Guest post: Feel the vibes, maaaaan
Originally a comment by Mark on Defy the reality.
Just as many conservatives dislike something solely because it is popular amongst the Left, there are those on the left who like something solely because the right dislike it. I believe the trans-rights movement is, in large part, a byproduct of such thinking.
I am someone who has loathed right wing, religiously driven thinking for most of my life, but just because my ideological opponents hold a position on an issue, it does not follow that I must have the 180 degree opinion on it. We all know the saying about broken clocks.
The “socialist” aspect of trans rights is, for many of them, simply because they know the right hates it. It’s just as shallow, knee jerk, thoughtless a reaction as when average right wingers hate electric vehicles, despite not being in the oil business – they hate electric cars because the “vibe” of caring about the environment and thinking beyond the end of your nose strikes them as “lefty”. Same with trans rights – the Left like it because it’s all about, allegedly, acceptance, sexual minority protection and because it makes the right wingers really mad, and the “vibe” it gives off is all about rebelling against “normies” and peace and love and supporting people
The fact that the trans movement is completely illogical, goes against commonly accepted definitions and ignores basic genetics matters not. The viiiibbbbeeeess man, its all about those feel good socialist vibes! It feeeeeeeels Left wing, it feeeeeeeels rebellious, it feeeeeeeeels so good to annoy the right.
You can’t argue with them on logic. They didn’t arrive at their conclusion by using logic.
I don’t see the trans “movement” as a leftist one. I think it rather has more in common with right wing authoritarian ideals. Like most things trans, it “identifies” as something it’s not. The trans cult has piggybacked on the legitimately leftist LGB rights movement, even though trans is not a sexual orientation (LGB rights being opposed largely by religious ideologies). I think this is where the confusion comes in. Since no trans people or trans rights activists have been able to define what trans rights are, we can see that it’s not a *rights* issue at all. In sports for instance, do men who “identify as” women have the *right* to compete against women? No, but females do have the right to have their own competitions absent of males. It’s more about material reality, and forcing people to deny material reality (just as religion does) also denies people the right to free thought. In my view the whole trans issue has been over-politicized, just as the trans cult intended. It only “identifies” as partisan.
But it’s not even a broken clock issue. You simply looked at an unbroken clock. If you came to your view on gender without consulting religious traditionalists, should you change it just because they say something similar?
This is so spot on; I’ve been complaining about some of the atheist groups who will oppose anything the religious say, regardless of the merits. I had friends in school who were horrified anytime I would agree with Dubya or Reagan, and it wasn’t often I did, but I am not prepared to check my brain at the door of leftist thought.
And, of course, as twiliter says, the hijacking of a legitimate rights movement helped. It’s so easy to think “okay, this doesn’t seem right to me, but there were once a lot of people who were suspicious of gay people, and look how wrong they were. There were once a lot of people who were suspicious of people of color, and look how wrong they were?.
Just because one issue calling itself ‘rights’ turned out to be legitimate, it does not follow that all will. And the left knows this, because they don’t buy into the MRAs. But on this issue, they are so afraid of what history will say about them, they can’t think rationally about it.
To add to my last post: Especially since rational thinking has been dubbed ‘western colonialist oppression’.
I don’t know if my experience is typical, but my first real awareness of the trans rights movement came in the context of allowing high school kids to use the bathroom of their choice. If that was a deliberate strategy, it was a cunning move–anyone who’s been through adolescence, and especially in a US high school, knows how fraught it can be, and how scary a high school bathroom can get. And so it seems cruel to keep a handful of kids the right to use the bathroom; surely it can’t hurt to let them in, especially since the only way to keep them out is to “examine their genitals”?
From the start, that’s been the modus operendi of the trans rights movement: paint them as a vulnerable minority, focus on embarrassing and often dangerous situations, and, when cornered, accuse your opponent of being weirdly obsessed with genitals, all of which has the effect of appealing to the natural tendency of the western liberal to want to be kind, especially to the “underprivileged”, and to anyone the right seems to hate. It’s all so dismally effective, especially, as Twiliter notes, piggybacking on the fight for LGB rights.
While that is true, there is also a mini-industry of Pseudo-Leftist, Pick-Me female writers who spend vast amounts of energy demonising all feminist writers even tepidly critical of gender self-identification and sex work. Their writings are then enthusiastically promoted by the Wokebro Leftists at outlets like Novara Media and Verso Books.
Check out this rant by the power-worshipper Sophie Lewis disgracing the pages of “The Nation” magazine, once the leading journal of United States leftism.
https://archive.is/Zq1wX
Lewis calls GC feminists supporters of “fascistic “family values””, ” femmephobic”, “self-styled anti-woke left-liberal single-issue cissexists” , ” feminism’s Brexiteers”, anti-egalitarians, anti-Black racists, allies of the Trump Administration, “well-spoken eugenicists”, “the enemies of human liberation” and ” trans-annihilationists”.
I’m surprised Lewis the Transmaiden didn’t finish with “ass-kickers, shit-kickers, and Methodists”.
She sounds like Greta Christina.
WaM @ 5 – “keep a handful of kids” should be “deny a handful of kids”?
Trans ideology isn’t genuinely left-wing, of course, but the reality is that the people who embrace it and punish refuseniks are all on the left. No one on the right would touch it with a bargepole.
Mark, great points.
Twiliter, you’re correct – the trans movement is in fact deeply regressive and conservative at heart – but it identifies as progressive and is therefore perceived as leftist.
Ophelia,
Yes, thanks!