rights movements as a whole, preferring to enforce patriarchal norms. A different type of challenge to feminist organisations is posed by dissenters within their own ranks.

In India and Pakistan, as in the UK and the US, gender critical feminists who advocate sex-based rights are targeted – and with the same weapons. ‘Terf’, or ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’, is now a slur being deployed to silence gender critical voices in South Asia.

These types of allegations were, for instance, also made against one of the Indian subcontinent’s most prominent feminist activists, Kamla Bhasin. Bahsin, an activist, author and social scientist who passed away in 2021, had decades of women’s rights work under her belt, the last 20 years of which saw her found Sangat, a network of South Asian feminists.

I spoke to thirteen members of Sangat about the allegations that Bhasin faced months before she passed away. Bhasin was accused by various feminist groups, including Feminism In India, of being a ‘transphobe’, because she was critical of the gender identity narrative and endorsed a biological definition of ‘woman’. For these members of Sangat, the treatment of Bhasin was a reminder that even half a century of women’s rights advocacy was not enough for one of its leading activists to be given the space to dissent against gender identity ideology. Most of the Sangat graduates whom I spoke to believed that while disagreements with some of Bhasin’s views have always existed among the network, the unified public backlash against her over her gender critical views came as a shock. This backlash further silenced many feminists into acquiescence over the general direction of the movement.

Even so, many South Asian feminist voices still decide to go public with their dissenting views on gender identity ideology, often at personal cost. Among these is Thulasi Muttulingam, the founder of Humans of Northern Sri Lanka. ‘The wider networks of feminists – it’s a small country and we know each other [and] have networked together on various issues – have cancelled me,’ she says. The backlash, she stresses, came three years ago when she first began questioning the animosity against JK Rowling over her gender critical views. Muttulingam, a member of women’s rights organisation Vallamai, says her women’s day speech was boycotted this year, because she chose the theme of transgenderism and sex-based rights. ‘It was the Social Scientists Study circle and their monthly meetings are usually well attended,’ she said. The poor attendance ‘told me how much the liberals were scared off by the topic. Then a network of diaspora and Tamil feminists held a Zoom meeting to misrepresent what I said and denounced me as a bigot [and] transphobe.’

Natasha Noreen, the founder of Feminism Pakistan, saw a similar backlash when she shared gender critical views on her Facebook page which endorsed Rowling’s position on womanhood and insisted that biological men cannot become women simply by identifying as such.

‘The cancellation campaign began. Activists from Islamabad and Lahore started bashing me,’ she said. ‘I was invited to an online session, where I was told it was going to be a neutral talk, while four other participants and the host all were on one side just humiliating me.’ Noreen, like others critical of transgenderism and its denial of sex-based spaces for women, has been removed from social, professional, and activist groups.  ‘Fellow [women’s rights] activists have stopped talking to me. Pakistani feminists were my tribe, my people.’

Vaishnavi Sundar, meanwhile, was not just cancelled in India but also in the US, where the scheduled New York screening of her documentary on workplace harassment, ‘But What Was She Wearing’ was stopped owing to her views on pre-operative trans women. ‘Why are you cancelling an Indian woman [in America] for something she tweeted on her private Twitter? I just wanted to preserve women-only spaces,’ she told me. Since then Sundar has been blocked out of many feminist initiatives and groups and has had to focus on working independently. ‘People just stopped responding, stopped talking, stopped doing a lot of things that they used to before,’ she said. ‘I used to be one of those go-to people on things concerning women. Because I’ve researched on this for so long. It’s as if I made this observation on the trans ideology and suddenly my expertise and my films don’t matter anymore, because I have committed the cardinal sin of saying trans women are not women.’

It is important to underline here that many of these South Asian feminist voices cancelled as ‘transphobes’ have been long advocates of gay rights and the rights of the traditional hijra community in South Asia. Much of the critique of modern transgenderism made by such gender critical feminists aims to distinguish biological sex, and to use that scientific reality to reaffirm the importance of women-only spaces. It is certainly not intended to support the persecution of individuals.  

Wherever one stands on the divide between Western transgender activists and gender critical feminists, there are two irrefutable and vital facts that need to be taken into consideration. First, that there is a clash between advocates of gender identity ideology on the one hand, and, on the other, advocates not just of sex-based, but also of gay rights, and those defining their sex or sexuality based on the human anatomy. The second fact, especially critical to the Indian subcontinent, is that modern transgender ideology is very novel to the region, where individuals not considered male or female have historically been assigned to a third, broader gender.

Faced with these realities, the silencing of gender critical feminists, especially among the urban women’s rights groups, is bound to be detrimental not just to women’s rights, but to the well-being of all groups that these organisations are claiming to protect.

This point cannot be stressed enough. The proponents of gender neutral language on issues that overwhelmingly concern the female sex insist that all historically considered ‘women’s issues’ are no longer in fact women’s issues. If their approach is adopted without question, then for all practical purposes there is no exclusive women’s rights movement, and in turn no feminism.

What exclusive women’s issue would Feminism In India be concerned with, if feminism is redefined to concern every type of person except the cisgendered heterosexual male? Why would ‘Aurat March’ continue to use the ‘Aurat’ prefix and not call itself Insaan, or ‘Human’, march? This type of attitude from Western transgender activists and ‘allies’ has made it all too easy for patriarchal, conservative and misogynistic detractors of feminism, especially in South Asia, to insist that there is no such thing as exclusively women’s rights. Feminist groups in the Indian subcontinent are practically making the same argument as their conservative opponents – ostensibly in the name of progress.  

Local movements that had begun to put forth the notion that a woman should not be limited by her anatomy are now upholding the idea that a woman is not defined by any particular anatomy at all. Similarly, where the purpose of challenging gender was to oppose gender roles and stereotypes, now those who purport to challenge gender stereotypes either use those very stereotypes as evidence of transgenderism, or try to eradicate or deny the idea of gender altogether.

Tasaffy Hossain, the founder of the Bangladesh-based organisation Bonhishikha, which uses the tagline ‘unlearn gender’, argues that much of the conversation in South Asia on transgender rights is still based on the realities of the West, and that it is critical to uphold the concerns of all groups and all identities in the region. ‘There is the issue of what feels safe for whom, what is triggering for whom, which is a deeper conversation. Cis women would have a different concept of what is safety to them. Trans women would have a different idea of what is safe to them. Even within the queer spaces we have seen, it’s not always safe just because everyone is queer,’ she told me.

Hossain echoes pretty much every South Asian women and gender rights organisation, those advocating gender identity ideology and its critics, when she says that ‘not enough conversation has been had’ over these concerns. However, many of those leading feminist organisations in the Indian subcontinent, who lament the lack of such conversations, have done little to allow an equal opportunity to share opposing ideas within feminist circles, and have in fact predetermined the conclusion of discussions that are yet to be openly had.

The failure to acknowledge the distinguishing characteristics of different identities, and in turn the exclusivity of their concerns, is creating rifts within minority movements that have only just begun to reverberate at the grassroots level. This is only emboldening the misogynistic forces within South Asia, such as religionist groups and ultra-conservative politicians, who are successfully exploiting the gaping hole between insufficiently dissected gender ideas and the depressingly patriarchal, religious-supremacist realities on the ground.

To counter the regressive forces that are targeting marginalised communities in the Indian subcontinent, it is important that South Asian rights movements embrace the dissenters within their communities, and appreciate the distinctions that they want to make. This is the only way that they will be able to address their different concerns, which are grounded in the unique realities of individuals, subgroups and the region as a whole. Similarly, it is time for Western advocates of gender identity ideology to acknowledge the negative impact which their ideology is having on the rights of violently marginalised people across the world, such as the women and hijra in the Indian subcontinent. For the problem with absolutist ideologies is that they are theoretical and totalitarian – and as such, they always risk becoming inhumane.  

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The post South Asia’s silenced feminists appeared first on The Freethinker.

2023 has been an eventful year for free thought, humanism and secularism. Below, Emma Park and Daniel James Sharp look back on some of the major issues that have been debated in the Freethinker this year.

I. Free speech, religion and the culture wars

Free thought and intellectual progress are not possible without a shared culture of free speech, open debate and a willingness to engage with different points of view. One of the Freethinker’s concerns this year has been with attempts to repress free speech, especially in the UK and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, and in the context of the ‘culture wars’.

In Ireland, a new bill on hate offences threatens to undermine free speech, not just about religion but on a variety of the most sensitive topics – in other words, topics on which open debate is crucial. In Wakefield, England, in February, a non-Muslim woman, presumably under pressure, donned a veil and made a humiliating public apology in the local mosque, because her autistic son had brought a copy of the Quran into school and it was accidentally scuffed. And Puffin has made attempts to censor Roald Dahl in the name of ‘sensitivity’.

Free speech at universities also remains under pressure, as illustrated by the case of Professor Steven Greer, who was hounded by Bristol University Islamic Society in a smear campaign that was supported by academic colleagues who should have known better. Daniel reviewed Greer’s book about his experiences.

Across the pond, Professor Alex Byrne’s contract for a book critical of gender identity ideology was cancelled by Oxford University Press, but has since been published by Polity. From a different perspective, former vice chancellor Julius Weinberg argued that ‘freedom of speech is not as simple as my right to express my ideas’.

To supporters of democracy in Hong Kong, the culture wars are all but an irrelevance. The suffocating control of the Chinese Communist Party, said Kevin Yam, forced campaigners across the political spectrum to work together.

II. Science, philosophy, and humanism

As well as exploring the issues of the day, the Freethinker has also explored some of their deeper philosophical and historical contexts.

We interviewed the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett about the relationship between philosophy and science, meaning and consciousness in a godless, Darwinian universe, and New Atheism. With historian Charles Freeman, we discussed the richness and variety of the ancient Greek mind and how the coming of Christian orthodoxy put an end to that tradition. And we caught up with the humanist and author Sarah Bakewell to explore different traditions of humanism.

Meanwhile, Matt Johnson and Daniel Sharp both contributed articles about one of the most famous freethinkers of recent years, the late Christopher Hitchens.

III. Islam and free thought

With the rise of Islam in Britain and across the West, it has become urgent to consider how far the religion can be compatible with Western values and approaches. To explore this question, we interviewed Taj Hargey, possibly Britain’s only liberal imam. Other contributors have explored the need to rekindle irreverence for Islam in Muslim thought around the world, why the hijab is not a good symbol for women, and whether it is possible to distinguish between religious and political Islam.

IV. Secularism

Secularism is the principle that religion and state should be separated, and that religion should have no undue influence on public life. In the UK, thanks to a combination of political apathy and entrenched privilege, we still have an established church and unelected clergy in Parliament. Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat peer, spoke to the Freethinker about why he introduced a bill to disestablish the Church of England.

With a general election on the cards for 2024, Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society discussed where the political parties stand on faith schools. Two recent events in which the NSS participated revealed some of the challenges involved in secularisation. Daniel also argued in an article for Only Sky that the Church of England’s record on gay marriage is another reason to hasten disestablishment.

Other contributors to the Freethinker have looked at secularism, its history and future, in Québec, Turkey and Wales, and the strengths and weaknesses of French-style laïcité.

Did you know that, while the advancement of any religion, as well as of humanism, is considered a charitable aim under English law, the advancement of free thought, atheism or secularism is not? See Emma’s piece for New Humanist.

V. Israel and Palestine

One of the year’s biggest events—the Hamas attack against Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war—has produced a wide range of often emotional and heated responses. In contrast to all this sound and fury, the Freethinker has published a series of articles dealing with the conflict from different and often disagreeing, but rationally and charitably argued perspectives.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid wrote about the ‘leftist postcolonial apologia’ for Hamas and argued that the Israel-Palestine conflict is, at root, a religious one, while in Emma’s interview with Taj Hargey, the imam was staunch in his support of the ‘occupied and oppressed’ Palestinians. Hina Husain wrote about her Pakistani upbringing and being inculcated with Islam-based anti-Semitism. Finally, Ralph Leonard responded to all these articles, arguing that the conflict is, in fact, inspired more by competing nationalisms than religious impulses.

VI. Republicanism

Free thought and secularism have been closely intertwined with republicanism in British history. The Freethinker has reinforced this link since its beginnings in 1881.

This year, we have continued in the same spirit of religious and political anti-authoritarianism, publishing a review by Daniel of the republican activist Graham Smith’s anti-monarchy book. Later in the year, Daniel interviewed Graham Smith in person at Conway Hall. Meanwhile, Emma delved into the archives to discover the connection between the Freethinker and Republic, of which Smith is the CEO.

See also Daniel’s article on the republican Thomas Paine’s influence on Christopher Hitchens and Tony Howe’s discussion of an even earlier famous British republican, John Milton.

VII. Free thought history

In June, we were saddened to hear of the death of Jim Herrick (1944-2023), former editor of the Freethinker. Bob Forder, NSS historian, wrote an obituary commemorating Jim’s lifelong dedication to free thought, humanism and secularism.

The composer Frances Lynch wrote a guest post about her rediscovery of Eliza Flower, a radical nineteenth-century composer associated with Conway Hall, who was neglected by the historical record because she was female.

We have also been reflecting on the history of the Freethinker and of the various non-religious movements in the UK. Former editor Nigel Sinnott kindly agreed to let us republish an article he wrote for the magazine in 1970 in which he discussed the complicated historical relationship between humanists and secularists. Historian Charlie Lynch introduced the recent book he co-wrote with two other academics charting the history of organised humanism in Britain, which Emma has also reviewed for New Humanist. And Bob Forder argued that free thought and secularism are inseparable.

VIII. The future of free thought

Artificial intelligence has made great strides in 2023. (We even used Dall-E, a generative AI model, to illustrate this post.) Given the exponential pace of development, it is clear that the implications need to be monitored very carefully. For instance, there are concerns that ChatGPT may be biased in favour of certain interpretations of Islam. And artificial general intelligence (AGI) may be just around the corner, making ethical oversight all the more urgent.

Emma and Daniel spoke about the nature of free thought and the challenges facing it today and in the future on the Humanism Now podcast, on Freethought Hour and to the Reading Humanists. Emma also spoke to the Central London Humanists about Pastafarianism, arguably the world’s fastest growing religion, and a topic about which there is much to say.

This year also saw the publication of two intriguing books about the impact of digital technology on free thought, one by Simon McCarthy-Jones, and another by Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan. Emma interviewed Laura Dodsworth for the Freethinker and reviewed both books for the Literary Review. We will be looking further at the implications of digital technology for free thought in 2024.

Finally, a request for your support…

The Freethinker is an independent, non-profit journal and completely open-access. We are funded by donations and legacies given by generations of readers back to the 19th century – and not by big corporations or billionaires. To keep us going in the future, we depend on the generosity of readers today. If you believe in the importance of fostering a culture of free thought, open enquiry and irreverence, please consider making a donation via this link.

And don’t forget to sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter, to keep abreast of the latest developments in free thought in the UK and around the world.

Postscript: a merry Christmas of sorts from Christopher Hitchens…

The post Year in review: 2023 appeared first on The Freethinker.

Introduction

Alex Byrne is not necessarily the sort of person whom you would have expected to become involved in the ‘culture wars’. After an initial career in advertising, he studied philosophy at Birkbeck, King’s College London and Princeton, and then did a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. In 1994 he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an Instructor in Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, where he is now a professor. Up till a few years ago, his research centred on abstract philosophical questions like the nature of ‘colour’.

Byrne became interested in the disputes over the meaning of sex and gender in about 2017, after learning about an early academic furore over the analogy or disanalogy between transgenderism and transracialism. He then had a ‘ringside seat’ in the trans debate, or gender debate as it is also known, when his wife, Carole Hooven, was ‘cancelled’ by certain people at Harvard University for publicly expressing her view that sex is biological and binary. His own book, Trouble with Gender, was under contract to Oxford University Press, but the latter withdrew from the contract last year. He discussed the possible reasons for this in an article for Quillette. Trouble with Gender will be published by Polity on 27 October 2023.

I interviewed Professor Byrne across the Atlantic via Zoom. In the edited transcript below, we explore the origins of his interest in the trans debate and his later experience of it, what the debate is actually about, his reasons for writing a book about it, and how a philosopher can contribute to the debate by making clear distinctions.

We also consider how the atmosphere in philosophy departments has changed in recent years, and whether philosophers have a duty to defend words against their destruction.

On debating the trans debate: polite notice

The Freethinker is committed to open, well-reasoned and civilised discussion, in particular on issues where dogma, authoritarianism or fear have led to the suppression or distortion of certain points of view. We are also opposed to extremism and fanaticism of any kind, considering such qualities incompatible with our guiding principles of liberty, reason and humanity. Further discussion here.

We have endeavoured to find contributors to oppose the views advocated in previous articles on the trans or gender debate, but our invitations have so far been met with silence or refusal. If there is anyone out there who has experience or expertise on this topic, and who thinks that the various arguments put forward by Alex Byrne, Helen Joyce and Eliza Mondegreen are fundamentally flawed, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please get in touch via this link.

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Interview

Freethinker: How did you get into philosophy in the first place?

Alex Byrne: It was a rather convoluted route. I think that is true of many philosophers. I started off doing mathematics and physics and then I worked in advertising in London for a number of years. And while I was doing that, I went to Birkbeck College in the evenings to study for a second undergraduate degree in philosophy. I had always been interested in philosophy, but in Britain at the time, it was very hard to put a name to the sorts of issues that I was interested in. I did not realise that there was an actual subject that dealt with these problems and questions that fascinated me. One formative episode was when I saw Men of Ideas by Bryan Magee. I also read AJ Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic, and found it completely enthralling. I believed for a while that logical positivism was the solution to all philosophical problems – I was soon disabused of that.

Looking back over your career in the philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics, what are the contributions you have made to these fields of which you are the most proud?

That is a difficult question. You should really ask someone else about my contributions, such as they are. I have done a lot of work on perception, and in particular the perception of colour. Most of this has been with David Hilbert, a philosopher at the University of Illinois, Chicago. We have written many papers together defending the view that colours are physical properties. In particular, they are just ways of altering the incident light. This is quite a controversial view in the philosophy of colour – a little subdiscipline of philosophy. One view that is perhaps more popular than our physicalist view goes back to the ancient Greeks, that nothing actually is coloured. Even though it seems or looks as if tomatoes are red and grass is green and the sky is blue, in fact, this is just some sort of global illusion and nothing is really coloured. Or at best, if something really is coloured, it is an item in the mind, a mental image or picture.

I think it was Democritus who said, ‘By convention hot, by convention cold, but in reality atoms and void…’

Yes. Democritus is the standard source for this eliminativist view. As that quotation brings out, it is not just colour that is supposed to be an illusion or only in the mind or a matter of convention. It is also other perceptible properties like heat, tastes, smells, sounds and so on.

How and why did you move from this rather abstruse subject to sex and gender?

I had always been interested in sex differences and the explanation of sex differences – why males and females of our species in particular differ in some trait. Also I had always been interested in issues of free speech and was temperamentally inclined towards an absolutist position about speech. And then, in 2017, the philosopher Rebecca Tuvel published a paper called ‘In Defense of Transracialism’, which appeared in the leading journal of feminist philosophy, Hypatia. There was a huge fuss about this paper, which essentially argued that the same courtesies and tolerant attitude granted to a transgender person like Caitlyn Jenner should be extended towards a transracial person like Rachel Dolezal.

The whole message of Tuvel’s paper was very progressive, and you might have thought that, within feminist philosophy, her paper would have been praised. But instead, the opposite happened: it was widely condemned as having the potential to cause great harm to various communities. An open letter appeared signed by many academics, including Judith Butler, the author of Gender Trouble, calling for the paper’s retraction. It was not retracted in the end, fortunately, but it brought home to me very vividly that philosophy at that time had an extremely intolerant side, opposed to academic freedom, which I thoroughly disapproved of.

You mentioned Judith Butler’s book, Gender Trouble. Your book is called Trouble with Gender. Is that a deliberate allusion?

Yes. It is also an allusion to Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham, the British science fiction writer.

You talk about the trouble that Tuvel’s paper caused in academic philosophy. When I was at Oxford in the 2000s, the Philosophy Faculty had a reputation for competitive, no-holds-barred debate. From what I have heard, that was true of many philosophy departments at the time. Is it still the case today? Is frank discussion still possible in university philosophy departments?

Yes, it certainly is, although I think that, over the years, that style of open combat and trying to tear the speaker down has changed. Back in the day, when an invited speaker came to deliver a talk at a colloquium, the attitude of some philosophers was, ‘We have to go into the talk with the aim of humiliating the speaker or destroying his or her ideas, and if we do that, then that is a satisfactory colloquium session.’ Sometimes philosophers went too far in that regard, and the result was that the discipline was less hospitable and welcoming to some people than it should have been.

Now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction: the emphasis is much more on constructive criticism and telling the speaker that his or her paper was excellent and incisive and a great contribution to the topic at hand. There is much more overt praising of speakers at the end of talks than there used to be. And as far as hot-button topics like sex and gender go, unfortunately it is not possible to have a freewheeling discussion without some people getting offended or hurt. As a result, we do not have no-holds-barred discussions about what women are or whether sex is binary.

This timidity came as something of a surprise to me. Philosophers talk a big game. They say, ‘Oh, of course, nothing’s off the table. We philosophers question our most deeply held assumptions. Some of what we say might be very disconcerting or upsetting. You just won’t have any firm ground to stand on after the philosopher has done her work and convinced you that you don’t even know that you have two hands. After all, you might be the victim of an evil demon or be a hapless brain in a vat.’

But when the chips are down, the philosophers turn out to have been bluffing. When there is the real prospect of being socially shamed or ostracised by their peers for questioning orthodoxy, many philosophers do not have the stomach for it.

In your experience, is that true on both sides of the Atlantic?

Yes.

Apart from the trans or gender debate, are there any other issues that cause this amount of friction?

At the moment it is mainly sex and gender. Race is another topic with plenty of no-go zones, in philosophy and elsewhere. Interestingly, in the subdiscipline called the philosophy of race, it is perfectly acceptable to argue for a biological theory of race – that what it is to be black or east Asian or white is to have a certain kind of ancient ancestry, a pure matter of biology, in some broad sense. 

Why is it that this issue of what a person is, or rather, what a woman is, has become such a huge bone of contention among so many people?

That is a good question. I am not sure what the answer is. The question, what is a woman, was asked most famously by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949). And feminist philosophers have been obsessed with the question ever since. But it has never before had the valence that it has now. I suspect that part of the explanation is that in the UK, for example, organisations like Stonewall started hanging their hat on the slogan that ‘trans women are women’. If they had said instead, ‘trans women are trans women’, or ‘trans women deserve to be treated as women’, there is no reason why the issue of what a woman is would have become so contentious. It is quite surreal the way the ‘what is a woman’ question is now used as a kind of ‘gotcha’ question to ask politicians.

In response to this question, for instance, Keir Starmer, the current Labour leader, said in 2021 that it was ‘not right’ to say that only women have a cervix. Then in March this year, he said that, ‘For 99.9 per cent of women, it is completely biological … and of course they haven’t got a penis.’ Finally, in July, he decided that a woman is an ‘adult female’. And as you point out in your book, ‘woman’ was Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2022. Is there a sort of fixation on this question? Why is it always about women?

Of course it is ‘what is a woman?’ – rather than ‘what is a man?’ Not because the ‘woman’ version of the question is harder to answer, but because issues of access to various spaces – sporting competitions, prisons, shelters and so on – are really only an issue for women; there is not a corresponding issue for men. Generally speaking, men could not give a fig about whether trans men are included in men-only sporting contests or use men’s changing rooms or are in the male prison estate. In fact, I think most trans men would very wisely choose to be in the female estate rather than the male estate.

This is one of those rare examples, like the Beatles, where the direction of cultural export goes from the UK to the US. The ‘adult human female’ slogan started in the UK, in 2018, when the infamous billboard went up that quoted the then Google dictionary definition: ‘Woman, wʊmən, noun, adult human female’.

It was only some years later that this made its way over the Atlantic, when Matt Walsh, a conservative commentator who is very popular over here, made a documentary called What is a Woman? The answer that Walsh’s wife gives at the end of the documentary is that a woman is an ‘adult human female’. To get to that rather unexciting point, Walsh interviewed many experts – including, memorably, a gender studies professor – who were completely unable to answer the question coherently.

To sum up, what is really at the heart of the trans debate? What exactly is it about?

That is a good question. There are specific questions or specific issues that divide the so-called gender-critical side from the trans-activist side. One question is about the nature of women and men. What is it to be a woman or a man? Another question is about the nature of sex. Are there two sexes or more than two? Or is sex in some sense socially constructed? Is the notion of sex in good order anyway? Maybe it should be completely junked. And another question is about gender identity. Do we all have gender identities? And is a misaligned gender identity the explanation of why some people suffer distress at their sexed bodies?

There are all these specific issues which are hotly debated. And then, of course, there is the even more contentious issue of how to treat children and adolescents with gender dysphoria – whether to give some of them puberty blockers, for example.

But beyond listing these questions, it is not clear to me that there is some sort of overarching issue which is really what the whole trans debate is about. Everyone sensible in this debate thinks that trans people should be afforded the same dignity and rights as everyone else. They should not be discriminated against, they should receive proper health care, they should be treated with respect in day-to-day life just like their fellow citizens, and if some adults wish to transition, they should be able to.

Is the struggle for trans rights analogous to the historic struggle for gay rights?

No, it is not, because there is no particular right being demanded that trans people lack.

Are there points at which women’s rights and trans rights, whatever these are, will inevitably clash, or do you think there is a way of reconciling them?

I would not put it in terms of a clash of rights, but there certainly are points of conflict. The most obvious of these is in sports. If you are a trans woman and you live your life as a woman and are treated by most people as a woman, it is at least understandable that you would wish to join the women’s team or take part in women’s sporting competitions. On the other side, women have an interest in having female-only categories for many sports. So there is a clear conflict of interest there. Another clear conflict of interest is in the case of prisons.

Let’s talk about your book in a bit more detail. In the ‘acknowledgements’ section, you say your greatest debt is to your wife, Carole Hooven, who was a lecturer on human evolutionary biology at Harvard. In 2021, she published T, which was a popular science book about testosterone. Last year, she wrote an article describing how she was accused of transphobia by certain members of Harvard for explaining on Fox News that sex is binary and biological. To what extent have your wife’s experiences influenced your own interest in the trans (or gender) debate and your views about it?

As a result of the episode you mention, Carole is no longer a lecturer in human evolutionary biology at Harvard. She has a position as an associate in the psychology department, in Steven Pinker’s lab. When this whole affair snowballed, it became apparent that it was not feasible for her to continue teaching in her old department. So she left. Carole’s experiences influenced the book a great deal. In addition to witnessing the backlash against Rebecca Tuvel, Kathleen Stock and other philosophers like Holly Lawford-Smith, I got a ringside seat when it came to Carole’s own cancellation over sex and gender.

That experience made me more determined to write a book on the topic. It is not that I am a particularly courageous person, but it did seem to be extremely unchivalrous to stand by and do nothing when I knew that I had things to say. And many philosophers were promulgating various confusions and mistakes which, I thought, I was in a position to correct.

Where would you put yourself politically?

I am a boring centrist. I have no political affiliation to speak of. I have always voted Democrat in the US. Temperamentally, I think I would really like to be a conservative, but I have never found an intellectually satisfactory way of being one. Socially, I have liberal views of the sort held by most academics.

In your introduction to Trouble with Gender, you write that your book is not about the ‘vitriolic political issues’ associated with the trans debate. Nonetheless, it was refused publication by Oxford University Press, after previously having been accepted. Why do you think OUP refused to publish your book in the end?

This is speculation on my part, but it is worth looking at the immediate history, in particular the fuss over Holly Lawford-Smith’s book Gender Critical Feminism, also published by Oxford University Press. Announcement of its publication produced two petitions of complaint. As I discussed in Quillette, one of these was signed by the OUP Guild (the union representing OUP staff in New York). The other was signed by ‘members of the international scholarly community with a relationship of some kind, or several kinds, to Oxford University Press’. The letters protested against the publication of Lawford-Smith’s book and told OUP to change its procedures so this sort of thing would never happen again.

As for my book, it is not as if OUP should have been surprised by what I actually produced, because I wrote a proposal, eagerly accepted at first, which accurately described the final manuscript. OUP’s single formal complaint against the book, namely that it did not treat the subject in ‘a sufficiently serious or respectful way’, is ludicrous. At least, I hope that readers will find it ludicrous.

Do you think that OUP’s response to your book is a symptom of the way things are going in academia at the moment? Is there a cowardice and an unwillingness to deal with arguments that challenge a particularly entrenched view about things?

Yes, for sure. It is a worrying trend. It is the same phenomenon as the philosophers who talk the talk but do not walk the walk. To put it another way, when academic publishing is subjected to a genuine stress test, it completely fails, even though the advertising beforehand was that it would work perfectly. OUP publishes all sorts of controversial philosophy books, which defend views that other philosophers think are ridiculous, misguided, or completely wrong. Often, in the pages of OUP philosophy books, the author will criticise other philosophers in the most uncompromising terms. It also happens that OUP philosophy books are reviewed by other philosophers in an extremely critical way.

So you might think that OUP would gladly publish a book on a hot topic like sex and gender – maybe that book would get trashed by other philosophers, but this is just the way of academic publishing, and nothing to be ashamed of. That is not what happened.

Your book is designed for a popular rather than an academic audience. Did you intend it to stir up controversy or make inflammatory claims?

No. I knew that some of the claims would be controversial. For example, there is a chapter in which the view that women are adult human females is defended. There is a chapter on sex which defends the orthodox view of what sex is and tries to expose various confusions surrounding this topic. There is a chapter which argues that gender identity, at least as people popularly conceive of it, is a myth. All these are inflammatory claims, but I did not intend to provoke or stir up controversy. No doubt I will, though. The book has eight chapters, and each one will annoy some people.

What does your book contribute to the trans debate that has not been said before?

It is a very different book from, say, Helen Joyce’s Trans or Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls. It deliberately does not take a stand on any social and political issues. It is not written from a feminist or gender critical perspective. It just brings the tools of philosophy to bear on the questions that everyone seems to be asking these days and tries to sort things out. The fact that it is not about social and political issues gives me more room to treat these topics in the detail that they deserve.

I would regard it as a success if readers discovered how you can actually argue about these issues. They do not even have to have to agree with what I say; they just have to see how evidence and argument can be brought to bear on questions like, ‘what is a woman?’ or ‘does everyone have a gender identity?’ Normally, in public discussions of these issues, people do not really argue, in the sense that one side presents evidence and reasons and then the other side counters or presents their own evidence and reasons. They start shouting at each other instead.

What can a philosopher specifically contribute to a debate about sex and gender? Should it not be left to the biologists and psychologists?

I hope that my book demonstrates exactly what a philosopher can bring to the table. Philosophers are good at making crucial distinctions, being relatively clear and precise, and being able to set out arguments in the appropriate way, so that you see why the conclusion follows from the premises. It is not possible to master all academic disciplines in one life, so we need contributions from different specialists. That includes the biologists and the psychologists, but sometimes their discussions of these topics are flawed because they lack a crucial tool from the philosophical toolkit. But it must be admitted that philosophers also have their blind spots and weaknesses.

You observe in your book that ‘a concerning feature of debates around sex and gender is the attempt to prevent distinctions from being made by prohibiting or redefining certain words.’ How far would you argue that sex and gender should be distinguished, and why?

In one way sex and gender should not be distinguished at all, because one of the many senses of the word ‘gender’ is simply ‘sex’. That is, ‘gender’ is sometimes just a synonym for ‘sex’; in this sense, sex and gender are the same. Because ‘gender’ has many other meanings, and to avoid confusion, I think it would be a good idea only to use the word ‘gender’ to mean sex. That is my first point.

My second point is that there are all these other things which we definitely want to distinguish from sex. For example, we want to distinguish being male from being masculine. Everyone going back to the ancient Greeks has seen that there is a distinction here. You can be a feminine male or a masculine female, and one sense of ‘gender’ is as a label for masculinity and femininity. We need to distinguish being male from being masculine, but there is absolutely no reason to use the word ‘gender’ to mark that distinction.

Another distinction we would want to make is that between being female and being a woman. There are numerous females who are neither humans nor adults, so there are females who are not women. On anyone’s view, there is a distinction here. You should not identify being female with being a woman, even if you think that all women are female. Now another sense of ‘gender’ is as a label for the categories man, woman, boy, girl. But again, it is a terrible idea to use the word ‘gender’ to mark this distinction between being female and being a woman.

Another distinction is between being female and having a female gender identity. Assuming we can make sense of the notion of ‘gender identity’ in the first place, we need to distinguish between being female and having a female gender identity, because some males can have a female gender identity, for example. Yet another sense of ‘gender’ is ‘gender identity’. But yet again, it is a bad idea to use the single word ‘gender’ to mark the distinction: we already have the phrase ‘gender identity’ and we should use that instead.

It is sometimes argued that the claim that trans people cannot change gender is incompatible with a humane (or humanist) outlook. Or that to require trans people to live in the sex which they are ‘assigned’ at birth, rather than accepting that they can change, is contrary to their human rights. Therefore, it is argued, to be ‘gender critical’ is fundamentally a right-wing, if not extremist, position, and harsh and oppressive to trans people. What would you say in response to this line of argument?

I am not a gender critical feminist, but it is not part of their position that people should not transition. And if people do transition, it is not part of the gender critical position that they should be discriminated against or their human rights should be reduced or downgraded. If you think of transitioning as it was always thought of, as a palliative measure to deal with gender dysphoria, then assuming that this actually works, at least for some people, it is hard to see what objection there could be to it, because it is an effective medical procedure to deal with a troubling psychological condition. It is not that people transition just for the hell of it or to gain access to women’s spaces. They transition because life has become unbearable living as their natal gender or natal sex.

Like many people on the side of free speech in debates of this kind, you quote from George Orwell’s 1984 in your book. You choose the part where Syme, a worker on the Newspeak dictionary, says,

‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words … Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.’

In your view, how far is the whole of the trans debate – or gender debate – really a battle about words?

In one way, it is not about words at all. Take the question of what a woman is. That question is not about the word ‘woman’, although of course I have asked it using the word ‘woman’. I am interested in people of a certain kind, women, not in any English words.

But in another way the trans debate is about words. Various trans activist projects concern language: if you can stop people from using various words or get them to use other words or phrases instead, then the various distinctions that the activists do not want to be made, become a lot harder to make. One example of this is the frequent replacement of ‘sex’ with ‘sex assigned at birth’. If you want to get people to stop talking about the fact that we come in male and female varieties, then one excellent way of doing it is to try and enforce a rule where you never say that someone is ‘female’, but instead that she was ‘assigned female at birth’. This has the effect of suggesting that people’s sex is a matter of some doubt or speculation – that maybe no one really knows what sex people are.

Similarly, for expressions like ‘cervix havers’ or ‘uterus havers’ – if you want to avoid the suggestion that any adult female person is a woman, then substituting ‘uterus haver’ for ‘woman’ is an effective way of doing that. Language is extremely important if you are an activist – for the reason that Orwell identified in that quotation.

Do you think that philosophers have a duty to defend words against their destruction?

They have a duty to defend established ways of making valuable distinctions. One very valuable distinction is between males and females. To the extent that people are trying to prevent others from making that distinction, philosophers, I suppose, should step in and say, ‘no, stop, that’s a bad idea’. But that is not to say that anyone will listen to us.

In your experience of academia in the US and elsewhere, how far would you say that free and open enquiry and debate are under threat in today’s environment? 

We are going through a bad patch – I do not think there is any doubt about that. But the pendulum will swing back sooner or later. There are already many signs of pushback; books seem to be coming out all the time explaining what went wrong and how we can correct things. I have a book that just came out called The Identity Trap by the Johns Hopkins political scientist Yascha Mounk, all about the origins of so-called ‘wokeness’ – which is of course closely connected to this present cultural moment and the enthusiasm for cancelling speakers and shutting down certain kinds of speech.

So there is already some momentum in the other direction, and, if history is any guide, these things come in waves and recede eventually. But that does not mean that we should just sit back and do nothing.

Do you hope that your book will help to push the pendulum back in the other direction?

I hope that in a very small way it will widen the Overton window and broaden boundaries of acceptable speech to some extent – whether people agree with the conclusions or not.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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On academic freedom, see further:

British Islam and the crisis of ‘wokeism’ in universities – interview with Steven Greer

Free speech at universities: where do we go from here? by Julius Weinberg

And on the trans debate:

‘A godless neo-religion’ – interview with Helen Joyce

‘The falsehood at the heart of the trans movement’, by Eliza Mondegreen

The post ‘When the chips are down, the philosophers turn out to have been bluffing’ appeared first on The Freethinker.

In June 1643, amidst the furnace heat of civil war, Parliament issued a prohibition of unlicensed publications. This Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing rescinded freedoms that had existed since the abolition of the Star Chamber, a judicial court notorious for its abuses of power, in 1641. For two years, the unlicensed presses had churned opinion, controversy and fringe views, uninhibited by government censorship. ‘Licence’ is a complex word that points to the difficult relationship between individual and collective freedoms. It derives from the Latin licentia, which in turn is related to licet, ‘it is permitted’, but also licens, meaning ‘bold’ and ‘unrestrained’. When we drive with a licence, we are permitted a freedom by law. But if we drive licentiously, or without due restraint, we may find our freedoms legitimately encroached upon. Some liberties are granted for obedience, others are assumed by the individual regardless of established legal or social norms. In 1643, individual liberty of expression was curbed as State concern about licence in the public sphere led to the return of licensing. Those who printed without permission, or without giving an author’s name, risked having their books burnt and being sent to prison. Admittedly, this was preferable to being burnt as well as your books, which could happen under the Inquisition, and did, in some Catholic countries, through to the nineteenth century.

John Milton, now best known as the poet of Paradise Lost – itself a profound meditation on obedience and its limits – objected to the return of licensing. Why, he asked, fight to overthrow the tyranny of unrestrained monarchy and drain the cesspit of the Star Chamber, if only to usher back its spirit of control? This is the question that motivates his great prose work Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament [sic] of England, which was published towards the end of 1644, when he was 36 and already a well-known writer. True to his principles, and characteristically defiant, Milton gave his name, but published without a licence. He spoke with his actions as well as his words. Laws, he believed, could be defied where they conflicted with a strictly examined conscience. In Milton’s double revolutionary context, the importance of this cannot be overstated. The Protestant Reformation hinged on the belief that God’s light shone from within; it was not received via the external authority of Popes and bishops. Milton was also at war, in words at least, with a monarchy that, in his view, aped popish ceremony and dictatorial presumption. Absolute authority, Milton believed, exists only in heaven. Disobedience may have been disastrous for Satan and his fallen angels, and it did not work out well for Adam and Eve, but it was very much on the table for the freethinker in seventeenth-century England.

Milton had also published, the previous year, anonymously and without a licence, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: Restor’d to the Good of Both Sexes, From the Bondage of Canon Law, a radical (for the time) argument that divorce, then allowed only in very limited circumstances, should be possible simply on the basis of incompatibility between man and wife. This outraged the clergy, who saw it as promoting sexual licence. Milton’s tract was first published on 1st August 1643; the Ordinance for the Regulation of Printing had come into force in June. His tract was mentioned with disgust in Parliament by those arguing for censorship. Herbert Palmer, a Puritan clergyman, read a sermon to Parliament in 1644, stating that Milton deserved to be burnt for this tract.

If Milton broke actual laws by publishing Areopagitica, there is also something unruly about the form and manner of his work. He calls it a ‘speech’, addressed ‘to the Parlament of England’. But Areopagitica is not a speech – it is too long and rhetorically demanding for such purposes – and it was not given in Parliament, a forum where Milton had no licence to speak. Areopagitica first appeared in the more lowly form of a pamphlet – a transitory, rough and ready articulation, another bundle of pages in a Babel of public print.

Milton was provoking questions about the right to be heard but also, crucially, about authority. At this point, he had little licensed authority himself and was viewed in some quarters as a crackpot. His authority is thus assumed, with a verve that borders on arrogance; it is grounded in his deep learning, in the evident power of his intellect, and in the brilliance of his literary skills. He also possessed a deep conviction that truth was on his side and that truth, in the end, would shine through.

Any revolutionary power base, the thing Parliament was becoming, begins as a challenge to existing authority, in this case, to the ‘divine right’ assumed by Charles I. The very logic of such a power base, that of dissent, entails the prospect of its own undoing at the hands of the next stage of the revolution. This is the toothpaste that Edmund Burke tried to put back in the tube after 1688, arguing for a monarchical reset based on limited powers and a flavour of mystique. Arguing from the French revolutionaries’ descent to government by guillotine, he proposed a pragmatic status quo based on an aesthetically pleasing but disempowered hereditary monarch. Authority is necessary, but it cannot operate without a foundation or generally accepted centre. Burke believed that the jewels, golden coaches, and ceremony of monarchy provided exactly this.

Milton would have hated any such idea as a very real hell on earth, as a sagging and cynical crypto-papist State. He believed that authority must rest on the consent of individual reason as it works towards the discovery of truth. And golden coaches were of no use for this journey. To him, all people were part of God’s creation, endued with a conscience and a reasoning capacity to distinguish right from wrong. They were able to make their own decisions about how they should be ruled. They were not sheep to be tricked into the fold, distracted by glittering gewgaws. To the Christian fundamentalist, the answer was simple: to hold up the Bible as the answer to all questions. But Milton was too well-educated to think of Scripture as a set of rules. He knew it for what it is, a linguistic and textual smorgasbord, full of symbols, allegories, parables and poetry. It required educated and judicious interpretation, and it is this process, rather than static diktat, on which true authority must be based. A ruler justifies his authority, writes Milton, when his ‘prudent spirit acknowledges and obeys the voice of reason from what quarter soever it be heard speaking’. The key phrase here is ‘what quarter soever’; we must be ready to hear all rational voices, to plunge into the ocean of opinion in order to become expert swimmers. Those who write with evil intent, to promote popery and undermine the commonwealth, must be identified and stopped; complete freedom of speech has never been entertained by the wise. But those who are simply misguided, or plain wrong, must be allowed their say, even where – especially where – it conflicts with current official views. This is not some TalkRadio idea of ‘free speech’: ignorant people should not be taken seriously on subjects where their authority is based on nothing more than easily swayed emotion. It is to recognise that, in our fallen world, it requires great skill to extract truth from the vast deserts of error and evil that surround us. Licensing, Milton argues, will blunt our capacity for critical thought, leaving us vulnerable to seductive but dangerous words. Censorship, he writes,

‘will be primely to the discouragement of all learning and the stop of truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that might be yet further made both in religious and civil wisdom.’

Given that some parliamentarians had been mutilated for expressing their beliefs (William Prynne, for example, had his ears ‘cropped’), Milton’s language could not be more immediate. For him, a lack of ears symbolised an urgent duty to listen. Authority should not be hereditary; it must be earned through hard work, and that work is the work of the mind, of knowing the world, and of knowing the minds of others through their words. Not the abstractions of the ivory tower, but working things through while embattled on all sides by contending voices:  

‘I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.’

The price of free thought for Milton was a moral obligation to go to war amidst words, to be a soldier in the cause of truth and collective prosperity. Those who silence voices will never keep the world pure. Their licence to remove the liberty of others will simply cheapen virtue by attaching it to the dubious privilege of an unexamined and unenquiring life.

For a bibliography of our articles on free speech and free thought, see: Free Speech in the Freethinker.

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For a bibliography of our articles on free speech and free thought, see Free Speech in the Freethinker.

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On 26 October 2018, Ireland voted to remove the archaic criminal law of blasphemy from its constitution. Almost one million people (64.85 per cent of participants) voted, in what Taoiseach Leo Varadkar called a ‘quiet revolution’, to remove the word ‘blasphemous’ from article 40.6.1.i of the Constitution. This had previously stated that ‘the publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.’

The bill to remove blasphemy was signed into law by the president later that year. However, just three years later, the Irish government are introducing a new, even more authoritarian bill that will severely limit free speech, and has the potential to criminalise modern blasphemers. Barring amendment or rejection, this bill is set to become enshrined in Irish law.

Currently being debated in the Seanad, the upper house of the Irish parliament, the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 would update and expand Ireland’s hate speech laws to include incitement to violence or hatred against persons or groups on the basis of protected characteristics, including religion, race, disability and gender. 

The bill contains many provisions that will make the average liberal or civil libertarian’s blood run cold. Under this bill, existing crimes such as assault and vandalism could lead to longer prison sentences if hatred is found to be the motive. According to Section 7, the mere possession of material that the state deems ‘hateful’ could result in citizens being sent to prison for up to five years if their actions are held to be ‘likely to incite violence or hatred’ against a person with protected characteristics. Should the bill it find its way onto the statute books, then, despite the government’s insistence that it includes a provision to ‘protect genuine freedom of expression’, there is little doubt that Ireland would become the ignominious holder of one of the most comprehensive ‘hate speech’ laws, if not the most totalitarian, in Western Europe. 

In April, the bill passed through the Dáil (Ireland’s equivalent of the House of Commons) relatively unscathed. Only 14 of the 160 Dáil members voted against the proposed amendments. Yet its provisions are comprehensive and authoritarian.

The Justice Minister Helen McEntee, who was responsible for the bill, argued that it was necessary in order to discourage the targeting of those with protected characteristics. Her comments were echoed by Pauline O’Reilly, a senator of the Green Party, who told the Seanad that restrictions on free speech were necessary to protect vulnerable people from ‘such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace’. The senator is also reported as saying, using highly emotive language, that ‘the dirty, filthy underbelly of hatred in Irish society’ necessitates ‘the restriction of freedom’.

On the face of it, these proposals may sound like a good idea. Few would oppose laws that protect the rights of individuals, especially if the individual belongs to a persecuted or marginalised group. No ordinary, sensible person would tolerate despicable acts such as racist or misogynistic violence. 

Except that words are not violence. Verbal abuse is not the same as physical abuse. According to those who support hate speech legislation, living in fear of being ‘attacked verbally’ is a restriction on one’s freedom. A rhetorical question commonly deployed by opponents of free speech in this debate is, ‘why is it acceptable to protect freedom of speech for everyone when doing so harms the right of some people, in particular, those with protected characteristics, to live in peace?’ The question is what conclusion should follow from this. Those who support the severe limitations on free speech proposed by the bill would say that it is justified by its alleged ability to protect vulnerable people’s right to ‘live in peace’. But the alternative conclusion would be that everyone has to accept a certain amount of rough-and-tumble, and that no one’s ideas are above criticism. Sometimes, words can even act as a bulwark against physical violence – against which every liberal democracy has numerous laws to protect people.

Clarification is essential when it comes to the application of laws, especially those relating to civil liberties. But tyranny likes grey areas. The bill’s current definition of hatred (clause 2(1)) is vague and tautological:

‘“Hatred” means hatred against a person or a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics or any one of those characteristics.’

This non-definition – ‘“hatred” means hatred against’ – led Thomas Pringle, the Independent TD (MP) for Donegal, to criticise the bill. He noted in a debate in the Select Committee on Justice that one ‘remarkable’ feature of the bill was that ‘hate is not defined in it’. Fundamentally, it is difficult to see how ‘hatred’ or ‘hate speech’, where it does not cross the line into existing criminal offences, such as harassment, libel, death threats or incitement to violence, could really mean anything more than ‘offensiveness’. But whatever the Merseyside police or hardline progressives might think, the idea that being offensive might be worthy of criminalisation is well beyond the current laws of either England or Ireland, and would be an extraordinarily illiberal step. 

Failure to define a crime can potentially lead to anyone being found guilty. When such vague definitions serve as the basis for a conviction, courts often have to base their sentence not only on a person’s actions but also on their beliefs. 

Consider the idea brought forward in the UK by Stella Creasy to make misogyny a ‘hate crime’. For several years the Labour MP has sought to make being motivated by misogyny an aggravating factor in criminal sentencing—with a potential prison sentence of up to seven years if it was determined that the crime was committed by someone with a hatred of women. We already have laws that deal with the most serious of misogynistic crimes, such as sexual assault and domestic abuse. Yet it is strange to think that a violent crime against a woman where the defendant was not motivated by misogyny should automatically be punished less severely than one where he or she was so motivated. If the harm done to the victim is the same in each case, there are real concerns with arguing that the law should categorise specific kinds of beliefs, when they motivate a crime, as making that crime liable to more severe punishment than it would be, had the defendant not been motivated by those kinds of beliefs.

McEntee and other supporters of the bill claim it is necessary to protect minority groups from actual verbal abuse. However a provision deeply buried in the bill indicates that its effects would reach much farther than that. Under Section 10 of the bill, the preparation or possession of material ‘likely to incite violence or hatred’ against people on account of their protected characteristics is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment, when such preparation or possession is ‘with a view to the material being communicated to the public or a section of the public, whether by [the defendant] or another person’, and ‘with intent’ to incite hatred or violence or ‘being reckless’ as to whether they are incited.  In other words, if you privately possess material that might incite, not even violence, but the more nebulous response of hatred, and you are ‘reckless’ about whether hatred is incited if the material is shared publicly, then you could be guilty of a criminal offence – regardless of whether the material actually results in anyone’s being abused.

An even more chilling provision is then introduced (clause 10(3)): where the defendant is found to have possessed such material, and ‘it is reasonable to assume that the material was not intended for [his or her] personal use’, it is to be presumed ‘that the material [is] not intended for personal use’ unless he or she can prove otherwise. Thus, if the defendant is found to possess material likely to incite hatred, then, if it is reasonable to assume it was not for personal use, then they would be required to prove that it was, in order to escape conviction. In other words, this section, a little over 30 words long, effectively abolishes the presumption of innocence. The burden of proof will shift from the prosecutor to the defendant, on the grounds not of a proved intention, but of what it is ‘reasonable’ to assume the intention was.

As the ‘possession’ clause suggests, this bill, like other hate-speech laws around the world, such as Scotland’s infamous Hate Crime and Public Order Act, does not seek to protect vulnerable people from abstract definitions of hate, but rather is intended to limit what you can say or write. As such, it will curtail legitimate debate and pose a serious threat to free expression. Anything that prevents people from freely holding beliefs not sanctioned by the state, or viewed by the law as ‘dangerous’, is a threat to a free and liberal society. The idea of an informed citizenship is anathema to authoritarians.

As noble as they sound, laws against hate speech do not promote equality. They give victims an artificial sense of justice, but in reality, they do little to address the issues that have led to the supposed crime in the first place. If Irish lawmakers want to reduce prejudice against protected characteristics, they must abandon this bill and focus on education. Knowledge increases tolerance and acceptance. The irony is that this can only be achieved through the free exchange of ideas – which is exactly what this law is intended to prevent.

In The Gulag Archipelago (1973), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn points out that people are unaware that they are complicit in acts of wrongdoing because dogmatic adherence to an ideology seems to justify their actions. In the case of Ireland, an ideology of identity that promises to protect minority groups from offence is allowing its adherents to hide their illiberal behaviour under the guise of moral righteousness. 

If Ireland is to remain a free country, it is essential that this bill be rejected in its entirety. A copy of Solzhenitsyn’s book should be left on the desk of every member of parliament. 

For a bibliography of our articles on free speech and free thought, see: Free Speech in the Freethinker.

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By Western ideological standards, Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former Roman Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong, would hardly be considered a progressive. On social issues, he has previously opposed legislation extending anti-domestic violence laws to same-sex couples. On liturgical matters, he is a staunch defender of the pre-Second Vatican Council Tridentine Latin mass. At the level of Vatican ecclesiastical politics, he pals around with the likes of the late Cardinal George Pell, who aside from being doctrinally conservative, was also implicated in shielding paedophile priests in Australia.

At the other end of the spectrum is the Hong Kong pop singer, Denise Ho. So outspoken has she been about LGBT rights, at least by Asian standards, that she was once banned from performing in Malaysia over her LGBT identity. She has campaigned for gay marriage rights in Hong Kong. She once said, ‘[w]e can be openly gay as someone else can be Christian or Muslim,’ seemingly implying that homosexual and religious identities are mutually exclusive.

If Zen and Ho were in the West instead of in Hong Kong, it is likely that they would have nothing to do with one another except as adversaries. For many decades now, self-declared ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’ in the West have fought never-ending culture wars over various social and identity-related issues. These include religion, rights related to sexual orientation and identity, reproductive rights, race, language, national identity (in the UK’s case, this is particularly apparent in relation to Europe) – you name it.

Political and culture-war affiliations in the West are linked increasingly with social as opposed to economic identities. Particularly in places like places like the United States and Australia, the traditional alliance between secular progressives and religious voters from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and those who emphasise economic justice over issues of personal morality, is unravelling. Centre-left political alliances have attracted less religious support.

But Zen and Ho are not in the West. Far from falling in with Western culture war faultlines, they have made common cause in the fight for democracy and autonomy in Hong Kong. Zen is an old warrior on this front, having been involved as early as 2003 in backing mass protests against China’s first, aborted attempt to impose national security laws on Hong Kong. In addition to her LGBT rights advocacy, Denise Ho became identified with Hong Kong’s democracy movement when she openly supported Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement, which involved mass protests for genuine universal suffrage.

Then came the protests of 2019. What started as mass protests against the Hong Kong government’s proposed legislation allowing for extradition to China expanded to a full-blown resistance movement for democracy and against authoritarian police brutality. As the period of the protests lengthened from days to weeks to months, the number of protesters being arrested mounted. From the outset, organisations were set up to provide various forms of assistance to those hurt or arrested by Hong Kong’s increasingly authoritarian regime.

Once such organisation was the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which was named after the date (12 June) of the first major episode of indiscriminate police brutality during the 2019 protests. According to its website, the fund provided ‘humanitarian and relevant financial support to persons who are injured, arrested, attacked or threatened with violence’; the support provided was primarily ‘legal, medical, psychological and emergency financial assistance’.

The fund was overseen by a board of trustees. Its members included Joseph Zen and Denise Ho. The fact that Zen and Ho were, by Western standards, ideological opposites on culture wars issues, did not appear to be a problem for them in co-operating on the cause of democracy in Hong Kong and resistance to authoritarian violence. In overseeing the fund, they stood together, they were arrested together, and they were convicted together.  

In the democracy movement, and the resistance to China’s authoritarian overreach in a Hong Kong that had been promised at least 50 years of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ as part of the deal in China’s resumption of sovereignty, Zen and Ho’s co-operation was not unique. Benny Tai, the initiator of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, is a devout Christian who contributed to a Chinese language anti-LGBT rights book. Yet he is currently on trial under Hong Kong’s National Security Law with LGBT rights figures such as Ray Chan and Jimmy Sham for their joint involvement in a 2020 informal primary election.

The well-known, and now also jailed, Hong Kong democracy activist, Joshua Wong, had his run-ins with his socially conservative father. Yet his father was also the one who inculcated pro-democracy ideas into him from a young age (link in Chinese), and was highly supportive of his activism. And prior to its disbandment in 2021, an umbrella organisation called the Civil Human Rights Front organised many of Hong Kong’s largest protests in favour of democracy and against the erosion of human rights. Its member organisations include a diverse assortment of religious, feminist and LGBT rights groups, as well as political parties and anti-Communist trade unions.

So what kept Zen, Ho and these various groups, whose views on issues in the Western culture wars varied wildly, working together, right up until the point when China imposed a draconian National Security Law on Hong Kong in July 2020 to crack down upon resistance? This is a question that has not really been discussed and analysed within Hong Kong itself. It was as if the fact of co-operation between these individuals and groups to resist China’s authoritarian overreach was taken as a given. Nobody made a big deal about any ‘cross-ideological grand alliances’. And yet, on further reflection, whether conceptually or as a matter of factual circumstances, these people’s and groups’ decision to put aside the culture wars and face a greater adversary together as one makes sense.

Conceptually speaking, in order to have a culture war, one needs an environment that tolerates it. This would involve the existence of, or even respect for, freedom of speech, assembly, association and conscience, as well as a democratic government obliged to take account of the strength in numbers that culture warriors claim to represent. But when these basic freedoms are under threat and are undermined by an authoritarian government, everyone, no matter what his or her opinions, is at risk. It therefore made sense for those with ideological differences in Hong Kong to work together to resist authoritarian attempts to silence them all.

The campaigners’ concerns about being silenced are justified by the facts. China has a track record of cracking down on civil society groups of all stripes. It has cracked down on both Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as on Uyghur and Hui Muslims. It has cracked down on LGBT advocacy groups. It has cracked down on civil society generally to the point of collapse. And in the case of Hong Kong, the fears of being silenced were realised. Since China’s full-scale crackdown against the city started in 2020, at least 58 civil society groups have folded, and those that remain have become muted.

China’s programme of cracking down on diversity of opinion and dissent does not stop at its own borders. It seeks to silence dissidents living abroad with surveillance and threats. Its ‘United Front’ operations in the West are little more than influence, interference and infiltration operations designed to undermine democratic processes. Its intimidation tactics have in the last year or two started escalating to the point of going after families of popularly elected Members of Parliament who have been critics of China. This has happened in places such as Britain (creating obstacles to the university applications of Iain Duncan-Smith’s children) and Canada (attempts at intimidating the family of Michael Chong MP). 

Despite the real threat that China presents to the West’s relatively free and democratic way of life, many participants in Western public debates remain consumed by their obsession with the culture wars. If anything, the tenor of the disputes appears to have deteriorated since around the mid-2010s, coinciding with the onset of Trumpism and, in the UK, the Brexit movement. What had once at least been relatively reasoned if ideological arguments over controversial issues has now descended into puerile name-calling, with terms like ‘woke’, ‘fascist’ and ‘TERF’ being bandied about almost at random. And on the question of the threat posed by China, ideological cultural warriors have used it either to go down the ethno-nationalist ‘yellow peril’ path (eg ban all overseas students from China) or to engage in insidious anti-Western whataboutery (eg dismissing atrocities against Uyghurs because Australia treated its indigenous people poorly).

These exacerbated divisions and name-calling merely play into China’s hands. Moreover, the continuation and intensification of the Western culture wars has in itself taken an authoritarian turn, in which both sides manifest a lack of tolerance and respect for opposing viewpoints. The way the China issue has played out in the context of the culture wars, with the two sides as usual adopting equally extreme positions – either in support of a racialised approach in dealing with China or in defence of its authoritarianism – is but a case in point.

This is fertile ground for China to push its anti-democratic agenda beyond its borders, such as through disinformation campaigns. The West’s ability to resist is weakened by its own internal obsessions and intolerances. And while China cannot necessarily impose itself on the West as quickly or as directly as it has done in Hong Kong, it has shown itself capable of establishing firm footholds and exercising control over apparently democratic processes. Take, for example, China’s secret funding and compromising of candidates for elected office in Canada, its disinformation campaigns about the political system in Australia, its illegal funnelling of political donations to both major parties in New Zealand, and its suppression of Hong Kong dissident protests in the UK. Activities such as these are stepping stones towards displacing the Western liberal democracy-based world order led by the US, and replacing it with a China-led authoritarian world.

There is a real risk that by the time the bickering cultural warriors realise that their freedoms and rights are being undermined by a greater force, it could be too late.

This is where the examples of Joseph Zen, Denise Ho, Benny Tai, Ray Chan, Jimmy Sham, Joshua Wong and his father, and various ideologically diverse groups in the now-defunct Hong Kong Civil Human Rights Front, are instructive for the West. Of course, it may be said that despite their refraining from fighting culture wars and standing in solidarity in resisting authoritarian China, they have suffered setback after setback. What is the point of cross-ideological solidarity if it makes no difference in the end?

Except it very probably did make a difference. China’s push to erode and ultimate destroy Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms did not just start in 2019. It had been taking place for many years under the radar, even at local community levels. By putting culture wars to one side in the face of a common threat, pro-democracy Hong Kong activists and groups with divergent views on social issues played an important role in holding the line against China, until the dam broke upon the state’s full-scale crackdown in 2020. This crackdown has been all-encompassing, ranging from mass arrests and the jailing of dissidents, to the dismantling of civil society groups, education curricula and electoral systems, to the removal of politically sensitive books from libraries, to the general silencing of all criticism of authority by ordinary people.

Hong Kong is under China’s sovereignty and is ultimately subject to its authoritarian whims. The odds were therefore stacked against Hongkongers even though they were relatively united. The situation is different for Western democracies, where China needs more time and must use less direct methods to gain influence.

Where those engaged in socio-political discourse in the West are willing to set aside their internal differences to resist China’s efforts, they stand a much better chance at keeping China’s creeping authoritarianism at bay than Hongkongers ever had. In contrast, however, for Western democratic societies that choose to continue to allow themselves to be consumed by the culture wars, China’s efforts to undermine and, potentially, control them will be left relatively unopposed. The West’s inward-looking obsession with the culture wars, or just inertia, has, for example, enabled the Chinese government to open up secret police stations in many Western countries to facilitate the intimidating of its critics there. It is only in the last year or so that they are being discovered and gradually looked into by Western governments.

For those in the West who are caught up in arguing ceaselessly about their ideological differences, trying to set all that aside and work together to resist a more nefarious force may appear difficult. But the likes of Joseph Zen and Denise Ho have shown that it can and should be done. Internal squabbles may be a tolerable or even acceptable part of political discourse when democratic ways of life are not under threat. However, they become a luxury that one can ill afford when the distraction they afford opens the door for authoritarian encroachment.

As China becomes increasingly assertive in imposing its influence and control around the world, it is high time for the voices on both sides of the culture wars to lay aside their differences and give solidarity a chance. Hong Kong has shown the world how, even in the most difficult of circumstances, solidarity between erstwhile adversaries matters when confronted by an authoritarian giant. If Hongkongers can do it, then so can those in the West.

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Sarah Bakewell is what you might call a non-organised humanist. That is not to say she is disorganised (far from it), but that she has developed her conception of humanism individually, over many years and to a large extent independently of the official humanist ‘movement’. Her previous books include a biography of Montaigne, a narrative study of Sartre and the existentialists, and two ‘true stories’ of eighteenth and nineteenth-century adventurers.

Bakewell’s latest book, Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry and Hope, published by Chatto & Windus in March, represents her attempt to synthesise at least three distinct ‘humanist’ trends of thought that emerged, primarily in Europe, between the fourteenth and the twentieth centuries: the literary culture of Petrarch and the Renaissance umanisti; the philosophical humanism of Voltaire and the Enlightenment; and the expressly non-religious, scientifically inclined humanism of figures like TH Huxley and those involved in early organised humanism.

Humanly Possible has already attracted attention. Bakewell has been profiled by the New York Times; her book has been reviewed by the philosopher Julian Baggini and Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and featured on BBC Radio 4. She also gave this year’s Rosalind Franklin lecture, held annually by Humanists UK, on the topic of humanist women.

I interviewed Sarah Bakewell in the British Library. Over a cup of tea, we explored some of her ideas in depth – from the relationship between humanistic and scientific humanisms to how to find meaning without religion.

~ Emma Park, Editor

Freethinker: How does Humanly Possible relate to your previous books, as well as to your own intellectual development?

Sarah Bakewell: It definitely grew out of the previous two books. The spark was thinking about Montaigne as a humanist, and what role the humanist tradition played in his education and his attitude, but also how he rebelled against and reinvented it, and was much less reverent towards it compared to other people of his father’s generation. And humanism was connected with existentialism: Jean Paul Sartre famously gave a lecture after the end of the Second World War, saying that ‘existentialism is a humanism’ – then he kept changing his mind about it.

I also wanted to understand more about the connections between the different forms of humanism and their development in different eras and contexts. Thirdly, it was about what humanism meant to me. I have always been a humanist, although for years I did not use the label.

Are there any translations in the pipeline?

Yes. There are a dozen or so on their way, including German, Italian, French, and two Chinese editions – one for Taiwan and one for China.

Will the one for China be censored?

One publisher, who I did not go with in the end, said that any mention of religion would need to be cut, which is strange in a book about humanism. It was different compared to the last book, where none of this came up. I think there has been a shift in how much publishers feel they have to self-censor. But there were certain compromises that I would not and did not make.

Was religion a part of your life growing up?

No. My background was absolutely atheist. My parents were non-religious. My father was brought up as a Baptist and he rebelled against that when he was a teenager, and had the whole church praying for his soul as a result. My mother was never a believer. So I was lucky in that I did not have to go through that painful, challenging process of rejecting what you have been brought up with. My grandmother, the Baptist one, did hope that she might be able to get me interested in religion. She sent me a children’s pictorial Bible, which I loved because it had great stories, like fairy tales, with beautiful illustrations. But I never took it literally.

Would you now consider yourself agnostic, atheist or something else?

Theoretically, I am inclined to say agnostic, simply because you cannot prove a negative. But I am more of an atheist by personal conviction. There are parts of what institutional religion does that appal me. But there are parts that I respect, because religious activity is a form of human activity and artistic creation. I enjoy going into churches, and even reading religious books sometimes. I love the beauty that can be found in religious traditions.

But for me, the real beauty comes from contemplating the universe, what we know about it and what we might still discover, the scale of what we see in the night sky and how it might all work. The desire to find out more about the universe inspires me much more than religious traditions.

When did you first start using the label ‘humanist’ for yourself?

About 15 years ago. Definitely before I started writing this book. I have never been much of a joiner of organisations, but I did join Humanists UK when I started writing it. Labels are not something I usually feel very drawn to using. I think that might be true of many humanists, who by disposition want something subtler and more individual.

How much of your research was in the UK and how much elsewhere?

A lot of it was in the British Library, where we are now sitting, as well as the Warburg Institute, the London Library and the Bishopsgate Institute. I spend a lot of time in Italy anyway [Bakewell’s wife, Simonetta Ficai-Veltroni, is Italian]. I did not do much research in Italian libraries, but I did try to find out more about the places where the humanists of the early modern era lived. Padua stands out, because it was important for university life and education, particularly in the history of medicine. Chapter 4 of the book is about medicine and humanism. In the medical university at Padua you can stand in the Anatomical Theatre [built in 1595] and imagine what it would have been like to be a medical student, seeing the anatomising of a body – a process which is of course so important for good medical education, and thus for better medicine, and thus for better human welfare.

Petrarch, who is the main character of Chapter 1, lived close to Padua towards the end of his life, and was involved with the university and the local community. I also visited Avignon, where Petrarch grew up, and Paris. I spent a few days in Chartres. The cathedral there has got nothing to do with humanism in the non-religious sense, but it had everything to do with the flowering of education and a proto-scholarly humanism that started there and in other French centres before it started in Italy. It gives you such a different perspective when you are in a place. I visited Basel, which was the closest Erasmus came came to having a home – in fact, he spent most of his time travelling around and said that ‘My home is wherever I keep my library.’ Which sums him up, really.

Your focus is primarily from fourteenth to late twentieth-century Europe. Why did you choose this period, and those specific starting and finishing points?

Petrarch marks the beginning of the self-consciously modern revival of classical learning in Europe. He saw himself as bringing the light back from the classical world and starting a moral as well as an intellectual revival. In that sense, he is often called the first humanist, so it seemed a sensible place to start. The story tends to focus mainly on Europe, with some reaching in other directions, particularly to America. That was deliberate, because I needed to impose some kind of structure, limit and coherence. The people involved were influenced by each other, read each other, and responded to each other’s work.

I thought about ending with a more substantial survey of where humanism is now. But this has already been written about by others, and it is still very much a live story, changing and developing. I did not think I could do it justice unless I had a large section on it. And I am more of a historian by temperament.

You read philosophy at university. It seems to me that you are a little ruthless with Plato and Aristotle, writing that they ‘were (in most respects) not very humanistic’, and preferring Democritus, a fragmentary Presocratic, and the obscure sophist Protagoras. What made you take this approach?

From the fragments that we have of Protagoras, he and Democritus were in many respects proto-humanists, in the tradition of materialist philosophy. There is one fragment of Protagoras which says, ‘as to the gods, I know nothing about them’. This and other Presocratic sources suggest that, because we cannot know anything about the gods, it is not worth spending time worrying about them. There is a similar tradition of materialism in ancient India.

Your book talks about Cicero’s idea of humane studies, including in his speech in defence of Archias, where he identifies a ‘common bond’ between the ‘arts that concern humanity’. How far are these ideas a starting point for Renaissance humanism?

The Ciceronian idea of the ‘human and literary studies’ is really at the foundation of Renaissance humanism. This interest in Cicero was kick-started by Petrarch, who really admired Cicero, although he did criticise him as well. But others came along after him who thought Cicero was an almost godlike figure and could not be questioned, and that his style in Latin should be imitated absolutely. There was a tension between the kind of humanists who were obsessed with classical models and the ones that were more questioning and critical.

You point out that Renaissance humanists like Petrarch were concerned about literary style even when writing in an emotional state or about distressing topics. Is this an idea that would be worth considering for modern humanists?

We still recognise the importance of speaking and writing in an articulate way, though it does not go under the name of eloquence any more. But sometimes we are suspicious of the veneer of polished speaking. There is the idea, which started with the Romantics, that beautiful words mean nothing, and just cover up authentic feelings. This idea was alien to the Renaissance humanists, who would have said that deep feeling should be communicated as powerfully as possible. They also took from classical literature the idea that real eloquence must always be allied to virtue, or goodness.

We seem to have a double standard. On the one hand, we – at least I – do not trust the likes of Boris Johnson, who uses Latin quotations elegantly and is educated in the tradition of eloquence and classical reference, without that necessarily being a reflection of goodness or honesty. On the other hand, we can also be judgemental about people who do not express themselves very fluently.

Among the people you mention in your ‘Acknowledgements’ is Andrew Copson, the CEO of Humanists UK. To what extent did you consult with him or any humanist organisations during your research and writing?

I talked to Andrew, who was very helpful, and to one or two other humanists. Almost as a matter of principle, though, I mainly worked with my own idea of what I wanted to write. I did not not want to feel that I was presenting a view of humanism that was officially sanctioned by humanist organisations. Although I did include Humanist International’s Declaration of Modern Humanism (2022) as an appendix.

Is there anything in the 2022 Declaration (the latest version of the Amsterdam Declaration of 1952) that you would disagree with or want to modify?

No. One change I agree with is the emphasis on the need for humanism to involve respect and concern for the rest of the natural world and for other species, not only for human beings. There is a misconception out there that humanism is the same thing as anthropocentrism and that it implies not caring about other species.

Why should humanists care about other species?

On the simplest level, because we cannot survive without them. We are of this planet, and woven into the biodiversity around us. The general humanist approach also involves a sense of responsibility for the impact we can have on the planet. We have considerable powers technologically and by sheer force of numbers; I think we need to own up to that responsibility.

You identify ‘freethinking, enquiry and hope’ as consistent aspects of humanism throughout your period of study. Why these three?

These three points apply to all the widely divergent forms of humanism that I discuss in the book – not just modern humanism of the secular or non-religious sort, but also the scholarly and literary humanism of the Renaissance and the philosophical interest in human well-being and dignity of the Enlightenment.

To what extent can we really talk about a single humanism running through all these different threads?

I tackle that in the opening pages of the book. It is there in the word: they are all practices or ways of thinking which have the human realm as the centre of their concern – whether culture, literature and the studies of the humanities, or human nature and well-being. And modern humanism involves a sense of morality and meaning that comes from human relationships and human concerns.

I mean ‘freethinking’ in the broadest sense of not taking anything on authority alone – whether that be the authority of religious institutions or political ones. ‘Enquiry’ is linked to that, but it involves asking questions and undertaking intellectual investigations in a more active sense – something many of the humanists did with gusto.

‘Hope’ is a little different. We cannot just be naïvely optimistic, but a humanist does have some sense that we can use our faculties and talents and our abilities to improve the well-being of other people and of other living things, to achieve a better politics, to solve our problems to as large an extent as we can. It was well summed up by Bertrand Russell, who features towards the end of the book precisely for what he said about the need to have hope in ourselves. Today, many people are in despair over the state of the world. But I think that losing hope is an abdication of responsibility and also risks being a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have to have some sense that we are capable of using our best abilities constructively.

Your book focuses primarily on individuals who were humanist in different ways. Was your choice of characters a personal one, or were you influenced by other accounts of humanism?

I was influenced by who I was interested in and who had something new to contribute. I tried to ensure that everybody that features in the book advances the story in some way, or stands for a wider process. I did not want to write a reference book merely listing lots of names, but something that was fun to read.

You use photographs to illustrate some of your main characters. Where did you find them, and why did you decide to add this pictorial element?

I took many of them from picture libraries. I wanted to have images to make it easier on the eye, but I did not want it to be just portraits. I tried to choose images that were a bit different or unexpected. In a few cases, there are contemporary political cartoons of people, rather than portraits, and in other cases, pictures of title pages or manuscripts that illuminate the text in some way.

Did you make any surprising discoveries during the course of your research?

There were a lot of things that were surprising to me, because when I write books, I find out a lot as I go along. I think that is more fun for the reader too, because we are going along together. Some of the characters were more interesting than I expected them to be – for example, Matthew Arnold, who wrote Culture and Anarchy, which I had had on my shelves for years but never read because I thought it would be boring. He is conservative and Victorian sometimes, but his writing is interesting, and he is endearing and enjoyable from a humanist point of view – I warmed to him. Wilhelm von Humboldt is another character who was full of surprises, not least his kinky fantasy life.

Your book discusses the debate Matthew Arnold had with TH Huxley about the relative importance of the humanities and literary studies versus the sciences. In 1959, CP Snow revived this debate with his Rede lecture on the ‘two cultures’. These days, it seems, if anything, too easy for scientists to take pot shots at the humanities for their irrelevance, lack of rigour or stagnation in the morass of literary theory. How far can the literary and scientific approaches to life, or more specifically literary and scientific humanism, be reconciled?

The clue to it is, again, in that idea of human studies. The universe is physical; we are physical beings. Some people would see that as invalidating all of the ‘human studies’ or humanities, as if they are somehow irrelevant because they do not correspond to how the universe is. But human studies are not irrelevant to us, because we are human beings. We are social and cultural by our nature, and so the human realm is enormously interesting to us. It is the sea in which we swim all the time – it is language, culture, communication, society, politics. The two cultures are connected, I think, not contradictory.

You say you like contemplating the universe. This reminds me of Kant’s idea of sublimity: ‘the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’. Is there an argument that the scientific perspective is fundamentally inhuman because its focus is on the very big and the very small, on the objective and not the subjective human experience? Isn’t the human, from the scientific point of view, just a collection of processes or cells or atoms?

Yes, but the paradox is that the science that we do, the ability to visualise and study the very large or the very small, is a human activity. There is no getting away from the human, for us. One of the things that is fascinating about science as a human activity is that it does try to set aside human preconceptions, perspectives, prejudices, and to work from the evidence – and that is a truly impressive thing to do. But even that – working out scientific methods, testing hypotheses, looking for falsifications and evidence – is still a human activity.

At the end of the book, you briefly mention posthumanism and transhumanism. How might the development of technologies like artificial intelligence affect humanism, and what it means to be a human, in the future?

This is a difficult question, because we do not know where we are going and things are moving very fast. We are already closely integrated with our technology, and are likely to be ever more so. Is there a line that we would one day cross, when we would no longer be the same? Have we crossed it already? I do not know the answer to that because it is all developing under our noses. I am wary of simplistic answers as to whether there will always be some human ‘essence’. I really do not know.

Your book was published in March this year, and you have said elsewhere that you spent about six years writing it. Those years were also a very eventful period in Britain. Did the turbulent political atmosphere have an effect on your book?

It was quite dramatic because I started working on it in early 2016, and then Brexit happened, and Trump. Since then, there have been all sorts of further blows to our sense of confidence in human common sense, if you like. I tried to keep reminding myself of what Bertrand Russell and others have said, that the greater the challenge to our sense of hope in ourselves, the more we actually need that hope – and the more we need a sense of faith in ourselves and in our processes, in our better political institutions, legal protections, free press, and the ability to talk openly about issues and to establish effective media of communication between countries. Altogether, we need more of our good qualities rather than just giving up on them.

Bertrand Russell [1872-1970] also experienced growing up in a hopeful time and then having to realise that things would not always simply get better and better. That is not how human history has ever gone. There will always be complications, steps backwards, obstacles and wrong moves, but it is wiser to expect that and not to be naïvely optimistic. And, as always, it is up to us. If things are going to be even a bit better in this world, we are going to have to do it.

Does the humanist have a natural political stance? Or should humanists today subscribe to any particular political views about anything?

No. I do not think there is any inevitable connection with any particular political viewpoint. In the nineteenth century, Humboldt and Mill were classical liberals, but Matthew Arnold, whose views about culture and education had much in common with theirs, was a small ‘c’ conservative. I am more interested in how the humanist dimension works with various political positions.

Where would you put yourself on the political spectrum?

I would say I am a humanist liberal.

Does the humanist today have a moral obligation to be involved in any sort of political campaigning or activism, or can they live a quiet life?

Personally, I live a fairly quiet life – I am not a political activist. That is just me. So I have to say that it is not necessary to be politically active in order to be a humanist! But looking through history, a lot of humanists were politically active, or became so. Bertrand Russell, for example, started as a scholarly logician, mathematician and philosopher, but was politicised by the First World War and decided from then on to write political material as well, and campaign for political causes. Renaissance humanists were often engaged with the politics of their city and their environment. Humanists are often drawn to political activity because it goes with the idea that it is up to us to make the world that we want to have.

You emphasise the importance of freethinking and enquiry to humanism – which leads naturally to the question of how important you think free speech is today, and where you would draw the line. How far should free enquiry go?

I am drawn to the free speech end of that continuum: I think things should be talked about. If we are ever going to say that something should not be talked about, we had better give a very good reason why not. There are certain things that disturb me when I hear them said, but I am not sure that the best method of stopping people from saying them is just to silence them. I would want to ask why people might be saying those things, what that implies about us as a society, and where we should go from there.

Your book is full of references to happiness, human fulfilment, and the need for connections between people. Is writing a way in which you make connections?

There is a relationship with the reader. But part of the nature of writing is that you do not know what everybody who reads it thinks or wants to say back to you. I think that is as it should be. It is nice to hear back from readers, but that is not the primary reason why I write. It is a way of discovering things for myself as I go along, and taking other readers with me. It is like walking along a path together, but without knowing who the readers are – that is part of the appeal. I like the idea that people could make something out of the book that I would never dream of.

A recurring motif in the book is the idea that humanists can, in a sense, live on in their writings after they are dead. Is this also a motivation for you?

No. Most of the things that any individual does gradually fade away out of view after they are dead. Even those we think of as timeless classics – Plato and Aristotle and Protagoras – it is too early to say whether they are all going to endure. They became fragments. There would be an egocentric arrogance in thinking that somehow your words are going to live on. But I do spend a lot of time pottering around in second-hand bookshops and libraries and picking up obscure and forgotten books from a hundred years ago or more. I love the idea of reading something that has not survived in more than a few copies, and yet finding the voice of the author still talking to you.

You talk about hope as an ingredient of humanism. In the very long term, of course, the earth will probably be swallowed by the sun, and the human race may well have died out long before then. Where can humanists find hope, given that, on a cosmic scale, we are, by all appearances, so fundamentally meaningless?

On that scale, I do think we are completely meaningless and forgettable, as is everything to do with this planet and the very fact that we have existed at all. But we have got much more immediate things to worry about, and we could find ourselves disappearing a lot sooner than that. We are still a very young species – dinosaurs were around for an enormously longer time than we have been. Also I do not believe in God, so even if I wanted to find meaning there, that is not an option. Would I be happier if I had this great sense of meaning? No, because to me it would not be a genuine source of meaning. Actually, I find it exhilarating to think about the size of the universe. The fact that we are tiny does not bother me.

Final question: what is your next project?

I have not got one yet. I am having a little interlude to see what might arise next. And even if I did have one, like most writers, I probably would not want to talk about it.

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry and Hope, by Sarah Bakewell, was published on 30 March 2023 by Chatto & Windus.

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In Pakistan, religion exerts a significant influence over society. This often results in restricted freedom of expression for those with different views. George*, when he was living in Pakistan, always had to keep his thoughts and questions to himself: he knew he could not talk about them with anyone. While talking to me in a private Twitter conversation, he said that he had kept his thoughts, ideas and questions to himself his whole life, as he never found a safe environment around him.

‘I turned 45, and until then, I found no space to talk about my thoughts, even in a small circle,’ he said. ‘If we were sitting and talking about something, and I said something about religion, they would start saying, “What are you saying? You should not be talking like that.”‘

Twitter Spaces was the first platform where George was able to share his thoughts, using an anonymous ID. He found Spaces on atheism, the evolution of religions, blasphemy allegations, human rights, social issues, and every topic that he had always wanted to talk about. He found people like him who also wanted to engage in live conversation and share their thoughts on these controversial subjects.

Twitter launched ‘Spaces’ in December 2020, initially as a beta test and then as freely accessible to everyone on the platform. Spaces allows anyone to host and participate in live audio conversations with other users on the platform. Since its emergence, ex-Muslims from Pakistan have been using this feature to talk about issues that were previously forbidden. They share their stories, voice their concerns, and connect with others who understand their experiences.

George’s story highlights the challenges faced by individuals in Pakistan who do not conform to religious norms. Although his family knows about his views on religion, he feels that he cannot share his opinions with them, even at home. For him, Twitter has become a valuable platform that has allowed him to finally express his views without fear.

Pakistan’s penalties for blasphemy, apostasy, or atheism are among the harshest in the world. According to a BBC report of 2017, ‘Although atheism is not technically illegal in Pakistan, apostasy is deemed to be punishable by death in some interpretations of Islam. As a result, speaking publicly can be life-threatening.’ Recently, as reported by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid in The Diplomat, Pakistan has reinforced its laws even further, adding to the already oppressive environment for Pakistani atheists and agnostics. Social media has become the only option for them to express their views, but the government has tightened its grip on these platforms too. It has become increasingly challenging for them to connect with like-minded individuals.

From Facebook to Twitter

Smith* and Syed Rahat Shah joined Twitter after feeling that it was not safe to share their thoughts on Facebook, where family and friends were present. During a Zoom meeting, Smith told me that he had filtered out everyone he knew in real life from his Twitter account. Initially, he used his real name, but later changed it to an alternative account, although he still uses his own picture. He was outspoken in real life, but noticed that people were not willing to listen to him. During a gathering, someone asked him to recite kalma (a declaration of Islamic belief in the oneness of God and the prophethood of Muhammad) to prove that he was a Muslim. Since then, he avoids talking about religion offline. On Twitter, his main focus is science and technology, but he occasionally discusses religion in Spaces and gives his opinion.

During a WhatsApp call, Syed Rahat Shah said that he identifies more as a cultural Muslim, despite not believing in any religion. He started criticising religion on his personal Facebook profile, specifically its laws relating to women. However, every time he did so, his brothers or someone from his family would shut him down: ‘It became extremely difficult to question religious practices. In Pakistan, I used to feel like I had a lot to say, but there was no space or acceptance for it.’

After Twitter released Spaces for everyone, Shah started to join some of them in his free time. There he found the freedom to say what he has been keeping within himself for years. ‘I joined Spaces initially, where people would talk about social issues and also discuss religion, like how it causes issues. I would join those Spaces and speak my heart out. Now, I feel like the frustration I had inside me that I couldn’t express has gone.’

Alice*, in a Zoom meeting, said that she identifies as agnostic. Talking further, she said that Generation Z are very lucky as they have many platforms and resources where they can easily access the information that she and people of her generation took years to find. ‘When we were growing up, we neither had that knowledge nor access to platforms where we could seek the information we wanted and network with like-minded people,’ she said. ‘It was especially hard for young girls who were curious. They had no ways to satisfy their curiosity as there were stricter societal and cultural rules in place for them.’

Finding like-minded people

Grace* had a similar experience. She told me, also via Zoom, that a couple of years ago, she had been going through some personal problems. In that phase, she tried to connect with God. She decided to read the Quran in translation. She read thirteen chapters; with each chapter, her confusion about her religion increased.

‘I started listening to Quran with translation on YouTube during my daily commute, which was a forty to forty-five-minute drive from my house to my office,’ she told me. ‘However, I quickly became confused because, in every second or third verse, there was a mention of hell and the punishment for sinners.’

Two of her friends introduced her to the YouTube channel of Harris Sultan, an ex-Muslim Atheist activist and the author of The Curse of God: why I left Islam. She started watching his videos, and this made her realise that she was not alone. There were other people like her who had the same confusion or concerns about religion.

Grace therefore decided to set up her own YouTube channel. Her channel focuses on social issues but religion comes in the discussion in one way or another. Last year, she joined Twitter, where she found that people were more responsive and open to discussion. ‘Twitter also provided the anonymity to express opinions freely, which made the response time much faster,’ she says. ‘I started visiting Twitter spaces and found other people like me there.’

Nuriyah Khan is a well-known ex-Muslim who runs her own YouTube channel. She observes that Twitter spaces can become toxic quickly. As a woman and a host, she feels empowered by the ability to mute or remove disruptive individuals. As she told me via Whatsapp, ‘Twitter Spaces and YouTube each have their unique benefits and drawbacks. Twitter Spaces are great for quick connections, whereas YouTube is better for a larger audience and more extended conversations.’

Are Twitter Spaces safe?

A Twitter user with the name A(nti)theist, whom I spoke to via WhatsApp, said that Twitter provides better security and privacy than other social networking platforms. However, he said that people should be careful not to offend others, especially when discussing religion. In his view, atheists should avoid attacking religious figures and instead focus on the religion’s ideology.

In the view of Harris Sultan (via WhatsApp), Twitter Spaces may not be the best platform for dissidents. He argues that the platform encourages users to create fake or anonymous accounts, which can be risky for those discussing sensitive topics.

Sultan also spoke about internet censorship in Pakistan. ‘The Pakistani government loves to censor anyone they find critical of religion or the army,’ he explained. ‘They don’t have access to Twitter users’ information. Still, they do regularly ask Twitter to ban accounts they don’t like, which puts the accounts of dissidents under the threat of a permanent ban in Pakistan. Eventually, they do get banned – like my ID @TheHarrisSultan.’

Most of the Twitter users who were interviewed for this article reside outside Pakistan. When asked about the digital security measures they take before going on the internet, most of them said they do not feel themselves in danger because they do not live in Pakistan.

Nuriyah Khan, however, takes her safety very seriously (for this reason, she did not tell me her location). She does not have a LinkedIn account as she does not want people to know where she works and track her down. Instead, she just uses Twitter and YouTube. She has deleted her accounts on every other social media platform, except her private Instagram account.

Blasphemy and the digital world in Pakistan

Yasser Latif Hamdani is a barrister who qualified at Lincoln’s Inn and is now based in Islamabad. When I contacted him via Whatsapp, he told me that the government heavily censors the internet through the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, which is empowered to block content that is deemed un-Islamic or immoral, including materials that may be considered blasphemous or critical of Islam. Hamdani stresses that the internet is heavily controlled through Section 37 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), which violates the fundamental right to freedom of expression in Pakistan. This section grants the Government unrestricted powers to block access or remove speech not only on the internet, but also as transmitted through any device.

As Hamdani explains: ‘Section 37 of the PECA is used to block content online which is deemed unIslamic or immoral. Online defamation is also a criminal offence under Section 20 of the Act. There are several attempts by successive governments to further restrict social media.’

He also points out that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are the strictest blasphemy laws in the world. ‘What these laws have done is to weaponise blasphemy allegations. Many of the blasphemy cases are just false but that should not be the point. Freedom of expression necessarily includes within its ambit the freedom to offend, but there is absolutely no appreciation of this right because the society is medieval and largely reactionary.’

Hamdani notes that while there is no law against apostasy in Pakistan, hardly anyone will identify as an ex-Muslim. Pakistan’s constitution guarantees freedom to profess, practise and propagate one’s religion to all citizens of Pakistan regardless of their faith, but at present, no distinct category exists for atheists, agnostics or freethinkers.

‘Any speech that is deemed criticism of the Prophet of Islam or Islam itself poses legal risks,’ writes Hamdani. ‘Section 295 ABC especially [the laws relating to blasphemy against religion, the Quran and the Prophet] might be used to target ex-Muslims. Criticism of the government of the day as such is not a crime, and indeed, sedition law was struck down recently. However, criticism of the army or the judiciary might land people in trouble both legally and extralegally.’

Twitter Spaces have given ex-Muslims in Pakistan a safe platform to express themselves and engage with the public on topics that are usually considered taboo in Muslim societies. One of the reasons that such free expression is possible, however, is that only about two per cent of the entire population of Pakistan is present on Twitter.

In real life, on the other hand, the situation for perceived critics of Islam is extremely dangerous. Recently, a Chinese engineer at the Dasu hydropower project in northwestern Pakistan was accused of blasphemy after he highlighted the slow pace of work during Ramadan. In December 2021, a Sri Lankan factory manager in Pakistan was beaten to death and set ablaze by a mob, in an incident reportedly linked to blasphemy.

It is also common in the country for mobs to attack Ahmadi mosques or murder Ahmadiyya Muslims due to their beliefs. In this environment, it is extremely dangerous to speak freely about religion as an ex-Muslim on the internet. In 2017, the government reportedly ‘asked Facebook and Twitter to remove content considered insulting to Islam or Muhammad’. Prior to that, as reported by Shahid, several Facebook pages and accounts of Pakistani ex-Muslims were removed by Facebook on the request of the Pakistani government. Twitter’s better community standards have provided Pakistani ex-Muslims with a platform for assembly and discourse. Time will tell, though, if Spaces will continue to be available to them, or if some may have to bear the consequences of the freedom that they have found there.

*The names of some individuals have been changed on their request.

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As W.H. Auden put it, ‘If the criterion of art were its power to incite to action, Goebbels would be one of the greatest artists of all time.’ Were this true, we would be living through a modern-day Renaissance.

However, as Jed Perl argues in Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts (Knopf, 2022), this is certainly not the case.

The so-called ‘culture wars’ are a polarising force. The media would have us believe that the woke ‘Left’  want to abolish ‘art proper’ for ideological propaganda, whilst the elitist ‘Right’ strive to preserve a clearly defined concept of art accessible to only the privileged.

Perl counters these inflammatory and amorphous positions by reasserting the universal nature of art. He does this by proposing the idea that art is independent from politics. In its own separate realm, he suggests, art is characterised by a dynamic relationship between authority and freedom. This argument – not entirely original, but uniquely crafted for the current artistic climate – provides a nuance on seemingly polarised positions.

A cursory read of Authority and Freedom is not recommended. Although some terms are difficult to grasp with immediate fluency, it is not possible to fully grasp the central thesis without them. Paramount to this is Perl’s concept of ‘form’, which he uses to distinguish the different types of art (fine art, poetry, fictive prose, music etc.). Within these categories of form, there are certain laws that we must learn if we are to communicate as artists. For example, we can only achieve resemblance in a portrait in oils if we first master the medium itself: untutored amateurs dabble with oil paintings at their peril.

Once we have mastered ‘form’ – the different rules that distinguish and characterise the distinct types of art  – then we can begin to communicate our innermost thoughts and perceptions. In this way, engagement with form ultimately provides the means for free human expression.

Form is therefore the limit to but also the measure of freedom, constituting a boundary within which creativity thrives: ‘Artistic freedom always involves engaging with some idea of order, which becomes an authority that the artist understands and acknowledges but to which the artist doesn’t necessarily entirely submit.’ For example, musicians exercise freedom within the constraints of musical scores: ‘Interpretations, even in classical music, vary dramatically.’ Perl also illustrates this point in the context of drama: ‘Every performance of King Lear is an exploration of the possibilities of King Lear.’

Perl’s argument becomes especially pertinent to contemporary debates once this fundamental understanding of ‘form’ is grasped. Why, for example, should Western artists not allowed to appropriate work from other cultures? The artistic practice of pastiche without borders or chronology is a free exploration and affirmation of form, independent of politics.

To embark upon an imaginative joyride journey of form is exhilarating: it is a way of delving into the past to embellish artworks with glorious past treasures. Art’s magical power – the ‘irresponsible, irrepressible, liberating’ sensation – should not be circumscribed by any political filter. We cannot force someone to feel happy, sad or neutral. Emotions are immediate and inwardly uncontrollable – and this is the universal human condition.

The tension between authority and freedom (the ‘lifeblood of the arts’) is natural to this human spirit. If the rhythm of this careful balance is tipped too much either way by the dominance of authority and the erosion of freedom, or vice versa, then artistic quality  is compromised. To this end, we should be suspicious of attempts to impose ideological rules on the arts: of the prohibition on certain authors against creating certain characters, or of the retrospective editing of books by ‘sensitivity readers’.

Used as a tool of authority, art becomes thinly veiled propaganda concealed beneath a moralistic mask. Perl criticises ‘the insistence that works of art … are validated (or invalidated) by the extent to which they line up (or fail to line up with) our current social and political concerns’. An observation by the American novelist Flannery O’Connor illustrates this idea: ‘“art is wholly concerned with the good of that which is made; it has no utilitarian end.”’ However, crucially, this is not to say that art cannot have an impact on the real world. O’Conner continues, ‘“If you do manage to use it [art] successfully for social, religious, or other purposes, it is because you make it art first.”’ In this vein, Perl argues that art proper is neither elitist nor alienated from real life. Rather, its independence is the key to its relevance because it is implicit and timeless. To make art requires courage. The discipline of form provides a space for free exploration of thought and feeling. Once completed, the artwork is severed from the umbilical cord of its creator and thrown into the world to live its separate life.

Artistic creation is therefore the exercise of godlike powers. In recent years, however, the idea of the ‘Great Artist’– understood to be a singular creative genius – has been criticised and ‘deconstructed’. Calls for the redistribution of power have underpinned a shift towards artistic collectives (seen, for example, in the sharing of the Turner Prize), an emphasis on oppressed identities as conferring the prime artistic value, and the conflation of the artist’s moral behaviour with the aesthetic value of their work.

To counter this trend, Perl redefines the artist as a creator: a single-minded individual who dutifully dedicates themselves to art because it is a calling that comes from within, rather than a political programme imposed from without. Immune from transient whims and demands, the artist pursues a lifelong vocation to become fluent in a language which is uniquely their own, but comprehensible to all.  

Both historically and at present, this artistic vocation is typically an option only for those who can escape the daily demands of reality – or, at least, be willing or able to take short-term risks, including the absorption of associated costs. When immediate demands or material limitations invoke too much authority, that crucial alchemical balance is poisoned, and the creative flow is interrupted.

However, Perl does not suggest that only the elite can produce ‘great’ art. Thankfully, given the current emphasis on ideologically-driven equality, diversity, and inclusion policies, there is another way forward. By recognising and removing the obstacles which impede uninterrupted artistic creation and the academic exploration of form, we can revive ‘great’ art in a way that is more widely accessible than ever before.

The removal of such barriers amounts to the recovery of human agency, and faith in the idea that everyone has something valuable to express.

The diverse examples and voices Perl invokes add support to this message, even if they obfuscate the book’s already diffuse structure. If we are living at a time when art has been desecrated by the demand for political relevance, artists must be mobilised with a manifesto or call to action. Towards such a manifesto, Perl’s book offers no easy assistance. Indeed, this is the great paradox: Perl argues that the immediate relevance of art is a risk to its applicability, but his beautifully written text is itself very artful.  

Theoretical intricacies aside, the artist or general arts enthusiast will surely be left with a changed perspective. Perl’s short book is a refreshing take on culture today built on the authority of the past, all the while providing guidance for the future.

This paradox reinstates the central question: should art be revered for its didactic power, or does its greatness inhere within its implicit and timeless potential? Perhaps it is up to the reader to decide.

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