Is "gender ideology" what we're now calling the idea that a tiny minority of people want to live their lives a little differently that the rest of us without harming anyone and mostly be left alone?
Given the overall rancor around topics like this, I feel it’s necessary to say I’m approaching this as a discussion, and am open to evidence that I’m wrong.
In my opinion your item 2 is mostly a conflation of “people want to enjoy the same rights that others have enjoyed” and a recognition that “separate but equal” doesn’t actually work. A prime example is gay marriage, where we went from “don’t ask don’t tell” to a brief national discussion of “civil marriages” to simply recognizing that a marriage is a marriage, and anyone who is married should get access to the same rights as others who are married.
I don't see a contradiction. I'm happy for people to seek changes to the law that makes their lives better. But it is still seeking change to the law. I don't know the American system well but didn't gay marriage require legal change? Or at least legal challenge leading to precedent?
It was more an equalization of the law so that it applies equally to all people. Absolutely nothing changed, legally, for the vast, vast majority of Americans.
8. A tiny (less than 1% of the population) group of people who you are (somehow) imbuing with enormous power and clout in our society, even those these are people who have been loudly derided, shamed, beaten and even killed by a sizable group of folks in our society.
Leave those folks alone, for heaven's sake. If you don't like them, stay away from them. If you don't want to give them simple human respect, it's legal to be an asshole.
All this anger/hatred focused on a tiny group. What gives you (or me or anyone else, for that matter) the right to tell other people how they should live -- especially when it doesn't affect you in the slightest.
People don't just "choose" to be transgender. And they certainly don't choose to do so because of the much higher risk of discrimination, abuse, violence and murder.
Did I mention that trans folks are an incredibly tiny sliver of the population (<1%)?
I'm not attacking anyone. I am describing what I observed as a relative outsider of the social process that has occurred in the last ten years or so. Broadly I would like people to be able to live as they want and identify themselves as they like. I don't really understand your comment.
>I'm not attacking anyone. I am describing what I observed as a relative outsider of the social process that has occurred in the last ten years or so.
You said:
>I think the reality of what has gone on has several faces which are all worth thinking about:
And then listed a bunch of innocuous stuff, as well as lies/tropes that bigots have used as an excuse to demonize minorities the world over, well, forever. Let's turn the clock back sixty years or so and change the focus from "transgender folks" to "African Americans." Perhaps then you'll see what got my dander up.
1. A group of people that want to be different without harming anyone and be left alone
(check!)
2. A group of people demanding certain specific and new legal rights with respect to how they are different
(yeah, those n*****s want to eat in our restaurants and swim in our public pools, have decent schools and even be allowed to buy houses near us! Why should they get special rights like that?)
3. A group of people advocating for new social and linguistic norms around said difference
(Yeah, we've called them darkies n****r for hundreds of years! What's wrong with these uppity pieces of shit? Black? African American? What a bunch of crap!)
3. A group of people socially shaming people who failed to respect said norms
(Yeah, what's wrong with these "language" police? I call a spade a spade -- or a n****r a n****r. What the hell is wrong with that? It's freedom of speech! Those fuckin' n*****s making demands? WTF?)
4. A group of people socially shaming those who opposed new specific legal rights
(Yeah! What's wrong with all those folks telling me I have to allow these n*****s into my store/restaurant and not beat them half to death for trying and that I'm a bad person to boot if I don't! What's with these new and "special" rights for them? Why should I be blamed for not wanting to allow them to live like us white people -- they certainly don't deserve it!)
5. A group of people vocally opposing said legal and social changes
(Breaking out of the historical context here: What legal changes are you talking about? Extending the idea that we should all be treated equally under the law? Which laws. Be specific here please.)
6. A group of people advocating legal restrictions to prevent or punish said different life choices
( Okay, back to 1965 -- Yeah! those n*****s choose to be poor and uneducated! Look at Dr. King! He can even read and write -- who allowed that to happen?)*
7. A group of people fighting said restrictions
(And a good thing too. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were good things, although they're under more threat now than they were sixty years ago)*
>Broadly I would like people to be able to live as they want and identify themselves as they like. I don't really understand your comment.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I don't know you.
I added (with the 8.) that the trans population is incredibly tiny -- yet folks spend an inordinate amount of time (including you making the assertion that trans folks are advocating for "new and special rights" that no one else gets -- what rights might those be? And be specific here) claiming they're trying to destroy our culture and corrupt our children with their Marxist beliefs.
Ridiculous tropes on their face. And you uncritically portrayed those tropes as truth, when in fact they're lies designed to demonize other folks.
As such, I have difficulty with your claim that you just want to live and let live.
Prove me wrong. At least as far as you and I are concerned, nothing would make me happier.
> 2. A group of people demanding certain specific and new legal rights with respect to how they are different
> (yeah, those n***s want to eat in our restaurants and swim in our public pools, have decent schools and even be allowed to buy houses near us! Why should they get special rights like that?)
Are you sure this analogy holds up when you're comparing it to males demanding access to female-only spaces?
Seems to be very different by every relevant metric.
Unless you're arguing for the abolishment of all single-sex spaces, which you don't seem to be, I don't see how your analogy works.
The reasons that women and girls are provisioned with female-only spaces are entirely different from the reasons behind the racist exclusion and segregation of black people in a white oppressor society.
It seems that you made this analogy without really thinking about it in any depth.
All the groups I mentioned are distinct groups of people some of whose members overlap and some not, so the size of the actual trans community doesn't really matter. I would say it is indeed their misfortune to have been made the subject of tribal disagreements.
But it is also disingenuous to say it's just about a group of people who want to be left alone as in the original comment I responded to.
Your elaboration of the stages as I stated them has some pithy truth in it but really just confirms its accuracy. You can read all you want into how I describe the stages but description is not advocacy. I'm not advocating anything really.
>But it is also disingenuous to say it's just about a group of people who want to be left alone as in the original comment I responded to.
That's true. They want to be treated like everyone else, not discriminated against and berated (cf. pretty much all of this user's posting history[0]), beaten and murdered. Are those the "special rights" you meant?
>Your elaboration of the stages as I stated them has some pithy truth in it but really just confirms its accuracy. You can read all you want into how I describe the stages but description is not advocacy. I'm not advocating anything really.
Mayhap you are and mayhap you ain't. But you certainly did uncritically include bigoted stereotypes and lies/tropes that have been used pretty much forever. I guess I'll have to keep waiting for you to prove me wrong. And more's the pity.
You may be surprised. Have you heard about "transmaxxing"? This involves men deliberately transitioning, with the end goal of passing themselves off as women, because they feel it's better than inceldom.
If you honestly do not know what is meant by this term this article contains a good number of references to other articles and studies from which you should be able to form an idea of what is covered under the term gender ideology.
This reads like someone who needs to take the time to understand the breadth of “ideology”. What will be left when what you consider ideology is gone?
As you note, even science has its ideology.
What about science itself? That too can be (is) considered ideology, although I assume you reject that position… that doesn’t make you correct (or wrong).
There is a lot of theoretical writing about this; it would be worth your time to understand.
In some ways we are already living in a world in which there are no restrictions on speech, certainly no privilege of truthful, factually based speech.
> What will be left when what you consider ideology is gone?
The scientific method, that is what you're left with. Even when the results of your study do not track with your feelings, your religion, your political opinions or any other irrelevant factors. I can give examples galore and I'm pretty sure you can come up with close to the same examples of where ideology trumped the scientific method by either not releasing studies, by simply falsifying or otherwise manipulating data so the results fit with the narrative and other interferences with the scientific method so as to use the cachet of the institution to amplify some desired narrative.
As far as I'm concerned there is no 'Science', what there is is people who use the scientific method to study some phenomenon in the search for more insight. People who know how to use this method and who apply it diligently, who publish their data and methods and outcomes and to the best of their ability try to interpret the results are 'doing science'. It can be bad science if they don't know what they're doing or if they're using bad methods but as long as they follow the tenets of the scientific method they're doing science. Their experiments can be repeated, their methods can be researched, their data can be inspected and others can apply their methods to their data to verify their results. Their conclusions can be questioned and discussed.
If the same people start with a given position and tailor their experiments and data and methods around that position to reach a pre-defined conclusion they are not doing science no matter how lofty an institution they happen to be employed by and how impressive their titles are. If one of these people says something which clearly does not stroke with the truth and starts throwing epithets at those who call him or her out on this that person is not a scientist but something else - a charlatan, an activist, a propagandist, a troll, anything but a scientist. A scientist, when confronted with clear and obvious refutation of his or her claims will retract or revise those claims and - if their character allows for this - thank those who pointed out the error in his or her way. That is how knowledge grows, by learning from our mistakes and by turning back when we happen to have entered a dead end.
In short, science does not have an ideology, it is the application of a method - the scientific method - which is orthogonal to ideology. You can take the most left-wing radical and the most convinced orthodox conservative person and have them do a study into ${subject}. If both of them strictly adhere to the scientific method and use valid method and valid research data there's a good chance they'll arrive at more or less the same conclusions. They may differ on their interpretation of what these conclusions mean when applied to society but the actual conclusions should be similar.
"They came for..." in this comment refers to "the marketplace of ideas built a brief consensus against..."
The "they came for..." in the famous poem, and in reference to today's Trump administration, refers to "the government utilized state power to advance or suppress certain ideas."
These are not the same at all.
A few specific bullets:
* Universities (especially private ones) are allowed to have ideological biases. If you disagree with them, go to a different university, criticize them, or create your own university.
* At least in the US, the health institutions merely flagged low-quality information to social media companies. It was up to the social media companies as to whether they wanted to respond -- in many cases they did not. This went to SCOTUS who decided there was no evidence that social media companies were coerced by the health institutions, partially because the social media companies created and began enforcing their policies prior to any of the alleged coercion
Note: None of this applies to the UK which really does have a free speech issue, but also doesn't really have anything close to as strong a legal guarantee of free speech and maybe should.
> Universities (especially private ones) are allowed to have ideological biases
Universities as private associations can have whatever biases they want. What they can't do is take public money earmarked for promoting debate and discovery and use it to promulgate a particular ideology, discriminate on the basis of immutable protected characteristics, or do other things contrary to public policy.
If they want the money from the public, they need to serve the public --- the whole public, not the part that agrees with administrators who mandate diversity statements for hiring.
> At least in the US, the health institutions merely flagged low-quality information to social media companies
There are public records of highly placed government officials emailing social media company leadership and demanding that specific posts be taken down. Not only is this state censorship in all but name, it's also unconstitutional under Vullo and other precedents.
Yes, the UK is worse. That doesn't make the behavior of the previous administration acceptable or consistent with American values.
What federal money gets sent to universities with the earmark “promote debate and discovery?”
The vast majority of federal money is given to universities to execute research contracts.
It is simply not true that if you receive any federal money your institution cannot have biases or opinions. What would that even mean in practice? They cannot use federal money specifically for political activities, but merely receiving public funding does not relieve you of your First Amendment rights.
If anything, the reality is the opposite of what you suggest: your contracted money cannot be threatened on the basis of your institution’s (protected) biases or opinions.
Re public health: The government itself has a First Amendment right to speak with and request action from private organizations, and those organizations have a First Amendment right to accept or decline those requests. Vullo absolutely did not find the government has no ability to request action, it said it has no ability to coerce action.
As it relates to COVID, we don’t need to speculate: this is the exact question that was asked in Murthy vs Missouri. SCOTUS found lack of standing because the “censorship” in question pre-dated the “coercion” in question. Private platforms are absolutely allowed to create and enforce content policies!
You cannot infer “the platforms were coerced” from the following set of facts:
1. The platforms made and enforced policies prior to government requests
2. The government made requests
3. Some of those requests were satisfied and others were declined
4. There was no punishment or threatened punishment for decline
5. The platforms said they were not coerced
That’s what SCOTUS and IMO any reasonable person would find.
Why are you trying to diagnose a person over the 'net? What makes you think some other person's life sucks? What makes you think that if some other person's life 'sucks' that is only caused by that person's own (in)actions or thoughts?
First they came for those who thought the sky was pulsating green, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the blue sky narrative.
Then they came for those who thought the earth was flat, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the round earth narrative.
Then they came for those who thought the internet was carried by little elves, but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the fiber optic narrative.
True, the ones you mentioned here come straight from the land of Fairy while the ones I mentioned all come from real life, warts and all. If anyone outside of the Dept. of Literature or that of Psychology were to struggle with the ideas you mentioned they'd be better of in either one of the mentioned departments or outside of academia.
But, key difference, the people pushing green sky or flat earth narrative don't get deplatformed, fired, yelled at or called Nazis.
I still haven't seen anyone attempt to do a cost-benefit on whether the COVID lockdowns were a net good. I do note we had a big social and economic disjunction and since then it has been pretty much nothing but war and trouble. The part where they were shutting up people with PhDs on YouTube through COVID was definitely a net loss though; the censors weren't anywhere near as qualified to decide what to talk about as the censored were in my experience.
Professors have been publishing papers advocating for legal bans of gender affirming care for ages. They've been publishing papers on gender dysphoria and the medical impact of transition for ages. Heck, there are law professors on topics like "against civil rights."
For covid, there are not only oodles of papers on the topic you describe here, but entire books written by academics on the topic. These people remain employed at premier institutions. The question of the cost benefit analysis of remote schooling (costs to education outcomes and costs to parents having less available childcare against costs to public health) has been a particular vigorous topic of discussion.
Yes, even ones that are expressly critical of the policies.
In Covid's Wake is a rather famous recent example. The authors are both professors at a prestigious university. They were interviewed by all sorts of outlets, including left leaning outlets. The idea that doing a cost-benefit analysis of various covid policies would get academics expelled from the academy is just not based in fact.
My first criticism is the unity of popular opinion. (Ironic, yes). I see this majority, holding the exact same opinion, offering the exact same arguments in support of that opinion, implementing that opinion in exactly the same way. In lockstep.
There's a definite lack of natural chaos.
That's fishy. That reeks of a finely crafted propaganda campaign.
I don't. I see lots of arguments. You're engaging in one right now. COVID arguing was Reddit's most popular subreddit, back before Reddit was an AI slopfest.
Is it possible that the majority opinion is the correct one and the majority arguments are the reasons why it's correct? I mean, that's how it works with the blue sky, round earth, and fiber optic internet narratives.
Irrc, dissent from the official narrative about covid on reddit got culled with extreme prejudice. And the protofascistic multitudes were overjoyed to play along.
So do narratives that say we have to gas the jews. Is that extreme prejudice? Is that protofascistic? Actually, I think culling people who want to gas jews is anti-fascistic.
The claim above seemed to have been that professors who went against particular narratives regarding transgender affirmation and public health efforts surrounding covid were silenced or even expelled from the academy. This is just observably not the case. Some sense that the academy demands absolute conformity to left wing positions is something people often say but it is ill supported.
"they require conformity to a certain wing positions" is always an interesting angle because like, one wing could just separate from reality and go off to la la cuckoo fairytale land, and then blame everyone for being biased if they don't meet them halfway.
> Professors have been publishing papers advocating for legal bans of gender affirming care for ages
Tattoos are banned on anyone under 18 for good reasons. Protect the children, parents shouldn't have the freedom to ruin their kids lives, kids have a right to grow up with a healthy body and not get experimented on.
Kids can't even consent to sex, changing your sex has much bigger consequences than having sex, why should you be allowed to transition before the age of consent?
Parents has way too much influence over kids for kids to be said to be their own, its only when they become adults that they should be allowed to make these kind of life altering decisions.
I don't think there are many books written about banning gender affirming care for adults, just for children, and for children it makes sense, all other such body modifications are banned for kids.
> I still haven't seen anyone attempt to do a cost-benefit on whether the COVID lockdowns were a net good
This really exposes your own lack of curiosity more than anything. There are, of course, dozens of published papers on exactly this question which arrive at highly variable conclusions.
The president and the secretary of health both believe vaccines give autism and covid was nothing but a big fever. You act like "covid skepticism" isn't mainstream in the highest spheres of power.
> But, key difference, the people pushing green sky or flat earth narrative don't get deplatformed, fired, yelled at or called Nazis.
... You know that people show insane behaviour regularly get shadow-banned, right? And don't get called on by every piece of media for their position? That people wearing tinfoil have been regularly shouted at and harassed since it became a thing?
If you really want to not be called a Nazi... Don't make friends with people who call themselves that, don't attend the same parties as them, and don't make the same false claims as them.
I've had comments flagged for far less inflammatory framing than that comment! And they probably should have been flagged, they resulted in lots of bad discussion. In this thread it's a completely appropriate flagging because it's basically troll bait. People did engage with it in far higher level of thinking than it used, this time, but I think we would all have been better off without this digression.
