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A review by quenchgum
The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity by Douglas Murray
2.0
I’m stunned. This would have been a thoughtful, well-argued, and often convincing book if the premises it assumed and relied upon -- that, in general, subconscious bias doesn't materially cause certain groups to be discriminated against -- were well-founded. But Murray, frankly kind of unbelievably, seems to mostly think that we basically do live in a society that’s grown past discrimination based on race, gender, and sexuality. If you assume those issues away then the book is fantastic. But if you don’t, and I don’t think we should, then you’ll see that the book fundamentally declines to engage with the necessary conversations. Many of its logical conclusions seem irrelevant when they aren’t wrestling with what I see and have lived as a reality.
I took a ton of notes and at many points I wanted to engage at a more specific, minute level, but it got too overwhelming. Maybe at some point I will. FWIW - in a shock - I think his section on the transgender rights movement was his most compelling. You shouldn’t have to be worried about losing your job because you questioned whether it makes sense for a 10 year old to start HRT (though I will say that I think the admittedly often kind-of rabid liberal response to any arguably transphobic comment is so rabid in large part *because a ton of people are often actually transphobic* (in ways that are actually hateful and not just.. raising logical questions about how to handle children with gender dysphoria)). I also think Murray’s obviously right that liberal cancel culture online can be insane (although nobody really disagrees with this) and that we’d all benefit from more thoughtful dialogue. But I think Murray completely misunderstood the liberal POV on the vast majority of points he addressed. Among MANY other topics, I think he completely misunderstands intersectionality and the tensions that exist within it: those tensions don’t delegitimize it but rather are an acceptable and expected result of having honest discussions about the ways our “identities” lead others to treat us certain ways. For example, the fact that black people with darker skin on average face more discrimination than black people with lighter skin doesn’t prove any meaningful contradiction in the way Murray seems to think it would, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t speak thoughtfully about the ways that subconscious bias manifests itself.
I took a ton of notes and at many points I wanted to engage at a more specific, minute level, but it got too overwhelming. Maybe at some point I will. FWIW - in a shock - I think his section on the transgender rights movement was his most compelling. You shouldn’t have to be worried about losing your job because you questioned whether it makes sense for a 10 year old to start HRT (though I will say that I think the admittedly often kind-of rabid liberal response to any arguably transphobic comment is so rabid in large part *because a ton of people are often actually transphobic* (in ways that are actually hateful and not just.. raising logical questions about how to handle children with gender dysphoria)). I also think Murray’s obviously right that liberal cancel culture online can be insane (although nobody really disagrees with this) and that we’d all benefit from more thoughtful dialogue. But I think Murray completely misunderstood the liberal POV on the vast majority of points he addressed. Among MANY other topics, I think he completely misunderstands intersectionality and the tensions that exist within it: those tensions don’t delegitimize it but rather are an acceptable and expected result of having honest discussions about the ways our “identities” lead others to treat us certain ways. For example, the fact that black people with darker skin on average face more discrimination than black people with lighter skin doesn’t prove any meaningful contradiction in the way Murray seems to think it would, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t speak thoughtfully about the ways that subconscious bias manifests itself.