I recently heard a new term "regressive liberal" (or leftist), which perfectly describe a kind of thought that has become more and more prevalent, and it's a real danger to real liberals, or "progressive" liberals, in fact, a danger to society in general.

<h2>Liberalism vs. conservatism</h2>

First of all, we have to define what a liberal person is. In it's essence it's the opposite of a conservative, a conservative is a person that doesn't embrace change, that wants things to remain the same, because if it has been the same way for decades, centuries, or even millenia, it must be good, right? A liberal thinks the opposite: we need to move forward, away from barbaric and backwards behaviors an thinking, that's the way we progress as a species. A more appropriate term might be "progressive", because, well, we want progress.

However, the crux of the matter is to find such things that need to be changed in order to progress. It might seem obvious to a rational person, but it turns out most liberals don't realize this simple fact: <strong>not all change is good</strong>. Do we really need to even discuss about this? Apparently we do, as we will later see in this blog post; most liberals do not realize that just because a change is proposed, we must embrace it. Obviously just because we've frowned upon stealing for thousands of years, does it mean it's time to change it? No.

So that is the key point: is the change progress or regress? Liberals tend to think change means progress, conservative that it's regress. More often than not, liberals are right, and they end up being on "<strong>the right side of history</strong>". Studies have shown that liberals tend to be smarter and better educated than conservatives, they tend to attend university and travel more, etc. However, society needs conservatives as much as liberals, in order to make sure that changes are going in the right direction. Sure, we need change in order to progress, but we also need devil's advocates in order to make sure it's progress, and not the opposite. Change for the sake of change is not good, and sometimes things are better the way they are, sometimes conservatives are right (although not often).

One of the best examples of progress in society was the abolition of slavery. In general, liberals were on the right side of history (as they often are), however, some conservative arguments did actually make sense, for example: some black people ended up worst being free that being slaves. We have moved ahead since those times, but still, in the United States black people fill their prisons and thus provide a good chunk of essentially free labor. Perhaps conservatives were right that you "can't just abolish slavery", maybe USA should have done it differently. Sometimes resisting change is a good thing, not just to make sure the change is actually progress, but if change must be made, to find the best way to go about it, and not just go balls to the wall about it.

So it should now be clear what a "regressive liberal" is; a person that advocates change for the sake of change, and is in fact moving society towards the wrong direction; regressing.

<h2>Regression and reality</h2>

Lately there has been a tendency for liberals to act in an irrational manner, something that has historically not been the case. That is one of the problems with being right so often; you sometimes forget you can be wrong.

There are numerous examples of this way of thinking, too many to explore them all in dept, but I'll mention a few.

Vegetarianism today is viewed as a liberal tendency; most vegetarians are liberal, many of them see it as a moral statement, some think we all should be vegetarians, and even go as far as saying that humans are vegetarian in nature. It's the latter argument I want to tackle. I don't have a problem if you are a vegetarian and say you do it for moral reasons, or health, or even push it to the rest of society for economic reasons, those are all valid arguments, and I might disagree, but the jury is still out.

The problem comes when people deny reality. It is very obvious to everyone that humans are not herbivores: first of all; we can eat meat, herbivores can't. You give meat to a deer, and it will die of starvation. The opposite is true of carnivores as well. But we humans are in neither of these categories, we are omnivores, like dogs, and bears. We eat everything. It's also very obvious from our physiology; we don't have the stomachs of herbivores, nor the teeth. Since we have the technology and resources to gather vegetables from all over the world, we might be able to sustain a vegetable-only diet and be healthy, although it's probably not economically feasible, not to mention that many vegetarians have health issues, precisely because it's not easy to find all the nutrients with such diet (not <b>impossible</b>, it certainly can be done, but it's certainly not easy). But through most of the history of our species we have been omnivores; we are omnivores, we can eat both meat and vegetables in large amounts, and that's a uncontroversial and undeniable scientific <b>fact</b>.

Yet there are some people, liberals, who deny those facts, who deny science, and claim that humans are vegetarians by nature. Things would be much easier if we were vegetarians, perhaps it would be ideal, but we are just not. When you deny reality, and reject facts in order to fit your ideal of how things should be you are engaged in what is called <b>wishful thinking</b>. Reality doesn't care about your ideals, things just are the way they are, it might not be fair, it might not be nice, but it's true. Is it fair, or ideal, for the female praying mantis to eat the head of the male during sex? Probably not, but that's nature, that's reality, we have to accept that such is the case.

A more controversial example is the whole idea that "Islam is a religion of peace". In order to explore this topic I'm going to use many of Sam Harris' arguments, which has done a superb job of shining light on the issue.

First of all, we have to understand that religions are different, that's why there are so many of them, and they are not interchangeable. Religions are different, in the same way that sports are different; you can't compare rugby with golf, and you can't compare Jainism with Christianity; they are way to different to make any meaningful comparison. And you can't generalize either; you can't say that all sports are violent, or that all religions are peaceful. Different religions are different, and their differences matter.

Second, religions are ideologies, ideologies affect the behavior of people, and while it's true that ideologies can be twisted to the point of breaking their core principles (at which point it can be argued you are not really following that ideology), the ideology itself remains having certain ideas, independently of how people interpret them. For example, a nazi that doesn't consider the aryan race superior can't really be considered a nazi, a nazi that adores the state can be said to be perfectly within the ideology. A Jainism follower that advocates violence is not really a Jane (violates the core principles), but one that is vegetarian is perfectly within.

The question then becomes; can a violent person be called a Muslim? By extension; does the ideology condone violence? <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/023-violence.htm" target="_blank">There's many verses on the Qur'an about violence</a>, for example: (8:12) "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them". It's pretty clear to anyone reading the Qur'an that it not only condones violence, it advocates it.

So it's that simple: Jainism doesn't condone violence, Islam does; Jainism is a religion of peace, Islam is not. Yet some people, liberals, like Reza Aslan, claim that all religions are exactly the same, and their holy books interpreted in any way, the problem is not the ideologies, but the people, the followers of the ideologies. We know this not to be true, with ideologies like nazism, Islam is no different; we have to look at the ideology in order to decide if it's peaceful or not, and just because an ideology happens to be a religion, that doesn't mean it's inherently peaceful.

It would be nice if what Reza Aslan said was true; all religions are equally peaceful and/or violent, all religions are faces of the same prism to which we see the same truth. But just because something is nice doesn't mean it's true; that is <strong>wishful thinking</strong>. However, many liberals drink this Kool-Aid, precisely because of that; it would be nice if it was true, therefore it must be true. The evidence is clear; not all religions are equal, Islam is a violent religion, the Qur'an endorses violence, as much as we would want it to be otherwise, we shouldn't deny reality, the praying mantis is the way it is, and the Qur'an is the way it is.

Now, there's a difference between <strong>is</strong> and <strong>ought</strong>. One thing is to recognize human nature, another is accept it as desired behavior. We humans have a tendency to crave sugar, does that mean we ought to eat a lot of sugar? No. In order for humans to progress, we first must recognize our nature, in order to reject it and actively fight against it. If science demonstrates humans are xenophobic by nature (which seems to be the case), the answer is not to close our ears to the evidence, the answer is to accept it, and find ways to fight against our nature.

By rejecting evidence, and thus denying reality, liberals are doing a disservice to society, and pushing for changes that might as well be moving us backwards. If liberals push for vegetarianism because humans are herbivores, that's wrong. If liberals want to label every criticism of Islam as islamophobe, on the basis that all it is a peaceful religion, like any other, that's also wrong. Both liberals and conservatives must seek to be in contact with <b>reality</b>, even if reality is not nice.

<h2>Third generation feminism</h2>

This is the definition of feminism:

<blockquote>1: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2: organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests</blockquote>

Once upon a time, not long ago, women did not have the same rights nor opportunities as men, so a movement was needed to achieve equality between the sexes by pushing for women's rights, and that was perfectly fine, that was feminism.

Today, the world is different, and women have as many rights as men, if not more, women have as many opportunities as man, some argue even more. Today, the need to push <em>exclusively</em> for women's rights is just not as urgent as before, and perhaps even not necessary.

Today the discourse about sexism and gender issues has advanced tremendously, in part thanks to the first generation feminists, and that's why today we recognize that actually men have gender issues as well, like being raped in prisons, be victims of violence, much more likely to commit suicide, and die earlier than women from disease. Males are also raped, but society doesn't want to hear about it, even ridicules them, that's an issue, why are feminists who supposedly fight for the "equality" of sexes not fighting to change this? Why is the movement called "he for she"? What happened to "she for he"?

The fact of the matter is that feminism was never about male issues, we all know that, even the name itself implies which gender was the focus of the movement. That might have been necessary in the first generation of feminists, but now?

Some people argue that in fact, women are the privileged gender today, and with good reason, yet third wave feminists continue to push to privilege women even more. Society is catching up to the fact that perhaps liberals pushed way too hard and we are no actually moving backwards in terms of gender equality.

This third wave feminists want still more change, as liberals that's expected, but they are doing so denying plenty of evidence that goes against their agenda.

One particularly worrying aspect is that they deny that men and women are in fact different. We all know we are different from our anecdotal evidence, we have always been different since the dawn of time, and plenty of parents of boys and girls see this obvious fact. Yet these feminists deny that fact and argue that it's <b>all</b> due to culture, even though it has happened in all cultures in history.

Differences in men and women are not just obvious, they are scientifically proven. Sexual dimorphism happens through all the animal kingdom, why would humans be the exception? Yes, some differences can be explained by culture, but certainly not <b>all</b> of them.

Let's keep in mind that being different doesn't mean one is better than the other, just different. Women seem to be better at some things, men at others, there's nothing wrong with that. But more importantly; if our understanding of human nature advances to the point where we find that in fact, men are better than women in general, what does that mean? Nothing. That's just reality. But fortunately for us, no gender seems to have a leg up, and even if it did, it probably wouldn't be by much, and evolution is always happening anyway, so things might flip in the future.

Let's look at a very concrete example: chess. Men dominate the competitive chess scene, even though women have been given every opportunity, and many women have become indeed pretty good at chess, they haven't reached the top positions. Why is that? Feminists would argue that it's <b>all</b> because of culture; women are discouraged from such endeavors, the culture of chess is toxic, women feel inferior, therefore they act inferior. While all of that might be true to some extent, there are always exceptions, and there are strong women who don't give a damn about society's expectations of them, or the culture around an activity, and that's why many women through history have achieved great things despite the fact that they were not supposed to. Still, no woman has become a chess world champion, even come close to that, even with all the help from feminists to "empower" them in such activities.

IQ might be a controversial way to measure general intelligence, but not the intelligence needed to play chess; if you are good at chess, you have high IQ, if you have high IQ, you have potential to be a good chess player. So, is men's IQ higher than women's?

<img src="https://felipec.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/iq.jpg" alt="IQ" width="577" height="328" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1971" />

The answer is; not likely, but this graph shows the distribution is different. You are likely to find a good amount of really stupid men, but also, really intelligent ones, on the other hand, the average woman is smarter than the average man. Does this not match to pretty much everyone's experience? Most of the women I know are pretty smart, smarter than most men, yet, the smartest people I know, are men. And that's why we don't see women in the top chess competitions; exceptional men are more exceptional than exceptional women, but stupid men are stupider than the stupidest woman.

Why would we want to change that? It's just chess. Plenty of men are bad at chess, the vast majority of men are bad at many disciplines that require exceptional people. Women are better at plenty of other things that men, and that's fine.

The more science finds about the nature of the human brain, the more we find that in fact there are plenty of inherent differences between men and women, that's just a fact, that's reality, and there's still plenty more to find.

Why can't we embrace and accept our differences? One example scientists have found is that a region of the brain called the corpus callosum tends to be bigger in women, what does that mean? It means women in general are more likely to associate seemingly unrelated ideas, which is very useful in the arts in general, so is it really a surprise that women are more artsy than men? Plenty of men have complained that when discussing with their partners, women often bring issues of the past, issues that, in the opinion of men, are not related at all. Why can't we just accept this and say: "I'm sorry honey, but I just don't see what X has to do with Y, I'm a man, remember?"? It's not an excuse for men, but it's an explanation.

It's not sexist to say that praying mantises females eat the males' heads, that's just a fact, so if science proves that men and women are different in certain aspect, that's not sexist either, just reality. Yet feminists insist, and will keep insisting, that we are the same. I don't see a better recipe for unhappiness than denying our human nature.

In fact studies have shown that women have become unhappier of late, in a pretty significant way, and this trend started, unsurprisingly, when feminism started. Maybe women really like to feel protected, maybe demonizing stay-at-home moms was not such a great idea, maybe there was nothing wrong with women being feminine, I personally don't know, but what seems to be clear is that the feminist movement doesn't seem to be moving us forward as a society any more.

Every indication seems to suggest that third wave feminism might be the first liberal movement that is actually on the wrong side of history (as far as I know).