Amia Srinivasan: belief

Transcript context

…You end up as a social conservative because there’s always context, there’s always ambivalence. You’re carving out these spaces with multiple perspectives, building these worlds, and without intending it, you create all these spaces where there’s plenty of room for social conservatism, which is then respected and intact. I should say that while I’m ambivalent about some things, I am very adamant about some other things in the book. It’s not that my general take is one where we should be ambivalent about every question, or we feel like we can’t come down on certain sides. For example, I have very strong — and I think, within the American mainstream, very controversial — views about the decriminalization of sex work. I think there’s a very clear case grounded in basic political considerations for, and ethical considerations for, why we should decriminalize sex work totally. But I do think there are other cases where, for example, we’re thinking about how to deal with sexually abusive men or the relationship between radical politics and state power, where we have to be more circumspect and ambivalent. I don’t want to say that my general political outlook is one of ambivalence. What’s the closest path counterfactually — is that the question — between me and a conservative worldview? I can tell you the parts of conservatism that are most attractive — But to get you all the way there, someone might say, “Well, if the costs of single-parent families were much higher than I thought, I would be a social conservative.” I’m not saying that has to be your answer, but that would be a kind of answer to the question.…

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