Maybe it's because I was watching Vaush today, but holy crap, I'm so over the trans issue. Apparently he was going on about Cenk Uygur again and watching him interact with other streamers like Hasan and David Pakman, but holy crap, can we NOT obsess over this?
I mean, maybe it's my ethos of "not caring", but I'm tired of hearing about this. The trans population is 0.6% of everyone in the US. It's as small as Joe Biden's victory margins in 2020 (literally). I'm not saying they're irrelevant (look at how slim margins win elections), but I feel like this issue is something that is grossly outsized overall relative to its actual impact on reality. The left will just tear people apart over it if they dont toe the line on every issue (including trans sports and the whole "birthing person" thing) and act self righteous in refusing to admit that they have an image problem. And they do.
Leftists like Vaush, Hasan, etc., seem to think if we dont just loudly scream trans rights every election it will end with trans people being thrown under the bus, but I feel like this is ignorant. Look at how we won on homosexuality and gay marriage. About 15-20 years ago, just as controversial as trans issues are today. So how did the other letters of the acronym alphabet soup win their rights?
Well, long story short, we stopped caring.
Like, for a while, the religious right held HUGE sway in the US. Remember what I keep saying about alignments and coalitions. From the late 1970s/early 1980s until around 2008ish, the "moral majority" ran politics. And they created constant moral panics over the issue. If they were outright pushing religion they were going over crap like the AIDS crisis, and blah blah blah. And eventually....that stuff came to an end. Why? Because around 2008, millennials used their political power for the first time to elect obama, and as millennials became more mainstream in politics, they made it clear that we didn't care about this issue like our parents did. We had gay friends, gay family members, and we were just sick and tired of religion in politics.
And let's face it, that's the whole reason there was an obsession with homosexuality in politics. Because religion. Because authoritarian moralists wanted to push their religion on the country. From a secular standpoint, there was ZERO reason to care about the issue. Gay people just wanted to live their lives, if we just mind our own business then they'll mind theirs. Quite frankly, the only way the left could lose on the issue is if we had our own weirdo versions of authoritarian moralists shoving this stuff down peoples' throats.
Oh wait. We do! We didn't back then as much, while the acceptance of gay rights was going on SJW types were a pitiful minority no one took seriously, but now those authoritarian moralists are everywhere insisting that people have to take time and energy out of their day and care about the issues other people face. They might mean well in doing so, but they don't seem to care that they're making this FAR more polarizing than necessary.
Once the public supported gay rights in a majority, things just...quietly happened. It was like a switch flipped, and suddenly being anti gay was a minority position and we made progress. The progress was also relatively quiet.
This in your face authoritarian moralizing left that insists you MUST accept every plank of their agenda or you're a bigot and a transphobe and you must be cancelled is actually backfiring hard on the left.
Because not only does the right gain support from their weirdo authoritarian moralists, but a lot of fence sitters go "ya know what, f these weirdos on the left man" and end up being sucked into the right due to their anti political correctness stuff.
There isnt a ton different between the gay and trans debate. There really isn't. Maybe you could pick out some of the more insular parts of it and hammer home on those, like insisting that people MUST accept trans people as their preferred gender to the point of being willing to sleep with them (which I've seen some lefties push before), or dying on the hill of trans sports or whatever, but honestly? This is a losing strategy. My honest opinion is if you have to force people to care you already lost. Because people won't. You're gonna be divisive and polarizing, and the public is gonna turn against you more than they otherwise would.
In some ways, SJWs make the right stronger. I would LITERALLY argue that. If we just did the same strategy we did with gay rights where we just let progress happen naturally and not FORCE it on people, we'd get there within the next few years.
Hell, to go further, if the left stopped inflaming the right and giving them ammo, I'll say this, the right in this country would implode. The religious coalition is aging, I dont think many people under 40-50 really care about that stuff any more. And push comes to shove, if the debate just centered on "whatever man, just let people live their own lives, F these authoritarian moralists", then guess what? THE LEFT WOULD WIN! I know this because again, this is how the gay issue was won.
Forcing acceptance and forcing people to care about insular social issues, and starting fights and civil wars on the left over not accepting every single plank of their little agendas is how you lose support. people are bashing Ana Kasperian for her "I was a leftist until..." rhetoric, but honestly? SJWs create people like that. And most of them arent bad people. hell, I'm one of them in a way too. Because im an ex conservative, I came over on social issues for the secularism and libertarianism, I never embraced the woke stuff fully, and the second it became an actual polarizing thing in 2016, well, it should be obvious what side I ended up taking.
The point is, the extremists need to shut up already. They're literally shooting themselves in the foot the way matt Gaetz and his ilk did on the right the other day. Perhaps sometimes being polarizing and pushy is needed when your faction is being completely ignored and makes zero progress on anything for a long period of time, but honestly? We just got gay rights last decade, and most of the left, I believe, is fairly united in supporting trans rights in the same way. Of course, that same way looks different for different people. Some might be activists, but the left needs to stop crapping on the more passive part of their base that at the end of the day believes the same things they do, but may disagree with their approach, or may not accept every plank that the most extreme people wanna push, or just passively support this stuff, have no desire to be an activist, or to virtue signal, or to care, but at the end of the day can be brought on board through the virtues of coalition building.
Basically, stop crapping on less extreme and more passive allies. If you wanna attack the far right, have at it. They deserve it. But let's face it, what does that look like? "Look at these weirdo authoritarians trying to push their crap on people!"
The problem is, that's literally what the right is saying about the left. Because the SJWs don't know how to shut up. And that's not good. Because that inflates their numbers and deflates ours.
I honestly believe at the end of the day america is culturally libertarian and the side that wins the passive people is going to win the day. Cultural issues are won on the rhetoric of freedom. They are lost on the rhetoric of shoving their views down peoples' throats. So if we can do that a lot less, and focus on criticizing the other side a lot more, then that would be nice.
Again, at the end of the day, I believe most americans, outside of the most right wing, could come around on trans issues. Just as they did on homosexuality. Again, it's the same debate. This is just round 2. Once the public understands that the radical left isn't coming for their kids and trans women in bathrooms aren't gonna sexually assault people, then they will fall in line just as they did on homosexuality.
Seriously. The left is its own worst enemy sometimes. Sometimes we need to get out of our own way and just let progress happen naturally rather than trying to force it.
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