I'm probably more "idealistic" than I have ever been; it's just that I no longer have the silly "Let's just do this one simple thing" attitude. I've just found that getting places is always a lot more difficult than we think. Usually, it's people, and all their messy personal issues, that gum up the works.
The good news is, is that I am actually accomplishing more than I did, when I was younger. It's taking less energy, and is often more frustrating, but shit gets done. A big reason, is that I understand myself, and the people around me, a lot better than I used to. They are no longer "NPCs" in my Game of Life.
As to the article, I seriously feel for the author, but I am not exactly in their shoes. I don't have anything against them, but their crusade is not my crusade.
The one thing that is almost guaranteed to make our cause to go floop, is insisting that everyone else is either with us, or against us. This is especially annoying, when our cause is important to only a small minority of stakeholders.
For some reason, almost everyone in our life ends up in the "against" column, and many of them started as people that actually supported us, but weren't willing to go much farther than that. So now, they are actively working against us. The "woke craze" caused exactly this reaction.
As Dr. Phil might say, "So...how's that working out for you?"
Masterfully said, I'd love this to be the pull quote here.
- Ronald Reagan, 1972
I get that there are some 'purity test' type people out there, and they're annoying, but they're a small minority in most things.
https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...
To demonstrate that you're in the "in group", it is not enough to simply support most of what they are into. You must take a potentially expensive position that demonstrates your absolute support. Such as supporting putting rapists in women's prisons if they've claimed to be women. Such positions then become a litmus test, and all who fail it are declared enemies.
No matter what the issue, no matter how fair their cause is, this tendency will wind up with extremism. And that torch everything extremism either results in victory or a backlash. Fair warning, usually it winds up with a backlash and overcorrection.
It happens constantly online. Leftist A will say something about respecting gender self-identification and then rightwinger B will manipulate the conversation so that the leftist is now trying to defend putting biological men in women's prisons [1]
It's incredibly disengenous and bad faith.
[1] regardless of your moral position on this issue, there's a fuckload of other awful things about american prisons that these type of people are rarely concerned about.
This isn't a gotcha either. When the horrific outcomes of males being transferred into women's prisons is brought up, it's typically being done to explain why gender self-id policy is so harmful to women.
Often, the person advocating for gender self-id hasn't spent any time considering this impact at all. The detriment to women and girls isn't even on their radar. So it's worth explaining.
It changes views, too. I've personally witnessed several people rapidly undoing their support for gender self-id when they see evidence of the deleterious consequences. Though more in real life than online.
Conversations like those are the reason why support for policy that prioritizes gender identity over sex is dropping like a stone.
In the sense that the vast majority of all feminists of any kind are on the left? Is there such a thing as a rightwing feminist? JK Rowling?
> This isn't a gotcha either. When the horrific outcomes of males being transferred into women's prisons is brought up, it's typically being done to explain why gender self-id policy is so harmful to women.
This is literally the point I was trying to make about these types of conversations. It's extremely tempting to argue with your blanket assertions of 'detriment to [other] women and girls', but now instead of talking about the person in the article's very real concern about being discriminated against while working or even being attacked while socializing, we're talking about some extreme hypothetical about women's prisons.
Also, it's weird how often people are completely silent about the treatment of female prisoners... until it's related to transgender issues. Or female athletes for that matter. If you were actually worried about it, there are probably bigger fish to fry.
There are some feminists who reject the left-right divide and don't place themselves anywhere on it, as a response to the male-dominated political system. It's not a very popular view but it exists.
JK Rowling isn't one of them, she has left-wing views and describes herself as such.
> instead of talking about the person in the article's very real concern about being discriminated against while working or even being attacked while socializing, we're talking about some extreme hypothetical about women's prisons.
Sadly it is not hypothetical.
If you believe that supporting gender self-id positively addresses the concerns of males like the blog author, then you should also be willing to consider the documented and evidenced harms to women and girls.
And certainly if you wish to understand why there is such significant opposition to policy that prioritizes gender identity over sex.
> Also, it's weird how often people are completely silent about the treatment of female prisoners... until it's related to transgender issues. Or female athletes for that matter. If you were actually worried about it, there are probably bigger fish to fry.
One might also wonder why policymakers haven't fried these bigger fish that would improve conditions for female prisoners and female athletes, and instead have chosen to introduce gender self-id policy which demonstrably harms women and girls while privileging males.
If you keep repeating this, maybe you'll convince some people who desperately want to believe it.
And I don't really need to wonder why. Because they obviously don't care except when they can invoke "won't somebody think of [the women]" as a convenient excuse to achieve political power.
It's exactly as dishonest and intellectually bankrupt as "advocating for the unborn".
I have helped some people understand the full impact of such policy, yes.
In my experience, it depends on whether the person I'm talking to has an interest in the wellbeing of women and girls, and is even slightly open to challenging their current understanding with new information.
> dishonest and intellectually bankrupt
Evidence-based and built upon feminist principles, actually.
As I clearly think, given what I said above, most of what trans people want is obviously fair and just. To go through life, being treated as their preferred gender, and not facing discrimination of various kinds for that choice.
But that isn't where we are. Instead we are in a world where Kamala Harris was, completely unforced, recorded talking about protecting trans rights in prisons back in 2019. Trump ran ads showing those clips with the tagline, "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you." And now Trump is President.
Is it being brought up now as a gotcha? Absolutely! But back when Kamala was running the first time for President, SHE brought up her support for the policy. Unforced. Because it was how to signal her support for that issue. And now we're all paying the price for how activist extremism creates backlash.
Like, I'm genuinely not trying to create a strawman, I'm just rephrasing literally what you said.
I'm reminded of MLK's quote about white moderates here...
That's exactly what you're doing with your own rhetoric, you know.
My "rhetoric" about the issue which Donald J. Trump spent something like 1/4 of his ad spend on. I didn't pick it to sound extreme. I picked it because it was very important to how politics will play out for the next 4 years.
If you don't like what Trump does now, you can thank Kamala's attempts to ingratiate herself to trans activists back in 2019.
How are you making that happen?
This is an honest question.
As I've gotten older, and developed a deeper understanding of the intractability of the world's problems, this change in perspective has cratered my motivation. It was one thing to give my all toward what seemed like it mattered, back when the scope for possible change still appeared to be great enough that one could imagine living in a better world: but knowing now that no matter what I do it's just going to be more of the same old bullshit, with maybe - at best, and this unlikely - one or another of the rougher edges on the great, awful machine of exploitation and suffering which powers our civilization slightly filed down, so that maybe a couple of people here and there don't get hurt quite as badly as they otherwise might have, while the core of the process continues crushing the life and beauty out of the world, unchanged... it's difficult to muster up any real energy to do anything about it. I still go through the motions, when it seems like I must, for conscience's sake; but I don't believe in it anymore. The source of my past effort is all gone.
I miss that past self, but I can't imagine how to believe that any possible accomplishment would actually matter anymore, enough to justify putting my back into it. What's your secret?
I can assure you that the work I do, makes a pretty big difference in some lives. We're not out to change the world. We're only trying to police our own area*.
Being older and more experienced, means that the work I do is much more effective, and much more economical (we don't have a lot of means). It also means that I work well with others, and am much better at team stuff.
*> “I was in the Air Force a while and they had what they call “policing the area.” And I think that’s a pretty good thing to go by. If everyone just takes care of their own area then we won’t have any problems. Be here. Be present. Wherever you are, be there. And look around you and see what needs to be changed.”
-Willie Nelson
Not entirely dissimilar to the exploitation of eg college athletes.
Even in less obvious cases that don't involve old age, we often call something growth, when we should just say change. Sometimes we are all just more set our ways. Others, our "learning" is just abandoning principles so that we can follow random emotional fancies. Knowing when we are actually seeing the world more accurately, instead of being wrong in a different way, is quite challenging. We all want to think we are getting better, which is precisely whi we are blind to the ways in which we aren't. The convenient story often defeats what is actually true, but inconvenient.
also known as growing older ;-)