Quote:
Originally Posted by wittynickname
And do you know how you get to the point where you're left alone and treated like everyone else?
It takes vocal feminists to push legislators to protect women's rights. It takes vocal LGBT advocates to push for hate crime laws and housing/employment protection. It takes vocal advocates against racially unjust policing/sentencing to help black communities just be left alone, etc.
It's all well and good to say you want to just be left alone and treated like everyone else, but without someone to advocate for your rights and freedoms and protections, without those "identity politics" libertarians love to whine about, you don't have the ability to just be left alone and treated equally, because those in power will take your rights away the minute they get the chance.
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But legislation calling for all people to be treated the same does not require groups to appeal to group identities. It just means widening the circle of who is a a full member of society and has all the rights that everyone one else expects to have. That widening of the circle has been going on for two hundred years in liberal societies.
Gays in North America had rights before they were accepted by the majority of citizens. Straights in the 60s and 70s were going through their own sexual liberalization. They realized they didn't want to be judged on their own sexual choices and concluded that it wasn't any of their business what gay people choose to do for kicks. Doesn't mean they gave a crap about gay identity, or that they didn't disapprove of gay behaviour.
That's the whole point of liberalism - protect individual choice, even unpopular choice, from the tyranny of the majority, because most of us are a minority or otherwise vulnerable to oppression in some aspect of our lives. So I'll tolerate you doing something I don't especially like on the understanding that you'll protect me from being oppressed when I do something most people don't like. We don't need a common identity beyond not wanting to be oppressed by the majority or the state.
We make social progress by recognizing that we have a common interest in being treated as individuals who are free to defy convention or authority so long as we don't hurt others.
Question for those who disagree:
Why has liberalism made so much progress in the West, and comparatively less in China, India, or the Arab world?