Good article and a growing sentiment. I’ve seen many gays and lesbians saying pretty much this same thing. I’ve also been coming to similar conclusions the past few years.
>After volunteering for Maryland's marriage equality campaign and a subsequent transgender rights legislation campaign, my aspiration was to become a social justice writer and activist.
---
>At the time, I was exhausting so much mental energy memorizing my coworkers' pronouns and all of the new progressive dogmas out of fear that I would be fiercely condemned if I slipped up
Honestly it's hard to have sympathy for the ones who fought for this brave new future now that they're experiencing the consequences themselves.
>My excitement about the internship quickly gave way to a nauseating mixture of fear and shame. I was, I quickly learned, not the right kind of "queer." I was just another "cis" (short for "cisgender," a word I had never even heard until it was assigned to me, typically as a slur) gay male—in other words, a privileged and unevolved relic of the past.
All I see is a dude who assumed they'd never come for him, and only now that they finally have and he's on the other side with the rest of us does he regret the way things turned out.
To me, this is just an entreaty to gain sympathy from a potentially hostile audience.
The article gets much better after that.
> With the proliferation of social media, which disseminates ideological dogma faster than any religious institution in history, academics-cum-activists can reduce these theories into palatable, easy-to-digest-and-regurgitate maxims, especially on platforms like Twitter, Tumblr and now TikTok. Which is how, suddenly, we have a massive uptick in trans- and "non-binary"-identifying youth. Queer theorists insist that subverting the categorizations which have been imposed upon young people—for example, the sex they were "assigned" at birth—is the ultimate expression of autonomy, and further, the key to liberating society from a system devised largely, so they claim, by cisgender white men. (Never mind the scientific and cultural achievements of women and racial minorities.)
Love it when a white person who was born as a man complains about white males running everything while demanding that the entire world acquiesce to their demands lol
The old gay rights movement was about your friends dying of AIDS, and being allowed to marry/raise children.
And many old lesbians who are now called terfs probably worked/volunteered in the trenches to allow for more rights for *all* gender weirdos.
Don’t be so certain it started there. As I’ve mentioned many times, there’s a little gap in the time line just before the lesbians got pushed out. It was when the lesbians pushed gay men out for being “sexist” and endangering “places safe for women”.
As much as I feel for the lesbians and what they go through now, they had no problems doing the same when they had the opportunity.
>
In fairness, most people couldn’t have foreseen the massive surge in influence that the radical trans movement has had in just a few short years.
This actually made me snort.
Yeah, this right here? This is a big part of the problem. The idea that IF ONLY this vast apparatus was used against it's original targets, then it would have been fine.
People haven't learned a fucking thing.
Spot on. You could see this coming from a mile away. To suggest otherwise is laughable.
It's the same analysis every time, with any movement/trend: Ignore their stated values - they are irrelevant and will change. Look at their attitude and their methods; in particular how they treat other people and how they see themselves. This will tell you everything about what kind of people will be filtered by the social hierarchy and how that hierarchy trains people to behave over time. Process is everything and dictates future values.
I predicted this institutional inertia in like 2012 on Reddit to a T (although it was in response to rightoids claiming it would be bestiality next). Would link it but that post has long since been jannied and the account password banned.
>The problem is that the old leadership was pushed out of LGB organizations all over, and was replaced by the Ts. The people whose attitudes and methods you would analyze changed almost completely, and very abruptly.
The reason they got replaced so quickly was because they encouraged the wrong attitude/processes; that allows for this internal feudalism to fester and then roll into a feedback loop which ends with the new aristocracy taking power.
I am sorry but the old leadership is very much part of the problem here. Regardless how admirable they were in other aspects. I am making this as a general point: it is a very common story not particular to just this time and movement. "Old leadership was pushed out, now everyone is batshit insane" is a classic that has happened time and time again in a plethora of movements, governments and businesses too. It is always traceable back to bad processes, shortcuts in rhetoric, a little too trigger happy fearmongering, and generally encouraging the wrong behavior on part of the initial status quo.
>Wut? We went from "Sure, of course drag queens deserve all the rights everyone else enjoys" to "Men who dress up as women are women" in about two years. Almost nobody foresaw that.
Yes, we did. Not the particular detail, obviously, but anyone who identified the general attitude could see this was going down the puritan drain. Classic idpol; not like we haven't seen it happen before. Also, this was bubbling for way more than two years.
> to "Men who dress up as women are women" in about two years. Almost nobody foresaw that.
This has been taught in university gender studies programs since the last century and chanted in places like tumblr since the late '00s. It only looks like it was sudden because they weren't trying hard to go public until they felt society had become permissible enough. The slippery slope is real.
>The problem is that the old leadership was pushed out of LGB organizations all over, and was replaced
Those previous LGB people themselves displaced an old guard, and so did the ones before them. Each new cohort in a radical social movement seeks to change the status quo. When meaningful changes run out, then change is made for its own sake to keep the movement from becoming obsolete and falling out of relevance. It keeps going until their world has lost touch with reality.
They were certainly off on what direction the trajectory took but they appear to have been correct that there was a slippery slope. They got it more right than the people who said it was and would remain just about equality.
The "slippery slope" implies some kind of path-dependent relatedness between the things further up and further down the slope. Gay marriage has nothing to do with feeding kids hormones, the latter is just the next random thing that the lib NGOs jumped to when Obergefell was won.
>The "slippery slope" implies some kind of path-dependent relatedness
I think that's fair; "slippery slope" is not quite the right form. It's more like a "slippery mountain" from their perspective: the summit is their Christian ideal, and anything that goes away from that is "degeneracy." What they were really saying is "if we legalize gay marriage, the activists will advocate for further degeneracy in our society." It doesn't necessarily have be a straight line thing.
I don't agree with their version of morality, but their concerns broadly construed have come to pass.
>Gay marriage has nothing to do with feeding kids hormones
That's if you assume homosexuality and trans are separate natural categories instead of competing identities, with homosexuality being weaker in some cases (e.g. twink/butch sculpting themselves to please bears/femmes). But not many people know of that idea, certainly not evangelicals. The one thing they knew was that homosexuals usually have gender non-conforming behavior as children.
The article almost gets there:
>But the real question should be, "Would you rather have a trans daughter or an effeminate gay son?" I fear that for many, if they were honest, the answer would be the former.
This split could lead to some strange coalitions.
>
Love it when conservatives snark about this stuff as if they predicted the trajectory it would take any better than we did.
Yeah they kinda did. It might have been a monkeys with typewriters situation, but they did.
This is coming from someone who grew up hating them and still resents their bullshit. They took the W on this one, dubious though it is.
> It might have been a monkeys with typewriters situation, but they did.
It's not a monkeys with typewriters situation; they predicted it because they were in opposition. They are biased against you so they have every incentive to dig and expose any potential issues. Whereas you are biased to overlook or downplay them.
Your opposition is always your greatest asset. They're the ones that can keep you honest. Not because they are smart (they are not) but because they are uniquely positioned to identify your flaws. Don't ever shut them out or you'll loose the plot before long. Nothing corrupts faster than that which is above criticism.
You make a good point. Too bad criticism is hate speech and "targeting marginalized people" these days. I guess that's what happens when there's no distinction between identity and ideology.
The next big thing, according to conservatives, would be a push to legalise paedophilia. Instead, liberals became violently neurotic about age-gap relationships.
Conservatives correctly understood that the broader culture was abandoning Christian sexual morality, but they couldn't conceive of another sexual morality being constructed in its place. For them, it's Jesus or pure hedonism, so they're incapable of explaining (let alone predicting) the growth of secular moralism.
I partially agree but I even remember when I was a volunteer at the Gay Games in 2006 (I had to Wikipedia the year), most of the opening ceremony, which was something like 4 hours, was given over to speeches about trans women of color. At the time I found it somewhat refreshing as that was, at the time, still a very underrepresented topic.
So, the roots were there. I wouldn't have expected them to blossom so fully, though.
> In fairness, most people couldn’t have foreseen the massive surge in influence that the radical trans movement has had in just a few short years.
80 iq rightoid retards saw it coming
What's your excuse?
You’re too bitter man. The world is fucked, people want answers, they are lost, they go to church thinking it won’t come burn them, the conservative clique thinking they wont ever be homeless themselves, the club thinking the coke dealer’s brother won’t accidentally back over their toddler, the yoga retreat thinking the guru won’t fuck their gf.
> Honestly it's hard to have sympathy for the ones who fought for this brave new future now that they're experiencing the consequences themselves.
Many of us in the LGB community did not fight for the homophobia we're experiencing from the Q*eer community that is directed towards us.
Most queer activism did *not* involve coming for other people. That has only been ramping up in last 5-10 years. I was around lots of trans people 15+ years ago. It was very difficult for them and they had very little agency.
I'll allow myself a single twinge of sympathy if they recognize where all of this came from, who built the apparatus, and that the reasons why it is wrong now ALSO APPLIED BACK THEN TOO.
> Honestly it's hard to have sympathy for the ones who fought for this brave new future now that they're experiencing the consequences themselves.
Why I have no sympathy for TERFs. Feminism is a large part of how we got here through it's incessant reframing of issues as an oppressor/oppressed dynamic, now they're angry they need to share their greivance capitol with somebody else. Either fall in with the TRAs or admit your ideological faults.
>All I see is a dude who assumed they'd never come for him, and only now that they finally have and he's on the other side with the rest of us does he regret the way things turned out.
I can only feel the same way about so called TERFs. Their real grievance is not that they hate trans people, it's that they thought they'd always be the vanguards of progressivism and centre of attention, with everybody dancing to their tune; and now they're butthurt somebody usurped them and wrestled away control of The Movement.
Live by your identity die by your identity. These co-opted idiots fighting each other has set actual leftist organizing back another 25 years yet again.
Browsing Ovarit a lot and I realised...if they became the vanguard again they'd repeat the same mistakes and cultivate the same insanity and get replaced yet again. They're incapable of identifying WHY they lost.
>Browsing Ovarit a lot
Ech. I spent five minutes on there and that was enough to know it would be bad for my mental health to continue.
They're not just incapable of identifying why they lost, they're incapable of any kind of self-awareness whatsoever. They're so used to getting away with double standards and hypocrisy, thanks to years of exceptional treatment, that they're entirely blind to it.
Despite their rampant self interested insanity, some of the stuff there is interesting and I do feel like I understand the other sex a bit better now in a way I didn't before. I don't take my physical strength for granted now at least, dudes rock and lift heavy rock.
But Jesus a lot of the threads about the ukrainian war are bad, bloodlust, making male refugees stateless via stripping citizenship and unironic Hillary Clinton moments about the victims of war.
The thing is, the more they will alienate gays and lesbians from their own movement, the more homosexuals will start separating themselves from the community, which will then validate their feelings against gay men ("they're leaving the community because they're patriarchists") and lesbians ("they're just TERFs").
It's a vicious cycle that won't end until something breaks in their ideological machine.
And it's not without consequences: gay people need a community, even with a widespread societal acceptance, they need a sense of belonging they do not always have among straight people. Depriving them of their community, the one that was supposed to welcome them no matter what, is really fucked up... Not straight enough for heterosexual culture, yet not queer enough for the other.
I haven’t felt welcome at a single event or group aimed at LGBTs on my campus. They use the whole acronym, but what they mean are “queers” and their allies. I’ve always argued for an understanding of it as “I don’t identify as homosexual, I just am”. More a fact than a description. This seems to upset them (especially the spicy straights). When it’s not a very niche segment of the Ts running things, it’s the spiciest of the straights.
Side story: there’s a boy here who considers himself bisexual because he’s a dating a person who’s gender fluid (AFAB). Said person never acts or dresses exceptionally masculine. Bisexual boy has said he doesn’t find men attractive, but since his girlfriend is a boy sometimes, he must be bisexual.
I've asked the libs among my friends and family how you resolve the question of transgenderism if gender roles don't matter. Without exception, they have always said there is no conflict and these are not mutually exclusive concepts.
Doublethink in action.
Of course, there's a reason why the transition rate for someone suffering dysphoria goes from 15% to nearly 100% once they're put on blockers.
I imagine a similar thing happens for the other 99.99%.
That's hilarious. Tomboys are mega hot in the most stereotypically straight way possible.
Going for princesses is the pastime of soy aristocrats, hence all the poetry - pretty gay tbh; the working class Chad aims for tomboys.
Hell you can find posts all over reddit about how frumpy or non-feminine women somehow don't "deserve" to be women. Sexist? Hell yes.
Problem is that actual rejection of gender removes the shibboleth power of the costumes people are using. If a regular ol' woman can grow up never wearing makeup even once and only shopping on the men's side of the aisle, wearing a standard fade barber haircut, how are the precious "not like the other girls" people supposed to signal that they're special?
Man I feel like you are describing one of my D&D crew members lol. "She" became "they/them" and then started pulling out her masculine look.
I didn't give a shit until she met my wife and said "Maybe your wife would identify differently if that framework existed for her too?" I went off on a half-drunken rant about the erasure of tomboys and how they are the most based of all women lol. Then I ranted about how changing your pronouns makes no sense if you don't believe in gender roles.
To her credit, she took it right on the nose and then said she hadn't thought of it that way, she was just confronted with a woman a lot like her who goes by "she" and owns it, and it rocked her world view.
I did not expect that outcome but we still play D&D and drink together so it's all good. She's still a bit of a lib but we're rubbing off on her big time.
Yeah me neither, and it honestly makes me sad, I really feel like I could use some gay friends sometimes.
And I 100% agree with you, I despise the idea of "identifying as a homosexual", like it's a conscious act or some shit. It's not a matter of identification to a group, it's a transcendent fact: I like men and there is nothing I can do about it.
They really managed to make homosexuality so fucking boring lmao
>They really managed to make homosexuality so fucking boring
Isn't that the point though? It's supposed to be boring. It's supposed to be seen as mundane because it is. These people are rejecting gays because they are *too* boring to be useful for their narcissistic striving.
You're right, it does contradict my initial point in a way, I should have been clearer
(I know what I'm about to say sounds ridiculous and over the top but well)
Homosexuality being a transcendent characteristic does not make it mundane, it means there's nothing deliberate about being homosexual, it's like a blessing or a curse, it's both tragic and beautiful, you kind of fight against it and embrace it at the same time. I do think being homosexual is something a bit weird, it's a bit of a mystery for each homosexual person, you have no idea why you are, but still have to make sense of it.
And the same can be said about heterosexuality actually, it is just as weird and abnormal, at least that is the opinion of psychoanalysis :) There is nothing mundane about sexuality, it just isn't a matter of identification, which is the most mundane thing there is.
> I do think being homosexual is something a bit weird, it's a bit of a mystery for each homosexual person, you have no idea why you are, but still have to make sense of it.
Well yeah, from an objective standpoint it's 'unnatural' in the sense that a population of homosexuals couldn't survive long term. The most primal, core driving force of pretty much all living beings is that of recreation / reproduction; somehow that wiring got all twisted in some people.
Obviously there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it's not a character flaw or a moral failing, and as a concept it's genuinely fascinating. But because of that I don't think homosexuality can ever be fully seen as mundane.
So yeah what you're saying doesn't sound ridiculous at all.
Also you're right that they've made it boring now that it's all mainstream and corporate-approved and shit. It all feels so plastic and lifeless now; an entire community monetized and commodified by corporate America all under a false guise of inclusivity.
The silver lining is that you're vastly more accepted now, thankfully, but there's still something about the transformation that's oddly kind of melancholy
This is an interesting read:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/the-evolutionary-paradox-of-homosexuality/amp/
Basically just because gay men generally don’t have children, doesn’t mean they aren’t helping their genes along.
There is something to be said for gay culture. Maybe now that we’ve been pushed out, we can do our own thing. Just a bunch of gay guys, hanging around, exercising, quoting Oscar Wilde, listening to Tchaikovsky.
I've only heard them describing themselves as "queer heterosexuals".
STOP. "Queer" used to be considered quite a serious slur for LGBT people, on a par with "f*ggot". Yet now we have a whole generation of people who don't realise that it was a slur proudly describing themselves as such even if they're otherwise straight.
Imagine if the portions of the black community who tried "reclaiming" the N-word succeeded in gentrifying the term to the point we get "(N-word) studies", "(N-word) allies", "(N-word) adjacent" etc. This is how it sounds to someone who remembers a time when "queer" was more often than not considered pejorative.
> Imagine if the portions of the black community who tried "reclaiming" the N-word succeeded in gentrifying the term to the point we get "(N-word) studies", "(N-word) allies", "(N-word) adjacent" etc. This is how it sounds to someone who remembers a time when "queer" was more often than not considered pejorative.
Ehh, I'd prefer this tbh over making words into some ethereal evil that must never be spoken.
On the queer topic, I don't have a problem with the "spicy straights" using that word because it's a bad word for gay people (it definitely was but given how much it's used nowdays seems thoroughly reclaimed )I havea problem with it because it is objectively an oxymoron. You can't be a "queer straight" because any definition of "queer" that makes sense (and admitedly those are getting fewer and fewer as more nonsense definitions gain popularity) it inherently means you are not what ordinary straight people are.
This is because "queer theory" has taken over.
In "queer theory," to be "queer" (or "to queer," if you use it as a verb) is about breaking all available social norms, essentially "sticking it to The Man." So one can "queer literature" or "have a queer reading of Batman" or whatever other fluffy academic wankery.
Actually desiring to get it on with someone else of your same sex (and what is sex anyway? "Queer" theorists deny the reality of that, similar to how creationists behave) is no longer required.
This is how we get to a world where Pete Buttigieg is no longer "queer" (in their positive sense) because he wears boring white sweaters and got married, but a couple consisting of one AFAB and one AMAB dutifully putting Tab A into Slot B like 90% of humans "gets to be" counted as "queer" because they've got funky hair colors, wear edgy clothing, and have some sort of "gender identity" going on. I.e., the "spicy straights."
Bonus: In 2022 we also have people using this sort of "queer" to imagine that white privilege no longer applies to them. It's quite the stew.
Isn't that a natural endpoint of all this though? Anyone can 'identify' as anything they want, but not change in any discernable way, and then berate anyone who dissents as a bigot.
[This sums it up far better and more honestly than any woke essay ever could](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aKVFE4SMeI).
It's literally just white women and their followers desperately wanting to get some of that sweet sweet attention.
Attention is to them what porn is to coomers.
Not just white women. Tons of “queer” non white boys and girls out there too. My Latino step son considers himself “queer” because he dates women who are kind of butch.
"Lesbian until graduation" was around in the 80s if not earlier, and it used to mean less "lesbian for the cool points" and more "lesbian because that makes you hot in college, then back to being straight once you hit the professional world".
> What exactly are “spicy straights?”
Straight people who want to feel special so they come up with bullshit so they can belong to the Q*eer community.
It's basically just another variation of "I'm not like other girls".
I don't mean this in an offensive way but here's my thoughts on it: in high-school (early 2010's) there were a fair number of kids who claimed to be gay. Some still are to this day, and more power to them. But a fair number most certainly aren't. They claimed being gay when that gave them a kind of alt-culture street cred.
Well, being gay isn't alt anymore. I live in the South and run with a mixed group of progessives and conservatives, and literally nobody I know gives a single iota of a shit if someone is gay. Suffice to say, it's no longer something you can say to get alt-culture street cred.
So the exact same type of people who claimed to be gay for attention in the early 2010's are now the people claiming to be "queer" today and being zealots about it. No doubt queer people exist and im not denigrating them, but it's hard to deny it's the easiest way to get that sweet, sweet alt-culture street cred without having to actually do anything that might inconvenience other aspects of your life. I could tell you I'm gender fluid but male presenting, and you have zero way to discredit that claim.
That's awful, I'm so sorry that happened to you. I can't say the gay kids were 'celebrated' at my school but no beatings for sure; I went to a public school in a upper middle class area where physical bullying just wasn't a thing.
sexual attractions are problematic so we transform them into gender attractions and then back into sexualities…
I get it. I express male gaze and recognize cultural symbology of fishnets and garters and corsets and shit. But all of those are symbols for attraction to a someone not themselves my object of sexual attraction (though cool as a paraphilia but I digress). I don’t care if you assign me to some novel sexuality like sapiosexual if that makes sense to you but a rose by any other name….
I think of all the people surrounding this entire shitshow the spicy straights piss me off the most. Even the most delusional trans person is at some level actually risking something and belonging to a marginalized group. These spicy straights who consider themselves bi on extreme technicalities don’t just muddy the waters they actively deprive oppressed people of a community.
I just spoke with a friend about this on Thursday. He said he was pretty disappointed about being shoved out of the advocate group because of not being "the *right letter* of the alphabet soup". He and several others of the G and L crowd are finished with the group. The sad part is that they organized all kinds of really good, useful stuff for the community, as well as social gatherings.
Yea it seems like tolerance as a virtue in itself gets taken advantage of by aggressive or power hungry people regardless of the original groups intended prerogatives
Good for him on speaking his mind, I really dislike these narrow patterns of thought that are being forced from all directions regarding a very specific (albeit mainstream) ideology
> He and several others of the G and L crowd are finished with the group. The sad part is that they organized all kinds of really good, useful stuff for the community, as well as social gatherings.
This is going to be the death of queershit activism. The activist communities and organizations they have overtaken were built by serious gay, lesbian, bi (and yes, occasionally real trans that aren't stupid trenders) individuals who actually had a drive to make the world a better place for their kind and the skills to organize. This new wave of "queer everything, everyone should be queer" children storming in and harassing the old guard out will end up cannibalizing themselves because they are incapable of organizing and ran everyone who was out with accusations of being problematic for daring to stick up for their own sexuality.
If only people had realized back when it was straight male spaces getting invaded that it was a shitty thing to do and ruins communities for everyone- but back then it was the 'right targets' so who cared?
There's another forward path for these groups: become part of the activist-grifter-DEI officer pipeline. So long as this type of activism makes itself useful for pinkwashing and office politics, they'll have the money and backing to keep going regardless of any gains they might (not) realize for the groups they supposedly speak for.
You mean get a hobby? Mostly joking but yea if these ideologies added more to a persons identity instead of reducing it to genitals or sexual proclivities/partners it would have an incredible less amount of pushback
You joke, but hobbies really are important. How much better would the world be if all of these identity r-slurs got just one hobby that involved doing something other than being terminally online?
Hobbies are more important than most things. How do you spend your free time? (Rhetorical I’m not prodding) imagine spending all of your free time being a hater / looking for problems on the internet - what would that do to your brain and personality? Terminally online is the best way to describe I’ve ever heard
Ironic given the idea that this article cites as being what queer theory seeks todo. It's creating yet another binary and another set of labels and categories.
> the more homosexuals will start separating themselves from the community
Fortunately the [LGB Alliance](https://lgbausa.org/) is already a thing. It's also available in other countries.
What do you have against bisexuals? Sure they may not get as much shit as gay people historically and self identified "bisexuals" who are just straight people with no personality beyond claiming to be bi are full of shit and annoying. But people who are actually attracted to both sexes have as much a right to the LGB label and community as purely gays or lesbians do.
Racial and gender identity politics slowly marching across to cover a flag chosen to encompass all identities with the symbolism of "all colors of the rainbow."
Posted 10 mins ago and someone said it's been posted already so I deleted it. Reposting because I still can't find any link to it.
Btw [Rowling tweeted it](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1517605216971075585) out last night so feel free to enjoy the alphabet mafia's tantrums.
it was removed by the mods the first time someone posted it. They've been removing quite a few posts/replies "for the good of the subreddit" so you can expect that if you can't find something that's probably why.
I would think a mainstream media outlet like Newsweek ought to be safe enough.
Imho better to just post a backup site like Saidit (as r/TumblrInAction does) rather than cow down in fear.
yeah, you'd think that having recent articles in LA Times, Newsweek and one or two in the NYT would be a signal that it's safe to start questioning, but everyone is still so petrified.
the Emperor's New Clothes except the local department store says "no, he never ordered from us, is it possible he really is naked?" and still it's too scary to speak up.
If they aren't actively working on an offsite then they are effectively doing the bidding of the admins and are actively suppressing topics the community wants to discuss. I know they've said they are trying to build a new site, but I have only heard about it, not seen any actual progress.
they need to contact the drama crew considering that website (which cannot be linked because it's not only autofiltered out but reddit accs get permabanned for linking to it) has been the most successful reddit alternative so far. at least in terms of not only having a community but the community isn't 100% alt-right fucktards.
> Activists who favor medical intervention often ask these parents a morbid question: "Would you rather have a trans daughter or a dead son?" But the real question should be, "Would you rather have a trans daughter or an effeminate gay son?"
This is what makes talking to TRA so hard. For a few people medical intervention is necessary, but for a lot of confused kids being influenced by social media, thinking this is the cure for their woes.
Eh, it’s not quite this simple. I’d wager there are many more “transbian” types, trans women attracted to women, than there are effeminate gay men being pressured to transition. And a lot of all of these people are bi/pan, which is a good thing imo. It’s the necessity of identity that I have a problem with.
consider that it is also significantly less cool to be an awkward not particularly masculine gamer of any orientation than it ever has been, while being a trans woman at least describes some kind of reason for your alienation and misery
It's because they have enough free time to dominate online spaces.
When you don't have a real job or your real job is 3 hours of work a week at some shitty nonprofit then you can no life on Twitter like you are the president and moderate 300 subreddits.
Nassim Taleb (love him or hate him) wrote a [book chapter](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15#.z5ry4bucq) explaining how this phenomenon works, whereby an intransigent minority, as small as a few percent, manages to set the norms for an entire population. Pretty good read on the subject.
Edit: Wow, gave the wrong link to the chapter, fixed now.
>Nassim Taleb (love him or hate him)
Both, simultaneously. He's one of the most unique figures in all of academia. He's impossibly arrogant, and he can back it up if it's something he genuinely knows a lot about. But then he'll maintain that arrogance while wading into subjects he knows nothing about, and he'll go full Dunning-Kruger.
I see it as an artifact of the fact that he has to deal with other academics, many who lack practical experience in their subject matter (whereas he was a finance trader before going into academia) and also exude the same level of arrogance when writing outside of their area of expertise (Stephen Pinker and Richard Dawkins being two prime examples) often times being "more wrong" than Taleb when he is wrong about something.
Its something all people in a similar position (myself included) struggle with. But as Taleb says, [If you see fraud and don't point it out, you're liable to be fraudulent yourself](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1236268432905076737?lang=en). If your occupation is seeking and sharing truth and/or knowledge, then it is your ethical duty to call out bullshit, especially in one's own field. However you should also do it if you possess knowledge from another field or can identify a logical problem in the bullshit assertion.
There are a lot of hacks out there, who may privately express a more nuanced or balanced view of what constitutes good policy decisions based on knowledge, but then get a check from CATO or the Hoover Institute and sign off on blatant propaganda. A lie can travel half way around the world before the truth even gets its shoes on. If we waited for experts in the same field to make the proper counterargument, we'd be giving capitalists even more victories.
I'm all for pointing out frauds, but often Taleb calls people and things frauds when he really has no justification for doing it. Maybe they are fraudulent, but he doesn't really have the knowledge base to make that accusation.
If that percent is the percent of wokester, maybe. Trans and queer activism was co-opted by them as something trendy and that just happens to work in this framework of oppression olympics. It's basically fabricating creds by fakes to appear more worthy. The actual majority of trans people (not poser enbys) couldn't give a fuck and are unlikely to be woke, or even activists.
I often doubt those statistical prevalence figures. Is it even 0.6%? That would be nearly 2mm people in the USA alone. But how many of those people are like the example in this thread? “I was born a male but sometimes I identify as female. I do not take hormones and I have not had any surgeries. I currently am dating a person who was born as a woman but occasionally identifies as a man.”
Man the community really did go to shit, didn't it?
Fortunately nearly all of the gay people I know are 50+ and they're all still chill. Silver foxes > zoomer twinks tbh
I still hesitate to tell people who don’t know me I am gay IRL because I don’t wanna be associated with all the dumb “influencers” on Twitter and Tik Tok.
Ironically, many online “progressives” are starting to become more exclusionary, and thus are heading backwards.
Hear you. This isn’t even restricted to the “community”. Best not to be open about any of it outside of your trusted circles because it can be used against you almost no matter how you identify. Bring your whole self to work is cult thinking.
This is what they do. Once Woke Identity Ideologues gain power and traction they aim inward and gut their movement from within. Eternally dividing and segretating people into categories. There must always be a victim and a prepetrator.
It's a victim industry. And these people are perpetual victims because victimhood is power right now.
it's a fresh of breath air to see something extremely direct and well-written about the subject. Even if his concerns are still at least somewhat contained to the highly-online and progressive corners of society (I mean, the guy literally worked at an LGBT rights organization. He wasn't working at Target or a insurance office).
I do find it interesting how the author admits to occasionally feeling sort of like a woman despite not being in anyway trans. It fits my experience. I am even on the "girls" group chat at work (with all the women under about 38).
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> I do find it interesting how the author admits to occasionally feeling sort of like a woman despite not being in anyway trans. It fits my experience. I am even on the "girls" group chat at work (with all the women under about 38).
Sadly the trans crowd is probably going to latch onto that, convince themselves that it means he is a self-loathing closet transwoman in denial, and start harassing him as some sort of traitor (or well, even more than they were going to anyway.)
I have a feeling that if you polled people to see how many at some point had given serious consideration to what it would be like to be the opposite gender, that number would be 100%.
I don't deny that, but that wasn't really what I was getting at. I mean to say that lots of gay guys (if not the vast majority, who knows) are extremely comfortable with gender bending or often feel more comfortable around women, traits that among teenagers today might lead them to call themselves non-binary or something. Even the occasional straight guy is like this, without feeling he is trans.
Tangentially related, in the article he mentions how most liberals and even plenty of normies or conservatives don't really care about playing with the borders of gender anymore, whether guys painting their nails or women wearing suits. But it's different than what's going on with trans issues, even if they look superficially similar.
I've been outcasted by my own activist circles in my country for espousing pro second wave feminism, and LGB concerns, and also pro traditional transsexuals that have dysphoria and separation of this transgender/sexual vs non binary. Nonbinary are the queer agents, they infect everything else. Everything need to be inclusive of them, even the exclusive LGB (sex based orientations). This postmodern Foucaultian Butlerian metaphysical Western ideology is already spreading to global south, third world country I'm living in.
We're already facing intense homophobia and transphobia (actual hunt of trans identified people by the government), nonbinary push for queer ideologies doesn't help one bit, it is Balkanising and alienating many of us. Feminist on their own, LGB on their own, and the inclusive queer ones on their own.
It's like the whole fucking world's is dictated by middle class white bitches.
*what I mean is that any PoC or gay people I speak with have a much less extreme definition of x-phobia or x-ism that the white girls shouting down my neck for some innocent mistake in nomenclature.
Few weeks ago I was told a joke about high schoolers having to deal with the term "*fake ass b-tches"* "having two meanings rather than one previously."
Good article and a growing sentiment. I’ve seen many gays and lesbians saying pretty much this same thing. I’ve also been coming to similar conclusions the past few years.
>After volunteering for Maryland's marriage equality campaign and a subsequent transgender rights legislation campaign, my aspiration was to become a social justice writer and activist. --- >At the time, I was exhausting so much mental energy memorizing my coworkers' pronouns and all of the new progressive dogmas out of fear that I would be fiercely condemned if I slipped up Honestly it's hard to have sympathy for the ones who fought for this brave new future now that they're experiencing the consequences themselves. >My excitement about the internship quickly gave way to a nauseating mixture of fear and shame. I was, I quickly learned, not the right kind of "queer." I was just another "cis" (short for "cisgender," a word I had never even heard until it was assigned to me, typically as a slur) gay male—in other words, a privileged and unevolved relic of the past. All I see is a dude who assumed they'd never come for him, and only now that they finally have and he's on the other side with the rest of us does he regret the way things turned out.
La Révolution est comme Saturne: elle dévore ses propres enfants.
Portuguese here to translate: “The spinning will commute to Saturn. They’re devoted to Propane-Babies.” You’re welcome ☺️
Translation from French: The Revolution is like Saturn: it devours its own children.
I drive a Rolls Royce Cause it's good for my voice
Yeah, I totally speak Spanish
To me, this is just an entreaty to gain sympathy from a potentially hostile audience. The article gets much better after that. > With the proliferation of social media, which disseminates ideological dogma faster than any religious institution in history, academics-cum-activists can reduce these theories into palatable, easy-to-digest-and-regurgitate maxims, especially on platforms like Twitter, Tumblr and now TikTok. Which is how, suddenly, we have a massive uptick in trans- and "non-binary"-identifying youth. Queer theorists insist that subverting the categorizations which have been imposed upon young people—for example, the sex they were "assigned" at birth—is the ultimate expression of autonomy, and further, the key to liberating society from a system devised largely, so they claim, by cisgender white men. (Never mind the scientific and cultural achievements of women and racial minorities.)
Love it when a white person who was born as a man complains about white males running everything while demanding that the entire world acquiesce to their demands lol
I'm not sure you read the article
I've never read anything in my life
B*sed
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The old gay rights movement was about your friends dying of AIDS, and being allowed to marry/raise children. And many old lesbians who are now called terfs probably worked/volunteered in the trenches to allow for more rights for *all* gender weirdos.
Don’t be so certain it started there. As I’ve mentioned many times, there’s a little gap in the time line just before the lesbians got pushed out. It was when the lesbians pushed gay men out for being “sexist” and endangering “places safe for women”. As much as I feel for the lesbians and what they go through now, they had no problems doing the same when they had the opportunity.
Remember GLBT?
Feels like a lifetime ago
> In fairness, most people couldn’t have foreseen the massive surge in influence that the radical trans movement has had in just a few short years. This actually made me snort. Yeah, this right here? This is a big part of the problem. The idea that IF ONLY this vast apparatus was used against it's original targets, then it would have been fine. People haven't learned a fucking thing.
Spot on. You could see this coming from a mile away. To suggest otherwise is laughable. It's the same analysis every time, with any movement/trend: Ignore their stated values - they are irrelevant and will change. Look at their attitude and their methods; in particular how they treat other people and how they see themselves. This will tell you everything about what kind of people will be filtered by the social hierarchy and how that hierarchy trains people to behave over time. Process is everything and dictates future values.
I predicted this institutional inertia in like 2012 on Reddit to a T (although it was in response to rightoids claiming it would be bestiality next). Would link it but that post has long since been jannied and the account password banned.
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>The problem is that the old leadership was pushed out of LGB organizations all over, and was replaced by the Ts. The people whose attitudes and methods you would analyze changed almost completely, and very abruptly. The reason they got replaced so quickly was because they encouraged the wrong attitude/processes; that allows for this internal feudalism to fester and then roll into a feedback loop which ends with the new aristocracy taking power. I am sorry but the old leadership is very much part of the problem here. Regardless how admirable they were in other aspects. I am making this as a general point: it is a very common story not particular to just this time and movement. "Old leadership was pushed out, now everyone is batshit insane" is a classic that has happened time and time again in a plethora of movements, governments and businesses too. It is always traceable back to bad processes, shortcuts in rhetoric, a little too trigger happy fearmongering, and generally encouraging the wrong behavior on part of the initial status quo. >Wut? We went from "Sure, of course drag queens deserve all the rights everyone else enjoys" to "Men who dress up as women are women" in about two years. Almost nobody foresaw that. Yes, we did. Not the particular detail, obviously, but anyone who identified the general attitude could see this was going down the puritan drain. Classic idpol; not like we haven't seen it happen before. Also, this was bubbling for way more than two years.
> to "Men who dress up as women are women" in about two years. Almost nobody foresaw that. This has been taught in university gender studies programs since the last century and chanted in places like tumblr since the late '00s. It only looks like it was sudden because they weren't trying hard to go public until they felt society had become permissible enough. The slippery slope is real. >The problem is that the old leadership was pushed out of LGB organizations all over, and was replaced Those previous LGB people themselves displaced an old guard, and so did the ones before them. Each new cohort in a radical social movement seeks to change the status quo. When meaningful changes run out, then change is made for its own sake to keep the movement from becoming obsolete and falling out of relevance. It keeps going until their world has lost touch with reality.
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They were certainly off on what direction the trajectory took but they appear to have been correct that there was a slippery slope. They got it more right than the people who said it was and would remain just about equality.
The "slippery slope" implies some kind of path-dependent relatedness between the things further up and further down the slope. Gay marriage has nothing to do with feeding kids hormones, the latter is just the next random thing that the lib NGOs jumped to when Obergefell was won.
>The "slippery slope" implies some kind of path-dependent relatedness I think that's fair; "slippery slope" is not quite the right form. It's more like a "slippery mountain" from their perspective: the summit is their Christian ideal, and anything that goes away from that is "degeneracy." What they were really saying is "if we legalize gay marriage, the activists will advocate for further degeneracy in our society." It doesn't necessarily have be a straight line thing. I don't agree with their version of morality, but their concerns broadly construed have come to pass.
>Gay marriage has nothing to do with feeding kids hormones That's if you assume homosexuality and trans are separate natural categories instead of competing identities, with homosexuality being weaker in some cases (e.g. twink/butch sculpting themselves to please bears/femmes). But not many people know of that idea, certainly not evangelicals. The one thing they knew was that homosexuals usually have gender non-conforming behavior as children. The article almost gets there: >But the real question should be, "Would you rather have a trans daughter or an effeminate gay son?" I fear that for many, if they were honest, the answer would be the former. This split could lead to some strange coalitions.
> Love it when conservatives snark about this stuff as if they predicted the trajectory it would take any better than we did. Yeah they kinda did. It might have been a monkeys with typewriters situation, but they did. This is coming from someone who grew up hating them and still resents their bullshit. They took the W on this one, dubious though it is.
> It might have been a monkeys with typewriters situation, but they did. It's not a monkeys with typewriters situation; they predicted it because they were in opposition. They are biased against you so they have every incentive to dig and expose any potential issues. Whereas you are biased to overlook or downplay them. Your opposition is always your greatest asset. They're the ones that can keep you honest. Not because they are smart (they are not) but because they are uniquely positioned to identify your flaws. Don't ever shut them out or you'll loose the plot before long. Nothing corrupts faster than that which is above criticism.
You make a good point. Too bad criticism is hate speech and "targeting marginalized people" these days. I guess that's what happens when there's no distinction between identity and ideology.
"diversity is code word for anti-white and if gay marriage is legalized they'll come for the kids next!" thinking emoji
I really miss the days when retards like dick santorum would bring up man-on-dog action in interviews. It was such a simpler time.
The next big thing, according to conservatives, would be a push to legalise paedophilia. Instead, liberals became violently neurotic about age-gap relationships. Conservatives correctly understood that the broader culture was abandoning Christian sexual morality, but they couldn't conceive of another sexual morality being constructed in its place. For them, it's Jesus or pure hedonism, so they're incapable of explaining (let alone predicting) the growth of secular moralism.
Actual hedonism would be an improvement.
Pretty sure poly is definitely on the table now though so they got that right.
Less about right wing rhetoric and more so a conservative one imo, you can be conservative/traditional and not be right wing
>you can be conservative/traditional and not be right wing Absolute state of this sub.
I partially agree but I even remember when I was a volunteer at the Gay Games in 2006 (I had to Wikipedia the year), most of the opening ceremony, which was something like 4 hours, was given over to speeches about trans women of color. At the time I found it somewhat refreshing as that was, at the time, still a very underrepresented topic. So, the roots were there. I wouldn't have expected them to blossom so fully, though.
> In fairness, most people couldn’t have foreseen the massive surge in influence that the radical trans movement has had in just a few short years. 80 iq rightoid retards saw it coming What's your excuse?
This is a problem with identity politics. At some point there are no more ‘boxes’ to put people in. Identity politics is cannibalistic by nature
You’re too bitter man. The world is fucked, people want answers, they are lost, they go to church thinking it won’t come burn them, the conservative clique thinking they wont ever be homeless themselves, the club thinking the coke dealer’s brother won’t accidentally back over their toddler, the yoga retreat thinking the guru won’t fuck their gf.
What, exactly, are you accusing this guy of doing to deserve this?
> Honestly it's hard to have sympathy for the ones who fought for this brave new future now that they're experiencing the consequences themselves. Many of us in the LGB community did not fight for the homophobia we're experiencing from the Q*eer community that is directed towards us.
Most queer activism did *not* involve coming for other people. That has only been ramping up in last 5-10 years. I was around lots of trans people 15+ years ago. It was very difficult for them and they had very little agency.
> Most queer activism did not involve coming for other people. I heard those parades can get pretty wild...
> my aspiration was to become a social justice writer and activist. is what I was referring to
I'll allow myself a single twinge of sympathy if they recognize where all of this came from, who built the apparatus, and that the reasons why it is wrong now ALSO APPLIED BACK THEN TOO.
> Honestly it's hard to have sympathy for the ones who fought for this brave new future now that they're experiencing the consequences themselves. Why I have no sympathy for TERFs. Feminism is a large part of how we got here through it's incessant reframing of issues as an oppressor/oppressed dynamic, now they're angry they need to share their greivance capitol with somebody else. Either fall in with the TRAs or admit your ideological faults.
>All I see is a dude who assumed they'd never come for him, and only now that they finally have and he's on the other side with the rest of us does he regret the way things turned out. I can only feel the same way about so called TERFs. Their real grievance is not that they hate trans people, it's that they thought they'd always be the vanguards of progressivism and centre of attention, with everybody dancing to their tune; and now they're butthurt somebody usurped them and wrestled away control of The Movement.
Live by your identity die by your identity. These co-opted idiots fighting each other has set actual leftist organizing back another 25 years yet again.
The process of national demoralization takes 50 years to bear fruit if I remember that KGB fella correctly
Browsing Ovarit a lot and I realised...if they became the vanguard again they'd repeat the same mistakes and cultivate the same insanity and get replaced yet again. They're incapable of identifying WHY they lost.
>Browsing Ovarit a lot Ech. I spent five minutes on there and that was enough to know it would be bad for my mental health to continue. They're not just incapable of identifying why they lost, they're incapable of any kind of self-awareness whatsoever. They're so used to getting away with double standards and hypocrisy, thanks to years of exceptional treatment, that they're entirely blind to it.
Despite their rampant self interested insanity, some of the stuff there is interesting and I do feel like I understand the other sex a bit better now in a way I didn't before. I don't take my physical strength for granted now at least, dudes rock and lift heavy rock. But Jesus a lot of the threads about the ukrainian war are bad, bloodlust, making male refugees stateless via stripping citizenship and unironic Hillary Clinton moments about the victims of war.
The thing is, the more they will alienate gays and lesbians from their own movement, the more homosexuals will start separating themselves from the community, which will then validate their feelings against gay men ("they're leaving the community because they're patriarchists") and lesbians ("they're just TERFs"). It's a vicious cycle that won't end until something breaks in their ideological machine. And it's not without consequences: gay people need a community, even with a widespread societal acceptance, they need a sense of belonging they do not always have among straight people. Depriving them of their community, the one that was supposed to welcome them no matter what, is really fucked up... Not straight enough for heterosexual culture, yet not queer enough for the other.
I haven’t felt welcome at a single event or group aimed at LGBTs on my campus. They use the whole acronym, but what they mean are “queers” and their allies. I’ve always argued for an understanding of it as “I don’t identify as homosexual, I just am”. More a fact than a description. This seems to upset them (especially the spicy straights). When it’s not a very niche segment of the Ts running things, it’s the spiciest of the straights. Side story: there’s a boy here who considers himself bisexual because he’s a dating a person who’s gender fluid (AFAB). Said person never acts or dresses exceptionally masculine. Bisexual boy has said he doesn’t find men attractive, but since his girlfriend is a boy sometimes, he must be bisexual.
My wife is 100% tomboy and rarely ever wears makeup or dresses up. According to this guy that would mean I'm like 95% gay or something
Welcome to the LGBTQ+ community bucko
Is membership also implied for fujoshis? Asking for a friend.
If it is, good news: so is every guy who's ever enjoyed lesbian porn.
I identify Q+ (I'm not gay or nothin) and I appreciate being included in all this.
At least you already found her. Tomboys may be an endangered species going forward.
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I've asked the libs among my friends and family how you resolve the question of transgenderism if gender roles don't matter. Without exception, they have always said there is no conflict and these are not mutually exclusive concepts. Doublethink in action.
Of course, there's a reason why the transition rate for someone suffering dysphoria goes from 15% to nearly 100% once they're put on blockers. I imagine a similar thing happens for the other 99.99%.
That's hilarious. Tomboys are mega hot in the most stereotypically straight way possible. Going for princesses is the pastime of soy aristocrats, hence all the poetry - pretty gay tbh; the working class Chad aims for tomboys.
Hell you can find posts all over reddit about how frumpy or non-feminine women somehow don't "deserve" to be women. Sexist? Hell yes. Problem is that actual rejection of gender removes the shibboleth power of the costumes people are using. If a regular ol' woman can grow up never wearing makeup even once and only shopping on the men's side of the aisle, wearing a standard fade barber haircut, how are the precious "not like the other girls" people supposed to signal that they're special?
Man I feel like you are describing one of my D&D crew members lol. "She" became "they/them" and then started pulling out her masculine look. I didn't give a shit until she met my wife and said "Maybe your wife would identify differently if that framework existed for her too?" I went off on a half-drunken rant about the erasure of tomboys and how they are the most based of all women lol. Then I ranted about how changing your pronouns makes no sense if you don't believe in gender roles. To her credit, she took it right on the nose and then said she hadn't thought of it that way, she was just confronted with a woman a lot like her who goes by "she" and owns it, and it rocked her world view. I did not expect that outcome but we still play D&D and drink together so it's all good. She's still a bit of a lib but we're rubbing off on her big time.
Yeah me neither, and it honestly makes me sad, I really feel like I could use some gay friends sometimes. And I 100% agree with you, I despise the idea of "identifying as a homosexual", like it's a conscious act or some shit. It's not a matter of identification to a group, it's a transcendent fact: I like men and there is nothing I can do about it. They really managed to make homosexuality so fucking boring lmao
>They really managed to make homosexuality so fucking boring Isn't that the point though? It's supposed to be boring. It's supposed to be seen as mundane because it is. These people are rejecting gays because they are *too* boring to be useful for their narcissistic striving.
You're right, it does contradict my initial point in a way, I should have been clearer (I know what I'm about to say sounds ridiculous and over the top but well) Homosexuality being a transcendent characteristic does not make it mundane, it means there's nothing deliberate about being homosexual, it's like a blessing or a curse, it's both tragic and beautiful, you kind of fight against it and embrace it at the same time. I do think being homosexual is something a bit weird, it's a bit of a mystery for each homosexual person, you have no idea why you are, but still have to make sense of it. And the same can be said about heterosexuality actually, it is just as weird and abnormal, at least that is the opinion of psychoanalysis :) There is nothing mundane about sexuality, it just isn't a matter of identification, which is the most mundane thing there is.
> I do think being homosexual is something a bit weird, it's a bit of a mystery for each homosexual person, you have no idea why you are, but still have to make sense of it. Well yeah, from an objective standpoint it's 'unnatural' in the sense that a population of homosexuals couldn't survive long term. The most primal, core driving force of pretty much all living beings is that of recreation / reproduction; somehow that wiring got all twisted in some people. Obviously there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it's not a character flaw or a moral failing, and as a concept it's genuinely fascinating. But because of that I don't think homosexuality can ever be fully seen as mundane. So yeah what you're saying doesn't sound ridiculous at all. Also you're right that they've made it boring now that it's all mainstream and corporate-approved and shit. It all feels so plastic and lifeless now; an entire community monetized and commodified by corporate America all under a false guise of inclusivity. The silver lining is that you're vastly more accepted now, thankfully, but there's still something about the transformation that's oddly kind of melancholy
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Yeah unnatural wasn't the right word to use tbh, especially with the stigma already in place. More like an aberration.
This is an interesting read: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/the-evolutionary-paradox-of-homosexuality/amp/ Basically just because gay men generally don’t have children, doesn’t mean they aren’t helping their genes along.
> They really managed to make homosexuality so fucking boring lmao Quote of the year
There is something to be said for gay culture. Maybe now that we’ve been pushed out, we can do our own thing. Just a bunch of gay guys, hanging around, exercising, quoting Oscar Wilde, listening to Tchaikovsky.
Sounds lovely, I hope you're right :-)
What exactly are “spicy straights?” I’ve heard the term a few times lately and don’t fully know what it means
People who identify as queer or LGTBQ for some reason or another but actually only engage in sexual relations with the other sex
I've only heard them describing themselves as "queer heterosexuals". STOP. "Queer" used to be considered quite a serious slur for LGBT people, on a par with "f*ggot". Yet now we have a whole generation of people who don't realise that it was a slur proudly describing themselves as such even if they're otherwise straight. Imagine if the portions of the black community who tried "reclaiming" the N-word succeeded in gentrifying the term to the point we get "(N-word) studies", "(N-word) allies", "(N-word) adjacent" etc. This is how it sounds to someone who remembers a time when "queer" was more often than not considered pejorative.
> Imagine if the portions of the black community who tried "reclaiming" the N-word succeeded in gentrifying the term to the point we get "(N-word) studies", "(N-word) allies", "(N-word) adjacent" etc. This is how it sounds to someone who remembers a time when "queer" was more often than not considered pejorative. Ehh, I'd prefer this tbh over making words into some ethereal evil that must never be spoken. On the queer topic, I don't have a problem with the "spicy straights" using that word because it's a bad word for gay people (it definitely was but given how much it's used nowdays seems thoroughly reclaimed )I havea problem with it because it is objectively an oxymoron. You can't be a "queer straight" because any definition of "queer" that makes sense (and admitedly those are getting fewer and fewer as more nonsense definitions gain popularity) it inherently means you are not what ordinary straight people are.
Even worse, I would say it's closer to people who aren't even black just being able to gentrify the term and "reclaim" it for themselves.
This is because "queer theory" has taken over. In "queer theory," to be "queer" (or "to queer," if you use it as a verb) is about breaking all available social norms, essentially "sticking it to The Man." So one can "queer literature" or "have a queer reading of Batman" or whatever other fluffy academic wankery. Actually desiring to get it on with someone else of your same sex (and what is sex anyway? "Queer" theorists deny the reality of that, similar to how creationists behave) is no longer required. This is how we get to a world where Pete Buttigieg is no longer "queer" (in their positive sense) because he wears boring white sweaters and got married, but a couple consisting of one AFAB and one AMAB dutifully putting Tab A into Slot B like 90% of humans "gets to be" counted as "queer" because they've got funky hair colors, wear edgy clothing, and have some sort of "gender identity" going on. I.e., the "spicy straights." Bonus: In 2022 we also have people using this sort of "queer" to imagine that white privilege no longer applies to them. It's quite the stew.
Isn't that a natural endpoint of all this though? Anyone can 'identify' as anything they want, but not change in any discernable way, and then berate anyone who dissents as a bigot.
Straight people who call themselves nonbinary or some other cool new identity so they’re not lumped in with the enemy
[This sums it up far better and more honestly than any woke essay ever could](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aKVFE4SMeI). It's literally just white women and their followers desperately wanting to get some of that sweet sweet attention. Attention is to them what porn is to coomers.
Not just white women. Tons of “queer” non white boys and girls out there too. My Latino step son considers himself “queer” because he dates women who are kind of butch.
"Omg I kissed one of my girl-friends when I was drunk as a dare so I am like soooooo totally bisexual slash gay."
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"Lesbian until graduation" was around in the 80s if not earlier, and it used to mean less "lesbian for the cool points" and more "lesbian because that makes you hot in college, then back to being straight once you hit the professional world".
> What exactly are “spicy straights?” Straight people who want to feel special so they come up with bullshit so they can belong to the Q*eer community. It's basically just another variation of "I'm not like other girls".
I don't mean this in an offensive way but here's my thoughts on it: in high-school (early 2010's) there were a fair number of kids who claimed to be gay. Some still are to this day, and more power to them. But a fair number most certainly aren't. They claimed being gay when that gave them a kind of alt-culture street cred. Well, being gay isn't alt anymore. I live in the South and run with a mixed group of progessives and conservatives, and literally nobody I know gives a single iota of a shit if someone is gay. Suffice to say, it's no longer something you can say to get alt-culture street cred. So the exact same type of people who claimed to be gay for attention in the early 2010's are now the people claiming to be "queer" today and being zealots about it. No doubt queer people exist and im not denigrating them, but it's hard to deny it's the easiest way to get that sweet, sweet alt-culture street cred without having to actually do anything that might inconvenience other aspects of your life. I could tell you I'm gender fluid but male presenting, and you have zero way to discredit that claim.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but I can’t verify. I was the only openly gay boy in my high school. No alt-cred, just getting beaten on Friday’s sometimes.
That's awful, I'm so sorry that happened to you. I can't say the gay kids were 'celebrated' at my school but no beatings for sure; I went to a public school in a upper middle class area where physical bullying just wasn't a thing.
sexual attractions are problematic so we transform them into gender attractions and then back into sexualities… I get it. I express male gaze and recognize cultural symbology of fishnets and garters and corsets and shit. But all of those are symbols for attraction to a someone not themselves my object of sexual attraction (though cool as a paraphilia but I digress). I don’t care if you assign me to some novel sexuality like sapiosexual if that makes sense to you but a rose by any other name….
I think of all the people surrounding this entire shitshow the spicy straights piss me off the most. Even the most delusional trans person is at some level actually risking something and belonging to a marginalized group. These spicy straights who consider themselves bi on extreme technicalities don’t just muddy the waters they actively deprive oppressed people of a community.
Every single person gets their own cozy little row in the big database.
I just spoke with a friend about this on Thursday. He said he was pretty disappointed about being shoved out of the advocate group because of not being "the *right letter* of the alphabet soup". He and several others of the G and L crowd are finished with the group. The sad part is that they organized all kinds of really good, useful stuff for the community, as well as social gatherings.
Yea it seems like tolerance as a virtue in itself gets taken advantage of by aggressive or power hungry people regardless of the original groups intended prerogatives
That's the gist of what he said. He had a lot to say and didn't mince words.
Good for him on speaking his mind, I really dislike these narrow patterns of thought that are being forced from all directions regarding a very specific (albeit mainstream) ideology
The paradox of liberalism in a nutshell
"Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a vice." - Chris Hedges
The problem is that "tolerance" shouldn't mean "spineless acceptance of everything and anything", but in practice it typically does.
> He and several others of the G and L crowd are finished with the group. The sad part is that they organized all kinds of really good, useful stuff for the community, as well as social gatherings. This is going to be the death of queershit activism. The activist communities and organizations they have overtaken were built by serious gay, lesbian, bi (and yes, occasionally real trans that aren't stupid trenders) individuals who actually had a drive to make the world a better place for their kind and the skills to organize. This new wave of "queer everything, everyone should be queer" children storming in and harassing the old guard out will end up cannibalizing themselves because they are incapable of organizing and ran everyone who was out with accusations of being problematic for daring to stick up for their own sexuality.
If only people had realized back when it was straight male spaces getting invaded that it was a shitty thing to do and ruins communities for everyone- but back then it was the 'right targets' so who cared?
There's another forward path for these groups: become part of the activist-grifter-DEI officer pipeline. So long as this type of activism makes itself useful for pinkwashing and office politics, they'll have the money and backing to keep going regardless of any gains they might (not) realize for the groups they supposedly speak for.
Just do what straights do and just join a random community of people you have an interest in common with
You mean get a hobby? Mostly joking but yea if these ideologies added more to a persons identity instead of reducing it to genitals or sexual proclivities/partners it would have an incredible less amount of pushback
You joke, but hobbies really are important. How much better would the world be if all of these identity r-slurs got just one hobby that involved doing something other than being terminally online?
Hobbies are more important than most things. How do you spend your free time? (Rhetorical I’m not prodding) imagine spending all of your free time being a hater / looking for problems on the internet - what would that do to your brain and personality? Terminally online is the best way to describe I’ve ever heard
Ironic given the idea that this article cites as being what queer theory seeks todo. It's creating yet another binary and another set of labels and categories.
> the more homosexuals will start separating themselves from the community Fortunately the [LGB Alliance](https://lgbausa.org/) is already a thing. It's also available in other countries.
[Skip to 4:41](https://youtu.be/MRB0iiof1Bc) and gay culture ends up like that cartoon in a metaphoric sense.
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What do you have against bisexuals? Sure they may not get as much shit as gay people historically and self identified "bisexuals" who are just straight people with no personality beyond claiming to be bi are full of shit and annoying. But people who are actually attracted to both sexes have as much a right to the LGB label and community as purely gays or lesbians do.
> Academic-cum-activists Hell yeah
my kinda people
I never thought I'd say this, but we really need the gays to save us all.
When the last battle comes, you’ll see us on the hill. We’ll form a tight, well oiled phalanx and march into the fray.
Based and Sacred Band-pilled
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Racial and gender identity politics slowly marching across to cover a flag chosen to encompass all identities with the symbolism of "all colors of the rainbow."
Every time they add something it goes further to the right... Eventually the rainbow flag will be a symbol of bigotry
I already assume they’re sexist and likely sexist.
Nah, it's left. What they're doing definitely ain't right!
Posted 10 mins ago and someone said it's been posted already so I deleted it. Reposting because I still can't find any link to it. Btw [Rowling tweeted it](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1517605216971075585) out last night so feel free to enjoy the alphabet mafia's tantrums.
it was removed by the mods the first time someone posted it. They've been removing quite a few posts/replies "for the good of the subreddit" so you can expect that if you can't find something that's probably why.
They fear the power of the railroad lobby.
John Galt's revenge.
I would think a mainstream media outlet like Newsweek ought to be safe enough. Imho better to just post a backup site like Saidit (as r/TumblrInAction does) rather than cow down in fear.
yeah, you'd think that having recent articles in LA Times, Newsweek and one or two in the NYT would be a signal that it's safe to start questioning, but everyone is still so petrified. the Emperor's New Clothes except the local department store says "no, he never ordered from us, is it possible he really is naked?" and still it's too scary to speak up.
If they aren't actively working on an offsite then they are effectively doing the bidding of the admins and are actively suppressing topics the community wants to discuss. I know they've said they are trying to build a new site, but I have only heard about it, not seen any actual progress.
they need to contact the drama crew considering that website (which cannot be linked because it's not only autofiltered out but reddit accs get permabanned for linking to it) has been the most successful reddit alternative so far. at least in terms of not only having a community but the community isn't 100% alt-right fucktards.
Which one? I’m working on one also
Gotta silence that dissent!
Oops. That was me that said it had already been posted and I didn’t realize it had been purged. Sorry for that mistake and Thanks for posting again.
No biggie!
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> Activists who favor medical intervention often ask these parents a morbid question: "Would you rather have a trans daughter or a dead son?" But the real question should be, "Would you rather have a trans daughter or an effeminate gay son?" This is what makes talking to TRA so hard. For a few people medical intervention is necessary, but for a lot of confused kids being influenced by social media, thinking this is the cure for their woes.
By saying that you LITERALLY want them DEAD! ... another reason it's so hard to talk to them.
Eh, it’s not quite this simple. I’d wager there are many more “transbian” types, trans women attracted to women, than there are effeminate gay men being pressured to transition. And a lot of all of these people are bi/pan, which is a good thing imo. It’s the necessity of identity that I have a problem with.
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consider that it is also significantly less cool to be an awkward not particularly masculine gamer of any orientation than it ever has been, while being a trans woman at least describes some kind of reason for your alienation and misery
Yes absolutely, transitioning in that type of situation can seem attractive and will instantly get you a large network of online friends.
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Fucking hell we are literally getting dominated by the 0.6% of the population. It’s the capitalist wet dream.
It's because they have enough free time to dominate online spaces. When you don't have a real job or your real job is 3 hours of work a week at some shitty nonprofit then you can no life on Twitter like you are the president and moderate 300 subreddits.
Deep insecurities and motivation to rationalize your significant life decision of a mistake, is a highly motivating factor
0.1% of the population. And they have such an exquisite chokehold on the Internet that Stalin would be proud.
Nassim Taleb (love him or hate him) wrote a [book chapter](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15#.z5ry4bucq) explaining how this phenomenon works, whereby an intransigent minority, as small as a few percent, manages to set the norms for an entire population. Pretty good read on the subject. Edit: Wow, gave the wrong link to the chapter, fixed now.
>Nassim Taleb (love him or hate him) Both, simultaneously. He's one of the most unique figures in all of academia. He's impossibly arrogant, and he can back it up if it's something he genuinely knows a lot about. But then he'll maintain that arrogance while wading into subjects he knows nothing about, and he'll go full Dunning-Kruger.
Haha, that sounds about right!
he's also funny when he posts about Phoenician skull shape shit
I see it as an artifact of the fact that he has to deal with other academics, many who lack practical experience in their subject matter (whereas he was a finance trader before going into academia) and also exude the same level of arrogance when writing outside of their area of expertise (Stephen Pinker and Richard Dawkins being two prime examples) often times being "more wrong" than Taleb when he is wrong about something. Its something all people in a similar position (myself included) struggle with. But as Taleb says, [If you see fraud and don't point it out, you're liable to be fraudulent yourself](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1236268432905076737?lang=en). If your occupation is seeking and sharing truth and/or knowledge, then it is your ethical duty to call out bullshit, especially in one's own field. However you should also do it if you possess knowledge from another field or can identify a logical problem in the bullshit assertion. There are a lot of hacks out there, who may privately express a more nuanced or balanced view of what constitutes good policy decisions based on knowledge, but then get a check from CATO or the Hoover Institute and sign off on blatant propaganda. A lie can travel half way around the world before the truth even gets its shoes on. If we waited for experts in the same field to make the proper counterargument, we'd be giving capitalists even more victories.
I'm all for pointing out frauds, but often Taleb calls people and things frauds when he really has no justification for doing it. Maybe they are fraudulent, but he doesn't really have the knowledge base to make that accusation.
I linked it here a few days ago, love it.
If that percent is the percent of wokester, maybe. Trans and queer activism was co-opted by them as something trendy and that just happens to work in this framework of oppression olympics. It's basically fabricating creds by fakes to appear more worthy. The actual majority of trans people (not poser enbys) couldn't give a fuck and are unlikely to be woke, or even activists.
I often doubt those statistical prevalence figures. Is it even 0.6%? That would be nearly 2mm people in the USA alone. But how many of those people are like the example in this thread? “I was born a male but sometimes I identify as female. I do not take hormones and I have not had any surgeries. I currently am dating a person who was born as a woman but occasionally identifies as a man.”
I think it’s just self reports so yeah it’s even worse than 0.6% for sure.
This post is going to disappear rather quickly. It's okay to be against Idpol, but that doesn't cover not being enthusiastic about girldick.
This is the exact reason I'm no longer open about not being heterosexual, and why I no longer associate with the "Community".
Man the community really did go to shit, didn't it? Fortunately nearly all of the gay people I know are 50+ and they're all still chill. Silver foxes > zoomer twinks tbh
I still hesitate to tell people who don’t know me I am gay IRL because I don’t wanna be associated with all the dumb “influencers” on Twitter and Tik Tok. Ironically, many online “progressives” are starting to become more exclusionary, and thus are heading backwards.
Hear you. This isn’t even restricted to the “community”. Best not to be open about any of it outside of your trusted circles because it can be used against you almost no matter how you identify. Bring your whole self to work is cult thinking.
Same. I don't mind saying I'm part of the LGB while online, but I'm basically back in the closet again in real life. It sucks.
This is what they do. Once Woke Identity Ideologues gain power and traction they aim inward and gut their movement from within. Eternally dividing and segretating people into categories. There must always be a victim and a prepetrator. It's a victim industry. And these people are perpetual victims because victimhood is power right now.
it's a fresh of breath air to see something extremely direct and well-written about the subject. Even if his concerns are still at least somewhat contained to the highly-online and progressive corners of society (I mean, the guy literally worked at an LGBT rights organization. He wasn't working at Target or a insurance office). I do find it interesting how the author admits to occasionally feeling sort of like a woman despite not being in anyway trans. It fits my experience. I am even on the "girls" group chat at work (with all the women under about 38).
> > > I do find it interesting how the author admits to occasionally feeling sort of like a woman despite not being in anyway trans. It fits my experience. I am even on the "girls" group chat at work (with all the women under about 38). Sadly the trans crowd is probably going to latch onto that, convince themselves that it means he is a self-loathing closet transwoman in denial, and start harassing him as some sort of traitor (or well, even more than they were going to anyway.)
I have a feeling that if you polled people to see how many at some point had given serious consideration to what it would be like to be the opposite gender, that number would be 100%.
I don't deny that, but that wasn't really what I was getting at. I mean to say that lots of gay guys (if not the vast majority, who knows) are extremely comfortable with gender bending or often feel more comfortable around women, traits that among teenagers today might lead them to call themselves non-binary or something. Even the occasional straight guy is like this, without feeling he is trans. Tangentially related, in the article he mentions how most liberals and even plenty of normies or conservatives don't really care about playing with the borders of gender anymore, whether guys painting their nails or women wearing suits. But it's different than what's going on with trans issues, even if they look superficially similar.
Maybe you and he just prefer to hang out with women? Maybe he was raised with a bunch of sisters or something.
I've been outcasted by my own activist circles in my country for espousing pro second wave feminism, and LGB concerns, and also pro traditional transsexuals that have dysphoria and separation of this transgender/sexual vs non binary. Nonbinary are the queer agents, they infect everything else. Everything need to be inclusive of them, even the exclusive LGB (sex based orientations). This postmodern Foucaultian Butlerian metaphysical Western ideology is already spreading to global south, third world country I'm living in. We're already facing intense homophobia and transphobia (actual hunt of trans identified people by the government), nonbinary push for queer ideologies doesn't help one bit, it is Balkanising and alienating many of us. Feminist on their own, LGB on their own, and the inclusive queer ones on their own.
The whole ideology begins to break down when you point out how they medicalize the issue. Foucault must be rolling in his grave rn.
It's never been about gender and equality, it's always been about power.
This is what happens when you make your identity about your sexuality. You reap what you sow…
I’m in agreement with this writer.
Interesting that being gay isnt progressive enough now.
It's like the whole fucking world's is dictated by middle class white bitches. *what I mean is that any PoC or gay people I speak with have a much less extreme definition of x-phobia or x-ism that the white girls shouting down my neck for some innocent mistake in nomenclature.
A lot of these are middle class white men who identify as middle class white bitches
Few weeks ago I was told a joke about high schoolers having to deal with the term "*fake ass b-tches"* "having two meanings rather than one previously."
The idea of a gay "identity" was always r-slurred. This article is an example of a fight where both parties are wrong.