We talk a lot about clout on the left (amassed social capital) which tends to function purely by volume of capital, but we focus a lot less on prestige which can function without significant clout.

As in some opinions has prestige and others do not, and those with less prestige are repeated less than those with more.

And prestige does not perfectly map to validity or utility. Some things have low prestige and quality ("cops are good") and some have both ("prison is bad")

But there's other opinions that are low prestige but maybe have many people who agree with them. But they don't talk about them because they're contentious or don't grant them prestige in broad discourse.

Sometimes "prestige" in the sense I'm using it can also be stated as "in vogue." The popular opinions that are less contentious and can lead to amassing clout.

A prestigious opinion in queer spaces is "we should disallow cis men." It sounds good on paper. It's self-defense and self-determination. It removes harm.

A less prestigious one is "banning cis-men inadvertently harms trans/NB/agender people and doesn't really target partriachy"

The latter seems to have a non-negligible number of people who agree with it. Yet it's taken less seriously.

There are many cases of similar prestige-heavy opinions dominating discourse. In part because The Left isn't a monolith.

I would like to see more open engagement with less prestigious opinions but that also requires more charitable reading of what people say. More nuance. Less dogma.

Twitter and social media at large are bad at that.

But I can dream.