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So I recently noticed that my state has quietly removed the word "mother" from every official documentation I've seen, replacing it with "birthing parent" or some other euphemism. Iirc Colorado has already switched its language the same way, as have most Dem-run states.
Wasn't it only a few months ago we were told this was an insane conspiracy theory and only a few weirdos would ever try to abolish "mother"? Now it's been done so neatly and without fuss or any sign of resistance. Things that only last year would have sounded like insane paranoid delusions just... Happen with unanimous support.
What is there to even say? The insanity keeps coming so fast they hardly need to gaslight you any more. Has anyone here been "corrected" for saying the M-word yet?
There’s also some Celebration Parallax in the mix: “That’s Not Happening and It’s Good That It Is.”
Replacing “mothers” with “birthing persons” is a totally brave and stunning practice if you’re supportive of it, otherwise it’s but a paranoid rightwing conspiracy theory.
Sure, when progressives call women “bodies with vaginas” they get an “awww, how sweet,” but when I do it I get a “hello, human resources?!” Hmph… ruuude.
I feel like some of the "celebration paradox" could come down to nuance around what is considered to be a specific thing happening.
I could see something like:
In this case, Person A may either consider X' to be basically the same thing as X, and so feel like Person B is basically saying, "X is not happening, but it totally is and that's good."
I feel like a good instance of this would be:
I think part of the perception of Person A that Person B is basically saying "ROGD isn't a thing. Also it's happening and it's good", is likely due to the fact that what Person A is saying isn't their true objection. I suspect that most people raising concerns about ROGD specifically are actually concerned more generally about the rise in trans people, and are happy to go to fringe theories to justify that concern. But if ROGD had never been conceptualized, it would have been another fringe theory, since trans skepticism has to be skeptical of the "mainstream medical opinion" of organizations like the APA.
Basically, if you don't believe you can find the truth in the authorities, you are going to rely on fringe sources. You see the same thing happening in reverse with trans activists and the Cass Review.
I don't see how this can explain it at all. "Adding context" is one of the most common deboonking tactics employed by progressive fact-checkers, and other discourse-participators. If they could take an anti-trans statement, and explain how it's all an oversimplification stemming from ignorance and bigotry, and how a pro-trans statement is the thing that thoughtful and educated people should believe, Vox, Snopes, etc. would be off to the races. What I've seen instead in this conversation is blanket denial and trying to smear the reputation of opponents. Any attempt at a nuanced explanation only comes after the blanket denials have been issues, and the evidence to the contrary becomes undeniable.
If you're going to question someone's motives, you should do so directly, rather playing the "it's not happening, and it's a good thing that it is" game.
First of all, this part is a bit confusing, what does it have to do with this "celebration parallax"? Secondly, I'm pretty damn contrarian / anti-authority, and even I wouldn't say that I "don't believe you can find the truth in the authorities", rather I don't believe authority determines truth. Finally, I don't see the symmetry here. When you brought the trans community's criticism of the Cass Review, saying it unfairly rejected studies by insisting on an impossible to meet double-blind RCT standard, we didn't do the "it's not happening, and it's a good thing that it is" bit, we just said "it's not happening" and sent you the evidence.
Right, I agree. Authoritativeness-fringeness is orthogonal to truthfulness. Fringe things sometimes turn out to be true, authoritative things sometimes turn out to be false. Continental drift was a fringe theory until it wasn't.
My larger point was more about what people tend to do when they feel like what the authorities are saying doesn't make sense, and decide to do their own independent investigation. Existing fringe theories form a Schelling point for the people rejecting authorities on a particular point, since it is often hard to build original theories and syntheses of one's own. As an example, I've always found Blanchard's typology incomplete and inadequate. It's not that I think autogynephilic and "homosexual" transsexuals don't exist, but that I'm fairly certain there are at least one or two other categories that exist as well (especially in the modern queer community.) People who believe in Blanchard's typology as a complete explanation of transness often remind me of Karl Popper's criticism of Adlerian psychoanalysis:
I could easily replace the references to Adlerian constructs with reference to "AGP." Heck, we even have /u/KMC doing it in this very thread. I don't know how people who have never met the person under discussion, have never tried to get to know their thoughts or why they transitioned are so sure that they know the person masturbates in women's clothing. It feels like AGP-totalizers take advantage of the fact that there will usually be silence about a person's sex life due to social mores, and fill in the gap with whatever best fits their preconceptions.
I'm fairly willing to accept that some number of "trans" people are AGPs who lie to fit the most acceptable societal narrative, but I'm less willing to assume that literally every trans person who transitions later in life is one of them. Especially because, for every seeming confirmation of AGP online when people are speaking candidly, there is always a chorus of people saying, "Eh, I've considered the AGP and HSTS hypotheses, and I think I've actually transitioned for reason X", where X is something completely plausible as a component of human psychology and desire.
I pretty much agree about Blanchard. To the extent I talk about it, it's mostly the mirror image of your objection - I keep hearing how it's discredited, pseudoscientific, and whatnot, while the most I could see in any substantial criticism is that it's incomplete. If incompleteness is the objection from the start, I have no issues with it.
But I still don't see your broader point. I could quibble with your interpretation of the examples you gave - I don't think ROGD was a preexisting fringe theory, rather it's an academic formalization of an already existing idea. When a 12 year old declares they're trans and want to go on hormones, thoughts like "are the friends you're hanging out with putting some goofy ideas in your head?" are the most intuitive and natural to pop into a parents' heads, no one needed Littman for that. In fact, the entire criticism of her study boils down to her recruiting from mommy forums where these conversations where already taking place, thus biasing her sample.
I could also question the idea that what you're describing is descriptive only / mostly of people rejecting authority. In my opinion the mainstream authorities also rely on fringe theories as a schelling point in exactly the way you described. You might protest that how can a theory be both fringe and endorsed by mainstream authorities? To which I'd point out that the majority of the world still thinks the whole "gender identity" theory is academic gobbledygook, and a basic question about definitions, even from a meathead like Matt Walsh, can reduce said mainstream authorities to a blubbering mess.
But more importantly I don't see the point of your argument at all. What are the consequences on the conversation if you're correct vs. if you're wrong? I don't see what relevant conclusion I can draw in either case, but maybe I'm missing something.
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