My “Lived Experience” with the Cult of “Social Justice”
As most of us understand it, social justice is a good thing. Definitions vary, but the common thread is a belief that society should actively work to expand access to social goods for all people, regardless of race, sex, or other immutable characteristics. Like all decent people, I support that noble goal. So, it worries me that a vocal minority of extremists with dangerous ideas and toxic tactics have abused the concept in recent years, throwing it into disrepute. A cadre of activists today push a radical ideology in the name of “social justice”, one with none of its liberal principles. Because its proponents intentionally manipulate language to evade criticism, I will use the terms Liberal Social Justice (LSJ) and Critical Social Justice (CSJ) to distinguish between the original version and the new one.
GROWING UP IN A CULT
My elementary and high school education took place at a private religious school, Seventh Day Adventist (SDA), to be exact. The SDA Church is a fundamentalist, Protestant Christian denomination that began in the United States in the mid-19th century — an era during which many separatist cult-like movements were formed (most notably Mormonism). For the SDA Church, it was the Millerite movement whose early believers predicted, based upon an esoteric reading of the Bible, that the world would end on October 22nd, 1844. When that day passed, offshoots of the movement formed based upon one or another justification for the miscalculation. To this day, SDA Church doctrine states that we are living in the “End Times.” I was instructed by teachers who had no qualms informing students that Armageddon would probably come “during our lifetime.” Some of the elders have since passed away.
Apart from being a bit kooky, that kind of eccentricity seems harmless enough. But beliefs invariably influence other beliefs. I was taught young earth creationism — in science class no less — and that anyone who tried to persuade us otherwise, even with credible evidence, was a tool of Satan sent to damn our souls. My early schooling was about two years ahead of public school in some subjects — but 200+ years behind in science.
Some of the indoctrination inevitably took root. I was a skeptical but otherwise upstanding SDA kid. I had no objections when my friends casually stated that they would never marry outside the Church. We were discouraged from even associating with non-Adventist kids. I remember taking an odd pride in that, like outsiders were beneath me. This went on well into my teens, when something changed.
ESCAPING THE CULT
My sexuality was pivotal. I was aware from early adolescence that I was attracted to both boys and girls. At first, I thought little of it, but over time, it began to cause cognitive dissonance. The Bible taught that homosexuality was a sin — and bisexuality by extension. Did this mean I was supposed to resist temptation and just marry a nice SDA girl when I grew up? Perhaps. We were also supposed to follow other strict rules, such as not engaging in “secular activities” on Saturday or even — for the truly devout — not eating pork or shellfish. In that context, everything seemed equally arbitrary — as illustrated by the common answer adults gave to pesky questions: “Because God says so.” By 16, I had outgrown it. I’d had enough of the hypocrisy and the dismissal of my skepticism. So, I tested out of high school early and started college.
Most of my SDA friends went to private Adventist universities, their indoctrination continuing unabated, but I dove headlong into the belly of the beast: public community college, then a public state university. I flourished in that new environment. Whereas before, my skepticism and curiosity had been disdained by religious instructors, outside, it was welcomed — even encouraged. For the first time, I felt free to fully explore the world of ideas, unconstrained by dogma. I quickly realized I’d been led astray not only in science, but in history and even the arts, where only the most Christian-friendly material was covered. My intellectual experience had been filtered through the lens of a single subculture. It was a pedagogy built upon circular reasoning with the goal of reinforcing faith in SDA doctrine.
To compensate, I spent the next ten years immersing myself in a broad education across multiple universities — changing majors four times. In contrast to my prior schooling, these institutions were founded on Enlightenment values — where critical thinking, logic, and evidence ruled, not blind faith. It’s not that tradition was disrespected; I was exposed to philosophical and religious traditions from all over the world. It was a breath of fresh air — life-giving. I appreciated my newfound intellectual freedom all the more because I knew firsthand what it was like to be arbitrarily constrained. My experience had fine-tuned my dogma radar, and when secular education institutions began falling into a different but equally stultifying set of dogmas, red lights went off.
Warning Signs
It was in an advanced literature course in the late 2000s that I was first exposed to a school of thought called Critical Theory, which we used as an approach to literary criticism. I remember the professor saying, “The author’s intent doesn’t matter,” which meant that it was considered acceptable to attribute meanings to a work even if the author had explicitly stated that they never intended such. That rubbed me the wrong way. It begged the question, “By what standard can we judge which interpretations are correct, or is it just anything goes?”
As the semester wore on, however, I gained a new insight: that language is an imperfect tool for communication because “signifiers” (such as words) can only be defined by other signifiers. There is no way to directly access the “signifieds”, which are different for each speaker and listener because they are informed by our different experiences. In other words, it is never possible to ascertain exactly what the speaker means; only an interpretation of it because we all have different associations with each word or phrase. That collectively adds up to substantially different readings of a given work.
I was mesmerized. It made sense. Applied to art, it resulted in more dynamic and interesting criticism. Besides, this was just one perspective out of many I studied at a school that had earned my trust by exposing me to a variety of differing perspectives. Little did I know, Critical Theory would expand well beyond literary criticism.
Queer Liberation
Southern Oregon University, the last school I attended, has repeatedly been recognized as one of the most LGBT-friendly colleges in the US. Still, I remember anxiously walking into the campus’s Queer Resource Center (QRC). Anybody who saw me might assume I was gay. What if people looked at me funny? I wasn’t ashamed of my bisexuality, but the fear of being judged by my new peers brought back latent insecurities from my childhood. The girl at the help desk was kind — and cute! After some flirtatious pleasantries, I asked her, “How do I meet other LGBT people around here? I’d really like to find a circle of bi folks.” She invited me to a dance put on by the QRC. I went and had a great time. Everybody was friendly and supportive. Nobody had anything to hide. It was another world, a freer one, compared to the insular and judgmental atmosphere of my youth.
After school, I got engaged and moved to Los Angeles with my fiancé, now my wife, so that she could pursue her master’s at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in — notably — Critical Studies. We got involved with a wonderful social club for bi people called amBi. I’d finally found that bi circle! It was healing to be surrounded by tolerant, open-minded people — yet another liberating chapter in my life. Before long, we made a name for ourselves as event organizers, and then as volunteers at Pride parades and festivals. In time, I was invited to work for a nonprofit called The American Institute of Bisexuality. I readily accepted.
The organization, also called The Bi Foundation, shares the liberal Enlightenment values that helped me escape the indoctrination of my youth. But as it turns out, they are somewhat of an outlier. The vast majority of LGBT orgs now take a different, illiberal, counter-Enlightenment approach. I would soon discover that the world of contemporary queer activism could not be more different from the liberal arts education I received in the 2000s or from the carefree bi social club I had since come to love. Instead, it was much more like the repressive environment in which I had grown up back in the 90s. It came to remind me of a fundamentalist cult with a lot of the same qualities.
Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire
The first related conference I attended was BECAUSE (Bisexual Empowerment Conference: A Uniting, Supportive Experience) in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. It began as a way for bi activists to network with one another. Upon checking in, I was asked to put on a name tag with my pronouns. I didn’t think much of it. I was asked to fill out a survey with questions about my personal history, including my preferred label to describe my “bi+ and gender identities.” That felt a little strange. Regardless, the conference was a positive networking experience with engaging speakers. There were early warning signs, though. The discussion groups were rife with virtue signaling. It reminded me of the religious one-upmanship of my SDA days and the pride in perceived victimhood.
In 2016, I attended an LGBT event in Washington, DC, hosted by the Obama administration as an invited bi activist. I didn’t know what to expect. I was hoping for something productive. What I witnessed was anything but. There was virtually no discussion of policy ideas that might make a real material difference in the lives of bi people. It was nothing but grandstanding. Panelists were competing in the oppression Olympics, obnoxiously vying to portray themselves as both the most virtuous and beleaguered. Every speech began with a recitation of the speaker’s intersecting oppressed identities. The more intersectionality points, the more street cred. Poor chaps who had the misfortune of being born white, male, and/or heterosexual (and who weren’t trans) were admonished to “check their privilege”, which meant that their opinions were worthless. The quality of one’s ideas didn’t matter, not that anything concrete was being discussed anyway. Instead, the political strategy amounted to nothing but endless shouting about how American society was irredeemably awful and needed to be torn down. It felt like the White House invited us so we would feel listened to, even though it served no other practical purpose.
Obama was not in attendance — I’m sure he had more important things to do — but I wondered what he must make of the weird, illiberal theater I’d witnessed. I thought back on his speech, delivered after attacks on his association with the radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright:
“… We’ve heard my former pastor ... use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; … they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America...”
No, President Obama would not have approved. He is a liberal, like me, who shares Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of treating people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin — or any other immutable trait. I got into LGBT activism in service of that dream. Isn’t the whole point to bring about a future where everybody is treated as an individual rather than stereotyped on the basis of superficial qualities? Shouldn’t we be working to break down barriers, not fomenting perpetual divisions for tribal warfare? Why were these activists, among the most privileged people in society, so full of disdain for the Enlightenment values that founded this country and for the liberal values that made LGBT rights possible? Didn’t they understand that replacing one form of bigotry with another was not real progress? I reassured myself that this was probably just an eccentric group. It was just one day, after all. Surely, most LGBT activists shared my liberal values. They had to, right?
I returned to DC to attend training sessions with a leading expert on social media strategy. A friend and colleague, who happened to be a cis white male, committed the cardinal sin: stating an opinion contrary to the Critical “Social Justice” (CSJ) dogma. He merely expressed concern that some of the more extreme language being used might alienate allies. He was brutally pilloried by several fellow students in the class, who claimed that his words had triggered them and amounted to “actual violence” and demanded that he rescind his statement or be expelled. I was flabbergasted, and my friend was fighting back tears. We’d made real sacrifices to be there. It felt wrong.
Over the following years, we attended many more progressive conferences, including Netroots Nation (attended every year by Democratic lawmakers). They all had the same toxic culture — and it got worse by the year. Eventually, almost every discussion group, presentation, or speech seemed narrowly focused on this emerging, illiberal ideology. With it came more obnoxious behavior. Attendees who spoke up in defense of traditional liberal values were protested, shouted down, and disinvited. I witnessed outright racism against white people, sexism against men, and cisheterophobia — all coming from the movement that was supposed to be standing for equality and human rights. Even the SSSS (Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality) eventually succumbed to the dogma. They were pressured into releasing embarrassing statements denying biological sex, reinforcing the irrational worldview of CSJ, and undermining their scientific mission. There had to be an explanation. I needed to understand the motivations behind this trend.
The Cult of “Social Justice”
I looked to my better half for support. With her MA in Critical Studies, which was somehow related to this convoluted landscape, I knew my wife Talia could help me decode this riddle. She explained that Critical Theory, the obscure academic philosophy I encountered in a literature course, had expanded to become the dominant political principle and epistemology of modern progressive politics. Madness. How did a single perspective of limited practical application come to capture half of Western political thought — and so quickly?! It wasn’t just the US Democratic Party — it had spread to the global left. I needed to research it further. I compiled a reading list of figures influential in cultural-left thought, including Hegel, Marx, The Frankfurt School, various postmodernists, and their contemporary successors. The common thread was a mode of thought much less grounded in rationality than the analytical, pro-Enlightenment thinkers I preferred. It was like going back to religious school all over again!
Religion, like social justice, is hard to define. Superficially plausible descriptions such as “A belief in god(s)” fall short, because not all religions have such beliefs. Scholars tend to prefer broader, less parochial definitions like “A particular system of faith and worship” or “A pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.” Contemporary thinkers have argued in all seriousness that some apparently secular ideologies can be regarded as religions. In Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World (2020), theologian Tara Isabella Burton argues that the “social justice” phenomenon has all the key components of a religion: it provides believers with an all-encompassing worldview, meaning, and purpose, clearly defined communal boundaries, and powerful self-actualizing rituals.
Linguist John McWhorter’s Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (2021) maintains that blind faith in systemic oppression (despite evidence of unprecedented progress) is a kind of fallen creation myth. Cisgender, heterosexual, white, and/or male people are “born in sin” and can never purge themselves of it — they can only endlessly atone by saying the right words and performing the right self-flagellations. Biologist Richard Dawkins, a notorious critic of religion, has come under fire for making similar invidious comparisons in his attempts to defend his own scientific field from related gender essentialism and science denial. Political theory professor Joshua Mitchell has argued that the boundaries between politics and religion are breaking down and that CSJ has strong structural parallels with Christianity. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, in his book Woke Inc. (2021), wrote that CSJ beliefs arguably “meet the legal definition of a religion” and thus, employers would be well-advised not to force these views upon their employees.
Among others, CSJ shares with religions the qualities of blind faith, circular epistemology, self-referential exegesis, cynical apologetics, sacred testimony, indoctrination, authoritarianism, holier-than-thou attitudes, hostility to science and rationality, and the persecution and excommunication of heretics. Critical pedagogy, in fact, was founded upon principles developed by the Catholic socialist Paulo Freire, whose book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) has been standard reading in many higher education curricula for decades.
In Christian school, “faith” was the convenient get-out-of-jail-free card for authorities who had no real answer to valid questions. Every dogma is reducible to an article of faith, which means that it requires no evidence to back it up. If there were evidence, then there’d be no need for faith. What matters is that we prove our loyalty to God and the Church by choosing to believe despite the dearth of evidence. The less evidence, the more faith is required and the more noble and virtuous it is to believe. This creates a self-reinforcing, perpetual motion machine of irrationality. It would be harmless enough if people were content to keep those beliefs to themselves, but a great many religious people see it as their calling to force those beliefs onto others through indoctrination and even legislation. The Cult of CSJ is no exception. Whenever someone asks perfectly reasonable questions requesting evidence-based answers, they are told that logic and science are tools of the oppressor. It is a symptom of our privilege (sin) that we have these doubts. In other words, we are supposed to take the central tenets of CSJ on faith.
Of course, that doesn’t mean proponents never attempt to offer logical reasons or evidence for their ideas. They often do, but it comes in the form of pseudo-evidence that is reducible to faith. In Adventist school, appeals to science and reason were selectively made only when the apparent facts aligned with the dogma. Any argument or evidence that did not was conveniently ignored or explained away as the devil trying to deceive us. But that isn’t how rationality and science work; you don’t get to pick and choose when their standards apply. Without consistent and universally applied principles, appeals to logic and science are insincere. Does this argument or data point seem superficially compatible with my cherished belief? If yes, then it is true. If no, then it is false. It’s just confirmation bias. Years of working in CSJ-dominated spaces have made it quite clear that this kind of dishonesty is baked into the ideology.
The same circular standard applies to sacred texts. At Christian school, it was the Bible, among other SDA writings. In CSJ circles, it’s the approved canon of scholarship. Religious schools teach a process called exegesis, whereby the sacred text is interpreted. You start with the assumption that the text is the infallible word of God (or one of his prophets), and you proceed from there. If something about the text seems inaccurate or incoherent, you must be misreading the text. After all, you’re a fallible human being — so who are you to judge God’s word? Any apparent failings of the text are thus explained away as user (reader) error. This is exactly how believers in CSJ defend their own core canon. If critics point to logical errors, claims contrary to evidence, or self-contradictions, CSJ defenders are quick to accuse you of “misunderstanding” the material. There’s nothing wrong with Theory — you’re simply too dense to comprehend its wisdom. It’s the same tactic.
In religious traditions, apologetics is a discipline where practitioners known as apologists devote their lives to making excuses for the irrationality and immorality of their chosen faith. Is your church engaging in the systematic cover-up of child rape? No problem — put out a ten-thousand-word essay explaining why Catholic tradition is blameless nevertheless. CSJ apologists include academics with pro-CSJ dissertations that lay out the philosophical basis for the practice, and journalists or public intellectuals who apply them in defense of the faith. The underlying principle is blind devotion to the dogma. It’s easy to excuse bad behavior done in its name (or deny that it happens at all) because CSJ is the Truth. If you’ve felt gaslit by people telling you that your concerns are totally misplaced, that cancel culture isn’t real (or it’s a good thing), or that rioting, looting, and arson in the name of CSJ is justified, you’ve been in the company of a religious apologist.
Another form of “proof” used by the religious is sacred testimony. In my Christian school, much fanfare accompanied the testimonies of the “born again.” The testifier would recount negative life experiences such as drug addiction, criminality, or sexual deviance and how coming to faith in the salvation of Jesus Christ, our Lord saved them from a miserable, meaningless existence. Stories such as my own, where escaping the cult was a liberating experience, never seem to have the same value.
CSJ’s “lived experience” is the same thing as sacred testimony. We are told we must respect the lived experiences of oppressed groups and that only oppressed bodies are qualified to discuss issues related to their oppression — which, as it turns out, conveniently encompasses all issues. If the “lived experience” in question is compatible with CSJ dogma, it must be believed, and any skepticism is pure bigotry. But if the lived experience does not reinforce CSJ dogma, into the trash they go (even if the speaker is a member of the oppressed group). My experience as a bi person, triggered by the cult-like behavior that brings back childhood traumas doesn’t count for anything at all — because it makes CSJ look bad. Similarly, the lived experiences of black critics of CSJ, like John McWhorter, are also rejected. There are no real principles here.
Just as with religion, people are not born believing dogmatic ideologies. They are indoctrinated into these beliefs. In my childhood, that was accomplished by a curated revisionist history and science curriculum. The CSJ cult uses taxpayer-funded public schools. Every subject must be reworked to ensure students are only permitted to see the issue through a CSJ lens. Ideologues always prefer indoctrination to genuine education that teaches students how to think instead of what to think because critical thinking, rationality, skepticism, debate, and free speech are the tools that dismantle nonsense. By contrast, dogmatic belief systems shut down criticism by punishing the critics and silencing free speech. Liberalism, with its preference for open and universal inquiry, is seen as dangerous because it steers people away from the virtuous path. According to “social justice” pedagogy, not only are there “stupid questions,” but there are evil ones. The very act of questioning CSJ is “literal violence” that must be shut down — by punishing the student (or teacher) who does so.
This ideology is consuming every academic subject. It began in the humanities, but it is now infecting even the hard sciences and mathematics. Universal, objective standards for success in these fields are derided as oppressive. Science and mathematics are now “one way of knowing”, no better than any other, and perhaps even inferior — since they are the preferred tools of Western culture. Those who disagree with its tenets are pressured, intimidated, silenced, or exiled as heretics. Educators like former Portland State University professor Peter Boghossian and even administrators like former Harvard President Lawrence Summers are run out of academia; employees like former Google engineer James Damore and even executives like former Roivant CEO Vivek Ramaswamy are forced out of corporations, and in the nonprofit world I’ve seen the same play out over and over again — especially in progressive spaces like LGBT activism.
Give Me that Old-Time Religion
Religion satisfies a deep need for many people, and it is not my place to take it away from anyone. But religion has boundaries. The world’s first liberal democracy was founded by Enlightenment thinkers who understood that the best way to respect religious freedom was to separate church from state. The establishment clause of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution was devised to serve that purpose, as eloquently explained by Thomas Jefferson in his Letter to the Danbury Baptists:
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
That wall must apply to all religions, theistic or otherwise. Believers of Critical Social Justice have every right to hold their beliefs. But the freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. Just as they must be free to believe as they wish, we must be free from having their beliefs forced down our throats. Taxpayer-funded schools should not teach the tenets of CSJ, and their ideas should not be applied to the pedagogy or curriculum of public schools. Corporations and nonprofits should have no more right to discriminate against employees based on CSJ beliefs than upon traditional (religious) ones.
A liberal society should tolerate differences of opinion and allow ideas to compete fairly in the marketplace of ideas. CSJ cannot be granted special status because that road leads to totalitarianism. The debate over CSJ isn’t likely to be settled any time soon, but we should be able to come to a consensus about its place in the public sphere. We need only choose between the liberty afforded by secularism or the tyranny imposed by theocracy. I know which I prefer. As a bi man who was liberated from religiously-induced self-loathing by exposure to a more secular environment, I can attest that liberalism and Enlightenment ideals are the path forward for our movement. Tethering ourselves to illiberal ideologies like CSJ is not.
“Social Justice” is Not Just
At the outset, I explained that I distinguish between two conceptions of Social Justice: the liberal one (LSJ) and a newly ascendant illiberal one (CSJ). Liberal Social Justice is the vision that has given us the progress we’ve made on civil rights; it is one based on the liberal principle of equal treatment for all individuals regardless of their membership in any identity group. It’s what was championed by the original feminists, LGBT activists, and anti-racist leaders. By contrast, Critical Social Justice, in the name of Neo-Marxist “equity” (equal outcomes), advocates for intentional systemic discrimination against historically “oppressive” groups. This is because you cannot have that kind of “equity” without violating the liberal principle of equality. The most informed and honest of its adherents will admit this if pressed.
A collectivist conception of “justice” breeds tribal warfare and tyranny. CSJ proponents are correct that there is a history of oppression against marginalized groups. But that oppression wasn’t in the name of liberalism; it was in the name of different illiberal ideologies: pre-liberal feudalism, mercantilist slavery, theocratic homophobia, and fascism. For a group that claims to value nuanced critiques of issues, CSJ proponents seem to miss a key fact about the West: we are not and never have been perfectly liberal. Progress has happened gradually, always slowed, and sometimes reversed by various illiberal alternatives that have animated segments of our society all along. And, yes, the early liberal and Enlightenment thinkers were not perfect exemplars of their ideals. Nobody ever is. But this is to be expected. Utopia isn’t possible, which is why we channel inevitable human conflicts in productive directions through institutions like capitalism and democracy. Beware the cult that sells you a utopia, because any dictatorial action can be justified by such a false vision.
It wasn’t Critical Social Justice that liberated me as a bi person. It was Liberal Social Justice. For any individual to be liberated, they need a conception of justice that values individual liberty. CSJ proponents aren’t going to liberate anyone. They are merely justifying a new kind of prejudice by appealing to an old one. This is why they must deny that we’ve made progress on civil rights in the West. If they were to admit it, they’d lose their excuse for that power grab. Liberals should not be taken in by this con.
CSJ isn’t the new frontier of civil rights. It’s just one of liberalism’s old enemies resurfacing and rebranded with a trendy 21st-century pseudo-woke veneer — one of many illiberal ideologies vying for the power to tear society down. Given liberalism’s proven track record of progress on civil rights, we’d be unwise to ally, even temporarily, with a movement that opposes those ideals. We need an awakening, but a liberal one — which celebrates real progress and views collective action as voluntary arrangements between individuals. We need a new Enlightenment, not just another deluded cult. It’s time liberals wake up to the fact that Critical Social Justice is an oxymoron, a mockery, and a Trojan horse. CSJ might just as well stand for “The Cult of ‘Social Justice.’”
Published Jan 5, 2022
Updated Apr 22, 2024
Published in Issue X: Clash of Ideologies
