It's quite hard for me to judge this topic because I am so thoroughly convinced that social media is toxic for mental health.
I think unfortunately it has become pervasive enough that you can't avoid experiencing it's toxic influence.
There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground and like the use of stocks in medieval times the concept of cancellation is much more power than any reality.
Twitter show cases this best, it's prison politics in web form. Everyone's in a gang and god help you if you aren't everyone will have a go at you.
I think social media amplified trends that were there before. I remember when I came to the US in 2000 it was pretty fashionable to say “I am angry” all the time. And the hatred at politicians was pretty pronounced too. And the cable news was already spreading fear and anger. Personally I think modern media starting with cable TV allowed hatemongers to easily reach large groups. The internet just made it much worse.
I just wonder how we can get out of this. My main observations are only from the US but the thinking that there are “others” who can’t be understood or talked to but need to eliminated is quite deeply ingrained in a lot of people.
It's like a societal autoimmune disease - when there's not a real, immediate event to react to, something has to be found to fill the airtime that is compelling enough to keep people watching and reacting, and social media has the added "benefit" of finding that filler algorithmically.
> social media has the added "benefit" of finding that filler algorithmically
Algorithmically, tailored per-user and without any oversight.
Traditional media can't peddle too extreme viewpoints because that would alienate a large chunk of their target market. Social media on the other hand can tailor the content for each individual user as to achieve maximum engagement without the risk of alienating anyone.
Traditional media is also subject to oversight (some people - or government watchdogs - can just record the TV programme as evidence) and regulations targeting broadcast media, where as social media isn't since nobody can monitor every individual user's feed, nor do they have the same regulations governing them (Fox got in trouble for peddling election misinformation, Facebook can promote exactly the same content and get away with it thanks to Section 230).
I think that when people are angry, they are more open to suggestion if you do it right. So this is a way to make people more receptive to buying a particular product or subscription, or to supporting a political cause, etc., if you don't make them angry about something first and do nothing else different, you get less conversions. And of all the different ways to improve in this kind of metric, the make-people-angry method one is relatively easy and requires relatively less competence.
And in order to compete with the other channels, news started becoming more and more sensationalist. Those channels contributed to the moral panics behind "Stranger Danger" and "Satanic Ritual Abuse", which resulted in parents becoming overprotective towards their children, stunting their development. When these children grew up into adults, they carried this "safetyist" worldview with them, where freedom is traded for security. And we know from history where that path leads to in the end, if it's not stopped somehow.
It is definitely happening. I used to like people like Taibbi and Greenwald but I feel that they have cranked up the outrage over the last years to the point that I can't listen to them anymore.
Another factor in parents over protecting kids came from John Walsh. Now, let me preface by saying no parent should endure what his family had to. But he nearly single-handedly caused what we see today where parents get in trouble for letting their kids walk to school or to the park. People today think everyone is a pedo or a child killer because that's what they were fed in the 80s and 90s.
It's a powerful combination of safetyism and concentration in urban and suburban areas that has pushed the American political compass strongly towards collectivistic priorities this generation. Basically a strong "europeisation" in metropolitan America.
Perhaps extortionate real estate prices and telework will put some counterbalance to it, but I don't expect this trend to buckle during my lifetime.
What has this got to do with collectivism? People can collectively decide to do whatever they want. Germany collectively decide to have risky playgrounds for kids. Sweden collectively decided not to lock down hard for covid. It sounds to me like America could do with collectively standing up against these channels and rejecting the rubbish they are peddling.
That is not why I meant by collectivism. Deciding things collectively just means you have organs of government.
By collectivistic priorities I simply meant that given trade offs between individual and collective orders of priority, the collective takes priority, often at the expense of individual rights.
America has traditionally had classical liberal ideals of individualism, as laid out by Locke, Rousseau and Franklin chiefly, and later others. What we've seen in the last few decades is a stronger alignment with continental European mainstream thought and politics. Perhaps because cities and demographics have pushed things in that direction. But I think safetyism is also a strong component.
I don't know that I'd call Germany collectivist. Under your examples by the US having national laws and regulation, we are somehow collectivist, which is not true. It's a trait of society and government.
Collectivist societies are unique in that they punish individuality. The government decides something and everyone must comply or face extra-judicial and potentially judicial consequences.
Individualistic societies often celebrate individuality. It's not marked by the absence of collective decisions, but that there's tolerance to dissent, or even that dissent is given weight and merit philosophically.
I'd summarize this as, collectivist societies are a proxy for government cohesion; it looks like people have power, but they don't. Individualistic societies retain power in both large numbers of people, but also individuals. The government is at competition with it's power to groups of people, which theoretically plays a role in keeping it in check.
I have seen those "risky" playgrounds in Germany - they aren't that risky at all?
Sure, you could get a splinter from the wood if its not maintained, or have a fall and get scraped up, but the risks are low, the benefits (learning to not be a fucking muppet, learning to cope with falls) are high.
When I was growing up, every weekday there was 30 minutes of local news and 30 minutes of national news. Most of the time they were able to fill all of that time with actual newsworthy stories, sometimes, there was filler.
Once the 24 hour news stations came out, there is still 30 minutes of national news, but much, much more filler. This is mostly fear peddling. 40 years of that and it's no wonder the entire population is a little off.
Yes once upon a time 24-hour news meant 25 or 30 different news stories covered in a an our. Now it seems like 5 or less stories in a day, and most of it is panels and "experts" spouting vitriol.
> And the cable news was already spreading fear and anger. Personally I think modern media starting with cable TV allowed hatemongers to easily reach large groups.
I'd posit it goes even further back to shortwave radio. Cable TV, internet forums, and later social media made discoverability easier - but the mass-media bile wa already present for a very long time.
This phenomenon social media is tapping into is far older than cable news. Tent revival preachers tapping into xenophobia and hate on supposed moral grounds date back well over 100 years. I'd expect you have similar feverish preaching by some charismatic leaders who don't believe a lick of their own creed their sheep flock to since we first had enough language to actually think in these terms. Good luck finding a counter for something that seems to be wired into our nature.
Yeah the 24/7 news cycle was definitely a precursor for this. There's not enough newsworthy things to cover in that time so they resort to sensationalism and drudging up anger wherever they can.
Now, that 24/7 news cycle gets carried around in your pocket daily and you get to see other people commenting on it.
> There's not enough newsworthy things to cover in that time
There is seriously no end to the number of newsworthy things to cover. The problem is that there are limited resources for coverage. It's expensive to staff a desk full of people who can find interesting topics and tell good stories about them for every subject area under the sun. It takes a lot of people with very variegated kinds of subject matter expertise.
It's much cheaper to have 4 or 5 people whose main skills are theater criticism level analysis of political events (i.e. how does this play with various demographics) and a skill of manipulating emotions to spend all their time speculating over nonsense instead. Just put them in a suit and have somber music on and we can pretend this is a serious matter instead of idle gossip.
"There is seriously no end to the number of newsworthy things to cover."
Not when it also needs to be "entertaining". When you watch Fox, CNN and others they convey almost zero information about actual issues but only emotion and opinion.
What makes something entertaining or not isn't necessarily a property of the topic. I think you just need an expert who is a good communicator and really enthusiastic about the thing to help you understand why it's cool or important or interesting. The trouble is there are only so many Carl Sagan level people to go around.
It's also important to remember that there are specific threat actors in other countries who spend many many millions on polarizing western countries by amplifying the most extreme voices in their online forums.
I mean, there was anger at politicians, but it was mostly "all politicians are corrupt". I certainly don't remember people saying "I am angry" all the time. I wonder if this was a coastal thing (e.g., the 'Occupy' movement seemed angry in a way that I couldn't relate to having lived my whole life in the midwest) and social media amplified it and spread it across the country?
I do recall online discourse being a lot angrier and less civil (not merely "more critical", but a lot more personal attacks, hateful generalizations, caricatures, etc). It was no longer "politicians are bad", nor even "the other side's politicians are bad", but increasingly "Americans on the other side are the enemy". And of course, conservatives were slow to adopt social media, so (as I recall) this was mostly liberals and progressives punching at conservatives who were still trying to be more buttoned up and play by the old rules, but as they increasingly came online and encountered the new incivility directed towards them (and the incivilizing force of social media itself acting upon them), I think it caused a lot of latent anger to accumulate until they finally embraced incivility in the form of Donald Trump (to be clear, this is a very abridged version of a very complex topic).
> I just wonder how we can get out of this. My main observations are only from the US but the thinking that there are “others” who can’t be understood or talked to but need to eliminated is quite deeply ingrained in a lot of people.
My hope is that the next generation will see the pointless harm caused by our hate/rage addiction and reject it, and maybe even regard it like an addictive substance (perhaps encouraging people to avoid social media, set up resources for addicted people, regulate social media companies, etc).
> I do recall online discourse being a lot angrier and less civil (not merely "more critical", but a lot more personal attacks, hateful generalizations, caricatures, etc).
Tangentially related: I wonder how Usenet groups or 1990s/early 2000s mailing lists compare to today's social media in terms of toxicity. Seems like the "netiquette" mostly worked those days; then again, one can probably easily spot ridiculous trolling or bullying in list archives as well (I like old mailing lists, so I think I have seen many remarkable rants over the years -- to the point that they have seemed conceptually interesting, a peculiar form of utterly irresponsible postmodernist stream-of-conciousness-literature if you will).
The nature of e-mail -- free-form composition, often resulting in lengthy, thoroughly argued replies -- probably did keep some of the anger and emotional arguments at bay, though. Could be that 1990s/2000s hackers were also more eloquent people, but this feels like more of a myth.
Hypothesis: if most online environments would still encourage barebones free-form composition (like e-mail; social media pushes one toward tight and thus sometimes overly straightforward expressions [1]), we would possibly notice more high-quality writing and wordsmiths in the internet. (Proof: go read the lengthy posts of your favorite HN commenter.)
1: See Uni of Chicago-Illinois communications researcher Zizi Papacharissi's work on "affective storytelling". An 2015 article with 250+ citations, analysing Twitter coverage during the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and online iterations of the Occupy movement: https://zizi.people.uic.edu/Site/Research_files/Papacharissi...
Toxicity isn't the only factor. USENET[0] may have been nasty but that nastiness was also very public and untargeted. Social media adds the ability to be extremely targeted with your abuse in ways that are nearly invisible to those who aren't clued into it. You can weaponize it way easier than you can a message board.
[0] And, for the purpose of this discussion, imageboards and other forums with little moderation, such as 2channel, Futaba, 4chan, etc.
"I mean, there was anger at politicians, but it was mostly "all politicians are corrupt"."
I lived in VA at the time and I remember plenty of people who got instantly mad when they just heard the word "Clinton" or "Bush". Since then it just got worse with "Obama=Muslim" and even worse with "Trump".
> And the cable news was already spreading fear and anger. Personally I think modern media starting with cable TV allowed hatemongers to easily reach large groups
Oddly, I used to have the same view of sports. Growing up where I did, it was common for folks to be fanatical on their local college sports team. Such that they get mean to folks from their "rival" schools and are generally trash talking to everyone else. It was so bad, that I certainly thought that was how you were supposed to be. Pick a side and be aggressive to the opponents when watching the game. Goal was to make them do worse, so that your team would do better. It even makes sense in that regard.
However, that is ridiculously unhealthy. And it easily bleeds into other aspects of life. Heaven help you when you go watch some middle school team sometime, parents are being terrible to their kids. Worse to other's kids.
Does this mean sports are unhealthy, though? I'm convinced, right now, that that is definitely not the case. But I can also easily claim we tend to have unhealthy relationships with these topics.
Note that in your example, it's not the athletes that are being toxic (usually), it's the spectators.
It's common for sports fans to say things like, "we're playing Los Angeles next week" or "we picked up so-and-so in the draft" when there's really no "we" about it. The speaker is not involved in the action in any way other than as one observing it. But using that language makes them feel included in something bigger. And sometimes the brain starts to believe you really ARE part of that bigger thing, and you start taking actions to reinforce that belief.
(And I want it noted that I'm very much including myself in this assessment. This is not some "nerds > jocks" kind of thing. As an American football fan myself, I've made a conscious effort to stop saying "we" specifically because this has started to bother me.)
So no, participating in sports isn't unhealthy. Succumbing to the delusion of participation as a spectator, that's what becomes unhealthy.
Ish. Trash talking is a huge thing in sports. Similarly many prudish administrators go out of their way to punish the players for celebrations and such.
Edit: And I'm curious how this relates to the topic at hand. Not that I think it is unrelated, but specifically how. We seem to be in rather strong agreement that it is the relationship with a thing that is unhealthy, with regards to sports. Why or how would that be different with regards to social media?
The connection I see is something like "imaginary tribalism". The members of an audience form a one-sided sense of belonging that distorts their behaviors.
The mechanism seems to be the "media" part. All the promotional content is blasted out at scale in a way that triggers this false or amplified sense of social engagement. It's not the social part of social media that hurts, so much as the media platform part that enables so many promoters to thrive.
How much is an amplified sense of authority? It isn't just that there are promoters, but many of these promoters really dig into the ideas that they have the answers.
This leans into all media and aligns with how much credence is given to pundits. People with good ideas wind up digging in and pushing that they have the only reasonable idea.
Most sports reduce discrimination and division, I think.
Side-tracking people into unimportant (sports) in-group versus out-group is really good at improving cohesion between important group differences. For example a Mexican and an American rooting for the same team, so they have their sport in common, which helps them be closer to each other.
Sports can be divisive between countries. Then again it is interesting to watch New Zealand support Australians against the English (background - there is usually strong sports rivalry between NZ and Oz since we are neighbours). A bit of win and lose on that one.
The most popular sports tend to be cross-class too - which is good. Of course there are sports that tend to be class oriented in some countries e.g. polo, soccer, athletics. FYI golf and skiing are not particularly class oriented within New Zealand: even 30 foot yacht racing can have a mixture of millionaires, factory workers, professionals and petrol attendants (we are weird down here).
I'm still mostly inline that anything that gets people engaging together will increase their willingness to do so. If that is playing a sport, that works.
I'm less enthusiastic about a lot of the big corporate push into many sports. Not just at large, but in the reach out to youth. Happy for my kids to get involved with sports at the local level. Annoyed at how much effort seems to go into funneling local assets into marketing that larger organizations clearly could be getting elsewise.
That said, I'm almost socialist enough to have a crap ton of completely incoherent ideas about how those that are succeeding should be doing their best to make sure those that aren't could. With no obligations attached.
Interestingly, I don't think that is "correct" use of gaslighted. It sounds right metaphorically, as you are "igniting" them in a way that "lighting a gas source" would go. However, gaslighting is to sow doubt and confusion in people's self thoughts. I /think/ you could use this to the same end, but I think the initial was specifically not evoking a sense a rage, but one of dependence.
Yeah, you are right. I think the mechanism, to start an outrage vs the perceived outgroup is indeed the same. Once ignited lots of people don’t change their stance, unless you score high on self-reflection perhaps.
Twitter really is the worst. At least the other platforms have some good mixed in with the bad. It is nice to stay vaguely connected to people in a sort-of holiday card way.
Twitter has nothing to redeem it. Even in communities where there’s attempts at substantive conversation the medium makes a horrible mess to follow.
Nah, LinkedIn takes the cake in that regard. If you wanna feel full on narcissism and a bunch of meaningless fake posts with people trying appear as something they're not... LinkedIn is the place to be.
LinkedIn and Nextdoor are the two worst social platforms around, it's the worst kind of horrible, a sort of superficial rage and invasiveness, a complete disregard for others as human beings.
Say what you will about Twitter, but at least the insults there are direct and tend to stay exclusive to Twitter - as opposed to neighbors convincing each other of the worst or your ability to land a job being sabotaged because your profile doesn't have enough keywords.
Yep, at least there are some posts on Twitter that occasionally make me laugh. LinkedIn just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and you almost have to use it nowadays.
It's not remotely true??? You're just off-base with that statement. A ton of companies look there and recruit through that site. Yeah you don't HAVE to use it but you're putting yourself at a disadvantage if you don't.
Linkedin is the only social media which has ever been of any tangible benefit to me, though. It makes getting jobs trivially easy, and I only have to login once every few years.
Not sure why you're ignoring the various official and unofficial accounts which use Twitter to distribute information during natural disasters which has saved lives, in a way that RSS can't replicate.
I think it depends on who you follow (which filter bubble you are in). Try unfollowing everyone who is not an actual personal friend (or use a pinned list to see only their tweets).
I have Facebook and Instagram for that, depending on the age of the friend.
On Twitter these same people are much more likely to post a hot take than pictures of their kids or pets. The platform draws out toxicity even in otherwise easygoing people.
> I am so thoroughly convinced that social media is toxic for mental health.
The social media business is definitely a toxic, failed replacement for social discourse.
Perhaps young citizens are driven to despair by this and their distress is an early indicator that we are failing as a society to provide adequate education and humanity.
As an adult citizen, I am almost driven to despair.
How is twitter a prison. You can just not use it. I've never had an account there, and never used it other occcasionally reading a linked tweet in my web browser.
Yes tech does fundamentally change this. Prior to social media, the set of everyone’s gang options was defined by a relatively small geographic area. This means people were largely looking at and likely caring about the same reality, same set of problems, same considerations around the problem, same individuals in mind, etc.
Now you have people forming quasi-religious conviction on issues that are not directly relevant to them whatsoever and looking at completely distinct “data” to inform those opinions.
Elections will continue to get gnarlier and gnarlier because they’re one of the few occasions we need to converge and reconcile our different realities. Between elections, we take refuge in completely distinct information environments than the people who live literally next door. This is completely new. Started with radio, amplified by TV, perfected by internet media.
That's a very good point, social media has made it a LOT easier to invent issues that isn't really issues but just a topic for bullies to rally around.
Yeah... but alternatively you can easily find a group of like minded people. I suppose you could argue this just fractures society more though. People migrate off into groups of others they agree with and don't even bother trying to coexist anymore.
> There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground
There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. If a person thinks someone is a born child molester (a "groomer" in the modern Newspeak) and that person thinks the punishment for child molestation is death (as is fashionable in Florida of late) there's no way they can meet that person in the middle.
And that, sadly, is not new, either, as Matthew Shepard demonstrated so memorably in my own lifetime, but things are rather coming to a head now that sexual and gender minorities are forcing their longstanding plight into the public eye. They don't die quite as quietly now, in other words, and the great mass of people is more sympathetic to them now than it ever has been in the past. This, naturally, makes their would-be killers feel a bit persecuted.
> and like the use of stocks in medieval times the concept of cancellation is much more power than any reality.
Here we go, right on cue. The notion of being run out of employment for holding the traditional bigotries is a bit new, isn't it?
A contra-narrative to your point is that there exist a minority of people who hold very specific and very dogmatic views about gender. These people are pushing their views through the education system (I do not know the extent of it, just that it exists), and seemingly without the consent of parents (i.e., social transitions without informing parents).
While I deeply disagree and detest the use of the term "groomer", the people who are doing so, are doing so in reaction to this dogma. Mind you, this is not about sexual minorities, but about infringing on child-parent relationships. As far as I best know (I can be wrong), the dogma is largely unsubstantiated, and it is not majority accepted in most places around the world (look at the UK for instance). Mind you, this is not about trans or gay acceptance, but the rejection of the biological sex binary, the conflation of sex and gender, and the subversion of parent-teacher relationships in favour of this dogma.
Furthermore, I don't think "groomer" is the modern newspeak. If anything, the dogma that the terrible term "groomer" was meant to counter has the support of countless of mainstream institutions, academic, political, medical, news establishments, etc. Unless you live in a pure conservative bubble of any sorts, the dogma is word, the dogma is the newspeak; for starters, painting actual bigots and people who have compassion for these minorities (but refuse to toe the line behind this dogma) with the same brush by calling them "would-be killers". As such, there is a middle ground to be found, a minority of extremists such as yourself just get in the way.
> These people are pushing their views through the education system (I do not know the extent of it, just that it exists), and seemingly without the consent of parents (i.e., social transitions without informing parents).
That's certainly a narrative one side sells. One does have to wonder though, how it is that this could be possible given the complete lack of power in society held by those individuals. Maybe it's a bit more hyped up than it really is.
The reaction became a chain reaction and now the details don't matter and the "dogma" could be anything. For example, singing the sone "Rainbowland" at an elementary school concert is now considered pushing some dogma of shaming on kids.
What about drag shows is inappropriate, for what ages, and what intervention would you consider reasonable to prevent the harm of children? Plenty of drag shows are designed to be family-friendly, and generally parents can just not bring their kids to things that they don't think are appropriate for them.
In any case, the way you write about self expression (and the Matt Walsh-level unseriousness of describing drag shows as a mockery to trans women) suggest you're not really looking to find a common ground that would allow non-conformity in public.
> Drag shows involve violating social norms as a form of voluntary self expression
This argument is brought to you by the same crowd of incels and other neo-reactionaries who lament the public reaction to their continued efforts to be shockingly edgy
> Such rejection of social norms should not be granted state sanction by hosting such events in public libraries.
Why? What social norms should the state care about? All social norms? What about the social norms of say, redlining communities? Should the state sanction that social norm, because it's a social norm?
> This argument is brought to you by the same crowd of incels and other neo-reactionaries who lament the public reaction to their continued efforts to be shockingly edgy
No, sorry, standard brown immigrant socialization—which is why both DeSantis and Youngkin won on this issue. Look, my family voted for Biden but we would lose our shit if any of our kids got a tattoo. You do not want to fight us in that turf.
> Why? What social norms should the state care about?
If we are talking about what state sanction directed to children, then it should be the social norms parents want to impart to their kids. There id a majority coalition for those norms to include accepting people who are born different. There is not a majority coalition in support of voluntary gender norm breaking in the name of self expression.
>There is not a majority coalition in support of voluntary gender norm breaking in the name of self expression.
As opposed to in the name of what else? your posts are so weird - no one is trying to fight you, so maybe tone it down. Like, you post at me like I'm going into your community and making you do things with your children, it's a bit ridiculous. We are just chatting on a website.
>No, sorry, standard brown immigrant socialization—which is why both DeSantis and Youngkin won on this issue.
To conform their outward presentation to the gender they identify with, which is a fact rooted in biology.
>No, sorry, standard brown immigrant socialization—which is why both DeSantis and Youngkin won on this issue.
> What?
The vast majority of the world does not embrace white American notions of individualistic self expression. We think norm enforcement and conformity are good things that help kids stay on track. Both Youngkin in VA and DeSantis in FL won majorities among Hispanics (a group that usually favors democrats) by focusing on that disconnect between liberal teachers and more conservative families. https://interactives.ap.org/votecast-2021-va;https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/florida-latinos-turned-f...
>To conform their outward presentation to the gender they identify with, which is a fact rooted in biology.
I'm sorry but how is that not also self expression?
>The vast majority of the world does not embrace white American notions of individualistic self expression. We think norm enforcement and conformity are good things that help kids stay on track. Both Youngkin in VA and DeSantis in FL won majorities among Hispanics (a group that usually favors democrats) by focusing on that disconnect between liberal teachers and more conservative families.
This is completely non-responsive to what you offered it as a response to.
> I'm sorry but how is that not also self expression?
Rachel Levine (a trans woman) dresses how she does for the same reason I (a cis man) do. Both our brains have a notion of our own sex, and we conform to society’s gender norms consistent with that internal understanding. It’s completely different than people who dress the way they do, or get tattoos or nose rings to make a statement, set themselves apart as individuals, or thumb their nose at society and it’s rules.
> This is completely non-responsive to what you offered it as a response to.
Not at all. You characterized my position as “incel” above, because the people having all the kids mostly share my viewpoint. It’s the dominant view in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, etc. Liberal Americans are the most pathologically individualistic people in the world.
Dressing yourself is a fundamental aspect of self expression. You completely ignore the question and just talk about gender and sex instead.
> Not at all. You characterized my position as “incel” above, because the people having all the kids mostly share my viewpoint. It’s the dominant view in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, etc. Liberal Americans are the most pathologically individualistic people in the world.
No, I categorized your position as being espoused by incels. Which is true. I don't care what you are.
> It’s the dominant view in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, etc. Liberal Americans are the most pathologically individualistic people in the world.
Well, we are talking about American culture here so I'm not sure what you think your point serves.
So the violation of social norms is harmful to children? Is that your argument? Or is it "voluntary self-expression" that children should be protected from?
> Drag shows involve violating social norms as a form of voluntary self expression. Such rejection of social norms should not be granted state sanction by hosting such events in public libraries.
Mere assertion. Not an argument.
The supposed arguments against drag queen story time are either unserious hand-wringing about supposed harms coming from drag, a form of art older than modern gender roles, or simple threats of violence. Neither are actual arguments, just argument-shaped word noises.
> By contrast, trans people presenting consistent with their biological gender identity isn't a form of voluntary self expression, any more than it is for a cis person to do so.
"Biological gender identity" is ill-defined here, to the extent I honestly don't know what you mean: Do you mean a trans woman, such as Blaire White, dressing and acting like a woman? The phrase "biological gender identity" seems to conflate the modern conception of sex (genitals, chromosomes to some extent, hormones) with the modern conception of gender (roles, presentation, identity) and I'm now confused.
The premise for broad acceptance of trans rights, just as it is for gay rights, is the scientific fact that prenatal endocrine exposure controls sexual orientation and people’s feelings about what gender they are: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97801.... It’s not at all “ill-defined” it’s the scientific premise behind saying that someone is born transgender as opposed to choosing to be transgender.
Accepting the right of people to present themselves consistent with their gender identity has nothing to do with sanctioning breaking gender norms for “art” or other purposes, which is the focus of drag.
I guarantee you that people who support the rights of trans people to be trans people are not doing so contingent on there being some kind of purely biological basis. Most people probably don't even know there is a proposed biological mechanism.
In any case, for those I know who have considered it, most reject the notion that one's acceptance be based on simply having no choice in the matter of their gender identity, sexuality, or other identifiers like skin color or disability, because it suggests that their value is arrived at only reluctantly and it is on them to prove they should be treated like anyone else.
Contrary to your quixotic theory, most nominally liberal or queer-accepting people I've met root their ethics in something like humanism (including for example Christian humanism). A person is
valuable because they are, because they exist. Self-expression is an outgrowth of such a belief. It is part of flourishing and living into the world. It is rarely if ever a worldview of itself.
Similarly, drag is not just art for the sake of art or transgression for the sake of transgression. It has not always been considered transgressive. It has a long tradition in gay spaces as an activity that brings people together and in many ways is used to show that queer people are not alone. It is a way of exploring the boundaries of what it means to be human.
All of it is of a piece because people are not collections of independent atomic functions, they are bodies and minds and live in spaces.
You’re incorrect. Only a quarter of the country even identifies as “liberal.” Support for same sex marriage is over 70%. That is because science in the 1990s established the biological basis of sexual orientation. There was a concerted educational campaign about that in the 2000s, including Lady Gaga’s song “Born that Way” in 2011.
The following statement from the American Psychological Association is quoted prominently in Obergefell:
“Only in more recent years have psychiatrists and others recognized that sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable. See Brief for American Psychological Association et al. as Amici Curiae 7–17.
The Human Rights Campaign defines sexual orientation as: “Sexual Orientation: An inherent or immutable enduring emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to other people.
> In any case, for those I know who have considered it, most reject the notion that one's acceptance be based on simply having no choice in the matter of their gender identity, sexuality, or other identifiers like skin color or disability, because it suggests that their value is arrived at only reluctantly and it is on them to prove they should be treated like anyone else.
Your conclusion only follows if you begin with an individualistic humanist perspective. Most people in the world, and probably a plurality in America, believe in natural order, not individual choice. Virtue is doing what you’re supposed to do; vice is acting contrary to nature’s or God’s plan. Conformity is pro-social; non-conformity is anti-social. Consequently, it’s extremely significant whether that sexual orientation and gender identity are innate. It means God made you that way. And it means that you’re doing what you’re programmed to do, and not deliberately thumbing your nose at society’s conventions.
rayiner is clearly just expressing their own personal distaste for non-passing trans individuals. Is Rayiner checking the genitals of everyone that interacts with children, or is Rayiner just implicitly assuming their sex based upon their gender expression??
You do realize in the subcontinent that transpeople interact with kids all the time in the street? I remember meeting them in my family’s neighborhood in Karachi when I was 7 or 8. You might want to ask your dad about this if you don’t believe me.
And you do realize that Hijra are trans people, who suffer exile and segregation into separate communities? They’re not cisgender men dressing like women to make a statement, like most drag performers.
> But drag shows aren't appropriate for children, right?
I mean, this is either an ill-informed or wildly hateful view. Many drag shows are appropriate for children. Many drag shows are not appropriate for children.
We didn't criminalize TV writers when South Park contained adult humor. In fact, we started showing it all day long.
Conservatives are all for letting parents take their kids to churches where people play with snakes and speak in tongues, and you are actually pearl clutching over a man wearing a dress?
Your whole chain of responses here running a motte and bailey on both sides. On the one hand, you're pretending that the most silly extremists on the right are central examples; while on the other hand, pretending that there exist no extremists on the left.
Responding to an actual poster here isn't that. Also, who are the alleged extremists on the left? You are just revealing your personal disagreement with my positions.
A library less so, imo. Local libraries are community institutions and should be serving their communities. so if the community wants to have a drag night, I don't see the issue? no one is forced to go... I went to boy scouts at my library
> A contra-narrative to your point is that there exist a minority of people who hold very specific and very dogmatic views about gender.
Yes. They're the ones who try to enforce their views at gunpoint.
> These people are pushing their views through the education system (I do not know the extent of it, just that it exists), and seemingly without the consent of parents (i.e., social transitions without informing parents).
You were going so well until the end, there. They don't enable social transition without parental consent, they insist upon genital inspections without parental consent. Looking at the genitals of pre-pubescent children isn't something which would interest me, but they seem quite keen on it. It isn't something I can condone, of course, and not something I can meet them halfway on.
> While I deeply disagree and detest the use of the term "groomer", the people who are doing so, are doing so in reaction to this dogma.
Insisting on access to the genitals of children is grooming behavior. Normalizing the idea that strangers get to poke around without consent is pure grooming. It's why I can't accept it.
>What’s actually going on in Florida is an ideological debate about how to teach kids to think about sexuality and gender identity more generally.
No it's not and that's a completely disingenuous reading of what is actually going on in Florida, which is clearly reactive politics and pearl-grasping over every single culture war issue because their governor is pushing these kinds of policies to gain nat'l political prominence.
>That’s why these middle aged librarians have drag shows for kids. In a way drag shows are a mockery of trans women. That doesn’t matter to them, because for them the overriding principle is self expression.
Lol, I see what's really going on with your post now.
The idea that drag shows mock trans women would surprise a lot of trans women drag performers. It’s not an unheard of position for trans women but it is not the norm.
> There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace.
A big part of the problem, though, is that the extremist voices/views get amplified the loudest, and then get trotted out as a typical example of the "other" side. And thanks to modern communication, you can always find bizarre extremist voices to amplify, so it leads to this narrative that the extremist view is held by vast numbers of people when in reality the percentage of people who hold those views is effectively 0.
You'll also note that mainstream conservatives refused to condemn the Colorado Springs shooting and there has been no change in the rhetoric that encouraged it.
> Even if effectively 0% of people hold extremist views (and I think that is a low number), they also commit outsized acts of violence.
Sure, that's true. But it's always been true and, AFAICT, will always be true. But they are such a tiny number of the total population that they aren't the gatekeepers to progress on big social issues.
There is a tendency today to give people like that the spotlight and to paint everyone the slightest bit on the other side as being of the same ilk. Both of these things are mistakes that give those extremists power they couldn't otherwise get.
Backing up, the context here is the notion of finding some middle or common ground instead of splitting into warring tribes. When we fall into the trap of believing that the other side is full of people that look like the extremists on the other side, it eliminates the possibility of there being a middle ground. The result is a deeper divide, utter despair, a lack of progress on resolving issues, and often more people moving to the extremes.
OTOH, when we recognize that the extremists are in fact extremists (i.e. statistical outliers), it's empowering and hopeful. The distance between your views and those of the vast majority of people on the other side is actually much shorter than the distance between your views and those of their extremists (and even likely shorter than the distance between their views and the views of their extremists). It really is a bell curve; don't buy into the lie that it's an inverted one. There is an abundance of potential allies (including the main ones that have a real shot of deradicalizing some of those extremists), most of those other guys are pretty decent people, and real progress is plausible.
> There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. If a person thinks someone is a born child molester (a "groomer" in the modern Newspeak) and that person thinks the punishment for child molestation is death (as is fashionable in Florida of late) there's no way they can meet that person in the middle.
You can start by pulling back from the obvious rhetorical flourishes. We can acknowledge that social liberals aren’t literally child molesters. At the same time, can you acknowledge that parents in Florida don’t want to put anyone to death, but simply don’t trust what liberal teachers will tell their kids about sexuality?
Like is it possible for you to acknowledge that folks in Florida don’t want to kill sexual minorities, but are also wary of a resurgent sexual revolution that could change the behaviors of kids who aren’t born gay or trans? Like can you seriously deny that there is an emerging trend of sexual identity becoming a form of self expression? https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/health/pronouns-guide-for-par...
It’s instructive to note that society did reach a broadly acceptable middle ground when it came to same-sex marriage. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the science was not well established, radicals wanted to use same sex relationships as a vehicle to deconstruct social norms around gender and marriage more broadly. The shift in the 1990s to refocus on same sex marriage was a deliberate, and in liberal circles controversial change: https://www.salon.com/1998/11/30/cov_30int. And of course that’s the view that won. Obergefell is a paean to traditional marriage that bears little resemblance to how radical academics conceived of sexual orientation either then or now.
>Like is it possible for you to acknowledge that folks in Florida don’t want to kill sexual minorities, but are also wary of a resurgent sexual revolution that could change the behaviors of kids who aren’t born gay or trans? Like can you seriously deny that there is an emerging trend of sexual identity becoming a form of self expression?
Sorry, but what's the problem with sexual identity being a form of self expression? Really struggling with this...
> What we can agree on, however, is that God (or the pre-natal endocrine environment, if you prefer) makes certain people different, and that those people should be able to participate in social institutions like marriage consistent with their biology.
I mean, no, we can't agree on that restrictive phrasing.
Even to the extent we might agree that biological differences might sometimes be socially relevant, there is no special biological privilege to pre-natal effects.
(But mostly this seems to be appealing to the flawed “born different” premise for legal rights.)
Agree on what? I didn't ask you to agree. I asked you to express what the problem with sexual identity being a form of self expression? I literally do not understand what your problem with this is, and knowing what the words mean, how it was not already inherently the case.
> What we can agree on, however, is that God (or the pre-natal endocrine environment, if you prefer) makes certain people different, and that those people should be able to participate in social institutions like marriage consistent with their biology.
Lol okay?
>On the other hand, if you want to force a debate on whether sexuality should be private or public, or whether individuals have social roles and be subject to social norms dictated by their biology, that is an entirely different fight, and it's one you don't want to have.
I don't want to force a debate on anything? I'm not sure why you seem to be incapable of having a conversation with me as opposed to some sort of globally disagreeable boogeyman you've invented on my behalf... I litereally asked you a simple question and rather than answer it, you came back telling me that I'm trying to force something? You put like 10 carts before your horse there...
>...people should be able to participate in social institutions like marriage consistent with their biology...
"Consistent with their biology" is not a precondition that you could find broad agreement on - I don't think you could even find a broad agreement on what it means.
"Florida Republicans Take Aim at Gender-Affirming Care, Drag Shows... [The bill] would treat parents as abusers for allowing medical care to children, and cracks down on parenting harder even than Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s notorious anti-trans child executive order." [1]
"Florida lawmakers approve death penalty in child rapes, sending bill to governor... The Florida Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would allow the death penalty for people who commit sexual batteries on children under age 12, sending the issue to Gov. Ron DeSantis." [2]
"Florida to allow death penalty with 8-4 jury vote instead of unanimously... If the Republican governor signs the bill into law, Florida prosecutors trying capital felony cases would need to convince only two-thirds of the 12-member jury that someone who is convicted deserves the death penalty, rather than a unanimous decision by a jury." [3]
I'm sorry, but we are able to connect dots. DeSantis looks like a fascist to many of us outside looking in. I mean, you couldn't be more transparent about building a legal framework for the state-sponsored execution of LGBTQ people. They're doing it right out in the open, and you're telling us that we should just maybe consider that the parents are concerned about what the liberals are teaching their kids about sex. Well then why are they busy passing laws making it easier to put LGBTQ people to death? You can make sure your kids are taught whatever you want without making the death penalty a 8/4 decision. You can do that without making being trans or providing trans healthcare a capital offence.
This is just like the Dobbs decision. When that landed, you had assured us it was a great thing because it meant the states could finally decide once and for all their local norms based on local politics. Well here we are now and there's a nationwide ban on abortion medicine because of an ideologue federal judge with a religious bent, writing laws from the bench, who decided he didn't like it, so we all have to abide by that. People who live in communities that support these medications will be affected, and we were assured by conservatives on the court (and their supporters) that this situation would not come to pass.
So really, I can't stand any more predications about what restraint the right will use with these laws. Any loophole in there will be used as such. Omissions and vague language aren't an oversight in lawmaking, they are tools which allow for the unequal enforcement of those laws in whatever way the executive (Ron DeSantis) prefers.
We cannot give Florida the benefit of the doubt that they aren't currently laying the edifices for genocide because a man like Ron DeSantis would never aspire to exact that kind of revenge on his enemies. Please. The man oozes petty authoritarianism. He is a walking narcissistic injury, and he's proven (though his Disney debacle) he is willing to use his power and his office to exact personal revenge against political opponents. He's not fooling anyone, and any calls to "please let's all give everyone the benefit of the doubt" doesn't pass the laugh test when he's lowering the threshold for the death penalty.
If parents don't want their kids attending drag shows it's pretty easy for them to simply not take their kids, but that's not what's happening.
What's happening is that those parents are making a fuss about what other parents are deciding to do.
Telling other kids and parents what to do is a consistent position. Like forced identity disclosures in schools. It isn't enough that they would like to get notified, but every kid who asks to be called something different has to be disclosed, or if they don't want their kid playing sports with a trans kid, they would rather kick out the trans kid out than make choices about their own participation.
It's not paranoid to listen to a guy dehumanize and label LGBTQ people as child abusers every chance he gets, and then wonder what he has in mind when he signs a law lowering the threshold for the death penalty the same week they approve the death penalty for child abusers.
Yeah sure, let's put child rapists to death, who could disagree with that? Until all of a sudden what you do in your private or with your friends or with your family is considered "child abuse". Until your lifestyle is considered "child abuse". Until your existence is considered "child abuse". The way fascists work your religion will be considered "child abuse" eventually. You've heard of the 9 most terrifying words, well the 4 most terrifying words in English are "think of the children!" There's no limit to the atrocities people will commit in the name of God and in the name of protecting children.
Do you ever wonder how a society can go from civil to erecting industrial scale human-death factories. It's little steps like these, and people rationalizing them along the way. We can make our children safe from rape and abuse without putting anyone to death. 0 people have to be put to death to keep children safe. And yet, here we are, the state is making it easier to put human beings to death as a matter of law. There should be no higher red flag raised than that.
The American right has spent the last couple of years intentionally and systematicallly conflating LGBTQ people with child sexual assault by starting to call them "groomers". That's who's doing this dot-connecting.
> Everyone's in a gang and god help you if you aren't everyone will have a go at you.
Don't you have to be sufficiently active or prominent on the social media to be attacked?
(Yes, I remember the example of some hapless lady who tweeted "hope I won't get aids" before departing to Africa. I don't know how active she had been on twitter, or how typical the subsequent annihilation of her is.)
Nope - look at the central park bird watcher/dog incident or the SA aids lady as you mention - both of them I guess had a social media presence, but it was along the lines of 50 followers, probably just the people they were friends with in real life.
But also being in a gang doesn't even protect you. Lots of intragang cancellations, if the gang seems you to hold the wrong values for the gang. Eg Lena dunham
Definitely not, if you reply to a sufficiently famous person in a way they dislike there's always a risk they'll (in)directly turn their followers against you.
> There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground
I disagree that this is a new phenomenon per se. There’s always been resistance to some aspects of a middle ground. Consider the case of Anita Bryant, who advocated that not being allowed to discriminate against homosexuals was a violation of her rights as a mother and as a “normal” American. She advocated for homosexuals to be ousted from schools and other environments because in her mind being gay was a corrupting force on children. This was well before the internet.
I also think the concept of cancellation is curious because it’s so fickle and stochastic. On one hand the lady who called the cops on a black man filming her choking her dog still doesn’t have a job 3 years later. On the other hand known sexual harasser comedians are selling out tickets like nothing happened. Hard to square that circle, and I wonder if there are more studies to quantify this phenomenon.
I think unfortunately it has become pervasive enough that you can't avoid experiencing it's toxic influence.
There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground and like the use of stocks in medieval times the concept of cancellation is much more power than any reality.
Twitter show cases this best, it's prison politics in web form. Everyone's in a gang and god help you if you aren't everyone will have a go at you.