Honestly, the way I see it: The people behind the 2025 stuff etc have been on the "losing" side of the culture war since 1969.
And they're sick of it, they're desperate, and now are just laying their cards on the table.
I grew up in an evangelical church in the 80s-- albeit in Canada -- attending "Focus on the Family" events, Bible studies, etc. that promulgated heavy socially conservative ethos -- so I feel like I have seen this narrative play out over a few decades ...
After the legalization of gay marriage they just collectively lost their shit. They see the stakes as being incredibly high. They see abortion as straight up murder. Winning the 2016 Trump presidency and taking over the US supreme court gave them a taste of blood, and a sense that they can finally reverse what they see as a profound descent into degeneracy. The trans rights stuff over the last few years has them totally incensed, as its a full-on assault (to them) on the ontological reality of family, body, identity, etc. that they consider intrinsic and holy and fundamental.
I think they're full of shit, but that's I think how this world view shakes down. It's a war because they feel the stakes are incredibly high.
People on the right or in boardrooms of various companies that are aligning themselves with these people for what they see are strategic ends are playing with fire.
As someone who grew up in an evangelical environment, this is exactly my read as well. The problem is they might still be able to "win" via a sufficient application of violence, aka state power, despite being wrong and in the minority.
The evangelicals believe that anyone who doesn't believe in their god will be tortured by their god for eternity. There's nothing worse than eternal torture, so they see it as their moral obligation to do anything at all to prevent others from being tortured for eternity by their god. Nothing they do to others can possibly be worse than that, so as long as they're focused on saving others any actions they take are justified (to them).
Their god considers gay sex a crime worthy of eternal torture. So anything they do to prevent people from having homosexual encounters is morally acceptable, up to and including torture & occasional execution via "conversion therapy".
Anyone who truly believes in hell is either morally bankrupt & willing to allow others to suffer for eternity, or a dangerous monster who will stop at nothing to prevent others from what they see as sinning.
Many of them don't go to the extremes they would if they actually believed they were saving others from hell. They're full of shit. But some of them do, and they're fucking terrifying.
Which means either they don't really believe in the exercise of free will, or they don't believe God is in control of who gets saved (predestination). Either way, they're not acting according to their interpretation of scripture. Being saved for a Christian shouldn't be up to governments. It wasn't for the early Christians. It was an individual choice. They're acting more like Constantine.
The pushback against trans rights advocacy is quite interesting because unlike with same-sex marriage, there are several distinct groups opposing it for fundamentally different reasons. Religious conservatives are one group. Radical feminists, female athletes, medical whistleblowers are others. And almost everyone draws a firm line against accepting gender identity beliefs in their romantic and sexual lives.
Trying to redefine "woman" and "man", "female" and "male", "homosexual" and "heterosexual" - and then reengineering society by decree based on these controversial redefinitions - is going to get opposition across the board.
I think this is why it's become such a hot "culture war" topic, because it undermines the deeply-held views of many, many more people than just religious conservatives.
Take gay marriage for instance - this was fought both for and against on the basis of it being a same-sex union. But from the perspective of gender identity believers, if, for example, someone female merely identifies as male, then marries a male (who also identifies as male), then this is a "gay marriage" too. Despite this actually being a heterosexual pairing.
On top of this, where these beliefs have been forced into law and policy, it has caused actual physical harms. Women being raped and impregnated by male prisoners who identified their way into the female prison estate is amongst the worst of these. But lawmakers in states that have enabled this will claim it's progressive policy, somehow. Even though it's regressing back to over a century ago when mixed-sex prisons where commonplace and incarcerated women were at constant risk of sexual violence and exploitation from the men they were locked up with.
I dunno man, "citation needed" about a lot of your screed.
On the whole the freaking out about "trans" stuff is mostly a red herring or strawman used for strategic propagandistic purposes more than it is reflecting any real world problematic.
Making outlandish claims about how liberals are trying to do X, Y, and Z to their children's education or sports forces liberals onto the defensive forcing them to defend hormone therapy for 12 year olds or whatever when the actual number of real world incidents of this is vanishingly small.
I don't personally carry any kind of radical gender identity theory, but I care about the rights of minorities and it's none of my business what other people do and I see no problem with the public and corporate sphere accomodate pronoun usages or even bathroom accomodations, it's unlikely to cause harms and it doesn't hurt me in the slightest.
It's also somewhat ... interesting ... to bring up defense of female prisoner's rights and their conditions as some kind of demarcation point.
Is the socially conservative right concerned about humane prisons now?
> Is the socially conservative right concerned about humane prisons now?
> Because that would be great. But unlikely.
I don't know where I'm at on this, but this is ad hominem. You can't discredit an argument based on who's making it. If you're opposed to humane prisons, just say so. But that's not what I'm getting.
Why would you blanket care about the rights of minorities? I care about the rights of lots of beings, but not minorities for minorities sake.
The person isn't making outlandish claims. You can search the web and validate all of them.
Liberals, as in new leftists responsible for the majority of purity spiral shaming we've seen on the internet for oh the last two decades now, are in fact responsible for their fair share of extremist ideologies that some folks have now taken as self-evident. This is despite the fact that many of us who once considered ourselves part of their ranks are completely sick of its absolutist language.
I've been pushed into what I guess must be a kind of center because it seems we can no longer have any discourse of any nuance around issues like trans people without being labeled a fascist or maniac neo-Nazi right-winger.
To take an example of this, I have a very close friend who is trans but even she is sick of how faddish transness has become. She insists she's a trans-medicalist, something I only recently learned about, which seems to set the bar appropriately high to being what global society (not the ultra-left view that dominates places like HN and Reddit) deems a woman.
I actually do believe in biological gender and even think the fact biological women are out there bleeding and suffering once a month in ways men can't even begin to understand does in fact separate them from other people stating they are now a woman. Or literally growing a human being inside them is both a privilege and a horror that marks someone so indelibly we call this person a woman.
Yet I can no longer reasonably even engage most of you in a nuanced discourse about this without likely getting downvoted to oblivion. There was a time once when you could, but now it seems that time has passed.
And you have illustrated my point perfectly, even down to using air quotes to describe a relationship of my own. Did you intend to go further and perhaps call me something truly awful? As I am not "center" according to you.
I am able to maintain friendships with people I disagree with, even on very fundamental things.
You capture exactly the drift that has occurred in discourse, where neither side is able to talk to each other with any level-headedness, but remains fixed in escalation, certain the other side intends their extinction.
I think trans advocacy is interesting and different from gay rights because it goes beyond "live and let live" and is also an ontological battle. That is to say, it is a battle not just for equal rights, but over what people think, believe, and desire.
It ask is not just for the right to exist, but to be placed within the gender heterosexuals are attracted to and accepted as no different. In this way, it lacks the libertarian arguments of gay rights.
The movement is is inherently cultural and poorly suited for adjudication the legal/political sphere. Courts and laws can't make people love, accept, or believe someone is a given gender.
Maybe you're too young to remember when "gay rights" was also an "ontological battle" ? -- a huge a fight over whether such an "identity" was anything other than a fundamental deviance, and a lot of rhetoric to the effect that it violates "natural order." It wasn't just theological thing from Christians, it came from the mainstream of society.
Some people still speak this way in North America but it is fringe. It wasn't fringe when I was a kid. It was the expected way of thinking about sexuality.
In the early 80s at least there was only two "mainstream" ways to talk about homosexuality, as far as I can recall:
1. what happens in people's bedrooms is none of my business, just don't talk about it in public and expect tolerance, or
2. this is total deviance and a mental illness and needs to be cured. (Oh, and they
deserve HIV for such unnatural behaviour.)
That changed, but only in the 90s/2000s, to an understanding that homosexuality itself is "natural" ("born this way"), and the so-called iron-clad laws of natural behaviour were "allowed" to include homosexuality. And even gay marriage.
Appeals to laws of nature and assumptions about what is natural mask ideology, and often look completely ridiculous 50 years later.
I remember the nature vs nurture debate, and always disagreed with it. I think it pigeon holed and disempowered the gay and the queer community for decades. I think it overstated the science, and understated the value of human autonomy.
That said, the battleground was about what they could do, so a live and let live compromise was possible. Gradual acceptance followed and continues increasing today.
With Trans, there battleground is belief, and even more critically, identity. Accepting homosexuals didnt require people to redefine themselves, their own gender, and that of the one they are attracted to. Self identity is incredibly important to people.
Conservatives present it that way, but I haven't seen that in practice. The majority of trans people are perfectly happy with people believing whatever they want as long as they treat other people with respect and don't discriminate against them.
I guess it really depends on the space. The trans debate is happening online in an extreme way that simply wasn't possible during gay rights movement of the 90s and early 2000's.
I agree that most of my trans coworkers and acquaintances seem satisfied with being treated the respect I give anyone, and keep any unflattering thoughts to myself. Meanwhile, there is a contingent of zealots on reddit that call me a bigot if I dont want to date a trans-woman or think biology should be considered in sports. Is that discrimination?
What is discrimination? Is it any delineation in treatment or perception from a cis-gendered person?
I have given a lot of thought to the topic because I support others having personal autonomy, but place value on my conceptions of gender.
> It ask is not just for the right to exist, but to be placed within the gender heterosexuals are attracted to and accepted as no different. In this way, it lacks the libertarian arguments of gay rights.
No one is forcing you to date someone you're not attracted to.
I find that to be an extremely common argument against trans ppl. It's very similar to the whole gay panic thing. I was surprised when I realized how worried some cis men were about being "tricked" into sleeping with a trans person. As if there are so many trans people and as if all of them want to get into their pants.
> It's very similar to the whole gay panic thing. I was surprised when I realized how worried some cis men were about being "tricked" into sleeping with a trans person.
Most of the time I see the argument that people feel pressured/forced to date someone they're not attracted to it's not about men being "tricked"
And they're sick of it, they're desperate, and now are just laying their cards on the table.
I grew up in an evangelical church in the 80s-- albeit in Canada -- attending "Focus on the Family" events, Bible studies, etc. that promulgated heavy socially conservative ethos -- so I feel like I have seen this narrative play out over a few decades ...
After the legalization of gay marriage they just collectively lost their shit. They see the stakes as being incredibly high. They see abortion as straight up murder. Winning the 2016 Trump presidency and taking over the US supreme court gave them a taste of blood, and a sense that they can finally reverse what they see as a profound descent into degeneracy. The trans rights stuff over the last few years has them totally incensed, as its a full-on assault (to them) on the ontological reality of family, body, identity, etc. that they consider intrinsic and holy and fundamental.
I think they're full of shit, but that's I think how this world view shakes down. It's a war because they feel the stakes are incredibly high.
People on the right or in boardrooms of various companies that are aligning themselves with these people for what they see are strategic ends are playing with fire.