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1) I concur with earlier posters that if social change drives progressive values and progressive values drive social change, then you haven’t fully rebutted important reactionary – or at least conservative – claims in this area. It may be true that comparatively, the latter effects are “small.” But they can still be important, because these are areas we have more control over. For example, the Pill probably played a much bigger role in rising divorce rates than no-fault divorce. But banning contraception is not a politically viable option today, whereas toughening divorce laws (and, say, providing economic incentives for people to get and stay married) is. (Cultural changes, such as making more people Catholic, are also semi-feasible.)
2) I think it’s ironic that you hold up Rome as a progressive society, especially your wording in the Anti-Reactionary FAQ:

Although their tolerance famously did not always extend as far as Christianity, when the Romans had to denounce it they claimed it was not a religion but merely a “superstition” – a distinction which itself sounds suspiciously Progressive to modern ears. Indeed, the insistence of Christianity (and Judaism) on a single god, and their unwillingness to respect other religions as equally valid (in a very modern and relativistic way) was a large part of the Roman complaint against them.

If this is “progressive,” that seems like fuel for the fire of the contemporary conservative Christian narrative of totalitarian progressivism oppressing Christians.

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You are right on the surface, but you don’t know deep enough. Please think this through:

1) The ideology of progressive movements like the fat acceptance movements rests on concepts like equality, all human beings having equal value, and freedom in the sense of the freedom of subjective choice.

2) Value means suitability for a purpose. A good knife is one that cuts well, i.e. well suited for the purpose of cuttin, a good doctor is someone who is well suited for the purpose of healing people, and a good human beging is…. is um, er, what? Well suited for the purpose of human beings? Is there one? Wait…

3) Any statement about the value of human beings, i.e. it being equal or not equal, rests on the idea that value is even definable for human beings i.e. being a homo sapiens sapiens is inherently directed towards a goal. But the last people who believed in that were the Scholastics who took it from Aristotle and Aquinas. And they were the last reactionaries. Not conincidentally.

4) If human life has no inherent direction, it means we may as well live according to our own desires and wishes. This is where the freedom of subjective choice comes from. If there is no goal we all are supposed to pursue, then our value is equal or rather #undef. And if every value judgement comes from someone’s desire, then the desires of one person worth just as much as the desires of another person.

This is where everything comes from, from fat acceptance to accepting gays. If human beings are not naturally geared towards reproduction in the sense that people who reproduce are considered better because they are well suited for an important subset of human goals, if sex is just for fun, what is wrong with gays indeed? If aesthethics is subjective, and everybody is free to make a choice between living long or dying young but having lots of fun, what is wrong with being fat indeed? When we look down on fat people, we feel like they are failing some built-in goal in life. Fat acceptence like all the other progressive movements is based on the idea that there is one.

So, Mr. Alexander, ideology is not merely about social circumstances. It is also about whether we believe that human life is goal-oriented, teleological, Aristotelean, and thus do not really believe in equality or subjective freedom, or do.

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“I understand that it’s a morally retarded minority of crazies who do the witch-burning, but the broader feminist community doesn’t seem to be willing to stand up and say “no, that’s bullshit; demeaning motherhood is about the most anti-feminist thing you can do”, so the crazies get to control public discourse on feminism, and the rest of us have to assume that that behavior is condoned.”

And yet I’ve seen exactly that conversation half a dozen times in the last year or so. Then again, I’m on a college campus and exposed to a younger set of feminists who see exactly that decision coming in their futures.

I’d say: give it 5 or 10 years and we’ll start seeing exactly what I’ve seen – moderate feminists telling more radical feminists not to STFU, but to embrace multiple lifeways. The debate needs time to climb down the intellectual tower into the public square. And that’ll take time. Lots of steps on the tower, dontcha know.

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Ok, that may be what the nice feminist intellectuals are thinking, but the situation on the ground in many circles (including public discourse) *does* seem to be one of discouraging housewifery and motherhood. AFAIK, people who say things like “housewifery and motherhood are noble choices and may be a better choice than careerism for most women” in public discourse tend to get shouted down as evil misogynists who want to subjugate women or complicit house nigs.

I understand that it’s a morally retarded minority of crazies who do the witch-burning, but the broader feminist community doesn’t seem to be willing to stand up and say “no, that’s bullshit; demeaning motherhood is about the most anti-feminist thing you can do”, so the crazies get to control public discourse on feminism, and the rest of us have to assume that that behavior is condoned.

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“Wonder why so many Singaporean men are still virgins.”
???

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