I find this an interesting point to consider.
I think it can help ... because if one is assuming that the other side is arguing from shared values you (the generic you, not the Jollyrei you) will often get even more offended when confronted with something that assaults your moral foundations.
You'll feel that nobody can *really* believe what they're saying and so it feels as if they're just using some made up excuse to be evil.
Such as, no
educated person in the West in this day and age can *really* believe that life begins at conception, that is just a feigned religious argument behind whch stands the actual goal of controlling women's bodies, and enforcing misogyny.
This is a problem, because now you aren't just disagreeing, you're also assuming that the other person is coming from a position of bad faith - not putting forward honest concerns but just smokescreens for a nefarious ulterior motive.
And of course you're making the mistake of assuming you can read their mind.
This actually happens very easily to all of us.
If you approach it from the viewpoint of 'they're coming from a different culture' you might be able to inspect whether 'evil nefarious' is really the most parsimonous explanation for the other side's position.
Also we generally accept that other cultures have a self-evident right to exist.
But then it's common to hear that certain convictions from inside our historical cultural background 'can have no place in this society' ... even if they're not dissimilar from views held in
other cultures that
are accepted by our society.
'Oikophobia' is one explanation for that.
But the other is that people are assuming 'our society' consists of a homogenous 'majority culture', and then add to that some other cultures that exist beside.
Having divergences
within our 'majority' that are sometimes similar in degree to those
between cultures isn't accepted - it's felt within the 'majority', there must be a decisive victory for one side in the struggle for seizing the means of discourse production.
However if you accept the idea of cultural strands running separate but parallel, that have their intrinsic right to exist just like the immigrant cultures, coexistence may be easier. (Because let's be honest here, most of the culture wars is
within the 'majority' culture)
And seriously I have to apply that approach to myself right now, a good exercise.
Because, to come back to where I started ... looking at the situation with very young juveniles, adolescents, even children, being funneled towards a sequence of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and finally surgery ... all on the grounds of entirely dubious claims to being able to diagnose
in children with
irreversible and infallible certainty a 'gender dysphoria' that means 'a person is born in the wrong body' and therefore
must have their body altered ....
I think the evidence is out there for all to see that tremendous harm is being done.
This has been boiling out of sight for some years mostly because intersectional progressives have indeed, gained a hegemony on the production of discourse with regard to 'gender theory'.
However by now it's been picked up even by the mainstream as at the very least a danger that deserves investigation.
It's an assault on my moral foundations to hear this brushed off with "But what horrific damages?". And claiming that progressivism is trying to 'minimise damage' when it has actually introduced an entirely new way of irreversibly damaging people from the most vulnerable groups of society, in the most vulnerable phases of their lives.
My natural reaction is visceral moral outrage at the suffering inflicted there being so completely brushed off with no consideration at all and it would be very easy to jump to the conclusion that this denial is just an instance of tolerating an obvious evil in order to attain ideological goals.
But that would be exactly the thought trap I tried to outline above so I'll take a deep breath and conclude that RR's denial that there's any damage here comes from being part of different cultural strands
Because I do see how progressivism, which is deeply involved with the ideas behind transgenderism, can cause its followers to be unable to conceptualize that suffering.
Progressivism views people along how they fit into groups involved in an exercise of power along the axis of Oppressor and Oppressed and while 'trans' is clearly seen as the 'Oppressed' versus the 'Oppressor' of heteronormative cis-patriarchy ...
... well here you have unhappy pubescent kids who suffer from some combinations out of a grab bag of sexual identity crisis, variant body dysmorphic syndomes, medication side effects of SSRI, isolation, autism, depression, OCD, social pressures and whatnot more, and they get diagnosed as having 'gender dysphoria' very rapidly (sometimes in a single session) and are set off on the course of 'transition' as a 'solution' .
These people do not easily form a group for progressives to recognize along the axis of exertion of power, they are just a jumble of individuals, and also - it's an inside conflict, not one between power groups.
Then there are also aspects of the juvenile transition situation that cause cognitive dissonance for progressives, ...
... such as that a large number of young girls sent down the transition path are lesbians whose lives have been made hell by homophobia and instead of removing the homophobia you're now mutilating the girls.
(This is what Iran of course does as a matter of policy... in same sex couples one has to 'transition' so that they can be 'straight')
... this means that the progressive enthusiasm for 'trans' enables homophobia and ... you are looking at an even darker mirror version of 'conversion therapy' ... it's better to deny the existence of this dilemma.
Postmodern transgender ideology replaces the idea of an 'innateness' of being a man or woman (regardless of orientation gay, straight,whatever) with that of a 'constructed' identity. This sits well with progressive ideas of dismantling systems of oppression based on supposedly 'innate' superiorities (race, etc).
However you end up with another 'innate' property -- the idea that a very young child can definitely know that 'they were born in the wrong body'. Ridiculously this is often diagnosed by 'non-conforming' behavior (girl plays with 'boy typical' toys, puts on boy clothes ... let's head for the gender clinic!) so you end up judging by the most stereotypical perceptions of gender roles (which progressives should question! But now they're assumed as the source of identity!).
All ideologies have some point where they run counter to their own goal, all ideologies will have inherent contradictions, and it's a natural reaction to gloss over them.
Nevertheless there absolutely is terrifying harm there. I'll have to stress that I'm not saying 'trans doesn't exist' but the very simple observation that juvenile transgender identification happens in epidemiological clusters tells us something. Anyone who really maintains that this is all innate, there is no misdiagnosis of transition-requiring gender dysphoria not ever, is not taking reality into account.
Since one of the outcomes of puberty blocking and early hormonal transition is sterility, and that is of course inevitable if you do full removal surgeries... what we are looking at is...
... an ideology is used in state-run clinics
... to sterilize...
... a vulnerable and defenseless minority ...
and that ideology isn't fascism, racism, colonialism etc, ... this time round it's progressivism ...
Blah !!
