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As I mentioned back in July, every month in our office canteen, a member of the HR team hangs up posters on the noticeboard of notable days or commemorations which fall within that calendar month. A lot of these are harmless days and observations that no one could take exception to (World Friendship Day, World Chocolate Day etc.), but a significant number this month were of a more... strident nature. In descending order from the top of the notice board:
Numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5 are unobjectionable (curious if I'll hear the "ugh, every day is International Men's Day!" joke two weeks from today). With regard to #3, my immediate thought was "for God's sake, how many days do you people need?" But my primary reaction was a feeling that 3, 5 and 6 are all in tension with one another, and that anyone who thinks about this for long enough would realise how unstable the coalition is.
More than anything I'm reminded of Scott's evergreen post "Neutral vs. Conservative: The Eternal Struggle":
Were I to argue that male rapists with intact penises don't belong in women's prisons, I'd doubtless be accused of bringing politics into the workplace, but observing Trans Awareness Week is just being a decent person. Were I to point out the shockingly brutal acts of violence against women Hamas committed on October 7th, I'd doubtless be accused of bringing politics into the workplace*; but announcing that you "stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people" is just being a decent person.
I don't know. I'm frustrated. I'd have no problem with a "don't talk about politics in work" rule, provided it was applied consistently.
*Even if I prefaced it by saying that Israel's response was disproportionate, and acknowledging that Israel has also committed crimes against humanity.
Maybe I am typical minding too much but I think if you tried describing these "tensions" to people who support both the things you identify as in tension they would come off as non-sequiturs.
My impression is that most of the people celebrating something like "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" likely believe there is an ethnic cleansing, if not genocide, going on in the West Bank and Gaza. Carried out by some combination of the Israeli government and private settlers. I would be surprised if their objections to this state of affairs evaporated on learning that Palestinians were anti-trans or misogynistic. The two things do not seem connected to each other. I don't think people's objection to Israel's treatment of Palestinians is premised on those Palestinians having progressive politics, though I am open to being wrong about this.
When people are thinking of something like "Transgender Awareness Week" they are thinking about struggles trans people have accessing healthcare. Or discrimination they might face in employment in housing. Similarly when people are thinking of "International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women" they are probably thinking of the elimination of, like, intimate partner violence. Assault by strangers. "Male rapists claiming to be trans to access women in prison" are just not salient to either groups conception of what the events are about.
Why? Tens of thousands of people have been crowing for weeks that Charlie Kirk deserved to be murdered because of his "transphobic rhetoric" and/or his opposition to abortion. It's probably a safe bet that Kirk was less misogynistic and anti-LGBT than the modal Palestinian.
I don't think they are. I think they're primarily thinking about the main culture war flashpoints, almost all of which involve male people in women's spaces.
I agree that they aren't salient. My argument is that they should be. My argument is that it's incoherent to claim to oppose violence against women and yet support policies that put women at greater risk of physical harm for the benefit of men.
First, I think that you are exaggerating what the response was to Kirk's death amongst normies (I agree that there were terminally online people who actively celebrated it, but I am talking about "irl" woke people)
The leftists at my workplace (the kind of place where "Trump is [generally] bad" is just in the groundwater) were very unsympathetic to Kirk. But none of them actually celebrated his death, they (quietly) discussed how he was a bad person, and that he had sort of brought it upon himself (I'm given to understand this is because he was pro-guns) To cherrypick the very worst things said (I'm paraphrasing):
But everyone to my recollection affirmed that it is bad that a human being died. And this general direction of discussion was lightly shut down by another progressive.
But Charlie Kirk was an individual, who personally held the "misogynistic" and anti-LGBT beliefs of a "modal Charlie Kirk" - not all Palestinians share the sentiments (or crimes) of the mode. I'm not saying group punishment is axiomatically immoral, but it is clearly a gray area because it involves punishing innocents. I think it is much more straightforward morally to support punishing a bad person for personally doing a bad thing (I'm not saying Kirk / Muslims do a "bad thing" by holding these views, just addressing this particular line of inference you drew)
But the above is my own disagreement to your logic. If we are looking at the world through a progressive lens:
The bathroom stuff is only one of the flashpoints. Respecting pronouns, concerns about the growing anti-trans (or "transphobic", if we are pathologising it) sentiment, access to hormones, trans children, trans men, non-binary individuals - these are all pretty clearly "flashpoints", and none involve males in female spaces.
As I suspect you are aware, progressives assign a different meaning to the word "woman" and "man" than you do. It is a reference to one's gender identity, and can be unrelated to their chromosomes, sex organs, appearance, etc (i.e. "transgender")
None of these policies benefit men - they benefit (trans) women (at the expense of cis women) One can argue that this is a bad definition, but it is the definition used by progressives - it is what they mean when they say "man" and "woman". So there is absolutely nothing "incoherent" about being feminist and pro trans rights.
Also, on top of that, it's not even incoherent to oppose violence against AFABs and support trans rights. It is possible to have multiple moral goals, for those goals to come into conflict, and to have to choose one over the other:
I'll second self_made_human and point to KendricTonn getting it in Ohio. There's more terminally online people than ever before, only some of them poast 24/7/365, and these days it's possible to invite them into your home without ever having been aware of their online presence beforehand.
I'm glad you've avoided it, but I'm finding that less and less possible.
I initially only believed that this stuff was happening irl in the US, but not the UK (since Kirk was an American influencer), I was under the impression UK progressives had entirely forgotten about the Kirk thing (the account I gave was the first and last time this topic was brought up irl in my presence)
Since it was just @FtttG saying this (from the UK), and it felt "two steps removed" from my own experience, I wondered if he had misinterpreted things and blown stuff up in his head by overthinking. But then @self_made_human's account was also in the UK.
The most parsimonious explanation is that my progressive coworkers do have these sorts of discussions, but not around me (because we don't spend time together except at lunch), which makes sense. I guess it felt "off" to me (hence that part of my comment) because it seems quite far from how they behave with me at work, but then my behaviour / opinions in private is quite far from when I am at work, so I should expect that they also have some "hidden" part to themselves.
I live in Ireland.
In fairness, my colleagues were only talking about it the day after. I don't think I've heard his name mentioned around the office since.
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