Humans come in all forms. Most humans have two legs, but not all. Some are born missing a leg and some lose them from injuries. If we only show two legged characters in Disney films does that mean it's some sinister message of "bipedalnormativity"?

https://www.thelist.com/32342/real-reasons-behind-blue-boys-...

For some today black is the macho color, for others it’s the artistic color.

Well it was the parent comment that was linking this to sexuality - Hetronormativity is inherently about sexuality (i.e. Hetro-Normativity - Hetro -> Heterosexual: of, pertaining to, or being a heterosexual person).

Where do those preferences come from? I've seen first hand the impact that media, advertising, and social pressures at school have had on my children's preferences.

Sure, but why is that a problem? Our preferences are of course sculpted by our environment, and that's not a problem as long the people who fall outside of those norms aren't punished for it. Assuming those norms aren't harmful of course, eg. not good to normalize psychopathy.

Heteronormativity is "heterosexual is the normal state of being".

Playing with trucks if you're a girl has nothing to do with whether you're hetero or homosexual.

This is a convenient segue to heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is the societal pressure to conform to the traditional gender roles of men and women who pursue heterosexual relationships. My parents didn't like me playing with Barbie dolls; they explicitly told me that it wasn't something boys did. This transmits a set of expectations about how I should behave, based on my gender. Notice that their telling me it was wrong to play with dolls was no more sexual than if they had allowed me to play with the dolls.

If your dad has acetylene torches around and your mom has axes around the house you’re going to play with them.

It does not mean or imply or predict that you want to burn the house down or you want to become a butcher or axe murderer. You’re not exploring being a pyromaniac or a murderer. You’re just playing, that’s it.

Same with high heels, smoking pipes, hunting rifles or lipstick. Kids don’t know their meaning yet (context of usage).

While true, to be fair GP was responding to this:

>>> "For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to *heteronormativity*. With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their *sexuality*." [emphasis mine]

To muddy the distinction further, there is a small minority of men whose sexual kink is to be perceived as women. These seem to be the people who are making the most trouble for trans women who just want to quietly go about living as women without fuss.

Heteronormativity conflates gender and sexuality; I'd guess (while acknowledging I don't know the content of anyone else's mind) that is what is responsible for their confusion, because they have been raised in a heteronormative society, the distinction doesn't exist in their mind.

While a true statement it's also a non-sequitur. Anglosphere society is roiled with social turmoil about trans-gender identity. One faction would like society to recognize that some people's gender does not fit their sex, and to normalize accommodating these people's gender expression without intrusive and oppressive questioning. Another faction, perhaps motivated by genuine concern, or perhaps by simple hatred of difference and change, throw a spanner into the works by asking hard questions about bathrooms and prisons and athletics and such. If the only people interested in entering women's bathrooms and prisons were genuinely only women who happened to be born in a male body, then everything would be clear and unmuddied. However, the existence of some fraction of men who would happily identify as women in order to gain easier sexual access to women does complicate the simple distinction. Is a trans woman lesbian with a penis really trans, or a predatory man with a kink? Ignoring or dismissing the muddy implications of the question will not make the second faction go away.

I didn't say predatory trans people. I said predatory men. Have you met men? Some men will put on a dress, call themselves trans, and fondle themselves in a women's locker room.

Again, pretending this is about trans people is disingenuous. This is about (some) men.

And, again, whether you genuinely dismiss the concern because you genuinely disbelieve that any man ever would take advantage of the situation, the faction that bring it up do genuinely believe that some men will take advantage of it. This faction will not go away. So, probably best to at least acknowledge their concerns so that trans people can get on with the business of doing their business.

The narrative you have presented is frequently weaponized, specifically by the adherents to the ideology of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, to argue that trans women are "men in dresses" who's real goal is to infiltrate women's spaces in order to assault them (or, in the example you gave, violate their privacy and dignity). In practice this a widespread phenomenon. TERF activists use this narrative to attempt to enact legislation barring trans people from the bathroom of their gender - forcing trans women into men's bathrooms, and I'm sure that, as someone concerned about problematic men and bathrooms, that won't sound like a good prospect to you. I take you at your word this was context you weren't aware of; now that I've brought it to your attention, I hope you'll consider it and see if it alters your thinking.

Indeed. This is both true, and a non-sequitur. Bad-faith arguers exist. Let us acknowledge the fact that some people will reprehensibly refer to every trans woman as a "man in a dress". Let's assume the best about each other.

If you're trying to say that everyone is a TERF who points out that some men (again, not trans women) will take advantage, or that only bad people point this out, then you're not addressing the concern, but dismissing it. Addressing and empathizing with the actual concern will get trans people into their preferred bathrooms and keep bad men out.

Anyway, you and I won't litigate this here, so if you have more to add, know that I'll read whatever you have to say but might not reply. Be well.

You're right, I should have done better there. To me, until this comment where you described this as "reprehensible", it sounded like you were employing "just asking questions" rhetoric, because you were asking all the same questions as TERFs, and to me it appeared you were only holding back the transphobic conclusions. However, that I should have done a better job assuming good faith on your part, and I apologize.

> This is both true, and a non-sequitur.

It isn't a non-sequitur though, I'm explaining to you what my issue is. If you were aware of the context around this narrative the whole time, you could addressed it instead of implying I was being disingenuous; the best-faith interpretation I could see was that you didn't understand my objection, so I added more detail. I would like to engage with you presuming the best, but can you see how saying I'm being disingenuous and that my points are non-sequitur (when it seems like you do understand what TERFs are, what bathroom bills are, and what it was I was getting at and how it relates to our discussion) made that difficult for me?

> Addressing and empathizing with the actual concern will get trans people into their preferred bathrooms and keep bad men out.

Happy to listen to what you may propose, but I don't have any thoughts. But I understand if you are done with this conversation, I myself need to log off for a few hours to attend to things, and of course you don't owe me any of your time.

All the best to you, as well.

Most people are like me: sincerely caring, well-disposed to trans people, understand that trans rights are human rights, bear absolutely zero ill-will and will happily use preferred pronouns. Would be terribly frightened for a trans-woman to be placed in a man's prison, for instance. And, nevertheless, would simply like straight-forward policy proposals to answer those specific concerns.

So far, the only policy proposals that address those concerns have been from conservatives, which are not ideal to say the least, either. From liberals, sadly, have come answers along the lines of "Asking questions like that is TERF territory. You don't want to be a TERF, do you?" Which is clearly not an answer, and concedes the entire policy platform to conservatives.

I mean, it could be that the liberal response is, essentially "Times are changing and the exceedingly minuscule chance of creepy men in womens' locker rooms and women's prisons is a small price to pay for human rights" but that's unconvincing, to be honest. Creepy men who have a right to be in womens' locker rooms and prisons will become a problem unless it's actually addressed in advance. That's nothing to do with trans women. It is, unfortunately, a problem with men.

But no, I don't have answers, here. Before, it seemed to be "Be discreet and make good-faith efforts to pass as your preferred gender and people will generally leave you alone." The "passing" part is not ideal, but at least serves as some kind of costly social signal that this person is really trying to blend in and not make waves. Without that, not sure.

There are millions of trans people in the world but presumably few rapists in dresses. The spurious focus on pointless concerns suggests we ought to harm the dignity of millions for a fictional advantage.

What do you propose to do about a creepy man who hears that all he has to do is self-identify as a woman and now has a right to expose his penis to women? This is not a trans woman, but a man who just will not leave his penis alone in a women's locker room. Women avert their eyes, but he shakes it around, puts tassels on it, gets excited by the turmoil. "This is not a thing that will ever happen" is an answer, sure, but when it does happen, your conservative opposition will use the exceedingly rare incident to exclude trans women from locker rooms. So, what is a better answer that actually addresses the concern?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-...

Same with me, but let me ask you a question. Were you the sort of kid that actually listens to their parents? Because i didn't, and most of my peers didn't, either.

Now, the reaction of my friends when they came over and looked at me funny when I tried to show them my awesome Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders doll (it had wings and could fly if you pulled a ripcord! That's objectively cool. Also, dangerous, especially to taller adults in the area.), that was painful.

For people with that attitude, yes.

I wouldn't see trying on lipstick or playing with Barbie dolls as "exploring a gender identity" as neither of those are exclusive to one gender, even in a heteronormative world.

I think these things were much more gendered at the time, as well. It is crazy for me to look back and remember how there was a time when I hadn't made up my mind about whether gay marriage was okay or not. Things have changed a lot over the past 20 years or so.

Right, you did that as a playful experiment. Would you want some trans-activist to tell you that, because you once experimented with this stuff as a kid, your actual gender identity is not the one you were assigned at birth and you should undergo surgical reassignment? Can you see why quite a few people might find this kind of thing a bit of an abomination?

1. This is not a good faith representation of what trans people are arguing for; no one is saying that playing with dolls makes you trans.

2. Trans healthcare for kids does not involve surgery. Surgeries are not performed for people under the age of 18. Trans healthcare for kids largely involves letting them choose what clothes they wear, pronouns they use, perhaps changing their name. The most that might happen is that they take puberty blockers, a reversible and safe treatment.

3. I can see why people would be upset by your straw man, were it the reality, but trans people are not an abomination, and directing dehumanizing language towards a group of people who are frequently targeted for violence is profoundly not okay. And your straw man is just that.

That's a rather extreme claim, don't you think? There's been a significant shift in recent years from "gender fluid" behavior being considered a matter of expression, to it being regarded as an almost mandatory matter of identity - either as a sign of identifying with the opposite gender, or as being "non binary".

> Trans healthcare for kids does not involve surgery.

The heavy medicalization of "trans healthcare" creates a rigid path from "affirmation" of the supposedly expressed gender, to puberty blockers/hormones, to surgical reassignment. There are significant social drawbacks for those who choose to stray, since 'community' support is conditional on picking the "right" choices at any given step.

> can see why people would be upset by your straw man, were it the reality, but trans people are not an abomination

The latter is not something I ever said, of course. You might be pattern-matching my comment with things that are just not there. I agree that most trans people just want to live their lives and not be at risk for violence, but this much is obvious. In general, the most extreme "activism" on either side gets a lot of visibility while being unrepresentative of what real people think.

Who exactly is arguing that it is mandatory to be gender fluid? I've never heard such a thing.

What I do hear trans people arguing for is that they have a right to exist, that they are under threat of violence, and that the require awareness of their condition and protection under the law as a matter of survival.

> The heavy medicalization of "trans healthcare" creates a rigid path from "affirmation" of the supposedly expressed gender, to puberty blockers/hormones, to surgical reassignment. There are significant social drawbacks for those who choose to stray, since 'community' support is conditional on picking the "right" choices at any given step.

You're just kinda putting quotes on things to make them sound scary. Do you object to surgery, or surgery being performed on children? If teenagers go on puberty blockers, and they decide they don't want to pursue surgery when they become adults - no worries, no surgery was performed. If they become adults, having considered the decision for a long time at this point - by what you were saying before now, that would seem to be okay; you were saying it was an unacceptable to impose a surgery on children, are you now saying that this isn't a choice you're ever okay with? I'm starting to get the feeling maybe you just feel trans people are unacceptable in general and that, whatever they did, you would disapprove of it.

I'm not deeply involved with the LGBTQ community, but I'm confident none of the people I know would bully someone who decided against transitioning. And none of the LGBTQ communities I've ever intersected with have been stingy or withholding of their support; they're happy to discuss my feelings about gender with me, for example, though I'm a straight man with a "by the book" gender presentation (and I have my frustrations with my gender and the expectations that come with it all the same, which I'm sure many men can relate to).

I'm sure there are toxic personalities within these communities, but it is certainly not the norm or generally tolerated, as bullying exists in virtually all communities but generally is not tolerated.

This applies to kids the most (they of course aren't at risk for surgery, but the usual notion of a fixed "gender identity" is also least sensibly applied to them), but people in young adulthood should also be a bit concerned. Research seems to show that, by and large, those who transition in middle-age are the happiest post-transition. I'm not sure how that squares with your feeling that someone with my views might just find "trans people unacceptable in general"; my concerns are derived from real-world practicality.

Unfortunately that is not true.

There are surgeons who perform 'gender affirming' double mastectomies on girls as young as 13. This is documented in the medical literature.

The former CEO of Mermaids, a UK-based charity for children who identify as transgender, had her child castrated and given a penile inversion at the age of 16, by a surgeon who specializes in constructing 'neovaginas'.

but when almost every other friend, relative, other kindergarten/school parents teachers push their own ideas of what is appropriate for girls or boys, my influence ends up being rather small.

i can't push my own ideas here. i can only encourage and protect the diverse interests that my kids develop on their own.

Also I'm not accusing anyone of pushing this on their kids, rather, our society does it in massive doses. Watch most children's TV shows or movies and heteronormativity is abundant.

For a pretty clean example of this check out the movie Up by Pixar. The first 10 minutes of the movie are devoted to Carl & Ellie's relationship and the loss of that relationship serves as a major driver for the movie.

Also there's nothing wrong with showing children this kind of content. It helps them make sense of the world. However, there is an issue with representation. When it's all they see then it constrains their minds as to what is possible.

Yeah, but the comment OP is responding to was explicitly about letting kids "explore their sexuality".

Emphasis mine. The comment is not, in fact, about letting children explore their sexuality, but people. (When you consider the parent of that comment, that still does not add context implying that we're talking about kids.)

The only part of the comment which discusses children is this:

> For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity.

To read this as sexualizing children is misunderstanding the term heteronormativity, but regardless, this is the behavior that is being criticized, not championed.

> For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity. With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality.

In a maximally generous interpretation, you could say that the "kids" in the first half and the "people" in the second half of the statement are completely different subjects. I think that is a bit of a stretch, though.

"For years I have been pruning the tomato plants in my garden. Now, I just let the _plants_ grow".

Anyone reading that would assume "plants" refers to the aforementioned tomato plants, not cucumbers.

Consider that, in the example sentence you came up with, you are referring to the same subject, at different times.

They think that because you’re not trying to make them “explore their gender identity” while teaching them ABCs that you are pushing something. It’s absolute projection. I support all people to live their lives how they see fit, but I refuse to use their newspeak or pretend like there is not a natural normal.

It seems to me like you're actually arguing to try and remove words that people have introduced to the language, and to erase the nuances they convey, because you don't find it to be "normal" or "natural". What is normal or natural is entirely subjective, and varies across cultures and across time, and in any case we don't generally yoke ourselves to what is natural (we are, after all, speaking through an artificial medium because we find it advantageous, and though we weren't born with wings we often find it advantageous to fly.)

It might be interesting to give 1984 another read.

Heterosexuality doesn't have to be the default, and indeed, that era is ending. The evidence for it is right here; you feel compelled to go to bat for the notion, not something you'd need to do if it really were mystically natural and inextricably true. Heterosexuality is promulgated as a default because it is key to a power structure called the patriarchy. The patriarchy works by assigning certain gender roles to men and women; these roles allow men to subjugate women, and also allow men to be subjugated by other men. The patriarchy's strength lies in the rigidity of those gender roles, and as the gender roles are loosened the patriarchy gets weaker. Lots of power within our society is expressed through patriarchy, for instance, the idea that men express their agency through violence instead of through emotion and that they should readily throw their lives away in service of a cause is useful for recruiting men as soldiers and police, and soldiers and police are useful in upholding many other power structures (like state power or the power of the rich). So over the last few millenia, many different power structures have come to rely on the existence of patriarchy, and it's been woven into our mythology and the fabric of our society. The fluidity of gender roles is a direct challenge to patriarchy, and people with nonconforming identities have been forced into the closet through violence and social reprisal.

This was a natural series of events in the sense that all of history took place in the context of the natural world, sure. But cancer is natural, we don't have to accept it. In the same way, I reject your heteronormativity. I think it sucks. I don't think people are "naturally" any particular gender, it's a role we learn to play as we're socialized. That doesn't make it bad, there's nothing wrong with being a man or a woman, there's nothing wrong with embracing very traditional views of what that means if that's what makes you happy. I live my life as a pretty traditional man. But that isn't all there is to life, and that's not all it should mean to be human.

Social and cultural norms are beside the point here; in fact, the most traditional societies are those that tend to feature the most salient spaces for same-sex quasi-romantic affection and emotionality, with such things as compadrazgo and sworn brotherhood/sisterhood. So it's just not clear how "heteronormativity" is supposed to be an internally coherent concept.

Heteronormativity isn't an epistemology, there's no burden for it to be consistent. It's a set of beliefs and attitudes, and a label that allows you to critique them. Why would we expect that to be any more consistent than the human behavior it describes (which is to say, only somewhat)? Will this label break down and stop making sense as society changes? Yes, I imagine it will. Will it become unwieldy and eventually fail altogether if we employ it in an analysis spanning cultures with very different conceptions of gender? Absolutely. But you might as well ask whether the concept of pop music is consistent and relate it to the works of Beethoven, if you think that's useful in your analysis than go for it, but if it doesn't work in that circumstance it isn't a condemnation of the idea. The only burden on heteronormativity is to be useful in describing real world behavior, which it clearly is.

If you want to know whether heteronormativity is a real phenomenon, you need look no further than the comment I criticized. It doesn't say, heterosexuality is prevalent; it says, heterosexuality is total, that it is "natural" and "normal", that it is inseparable from gender, and that people living as (or even describing) other gender and sexual identities are doing it to trick you.

That comment actually says "heterosexuality is normal", which is of course ambiguous - it could mean either of "prevalent" or "not merely prevalent but standard, with deviations from it being seen as undesirable". Heteronormativity might be a description of the latter claim, but denying that heterosexuality is especially common is mere wishful thinking.

The claim that gender and sexual orientation are linked would've been quite recognizable to ancient cultures including classical Greece and Rome, where heterosexual behavior was not normative and other sexual arrangements were often celebrated (though their dark, exploitive side, linked to the ubiquity of rape culture as purposeful male domination, was not unrecognized either; and this later fed into Christian condemnation of such practices). So it makes little sense to view that as "heteronormative" either.

I make no claims about heteronormativity in Greece or Rome (I do say that the patriarchy is several millennia old, so this could be read as an implicit claim that patriarchy existed in Greece and Rome [and I wouldn't take issue with that claim], but I don't think you'd find this disagreeable, given the "rape culture as purposeful male domination" you reference, and that the definition of patiarchy I provided specifically calls out the domination of men), and gender and sexual identities certainly are linked in the sense that certain combinations are more common than others - they just aren't synonyms. As I noted, there is no burden for this concept to translate to other cultures and time periods in order for us to accept it as a useful model for the purposes of our discussion; I've not seen a counterargument from you on this, so I don't see why I would accept these observations of Greece and Rome as being deleterious to my point, anyway.

Heteronormativity is just heterosexuality as a normative element of social structures (not merely prevalent in society, but where deviation from it is viewed as transgressive.) In modern societies, it is typically tied to patriarchy (a particular normatige structure of gender roles, in which social power is attached to male roles), cisnormativity, and, in particular societies, it may be attached to things like White supremacy that are superficially farther from sex/gender dynamics, but these are nevertheless distinct if linked elements of the cultures they appear in.

But we certainly agree that heteronormativity is different than society having a majority heterosexual orientation.

Note that by this standard, much of LGBTQ+ culture might well be described as heteronormative, since glorifying social transgression as such (not merely inasmuch as it might inevitably follow from having a non-majority gender or sexual orientation) has long been a staple of that particular identity.

I’m neither of these. I’ve never experienced sexual attraction to anyone. Every relationship I have is happily platonic. I have several good, close friends, so I capable of deep emotional bonds to people of any gender.

This would have been fine if I didn’t have a high sex drive. But I do. You’re not supposed to have a high sex drive while being completely uninterested.

I’ve wondered most of my life why I was broken. It was extremely isolating to be constantly surrounded by messages telling me there is something wrong with me.

Then I found out what asexuality is. That’s what I am. Romantic attraction can be completely devoid of sexual attraction. Someone’s sex drive can be independent of a person’s sexuality.

It hasn’t been any less isolating, but at least I know there is nothing wrong with me as a person.

Have you never seen anyone upset if their boys are playing with dolls or their girls are playing with toy swords?

How do you think most parents would react if someone bought a pink dress as a present for for their 6 month old boy, or blue pants for their 6 month old girl?

How would most parents react even today to a children's cartoon featuring two little boys holding hands and kissing on the cheek, or a story about prince charming saving and marrying another prince charming?

Pretending heteronormativity is just some sex related thing that no one actually talks about is absurd.

You don't even have to single out Disney, 99% of popular media will present heterosexual relationships as the norm, and children's media that shows something as benign as a same sex couple holding hands or hugging is viewed as mildly transgressive or at least newsworthy.

Gender non-comforming behaviour is 100% absent outside of maybe a "tomboy" female character (and even that seems less present than it used to be).

The voting on your comment is crazy because your ignorance on the topic is showing and it’s dangerous and insulting.

Educate yourself.

They literally do not say "kids are empowered to explore their sexuality."

Kids grow up into adults.

xd is the one that brought up sexualizing children. No reasonable person here would assume anyone is talking about sexualizing children unless they explicitly said as much.

Somehow you and xd are thinking "people are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality" explicitly means "kids" in this context. Why you are thinking that, I don't know.

He talks about society putting pressure on kids to be straight and then talks about people and sexuality in the same damn paragraph; are you being purposefully obtuse?

Also note that none of this is about having sex: it’s about telling kids which archetypes are available for them as grownups. If we want to talk about sex, however, look at the degree to which girl’s clothing mimics the styles of adult women even at the expense of practicality for the things kids actually do and how many stories even for young children revolve around the major life goal being an exclusive relationship with a man. Again, the stuff people are complaining about now is an order of magnitude less than what kids are already getting to reinforce traditional gender norms.

I definitely learned before age 13 that being gay/lesbian was bad (I'm bisexual and in my mid 40s). I definitely learned that I was expected to grow up and get married and have kids and if I worked, it was really to help the spouse. I remember my parents suddenly getting upset that I had male friends and didn't want me spending time with them the same way (this was around age 10). No one talked to me about attraction and if they did, never explained that I might feel that way about women as well as men. This is what heteronormativity is. This is pushing sexual preferences on youth.

Exploring sexuality isn't about actual sex acts, but more about learning who you are and who you are attracted to. You know, the sorts of folks you'd like to date and eventually, the sorts of folks you want to spend your life with. This sort of thing is most definitely encouraged, but sometimes the only acceptable option presented is the hetronormativity - you know, "biblical" monogamous relationships that produce children, and if you are female and don't want children, you are broken.

This isn't sexualisation of children.

Only decades? You mean for all of history, where there are distinct roles mostly because of anatomy.

In fact, it was only in recent decades with birth control that was there even an option for most women to take a different role for extended periods.

I'll say the opposite is true, the last several decades did a great job and removed the notion of heterogenomativity. We are just going so far past that into the illogical now.

Reliable birth control methods are sixty years old. And of course there have always been non-reproductive sex acts since the birth of time.

As far as "all of history" goes, ancient Greece for example tolerated a particular kind of "homosexuality", but not one we should try and emulate - it matched neither of two conditions in "consenting adults", for example.

While it's true that few if any societies other than "modern Western" would score as high as ours on Stonewall's diversity index, there were definitely ups and downs if you plotted things over time.

Go back several generations in the USA or Western Europe and it's absolutely normal for straight men to have close and emotional friendships for life; when photography was first invented, it was a thing that male BFFs had photos of themselves taken that I bet anyone today, if shown without context, would immediately pattern-match to "gay couple". I'm going to quote the "art of manliness" site, of all places, on this: https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/bosom-bu... (warning: images may be considered NSFW at your place of work, despite being absolutely non-pornographic as far as I can tell)

Some of these men were undoubtedly gay in the sense we understand the term, but the idea of having a close emotional bond with another man was certainly open to straight men too (and to some extent, also expected).

But then, to quote "The History of Male Friendships" linked on that page,

> First, men were free to have affectionate man relationships with each other without fear of being called a “queer” because the concept of homosexuality as we know it today didn’t exist then. America didn’t have the strict straight/gay dichotomy that currently exists. Affectionate feelings weren’t strictly labeled as sexual or platonic. There wasn’t even a name for homosexual sex; instead, it was referred to as “the crime that cannot be spoken.” It wasn’t until the turn of the 19th century that psychologists started analyzing homosexuality. When that happened, men in America started to become much more self-conscious about their relationships with their buds and traded the close embraces for a stiff pat on the back.

> [...]

> The man friendship underwent some serious transformations during the 20th century. Men went from lavishing endearing words on each other and holding hands to avoiding too much emotional bonding or any sort of physical affections whatsoever. Fear of being called gay drove much of the transformation. Ministers and politicians decried homosexuality as being incompatible with true manhood. And like most deviant behavior in the 1950s, homosexuality was associated with Communism.

So, once "gay" appeared on people's radar, heteronormativity shot through the roof and men were expected to be performatively straight, to prove themselves that they were not "tainted" by this new "affliction". That's where a lot of this pressure came from, it was definitely not constant throughout all of even relatively modern history.

Maybe it's more accurate to say Western (and in particular American) culture has fragmented, and one of those cultures has increasingly put stricter and stricter norms around acceptable heterosexual male behaviour to the point where it's nearly parody.

If laws against witchcraft are removed and/or witchcraft is destigmatized and then all the sudden there appears to be an explosion of witches, the explanation is probably not that hordes of people are adopting witchcraft.

I'll leave it to the reader to guess the simplest and most likely explanation.

This is what I find so exhausting about those who try to drum up some kind of controversy around gender identity. Assuming it is all just a fad, who cares? Where's the issue when people decide to switch their gender on a whim? It's their lives. People do all kinds of things on a whim. Adults, teens and children too. Especially children, in fact. Sometimes people regret the things they did, sometimes they don't. Oh well, it's part of life.

I could understand being concerned about a social trend if it was causing violent behavior that negatively affected other people's lives, but this isn't that. Who is it hurting if someone decides to identify as another gender? Even if they pursue medical intervention, it's only going to affect them at worst. If anything the small government/pro-freedom position should be to defend the right of those people to live how they want.

The issue, at least for me, starts when we give children drugs and surgeries to enable them to switch genders.

There's nothing wrong with little Timmy wanting to play with Barbies. He doesn't need hormone injections because of it.

People are worried about their kids. People are scared and the media amplifies the most extreme voices. Establishing scientifically the effectiveness of medical interventions is difficult in the best of circumstances and most psychology is non-reproducible, so it's hard to know what to believe is best.

Rule implies that it applies to past conservative moral panics. Is there a past moral panic in which lots of formerly suppressed identities suddenly expressed themselves once the moral panic was over?

Freedom of religion allowed a lot of people to express their religious identity which was formerly suppressed?

[1] See notes on etymology etc. at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sinister

Why was left handedness considered taboo and evil? Do we need to figure out a legitimate reason for this before we can remove the fence? Could there possibly be a legitimate reason for something that clearly absurd?

There seems to be a representation threshold below which any observable minority is considered undesirable. To the extent there is a “legitimate reason” it is probably rooted in evolutionary psychology for avoiding too much genetic variation in small tribes. I submit those fences are the opposite of Chesterton’s fence and can happily be ignored in today’s society.

Hmm. I suspect it's just "other tribes". We humans will make tribes out of literally any distinction, even athletic team preferences. It's kind of our thing.

Yes: https://www.straightdope.com/21343459/in-the-third-world-do-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic

Just as the media makes it out like the next stop by a cop could end up in an execution if you’re not the same ethnicity as the cop. It’s still rather rare, or at least not happening at the rate the media portrays it.

I don't know how you can a priori gauge this probability. If something illegal suddenly becomes legal but is still somewhat taboo, that obviously attracts experimentation, at least from rebellious youth.

This is patently untrue. Since the 60s, western society has been increasingly accomodating to the non-gender-conforming. Especially with the rise of the internet, people who once felt isolated with whatever made them different were able to find others like themselves.

But that isn’t a new thing in the past few decades, and indeed it does seem to be getting better.

For anyone else wanting more context, this is an ok starting point: https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/the-hist... (but note that the side of the story from inside the gay community is yet another matter, as niom hints at)

Basically, before most people knew that "gay" was a thing, there was much less pressure on men to be performatively straight.

In most of Europe at least, homosexuality could not be openly practiced for most of the middle ages. There were certain exceptions, but it was not generally considered acceptable, and it was persecuted by the church or other moral authorities, at the very least as ostracism if not outright legal punishments - usually seen as a deviant sexual act, which were also routinely punished. Since the states were far weaker than modern states, it wasn't as systematic and universal as the Nazis attempted, but it was still happening.

Even in societies we perceive as more open such as ancient Rome, homosexual acts were often not explicitly accepted as normal, except for some we today would (rightly) consider abhorrent - adult men having sex with teenagers, but never the other way around.