It's taken me a long time to reply because I really wanted to think about what you've said - and so that our discussion can be useful for both of us, because there are some areas of agreement and some disagreement.

I would argue that a society doesn't have a status quo, it consistently shifts ebbs and flows in various directions at all times. A liberal democracy is the means by which that ebb and flow continues - the individual both reflects and creates the society around them.

What we agree on is the systemic advantage of white people over other ethnic groups and the systemic advantage of men over women (in some aspects of society). Those two things are observably true and difficult to refute. Where we disagree is the rabbit hole that identity politics leads.

And your answer to the Islamaphobic/homophobia question is where things get murky.

By simply exchanging the islamic mother and the homosexual man for white woman and black man you get to the nub of the problem of the echo chamber. If she (white woman) thinks that black skin is dangerous, then she should make an effort to understand why HER margin is dangerous. Or if he (black man) thinks that she is dangerous, he should make some effort to understand why some people think HIS margin is dangerous.

Failure to reflect on the psychology of the 'other' leads to a tacit zero sum game. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. In short, you end up with a situation where everyone only actively seeks information from their own side, confirmation bias runs amok, demagoguery wins out and the real life interactions between these two groups of people become increasingly complicated to navigate.

We don't disagree on who society favours, we disagree on the methods of reducing that effect. You advocate group activism against white/male/heterosexual norms - I advocate individualism and self reflection - that will slowly feedback into the ebb and flow of a just society. History is punctuated by moments of revolution and long periods of people undergoing quiet psychological change.

I don't think that whiteness/patriarchy/gender binary are in and of themselves damaging and we can argue that further. There are aspects of each that are damaging but that negates the positives that come out of each of those things. I also question the nature of an ongoing power struggle - it's a conflation of marxism with identity politics that has now been applied amorphously to include every sort of societal ill. It also doesn't observably hold true. Between 2008 and 2016, the most powerful man in the world was black. Did society just forget to be racist for a bit? There is no power struggle between group identities, there are just individuals who can and do the job that is in front of them and excel at changing hearts and minds. The 'power struggle' narrative has the opposite effect of the one that most people think it does. It generates its own animosity, creates a reluctance to change and it ignores outliers like Barack Obama (a man who rarely plays identity politics)

On the last point we can agree. There is a level of intolerant behaviour that shouldn't be tolerated by even the most liberal of us. And at this juncture, it doesn't have a theme. Intolerant people have grouped together on both the alt-right and the social justice left, buoyed up by their echo chambers they continue to issue edicts arguing that they have both the moral high ground and the solution to the problems society has. They don't have either. The answer to the problem lies in conversations like this, between people who disagree with each other intelligently and who can articulate that disagreement without making it personal.

Thanks for chatting - and thanks for disagreeing. it makes Medium worth the time and money :o)