Language and meaning are on the front lines of the culture wars and  Orwellian language distortions are being applied to fundamental philosophical texts in order to advance ideological agendas.  This is happening on the battlefields of social media platforms, the halls of politics and the law courts. One potent weapon in this ideological conflict is Karl Popper’s influential “Paradox of Tolerance” which he posited in his seminal work The Open Societies and Its Enemies.  The paradox is a fundamental thorn in the side of freedom of speech and expression.  It occurs at the point at which the slope of speech becomes most slippery.  Through a close reading of the wording of the Paradox of Tolerance we can examine how it is being used by Gender Ideologues to stifle opposition and further their social agenda.  

Before looking directly at the Paradox of Intolerance it is important to understand the backgrounds of Gender Ideology as an academic movement.  Ideologues have always manipulated important texts to bolster their questionable claims.  In the early 90’s,  gender criticism was gaining traction (alongside Marxism and Post-Colonialism) as the de rigueur ‘critical theory’.  At that point Critical Theory was primarily a tool employed by Feminists, Marxists and Post-Colonials that applied a “lens” of gender, class or cultural hierarchy to the reading of the western canon of literature.

Prior to the prevalence of Critical Theory the reading of period/historical literature was primarily studied using Practical Criticism.  Practical Criticism theorist I.A. Richards wanted “ to encourage students to concentrate on 'the words on the page', rather than relying on preconceived or received beliefs about a text.”  This close reading was an internalized process which allowed individuals to receive meaning from a personal place that was manifested by the interaction of words on the page with the thoughts and accumulated beliefs of the reader.  This is aligned to what we refer to as “critical thinking” which is, ironically, in sharp contrast to critical theory which aims to subvert this thought process by applying an ideological lens to every text for the purposes of advancing that ideology. The goal of the reading is predetermined before the reading even commences.  There is no discovery in the process - rather the nuance of the text is carved away to leave only the hierarchical elements that satisfy the Critical Theorist’s ideological goals.  This is a fundamental characteristic of the ideologue’s process and can be seen in how they twist the Paradox of Intolerance to advance their own intolerance of differing opinions.

The paradox is expressed by Popper as:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. (Popper 591)

The quote is most often used without further context.  It is employed primarily as justification to shutdown the speech of an opposing ideology.  Popper was using it specifically in his defence of open societies in the face of totalitarian encroachment.  Importantly, the context of the quote is not fully comprehensible without reference to the Paradox of Freedom which stipulates, “that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek.”  (Popper 591)  This was a fundamental attack on Plato’s sense of freedom which illustrates this particular paradox when he posits in The Republic, “Then too much freedom is liable to change into nothing else but too much slavery.”  (Plato, Republic)

Popper makes it clear that he does not wish to see speech unnecessarily constrained.  In fact, his antidote to an ideology which seeks to stifle antagonistic thought is to ensure further debate.  He states this in the paragraph following the paradox, “In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of the intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.”

The fact that Popper recognizes that suppression of intolerant speech is not always necessary is an important.  He aims to combat intolerance first through rational debate.  He stipulates that suppression would be unwise.  Buried within this statement is the troublesome appeal to “keep them in check by public opinion”.  Herein lies a the tolerance trap.  In a society that is culturally divided into roughly equal halves public opinion becomes a difficult sum to factor.  Multiplying this difficulty is the reality that the public square (ie. big tech/social media) has amplified the opinion of the few so as to appear to be an overwhelming majority.  So, irregardless of what public opinion may actually be, the perception of public opinion, that which most people are presented with, is already an unprovable fallacy.  Popper did not operate within a world in which public opinion could be so multifariously manipulated, fabricated and projected upon the masses as is the case today.  It would seem that appealing to public opinion to decide what is an “intolerant philosophy” is itself a divisive practice.

Popper’s paradox of tolerance is often used to stifle discussion and pigeonhole critics of the current direction of gender theory. On Twitter, for example, the act of “deadnaming” a transgender individual will result in an account ban.  Deadnaming, the act of referring to a transgender person by their given name, is expressly forbidden by Twitter terms of service. “We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” (Twitter TOS)  Hence the community guidelines become the “public opinion” by which intolerance is measured.  Recently, prominent psychologist and writer Jordan Peterson was suspended from Twitter after tweeting, “Remember when pride was a sin? And a criminal doctor just removed Ellen Page’s breasts.” (Twitter) This violated Twitter’s deadnaming prohibition since Ellen Page has transitioned and now goes by the male name Elliot Page.  There are several elements of this suspension that seem unjustified. First, Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and therefore has expert knowledge and insight on the phenomenon of gender dysphoria which leads to gender transitioning.  Second, the actor in question has appeared in multiple films as a female with the name “Ellen” in the credits and is therefore a public personality known by her “deadname”. Finally, the simple, intuitive belief that biological sex is equated to gender has become a signifier of intolerance.  This in itself seems absurd.  How can a counter-intuitive, social constructivist claim by a tiny minority supplant “common sense” and be the basis for broad public opinion?

Perhaps we arrived here because of a conflation of historical violence and marginalization with current intolerance.  In fact, a recent survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that 82% of Americans favoured "laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations and housing."  This data indicates a broadly accepted public opinion that Americans are opposed to discrimination on the basis of gender/sexual identity.  This also suggests broad acceptance of the reality of historical marginalization. However, it is a faulty analogy to assume that broad public opposition to discrimination in jobs, public accommodations and housing equates to broad public acceptance that human sexuality itself is NOT bimodal or that the sex of an individual doesn’t equate to their gender. It is a fallacious leap to consider a person who rationally believes in bimodal human sexuality to be intolerant based on that belief.  Gender theory ideologues would have us believe that it is “public opinion” that gender is a social construct that is unrelated to biology. Further, if one refutes the social constructivist view then that person is intolerant and, taken to the extreme, supports historical violence and marginalization.  

This is where the response to “intolerance” by gender ideologues takes an ugly turn.  According to Popper, “we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.”  (Popper 591)  This is the crux of the paradox.  In a tolerant society the greatest threat to openness is militant intolerance.  This, the gender ideologues, would have us believe is the justification for cancellation and even violence towards the intolerant.  This is, from a purely textual analysis, a distortion of Popper’s invocation of intolerance.  He suggests that the leaders of the intolerant may “forbid their followers to listen to rational argument.”  The obvious rejoinder “What is rational argument?”  When the majority of evidence clearly points to bimodal sexuality amongst human beings how is it irrational to deny bimodality?  When this preponderance of evidence is combined with a pronounced acceptance and tolerance of this socially constructivist view of sexuality in terms of the individual’s rights and freedoms where is the intolerance?  The only point when it seems that Popper would accept censorship of the intolerant is when the leaders of these groups “teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.”  This would clearly represent incitement to violence, which, in most (if not all) western societies is a criminal offence that would result in probable imprisonment or other legal implications.  Hence, if laws already exist to protect from violent intolerance there is no need to remove the issue from the realm of rational debate.

By examining the language of Popper’s Paradox of Intolerance it becomes clear that in today’s gender debate it is in the Gender Ideologues who refuse rational debate and have become the intolerant.  They move to censor and “cancel” dissenting voices.  They appeal to false public opinion to bolster their claims that those who would question a gender spectrum are violently intolerant.  They move the language goal posts of “violence” and “harm” to include words and rational debate so that they can justify their censorship of opposing views.  And in doing so they inflict real world harm on those that they cancel by stripping them of their livelihoods.   

Notes:

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/340349/american-public-opinion-equality-act.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism

https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/classroom/pracrit.htm

https://twitter.com/en/tos

The Open Society and It’s Enemies.  Karl Popper

The Republic.  Plato