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The new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, is an Evangelical Christian that has positions and stances on homosexuality that I do not share (I confess, I remain a Millennial lib that has no problem with gay people doing gay things). Nonetheless, this CNN video where they discuss his positions on homosexuality and conversion therapy just seems so bizarre to me. In it, they refer to the idea of someone going from gay to straight as "debunked", quote Johnson saying, "there's freedom to change if you want to", and "homosexual behavior is something you do, not who you are".
Despite my own inclination to completely accept gay people qua gay people, I find nothing objectionable about Johnson's statements and see them as a much more accurate model of reality than what the CNN crew is expressing. I have zero doubt that sexual preferences and predilections can be substantially altered through a combination of conditioning, cognitive therapy, and repetition. I'm agnostic on whether this could allow someone who has a natural inclination towards homosexuality (or heterosexuality) to groom attraction for the sex that they didn't initially prefer, but it's not obvious to me, and I don't think there's good reason to say that it's deboonked as though this is just a common stylized fact. Likewise, even if it proves impossible to change one's underlying preference, it certainly remains true that one can elect to follow a different pattern of behavior than their natural tendency. I might have a natural tendency to hook up with a flirtatious woman at the bar while I'm on a work trip, but Mrs. O'Dim wouldn't appreciate this and I value her so much more than some stupid hookup. Were I a religious man, I might be inclined to view my religious obligations through the same sort of lens.
But really, the thing that keeps hitting me with dissonance isn't even the above points, which I can at least countenance reasonable counterarguments to, but the incongruity with the belief that gender itself is a mere social construct that is fully malleable to an individual's stated preference. A man attracted to other men cannot become a straight man, but he can become a straight woman. Do the people articulating this view not notice that this is at least a difficult pair of propositions to adhere to? Do they see no conflict? Do they understand the conflict, but believe that it's a question that's been solved by The Science, so better to just trust The Science and move on? Cynically, I think it's mostly that expressing the opposite view will get you bullied and fired.
Look at this meme.
It was made in the 2000s, an era in which it was totally legit for liberal people to make fun of fat people and their motivated reasoning and mental (certainly not physical!) gymnastics. Nowadays body positivity is the order of the day and liberals can only make fun of fat people if they're wearing MAGA hats.
The point of the joke, obviously, is that the fat woman in the photo claims that the shape of her body is entirely genetic in origin while ignoring the obvious dietary choices she makes which contribute to her body shape.
Perhaps the defining characteristic of modern progressivism is a wide-ranging assertion that social influences shape people's identities and desires. Men aren't naturally more interested in STEM than women, they've just been socialised to want to pursue careers in STEM, and were it not for this we'd see them going into childcare and education at the same rates as women. Men aren't naturally stronger and faster than women, it's just that women are systematically discouraged from playing sports. Most people aren't straight because that's their natural inclination, they've just been brainwashed by the heteropatriarchy and in the state of nature we'd all be bisexual. Stereotype threat, power posing, "internalised" Xism etc. etc. The apparent goal of many progressives is to undo the cultural conditioning (borrowing here from Marxist "false consciousness") which causes women to believe that they're more interested in childcare than computers. This false consciousness is unidirectional: a man can mistakenly believe that he's more interested in computers than childcare, but not vice versa; a repressed gay man can be in denial about his sexuality, but no straight man can mistakenly believe he's gay.*
This is the worldview underpinning the fury and rage surrounding the ROGD/social contagion model of transgender identity. I used to (by which I mean, at the time I started writing this comment) think that the tenets of gender ideology made for odd bedfellows with the rest of woke ideology. When I first heard about it, I was like "why are you guys so mad that social influences affect one's gender identity? You think social influences affect everything!" I thought that woke people had made a weird little carve-out for trans people, whose gender identity is assumed to be unresponsive to social influence in the way that their career aspirations or physical fitness might be.
But now that I think about it further, it makes sense from the false consciousness perspective. A trans person who mistakenly believes that they're cis until the moment their "egg hatches" is like a factory worker in Victorian England who, in a horrifying epiphany, realises the extent to which he is the victim of exploitation and alienation at the hands of his boss: they are to be commended, praised, welcomed with open arms. But a cis person who mistakenly believes they're trans: that's like being a strike-breaker. It's no accident that trans activists have nothing but contempt for detransitioners: they're traitors to the cause, scabs. This is one reason they resent the term "groomer", as that's not what they see themselves doing. If you're in a trans subreddit and you find yourself thinking that the list of "possible signs you might be trans" is so exhaustive that everyone alive must have at least one - that's a feature, not a bug. They don't think they're persuading children to be trans - they think that every child is already trans (and queer, and interested in topics associated with the opposite sex, and feminist etc.) and has simply been brainwashed into believing otherwise - if they lived in the state of nature then no "grooming" or education would be required.** Just like Marx thought that every proletariat already supported communism and had simply been tricked into thinking otherwise.***
So no, gender ideology and sexuality aren't carve-outs from the general woke assumption that social influences affect who you are (but only in one direction), they're central examples. But such a carve-out does exist within the woke framework. For whom, you ask? Look up top! Fat acceptance activists, as a group, do not acknowledge any social influences on their condition whatsoever. Hence all the hysterical caterwauling about how diets don't work and teasing fat people just makes them sad and I'm just big-boned and so on and so forth. I suspect quite a lot of fat acceptance activists wouldn't even recognise the joke in the meme above, they literally believe that diet and nutrition have zero impact, none, on how much you weigh. In the woke framework, genes may not determine how smart you are, or strong, or fast, or your career goals, or who you like to have sex with - but they damn sure determine whether you're a size 16 or an 8.
*People talk a lot about how Friends "aged poorly" and so on, but more than anything I think the B-plot here from which the episode derives its title would make woke people furious if it came out today, not least because it's still funny and more relevant now than at the time of release.
**Hence the historically tenuous claims that the gender binary is a recent artifact of Western capitalism and ancient civilizations had a more fluid conception of gender - "two-spirit" etc.
***This can get kind of Gnostic the more you think about it. It's not revisionist of the Wachowskis to claim that The Matrix was always intended as a trans metaphor - the reason this interpretation doesn't jump out at most people is because they're approaching gender ideology from the perspective of "most people are cis, but some people are trans and that's okay and they deserve respect and compassion" as opposed to the perspective of "everyone is trans, but most have been brainwashed into believing they're cis - freethinkers whose eggs have hatched see the truth". Cypher is a detransitioner and also a cowardly traitorous villain: not a coincidence.
But if everyone is trans, then there is no trans. Female brain in male body is female normal, male brain in female body is male normal. They can't be trans because they're not changing anything (except "yeah just need to take my puberty blockers" the same way there are multivitamin supplements for kids and teens). Maybe you don't even need to change your body; in that world it is perfectly true that men can get pregnant and women have dicks.
Vagina, uterus, ovaries, breasts, six months' pregnant? That's a guy and everyone accepts it, that's society's definition of what "male/man" means. Beard, penis and testicles, six foot six tall, built like a brick shithouse? That's a woman, that's what "female/woman" means.
The only trans people in that society would be those insisting "yeah I've got tits and a belle chose, but I'm really a woman!" or "yeah I have a dick and body hair like a yeti, but that doesn't mean I'm not a man!"
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And it’s hard not to notice that virtually every example of false consciousness is being more functional, prosocial etc. strictly speaking it is better to be cis(gender identity lines up with your birth sex) than trans(gender identity does not line up with your birth sex). It is better to be able bodied than disabled, fit than fat, etc, etc.
Why do you think that is?
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Absolutely, voted in favour in the referendum.
I was going to tepidly vote "yes" on the grounds that eh, civil marriage, why not? But the "Vote Yes" rainbow-farting campaign (with both our formerly traditional attitude parties going all-in on love, love) converted that to white-hot "Hell NO" vote because of the brain-melting stupidity.
The definitive moment for me when I flipped was when I was on a bus to our local city, the usual ads were playing on the radio, and on comes another one of the endless "Vote Yes For Love Love" referendum ads. And it was [expletive deleted] Mrs. Brown talking about her [expletive deleted] fictional son who does not exist and is not real and is only a character in a TV sitcom and how if he was gay and wanted to marry his partner and so forth and that's why we should all vote Yes for Love Love.
(Mrs. Brown isn't a woman, by the way; it's a character created and played by a guy in the tradition of pantomime dames). If it had been the actor talking about his real-life gay son - which so far as I know, he doesn't have - then I'd have shrugged and tuned it out. But it was the sitcom character talking about a fake child which didn't exist, and that was the same thing as all those real gays and lesbians just panting to march down the aisle (allegedly) and whose lives were blighted because sure they could have sex with whom they liked how they liked, they could live together, they could even be in domestic partnerships, but no - not being able to go down to the council registry office was plunging them into despair and fear, from which only our 'yes' vote could deliver them. Even, apparently, if they were figments of the imagination.
That's the exact moment I figuratively hit the roof and decided that I was definitely going to vote, and definitely going to vote "No". Because the glurge about "we only wanna be free to love" was bad enough, but now they were taking us for such idiots led around by whoever could tug on the heart-strings the hardest that fake fictional not-real characters wanting to fake fictionally not-real gay marry their fake fictional not-real lovers was supposed to convince us to junk all human tradition that "men and women marry" (whether that's one man and one woman, or one man and three hundred women, or one man and one woman in a short-term marriage or one woman marries five brothers or any other combination).
Like I said, the brain-melting stupidity of that just flipped me solidly to "Hell will freeze over before I ever again give in a millimetre on any of this shit".
Hold on, they subject you to audio ads on the bus?
They play radio stations, and the commercial ones run ads. Depending what station the driver picks, it can be "general AOR and talk radio" or "help I am going to jump out of this moving vehicle".
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I never encountered that Mrs. Brown campaign, but you're dead right, that's very cheap and manipulative.
You were lucky. I only heard it the once, and couldn't believe my ears. I'd been getting the full "Love Love Campaign" ads on the wireless ad nauseam leading up to that, and my first reaction was "hang on, surely this is meant to be Brendan O'Carroll talking about one of his real life sons?" but no. Mrs. Brown and her fake son.
I went "how. effin'. stupid. do. they. think. we. are." and switched from tepid, didn't really care one way or another 'meh probably vote yes if I vote' to steam out of my ears 'damn straight I am going to vote and it'll be NO with bells on'.
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You do understand that meme is false. Epistemic status - I do not excercise, diet, or abstain from alcohol. I am older than her and while obese, nowhere near her level.
So you don't exercise, diet or abstain from alcohol, and you're obese.
Struggling to see how this contradicts the thesis presented by the meme.
I am much less obese than that woman you enjoy laughing at. I could not reach her weight if my life depended on it.
But you are still obese. Are you denying that your diet, lack of exercise and alcohol consumption contributed to your obesity?
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