This is the first in a series of essays looking at tensions between feminism and the foundations of our society. This essay looks at conflict between feminism1 and the philosophical bedrock of our society - the Enlightenment.
In previous essays I argued there are dangers in feminism’s ethics and psychology. In these new essays I will argue that, even if all the prejudice and discrimination disappeared completely, feminism’s political philosophy would remain a growing systemic threat.
I committed to be concise in my essays, so I won’t delve into the complex foundations of feminist beliefs2, their relationship with allied ideologies like queer theory3 or the sometimes tortuous terminology4. My aim is simply to explain the conflict - and why it matters.
Introduction
If it weren’t for the Enlightenment, you’d probably be dead. Your short life would have been miserable, precarious, and governed by forces you could neither understand nor resist.
The Enlightenment may not grab your attention. But it does matter – a lot. More than anything else, we have the Enlightenment to thank for our knowledge, our health, our comfort and our understanding of our shared humanity. If the Enlightenment falters, all that is at risk.
To accomplish this miracle, all it took was ideas that, today, seem so obvious as to be trite:
Humanism – the belief that every individual has equal moral worth and the right and responsibility to shape their own life.
Empiricism – a commitment to knowledge based on evidence, experiment and data rather than feelings, dogma or authority.
Reason – the view that beliefs should be tested against reason, a process at which science excels.
Others might add belief in progress, free speech, or tolerant debate. But hopefully, you get the general idea.
Through some combination of genius, luck, trial and error, the Enlightenment stumbled upon a special alchemy. Universal humanism fostered a freer, more open society, ripe for rational inquiry. Inquiry produced knowledge and prosperity that, in turn, strengthened universal humanism. An altogether compelling package.
The problem is, feminists, especially in academia, don’t generally share my enthusiasm. For them, the Enlightenment is “more or less synonymous with everything white, male, middle-class and heterosexual.” And they don’t mean that as a compliment.
So, what is it they don’t like?
Humanism
First, feminists don’t like the Enlightenment’s universal humanism:
Enlightenment humanism assumes equal moral worth, whereas contemporary feminism requires asymmetric rights – privilege for the in-group and discrimination against the out-group. For example, prominent feminist theorist Anne Phillips calls for a turn “away from the abstract universals of the Enlightenment tradition”.
Enlightenment humanism honours the individual above all whereas feminism is “mobilized around women as a group” and has a tribal world-view. For Anne Phillips and others, even the concept of the individual is “suspect” - so much so that it requires scare quotes:
The “individual” is a patriarchal category
This opposition isn’t happenstance - these issues cut right to feminism’s core. Nothing recognisable as feminism could possibly compromise. But does that matter? Are there real-world consequences?
The most obvious result is the endemic prejudice and discrimination against males. But I’ve written about that at length previously so, here, I’d like to focus instead on the wedge feminism is driving between the sexes.
Almost unnoticed, segregation between the sexes has grown and spread. Women-only train carriages; women-only universities; women-only parking, banks, Ubers, ride share companies and police stations. One airline even offers women the option of segregated seating. The list keeps growing, each addition unremarkable until you step back and see the pattern.
At a personal level, the growing divide between men and women has resulted in a “Romantic Recession” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5); a “sex recession” (1, 2, 3) and declining marriage rates.
The divide has been termed “The Rift” but it is widening into a chasm. And there’s ample evidence feminism is a cause (1, 2, 3).
The Enlightenment built on a vision of universal membership in society to multiply the benefits to all. Sadly, we are turning our back on that in favour of division and hostility. There is damage already, and history offers few comforts about what comes next.
But feminism’s rejection of universal humanism is only half the problem. The Enlightenment’s other great pillar, its commitment to evidence, reason and science, faces an even more fundamental attack.
Empiricism, Reason and Science
From the beginning, Women’s Studies recycled a lot of ideas from the New Left among which postmodernism was key. The issue for us is that, as Edward O. Wilson wrote:
Postmodernism is the ultimate antithesis of the Enlightenment.
The clash between the two starts with the most basic assumptions. The Enlightenment distrusted claims built on dogma or appeals to authority and came down firmly on the side of empiricism. In this view, if a claim cannot survive a test against evidence, then it doesn’t matter who made the claim or what beliefs support it – it’s wrong.
Influential feminist academics often take the opposite stance. Building on postmodernism, they’ve created theories that reject the possibility of objectivity and even of truth – theories including situated knowledge, standpoint theory and social constructionism. The identity of the person making a claim becomes central because some groups (especially feminist women) are said to have “epistemic privilege”, meaning that their subjective feelings and experiences have a special access to the truth. The result? Feminists can feel justified in rejecting evidence that contradicts their opinions and instead conclude that the evidence, or the people collecting it, cannot be trusted. Which places feminism not as a successor to Enlightenment scepticism but as its opponent.
The next step is to attack reason and science.
Attacks on reason start from claims that it is, in some way, patriarchal. Consider for example Professor Genevieve Lloyd’s condemnation of “the maleness of Reason” or Charlotte Witt’s analysis of the proposition that “reason and objectivity, are irredeemably masculinist and sexist”.
Attacks on science reached a crescendo during the 1990s “Science Wars”. Again, the justification was that science is, in some way, male. But there was also great concern that science frequently reveals facts at odds with feminist beliefs. To quote Gross and Levitt’s book on the science wars:
By and large, the logic here is that, since the conclusions are unacceptable by feminist lights, the science must be flawed...
Feminist theorists propose a new, feminist science. Some, like Helen Longino, stress the importance of subjective experience. Others say emotion should also have a role.
It’s not just the scientific method they want to change, but also the purpose of science. To quote Gross and Levitt again:
since science is liable at any moment to produce results that demolish one or another cherished feminist beliefs, feminist science must instead be driven by feminist values.
As philosopher Susan Haack observes, the desired outcome is for science to become “only politics in disguise”. But feminists sweep aside such concerns with the breathtaking assertion that feminist ideology will improve science since:
feminists’ political status gives them a special vantage point from which to discharge the aims of science.
Experience suggests otherwise. Consider the following quotes from unrepentant researchers:
We don’t go out and collect data; we create data. [1]
And
… actionable and useful data for community care was the utmost priority over true, accurate, or verifiable data. [2]
Even among leading feminist thinkers, problems are evident. Consider, for example, Sandra Harding who rages:
Why is it not as illuminating and honest to refer to Newton’s laws as ‘Newton’s rape manual’ as it is to call them ‘Newton’s mechanics’?
Or Luce Irigaray who criticised E = mc2 as a “sexed equation“.
Similar scholarship now appears across the humanities and social sciences and is even spreading into science5 – to the point where there are a number of blogs and publications dedicated to calling out the latest examples. (E.g. 1, 2, 3, 4) And, at the time of writing, voting is open for a competition to determine the worst peer-reviewed paper of all time.
Journal articles on “feminist glaciology”, “a feminist queer crip approach to the gut” or “queer feminist blue posthumanities” may seem silly, but they aren’t stray oddities. They are symptoms of a broader attack on empiricism, science and reason. The problem is that norms exist only while people actively uphold them. When they do, individuals may be dumb but the system as a whole is brilliant. Today, norms in academia are being eroded and the system is looking a lot less than brilliant. And these aren’t just academic problems - they’re now driving policy decisions with life-and-death consequences.
Impact
The damage extends beyond academia—there’s evidence society as a whole is turning away from reason and this may be damaging the economy. But rather than catalogue problems, let me focus on one issue that’s largely passing unnoticed.
Feminists have long claimed “epistemic privilege” meaning that their subjective feelings provide access to truth—even to truths that cannot be checked by evidence or reason. You might imagine that such mysticism would die on contact with the corridors of power. You’d be wrong.
Under the banner of “lived experience”, feminist lobbyists and bureaucrats present carefully curated anecdotes of female victimhood to decision makers who, predictably, brush aside facts and science in their rush to do something, anything to help these women. The tactic dominates policy areas including domestic violence, mental health and sexual assault. Let’s look at suicide policy as a case study.
The National Suicide Prevention Office gives its objective as “ensuring a whole-of-government approach that is informed by lived experience”. And “lived experience” occurs no fewer than five times among its indicators for success. But, nowhere among their more than 100 indicators will you find the number of suicides. Consequently, if they occupy themselves swapping anecdotes even as suicides increase, they can present that to government as a success.
Moreover, about two-thirds of those selected for their “lived experience panel” are female - which may explain why most suicide spending goes to women though more than three-quarters of suicides are men.
The end result is that, over the last two decades, the number of suicides in Australia has increased even as global numbers fell. That is a disgrace and a tragedy - and it has happened because universal human concern has been replaced by identity-based theatre, and policy is driven by performative piety rather than a disciplined search for evidence on what works. The rejection of Enlightenment principles comes at a cost counted in lives.
Conclusion
This graph shows GDP since the year 1. That long flat area on the left is humanity’s normal state – poverty, sickness and misery. Very recently, an extraordinary confluence of ideas granted us the comfort, knowledge and prosperity we enjoy today. And the Enlightenment lit that fuse.6
But our great good fortune isn’t guaranteed. Humanity’s default setting is a life that’s nasty, brutish and short. So, it’s a very, very bad idea to start attacking the Enlightenment.
Yet attacking the Enlightenment is exactly what feminism is doing. Its opposition to universal humanism is fundamental and it’s also resolutely opposed to empiricism, reason and science. Feminism isn’t an heir to the West’s moral-intellectual tradition, it’s a rival.
Make no mistake - it is feminism that is advancing, leaving divisiveness, decaying academic standards and failed policies in its wake.
The Enlightenment will never be fashionable; it has none of the glamour of revolution or the romance of utopia. Yet almost everything we value hangs from the thin thread it spun between fact and moral concern. If you choose just one aspect of our society to defend, make it this.
Postscript
I’d like to add some related thoughts about Women’s Studies.
Women’s Studies set out to systematise feminism – to turn it into a consistent, reasoned body of knowledge. [1, 2] Yet the tangle of feminist epistemology, standpoint theory, situated knowledge, social constructionism and feminist science shows that the project has failed. Rather than reformulating claims of a patriarchy to fit evidence, they retreated from empiricism. Rather than reconciling claims of victimhood with facts, they elevated subjectivity and emotion over facts. Rather than aligning feminism with science they attacked science.
Students of logic will recognise this as reductio ad absurdum. In plain terms, if you make some assumptions and end up with nonsense, then your assumptions were wrong. Feminism didn’t drift into nonsense; it was forced there by its internal contradictions. Ironically, feminist luminaries including Sandra Harding, Donna Haraway and Evelyn Fox Keller who thought they were finding clever paths around contradictions were unwittingly debunking feminism.
In previous essays I’ve characterised feminism based upon what it does rather than what it says. I take a similar stance here to determine what it “believes”.
The challenge is that feminism has changed over time, and even feminism has its mavericks, so there isn’t perfect agreement on “what feminism believes”. But there is almost perfect alignment among contemporary feminist artefacts like position papers, commission reports, submissions, policy papers and media. The assumptions, views and methods they share are what I mean by feminism’s beliefs, position and philosophy.
This essay focuses on the feminist position rather than details of what underpins it. Readers looking for details of standpoint theory, situated knowledge, social constructionism, postmodernism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, critical theory, feminist science and feminist epistemology won’t find them here.
I expect my readers are aware of the alliance between intersectional feminism and other identity-based ideologies based on critical theory. These movements share a similar political philosophy and much of what I say here applies to them as well. Even so, my focus remains feminism — partly because it’s the theme of my essays and partly because its hostility to the Enlightenment came first and has been most consequential.
As just one example, feminist standpoint theory rejects objectivity but then uses the term “strong objectivity” to refer to subjectivity – another example of feminism’s penchant for semantic inversion.
I caution readers not to extrapolate my views too far. There are many female academics, some of them feminists, who produce work of the highest quality. And most women who consider themselves feminists are blissfully unaware of the beliefs I’ve presented.
If you want a visceral understanding of how much we owe the Enlightenment, I strongly recommend Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now.
I have this sinking feeling that while I was focussed on feminist attacks on men they were eroding the foundations of society.
Food for thought...
> The “individual” is a patriarchal category
Bloody Hell! Quotes like the above are terrifying.
Thanks for a great read - very informative and, err, “Enlightening”. You’ve given me a new perspective from which to view the never-ending feminist project.