Back in the 00s, the anti-LGBT culture war targeted primarily gay people, and it primarily used religious arguments. The Bible condemns homosexuality, marriage is a sacred institution, it’s a violation of Christians’ rights to make their churches marry gay people, &c.
Clearly, it didn’t work. During the 10s, when gay marriage was legalized, conservatives were dealt a pretty decisive blow on their anti-gay agenda, and so they shifted from targeting the LGB to targeting the T (they always targeted trans people, of course, but they really ramped it up during the 10s). With this change in focus came a shift in rhetoric. The right-wing certainly does argue for oppressing trans people on religious grounds, but you’re a lot more likely to hear them use scientific-sounding justifications. They’ll talk about chromosomes, about anatomy, about how “biologically there are only two genders,” about “people trying to put their feelings above objective reality.” They’ll throw around words like “rational” and “reason.” This of course ignores all kinds of actual science, such as the degree to which gender is culturally constructed, the existence of intersex people, how gender affirming care is the only dysphoria treatment shown to be effective, and a thousand other things. It’s anti-scientific to its core, but it can fool a casual observer into thinking it’s scientific if it’s telling them what they want to hear. It’s a bigotry for a materialist age, palatable to bazinga brains and nu-atheist Redditors, and maybe it’s just anecdotal, but it seems to me to have more traction among a younger, hipper crowd than the religious arguments ever did.
I can’t help but wonder if this pivot was concocted in some right-wing think tank somewhere.
I can’t help but wonder if this pivot was concocted in some right-wing think tank somewhere.
It literally was. I don’t have the source at hand right now, but not too long ago there was this reveal that the modern anti-trans push with all the scientific-sounding nonsense was concocted by a specific religious group or think tank in the US. Because they were losing the anti-gay culture war, they decided on taking a different approach by focusing on a group that most people know little about: trans people. I also remember reading about how many of those transphobic “LGB” groups in the UK are being funded by religious organizations in the US. It’s all part of their strategy to weaken and divide the LGBT community so that it becomes easier to pick them off one by one. Trans people are only the beginning for them. Any queer person who isn’t trans and thinks they’ll be safe because they aren’t trans, is truly deluding themselves.
Commenting to remember in case the source gets posted (I want to rub people’s noses in it)
This is also how you get people being able to use wedge issue shit like transgender women in sports and “being deeply concerned about protecting children” to allow transphobia to flourish. It sounds like such a good-faith, logical concern rooted in a solid sense of rationality to your average person who knows jack and shit about trans people, so there surely can’t be any harmful rhetoric going on behind that, right!? All this and the “scientific” mumbo jumbo you’re referring to is combined to make trans people look like a fringe bunch of “crazies” who don’t deserve basic human consideration to so-called “normal people.”
This is also how you get people being able to use wedge issue shit like transgender women in sports and “being deeply concerned about protecting children” to allow transphobia to flourish.
I hate those two wedge issues. You couldn’t engineer better ones if you tried. They fucking work, which is the worst part. My (usually pretty decent) mother, who has two trans children who she loves, started trying to talk to me several months ago about how there might be fairness issues with trans women in sports. It was so hard to maintain my composure and argue her away from that deeply shitty “worry” rather than just yell at her and tell her to never bring it up again, which is what I wanted to do. But, of course, we look like we’re overreacting and, yes, crazy, if we say “that’s a bullshit unreal worry, never say anything like that in my presence again”. It is a bullshit unreal worry, but it sounds just reasonable enough to clueless cis people that we can’t dismiss it out of hand. I fucking hate it so, so much.
And, of course, the “worries” around childhood transition perform the same function! Luckily no one in my life is susceptible to that one, but I know a lot of people are. And again here you can’t just say “childhood transition is great, shut the fuck up”. That’s the truth, but it doesn’t sound like the truth to your average cis person.
I feel like the childhood transition stuff is a sidestep, a deflection. Toddlers are poking around touchscreen computers before they can talk, that seems like a much more pressing “think of the children” moment. Not that I expect any nation in the english-speaking world to handle that with any sort of thoughtful or measured approach…
And again here you can’t just say “childhood transition is great, shut the fuck up”.
I just point out they’re OK with childhood transition for cis kids. That sometimes works on liberals at least.
What are you talking about?
Puberty?
A lot of this rhetoric only ever works when people have never encountered nor will ever encounter a trans person. Trans people aren’t real to a lot of Americans. There’s very little visibility or understanding. You ask a person to name someone trans and the only name they’ll have is maybe Caitlyn Jenner. They might know Lia Thompson or Chelsea Manning if they’re slightly more tuned in.
But most Americans still haven’t encountered trans people in their daily lives, it’s a pure abstract concept. It’s all imaginary mind palace games, so of course it’s gonna get couched in pseudoscience terms.
The average American probably can’t describe the difference between a drag queen and a trans woman, by the way. It’s all considered the same thing. I’m personally a non-binary agender person who prefers she/they pronouns while also preferring to present masculine, so imagine how they’d interpret any of that.
I’m personally a non-binary agender person who prefers she/they pronouns while also preferring to present masculine, so imagine how they’d interpret any of that.
video of them trying to comprehend:
If establishment liberals had any political instincts whatsoever, they’d be countering this pivot with something like, "The right talks big about freedoms, but dumps you the second you stop conforming. Rhetorically, you can counter both anti-trans sentiment and dovetail into pro-choice abortion rights with this approach… instead, they’ve decided on neoconservative war-hawking. Yay.
I once shut down a lobby of angry, hateful gamers with “The most important freedom, for your typical yankee, is the freedom to tell people they’re doing freedom wrong”
Class society needs a self-justifying ideology. Christianism wasn’t working so well at reinforcing the patriarchy, so it adapted it into “rationalism” (a less obvious form of Christianism).
“rationalism” (a less obvious form of Christianism)
Can you elaborate on this?
Only a little because it’s an underdeveloped thought of mine. But you know Richard Dawkins? Self-proclaimed atheist? Yet he gave the game away like a year ago when he used creationist talking points (saying the human body was made to do such and such) during one his anti-trans tirades. He also literally calls himself a cultural Christian.
the “rational, enlightened” nature of modernity is a smokescreen for a set of intense contradictions. as materialists it’s obvious to us that christianity didn’t just disappear overnight with the advent of capitalism. “scientific” capitalist modernity is rife with undercurrents of christian spirituality which are obscured and occultised compared to older times but still ever-present.
this is a good read on it, i know more esoteric marxism isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but even if you don’t personally give a shit about spirituality i think this piece is well-written and goes over some of the contradictions quite well between the “rational, scientific” modern age and its true more sinister nature. https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2021/11/25/dark-eucharist-of-the-real-god/
This is good stuff, thanks!
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I don’t think its necessarily Christianity but Western ideology at this point…
Yeah, which is also sometimes called cultural Christianity. Also I say Christianism because it’s only surface level connected to the Christian religion.
agree with this. it should be obvious to us materialists that christianity didn’t just go away overnight, it’s ingrained in the culture for millenia and undercurrents of it still exist in modern, “rationalist” capitalism, although occultised and obscured.
Yes, but also I wouldn’t give Christianity too much credit. Patriarchal family structures and class society is upheld by Confucianist ideology in East Asia. Both are justifications for the same kind of hierarchical regime, although they of course have their own particularities.
for sure, i guess i meant more in the so-called west. should have specified
It also serves to divide and conquer. Historically, many of the most vocal activists for the LGBT community have been its trans members. As I tell the LGB people who don’t really understand the T aspects of these things and make arguments towards calming things down and returning to normalcy, if you think they will leave you in peace after they cut out trans people, you are sorely mistaken.
It probably fits under an umbrella of pseudo science the right has been doing. That is a very astute observation though. I too have noticed how they moved on to primarily focus their attacks from gay to trans people but hadn’t thought more in depth. Possibly another factor is that religion has been falling out of favor with younger people. That messaging resonated very strongly with older generations. To reach the kids these days you have to sound scientific.
For a while it was looking like the whole idea that younger generations were going veer unequivocally into progressiveness was looking like a sure thing. The right wing parties were considered by the younger generations to be antiquated political ideologies of their grandparents generations. No young person wanted to be associated with conservatism. At least not outside of their own echo chambers. In the later half of the 2010s the right was was able pivot and suddenly become fashionable with the kids these days. I would attribute that to primarily to their shift from religion to phony rationalism.
New atheism was simply the process of eliminating “anti intellectualism” as a requisite for reactionary thought
bit idea: start bashing Christianity by saying that it’s people putting their feelings above objective reality. Say that people use the bible to try and cope with their moral dysphoria. Suggest that, instead of going to church, they get a life.
“I feel like I can respect some people who are spiritual. But others make it their whole personality and go hang out with shamans in Peru. And then some people want to completely ignore the biological reality of death, become a Christian, and start walking around in public in robes and a bible.”
They’ll just call you a militant atheist without a hint of irony. They are free to mock anything about you, but if you say they’re putting their emotions above reality they act like you want to round up all Christians and put them in a camp.
pls never use the word “hip” again
i found this poll and it did surprise me a bit (cw: transphobia). it seems like millennials, gen x, and boomers don’t really have any stark differences? and gen z + zillennials only seem to lean pro-trans despite being overwhelmingly pro-gay
How is the 30-39 group worse than the 40-49
30-39 is the right age bracket to have been mainlining anti-SJW Youtube at its peak, 40-49 just wants to grill
(I actually have no idea why)
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Maybe the 40+ people are more likely to have kids (and thus trans kids) and are more empathetic about it? Idk it does seem a little weird.
That’s just a matter of LGBT rights shifting from same sex attraction to gender stuff. A rationalist argument against homosexuality doesn’t really work as well as a religious one and a religious argument against gender is flimsy at best.
Rationalism isn’t rational. It’s like race science - they come up with ideological/religious beliefs, conjure up a fake science to support it, and successfully trick everyone into believing them because it’s science. Rationalist homophobia concerns itself with gay genes, the necessity of reproduction, and evolutionary sociology. Rationalist transphobia in the 21st century pretends that what human societies call sex is the same as what geneticists call sex. It also borrows a lot of sexist “sex science” if you will from the 20th and 19th centuries about male and female brains and physiques.
Do you have any book recommendations on the “rationalist” movement? I know too many people with EA/rational type brain works and I want to get some good books to counter their BS
No I don’t sorry. Keep me updated if you find any.
wedgie
The distinction between sex in a biological context and sex in a social context is narrow enough for a convincing argument to be made and it’s not hard how people fall into that line of thinking. It’s less of 19th century “sex science” and more of modern science without looking too deeply at edge and corner cases.
They’re not edge or corner cases. What we consider male and female is socially constructed around presumed reproductive roles. This is the biological component. Every human society in existence would presume my sex is female because I am phenotypically female. Only a geneticist would add the caveat that I’m karyotypically male (if I even am - who the fuck knows cause even in the 21st century we don’t do chromosome testing at birth). Let me also remind you that the gender/sex distinction is historically new! Most human societies would agree that I have changed my sex. It’s only in the 20th and 21st century that people would dispute that, because the idea that sociological sex and biological sexes (whether it’s genetic or reproductice or something else) are the same has become widely accepted. Speaking of birth sexing, sexes are socially assigned at birth according to genitals. This is why intersex babies get “corrected.” Yet not all intersex conditions are obvious by looking at genitals. What would you call a condition that causes “females” to have “male” secondary sex characteristics? That’s an intersex condition. Yet PCOS does this in up to a fifth of some female populations yet society does not consider it an intersex condition. Because patriarchal society insists upon the sorting of everyone into a sex binary (an immutable one at that, nowadays - a clear reaction against transhood) despite it clearly being bimodal and malleable. The body is artificially sexed. Women are not naturally hairless, yet body hair is considered male. The everyday Mesoamerican woman was as ripped as a professional kayaker from all the corn grinding she did, but the female sex is seen as dainty. The anti-trans movement wants to ban trans women from chess, darts, and Jeopardy! What is this if not 19th century sex science claiming women have inferior intelligence and motor skills?! Finally, let me remind you that humans are capable of generalized labor, and are thus able to change their environment. As a result, we have created exogenous hormones and sex reassignment surgeries. Trans people could change their sociological sex centuries ago. Now they can change their phenotypical sex. It is only a matter of time before we start growing reproductive organs from our own cells and having them surgically implanted. Nature is unjust, but we can change our nature!
They’re not edge or corner cases.
Trans people are edge and corner cases when it comes to current popular definitions of gender. For 99% of people there is no difference between their sex and gender which is my point. Most rationalist transphobia comes from people not looking at edge cases because a traditional definition of sex such as which gametes does someone produce or what genitals they have work for 99% people. With the chess case it’s a little more complicated than that because women’s cheese leauges started as a means to provide women a space with a smaller competitive pool and fast-track women to the upper echelons of the sport and then believing trans women threatened that pipeline; it didn’t necessarily come from a belief that women were inferior and women’s chess leagues were seen as a means to make the sport more popular to girls, like what motorsports are doing today. And yes, gender is a means of oppression and weaponized impractically.
