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There are so many negative feedback loops operating at once and working against critics of gender ideology.
Just to name a few:
Just to name a few:
- Most progressive and mainstream outlets refuse to publish anything critical of gender ideology. To publish, critics have to go to right-leaning outlets (risking guilt by association) or self-publish or go to small/niche outlets (unreliable source, no one vetted this, etc.).
- Culture within trans activist circles of not engaging primary sources ("block and stay safe," trigger warnings, do yourself a favor and don't read this) and then taking distorted secondhand representations of what women wrote as what they actually wrote.
See how Rowling's letter has been spun out of all contact with what she actually wrote—to the point that it's a widespread view among trans activists that she hates trans people, doesn't want trans people to exist, and poses a threat to "trans" kids: https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/1287367457213161473
- When trans activists and people who've been told repeatedly how evil TERFs are actually read what "TERFs" write, they often think they're not really TERFs because they've been told what TERFs believe is so horrible and what they read doesn't fit that image...
- Or trans activists argue that the writer must be "cloaking" or misrepresenting their real views to trick clueless people into supporting a dangerous cause. TERFs sounding reasonable isn't TERFs being reasonable—it's just part of the deception.
- Severe social and economic sanctions for attaching your name to critiques of gender ideology means lots of people use anonymous accounts (see: mine), which are then discredited as fake accounts or opinions too toxic for anyone to claim. https://twitter.com/iamGrushenka/status/1297962700077588480
- And there's orthodox privilege at work: “If you believe there's nothing true that you can't say, then anyone who gets in trouble for something they say must deserve it.”
http://paulgraham.com/orth.html
http://paulgraham.com/orth.html
Please add more—I've got half a brain this morning after a sleepless night of thunderstorms.
How can we break these cycles? One-on-one, face-to-face conversation has worked the best for me. And one person at a time adds up—but slowly. What else?
How can we break these cycles? One-on-one, face-to-face conversation has worked the best for me. And one person at a time adds up—but slowly. What else?
There's also the fact that trans activist claims & demands are so unreasonable that it's hard for ordinary people to take them seriously and literally. So "TERFs" stating reasonable facts like "sex exists & matters" seems so obvious it can't possibly be the heart of dispute.
