"The creatures outside looked from [Government] to [God], and from [God] to [Government], and from [Government] to [God] again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
In a way, it feels like the Middle Ages, with dominance of public and private life by an overbearing church. Except here it's the religion of social justice creeping into every single domain. And as for that false dichotomy of evidence and morality - it's driven entirely by the moral fervour of a new priest class.
My other bugbear is that leftishism (progressivism's hijacking of the classic left) is all about marketisation and consumer choice. The issue of 'sex work' is its apotheosis.
It's genuinely difficult to square the fact that people like Tlaleng Mofokeng will advocate for socialised health care and the empowering effects of a free market in sex in the same document, but it isn't all that unusual. This is something that I intend to write more about.
Mary Harrington has written about the marketisation of sex under left-liberalism too. It definitely seems more of a feature than a bug. I'll enjoy your further writing on this.
Many interesting points here, David, although you don't quite answer the question in the strapline as to why this has become such a prominent cause (a point I have some interest in, since it seems as if it might intersect with contemporary gender metaphysics somewhere in the backstory).
My wife and I were long-time supporters of Amnesty International until the 2020s, when it became increasingly clear that they had no interest in (nor understanding of) our human rights agreements - a contempt most egregiously displayed in their motivated decision to defend vaccine mandates. I wrote to them several times about various bizarre actions Amnesty had been involved in, but received only weaselly 'pass-the-buck' responses and eventually we just withdrew our support. I had known human rights were in trouble for some time, but it was still a shock to discover the depth of the rot.
It was probably more of a rhetorical question. The answer is I haven't quite made my mind up what explains it. The most remarkable aspect of it is how nakedly 'neoliberal' the impulse is to fully decriminalise the sex trade, which is the last thing one would normally expect of lefty human rights NGOs and activists. This is what requires the most careful thought, and I haven't yet figured out what I think about it.
Thanks for the clarification! This is an issue I have worked on myself, to no success. Unlike the gender metaphysics malarkey, which I can trace back to Judith Butler playing in Foucault's sandpit, I still can't see where the shift in sex-work politics originates. If it does not come from an academic thread (and it may, I just may not have seen it yet), then it may be worth asking who profits from decriminalising sex-work and seeing if there's a paid advocacy angle...
"Evidence, not morality, should guide ... policy." What we allow to be evidence is not value-free. Much as Bettina says, evidence-based policy making quickly becomes policy-based evidence making.
"The creatures outside looked from [Government] to [God], and from [God] to [Government], and from [Government] to [God] again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
In a way, it feels like the Middle Ages, with dominance of public and private life by an overbearing church. Except here it's the religion of social justice creeping into every single domain. And as for that false dichotomy of evidence and morality - it's driven entirely by the moral fervour of a new priest class.
My other bugbear is that leftishism (progressivism's hijacking of the classic left) is all about marketisation and consumer choice. The issue of 'sex work' is its apotheosis.
It's genuinely difficult to square the fact that people like Tlaleng Mofokeng will advocate for socialised health care and the empowering effects of a free market in sex in the same document, but it isn't all that unusual. This is something that I intend to write more about.
Mary Harrington has written about the marketisation of sex under left-liberalism too. It definitely seems more of a feature than a bug. I'll enjoy your further writing on this.
Many interesting points here, David, although you don't quite answer the question in the strapline as to why this has become such a prominent cause (a point I have some interest in, since it seems as if it might intersect with contemporary gender metaphysics somewhere in the backstory).
My wife and I were long-time supporters of Amnesty International until the 2020s, when it became increasingly clear that they had no interest in (nor understanding of) our human rights agreements - a contempt most egregiously displayed in their motivated decision to defend vaccine mandates. I wrote to them several times about various bizarre actions Amnesty had been involved in, but received only weaselly 'pass-the-buck' responses and eventually we just withdrew our support. I had known human rights were in trouble for some time, but it was still a shock to discover the depth of the rot.
It was probably more of a rhetorical question. The answer is I haven't quite made my mind up what explains it. The most remarkable aspect of it is how nakedly 'neoliberal' the impulse is to fully decriminalise the sex trade, which is the last thing one would normally expect of lefty human rights NGOs and activists. This is what requires the most careful thought, and I haven't yet figured out what I think about it.
Thanks for the clarification! This is an issue I have worked on myself, to no success. Unlike the gender metaphysics malarkey, which I can trace back to Judith Butler playing in Foucault's sandpit, I still can't see where the shift in sex-work politics originates. If it does not come from an academic thread (and it may, I just may not have seen it yet), then it may be worth asking who profits from decriminalising sex-work and seeing if there's a paid advocacy angle...
"Evidence, not morality, should guide ... policy." What we allow to be evidence is not value-free. Much as Bettina says, evidence-based policy making quickly becomes policy-based evidence making.
Exactly.