Posted by:
Cold-Dodger
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Date: May 07, 2023 03:55AM
https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/largest-study-to-date-confirms-overlap-between-autism-and-gender-diversity/The thing that makes this link interesting is that obviously gender dysphoria is one mode that that the autistic struggle can take. If you feel like you're living outside of the mainstream of humanity, if you feel like you're not real in your own skin, if you feel like people don't see you for who you are even when they're looking at you, and if people are in turn a mystery to you as well, well, maybe you're just autistic. Or maybe your soul and your body are mismatched. You're free to believe that too. To each their own. As long as it makes you happy.
America is a free country, and people of all sorts of persuasions are free to live those beliefs out here with reasonable accommodations that stop at the border of extending the same right to others. I've raised this argument here on the board before. If progressives stopped trying to shove all sorts of gender theory down everybody's throats and instead tried to make an argument for freedom, they'd get a lot farther. It might also keep them from reflexively defending every single stupid move this society makes in the name of diversity, exclusivity, and equity, which often gives reactionary media their daily fodder. Like drag queen story hour, for one example.
You are not being oppressed simply because broader society thinks your beliefs are stupid. Christian fundamentalists need to learn this fact as hard as some others. You are being oppressed when no one will hire you or give you living quarters on equal terms with anyone else; or perhaps when they tell you to come through the back door and sit segregated from the rest of everyone else. You are being oppressed when the risk of bodily harm is manyfold greater than other groups of people and nobody lifts a finger to do anything about it, because that's kinda the point. But weird sideways looks by themselves are not oppression. Those are your fellow citizens betraying their thoughts with their body language that they're not sold on whatever it is you have or have failed to communicate to them. IF have not lifted a finger against you and or even spoken against you, and yet you design shibboleths to weed out the haters to bring down maximum pressure on them, you are the tyrant, not them. So what if they hate you? -- as long as they leave you alone. Leaving people alone who aren't harming you is the key to healing this diseased society. Everybody needs to relearn this. That's real pluralism. That's enlightened liberalism. We don't need to make enemies of people who might on other issues be on our side, as long as we can persuade them into a social compact where trans people get a better deal than that which they have heretofore enjoyed.
You can't legislate against hatred or any other emotion. Trying to legislate against hatred or otherwise silencing people who have moral objections by brute force is the essence of what the enlightenment was trying to get away from. Right-think and wrong think. Orthodoxy and heresy. The government picking sides. Why don't other groups bend the knee and confess the truth as those with power see it? They must be full of hate; we can't trust them. Such thoughts drove the pilgrims to flee old England across the sea to New England. But even in the New World, they kept making these same mistakes over and over again, which is why America was many different colonial governments and not just one. That's what it took to make the peace. It took a slave-holding white Virginian named Thomas Jefferson to make the bold assertion that those in government have no business making laws based on religion or religiously-informed morality. Imperfect man. Imperfect society. But it was a bold leap forward in the right direction, and it laid a pluralistic foundation for the colonies to form a federal union.
In a secular, pluralistic society founded on enlightened principles, the individual is liberated from the need to conform to an established view. Further, the individual is free to associate with whomever they want, speak how they want, believe what they want, dress how they want, and persuade others without needing to fear government retaliation (ideally anyway). If your happiness is tied to the external validation of others agreeing with you -- well... may the strength of your arguments prevail. I genuinely wish people the best. But when you seek to force your view on others just to hear it out of their mouths to consume on your insecurities, you are a bastard.
A lot of the arguments I've heard, since leaving the church as identifying as a progressive, about tolerating the beliefs and lifestyles of other people resemble the original arguments that the Mormons made two centuries ago under the same constitution. Joseph Smith Jr. gave a lot of speeches that sound more American than anybody I hear these days.
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/articles/religious-freedomI think a view of equality that is firmly up the same tree which Joseph Smith was barking is the right path forward for this country. Joe was a womanizer, and he was a swindler -- yes, he was all of those things, and Mormonism is bullshit -- but he connected with people as an orator because he spoke to things they cared about and poured obvious heart into what he was saying. Reminds me another charismatic buffoon people have fallen for in recent years; someone who is, despite his many many flaws, a brilliant orator who connects with his target audience in charismatic ways his critics cannot fathom. Joe and his whole enterprise were quintessentially American, and I mean that in every good way and bad way you can imagine, as long as you picture it accurately.
This might sound like a convoluted way of saying "I hate trans people," but it's really not. I'm indifferent, if I have to spell out my real thoughts. I often find the movement annoying for all the oxygen it sucks out of the room and all the energy it wastes on propositions most people are never going to accept and will silently hate and inevitably rebel against. But I don't hate the trans movement anymore than I hate Mormons or any other religious sect; it's just there and I'm invested, for my own sake if nothing else, in thinking of ways for us to respect each other and live in harmony. I'm annoyed by all the quasi-religious elements of "social justice" in fact, even when I find myself on that side of the argument. I think there are smarter ways to play the game, and I think it's wise to pick your battles. It is annoying that people feel like they have to defend things like drag queen story hour or else they don't love trans people sufficiently enough to be part of the "right side of history." Oh brother, just stop with that shit.
There was a civil war in this country once. It killed two thirds of a million people or close to 10% of the population. There could be another. Before then, there were conflicts that tore Europe apart over matters of conscience and religion in government and morality in legislation that scarred the land for so many generations until few of educated cared to preserve Christian culture anymore. I would love to see a day when conservatism means conserving the separation of church and state which ended those conflicts and when liberalism means the liberation and rights of the individual above anybody's notion of what the collective ought to be forced to believe. That's what those words ought to mean. That's what they've meant in the past. You can't force every last person to think right-thoughts; you can only declare war on them in that regard, and they will resent you equally in turn and fight you if they can, which is what's happening. If they can't fight, they will run and form separate societies apart from yours, which is how America was born in the first place.
I'm of the opinion that there is fight brewing between the richest Americans and a system they have stolen from us and rigged against us and everyone else, and our energy is better spent on that perspective, but that's just my opinion. Martin Luther King made some brilliant speeches before his death about how if a man doesn't have a job or an income, he's not really free. Maybe "social justice" is best piggy-backed on an argument for material justice or class justice that includes everyone. These are just thoughts. I would love to an America where people have material security and social freedom, but at the very least I'd love to see an America that doesn't fracture at the pluralistic seams because Americans on all sides forgot how to compromise.
"Eplurubis Unum" was our national motto for many years before theists imposed the other one.