"It's a moral panic"

[bonfireoftheverities]

What do you say when your gender critical concerns are handwaved away with this?

I might manage a really good eye roll.

I'd ask them to explain why they think that. Ask them what they think the issues are and why they think they're trivial.

Would it be wrong to tear their waving hand from their wrist and slap them around the face with it, obviously while being kind?

What's wrong with a panic based on moral concerns?

I struggle with this one because I guess how does one define a moral panics exactly? In my opinion their fear of a trans genocide is a moral panic to me. But I don’t say that because I know to them it’s very real and I would rather chip away at other concerns first before dismissing a mortal fear like that.

Looked it up: a moral panic is 'an instance of public anxiety or alarm in response to a problem regarded as threatening the moral standards of society.'

But moral standards aren't always a bad thing, are they? It's not just people being prudish. It's immoral to steal, lie, murder etc. If there was a craze for sudden random violence, there'd be an excusable 'moral panic' about that.

Response: tell that to the US student raped by a trans women in her school female bathroom.

I would ask them to expand on why they think this and then discuss point by point.

I find the ‘moral panic’ argument tends to lack cohesiveness if they have to explain it. It shows of they are simply repeating something they read said by a self-identifying social media influencer and not something they have any depth of understanding. They think it is another shaming phrase.

There has never been a society at scale in all of human history that denies the reality of biological sex and that deliberately medically stunts puberty in it's children.
This is such a profound departure from commonly known reality and so far reaching across society that it requires that everyone gets a voice in the discussion on whether it's worth it, and all the difficulties it causes when trying to implement it are acknowledged honestly and openly.

@JanesLittleGirl
" Would it be wrong to tear their waving hand from their wrist and slap them around the face with it, obviously while being kind? "

Some would say that's a very bad and wrong thing to do, some would even say it's a very bad and wrong thing to even think about doing.
I couldn't possibly comment.
Btw, did you see, ' Inside Number 9 ' last night?

I agree. Two years ago I had a huge argument that ended with a friend blocking me on all social media and my phone number because I assumed my child female at birth you know… because she is a female. 🫠 Could not believe that was a real argument. Literally still getting my vag sewn up and she’s blewing up my husband’s phone because she had a pink hat and blanket for the pictures.

assigned*

When deeply immoral things are being inflicted, it's a duty for the moral to stanf against it.

And if something is urgent then we do need to panic.

Eg. the genital mutilation of children and vulnerable adults is immoral and we urgently need to stop it to limit the number of humans damaged.

*stand.

Why is there no edit button?

I think it's a stupid thing to say.

Where the first people to question slavery engaged in 'a moral panic?'

Is being concerned about paedophilia a 'moral panic'?

How is being concerned about the transitioning of children, locking up rapists in women's prisons and watching women lose their medals in sports a case of 'moral panic'?

Since the 60s, there has been a consistent push by what we now call the metropolitan elite to characterise all constraints on behaviour and sexuality as prudish.

Not everything about this push was wrong - there were massive hypocrisies and harms in the past: unmarried mothers forced to give up their babies while rich men could do whatever they wanted, etc. But the characterisation of all constraints as ridiculous, intellectually indefensible, and petty bourgeois has led us to the pornsick society we have now. It also enabled PIE in the 70s, and the campaign to normalise "minor attraction" today.

I don't believe in some grand conspiracy of pornographers and paedophiles, funded by George Soros - that's ridiculous, QAnon-level stuff. It's not a secret conspiracy: it's millions of men, thinking with their dicks.

It's 'no debate' in a different coat.

Then I'd ask them to explain what a moral panic actually is, and share examples of them (and expect them to understand what they are talking about: you often find at this point it's just a shut down phrase they learned from someone else and have no idea.)

And then ask them to explain how women wanting equality and to retain child safeguarding matches with the recognised characteristics of the term.

I do the name with 'Nazi' and with 'genocide'. This is a political movement that loves appropriating and throwing manipulative words around like confetti. If your listener has the capacity for critical thought they should fairly quickly realise they have been had.

(Incidentally if you ask women who want equality to define the words they use within the actual context and set criteria for those terms, they can. Several come to mind. It's why they are deleted on sight to avoid anyone having their brain accidentally engaged.)

Declaring “moral panic” is a way of shutting down the conversation. I take from that that person declaring it is either unwilling to or incapable of discussing the topic further and I would to respect that and change the subject entirely unless the person declaring “moral panic” is in a position of responsibility, authority or influence in which case I would press them why they think it acceptable to dismiss anyone’s concerns without considering them at all.

Like a pp moral panic isn’t an accusation I would level at proponents of the belief that a genocide of people who believe they have a soul which is the opposite sex to their body is actually happening. I don’t want to shut them down, I want to explore why they believe what they believe if they are willing.

Surely the "moral panic" comes from the
"You have to immediately affirm that everyone is who they say they are otherwise you're bigots" argument.
GC people are pretty much the "let's stay calm now" people.

If we allow males into places where females are vulnerable because we accept, on their say so alone, that they are really women, then we allow all males into such places because we can't tell the difference between such males.

We know that over 97% of convicted sex offenders are male. We know that the % of males identifying as women and who are incarcerated for sex crimes, is much higher than could be statistically predicted (x5, I think).

So, knowing those facts, how and why is it unreasonable for women to object to being around males when we don't wish to be?

Maybe it is a moral panic. Maybe we need to have a moral panic about this.

Wrong way round - the 'terf' fits the folk devil/scapegoat type better, anxiety around any dissent from full acceptance of the primacy of synthetic sex identities similarly better fits the concept of a 'moral panic' as it was originally described

A moral panic revolves around a potential (and/or unsubstantiated) threat.

Women's rights can be reclaimed, but teenage girls amputated breasts and teenage boys amputated testicles can't be reclaimed.

So the question is "is it a moral panic when children are having healthy body parts removed due to misdiagnosis and regret those decisions months or years afterwards?".

Yes, the moral panic is that children will kill themselves if they aren't instantly socially and medically transitioned.

There is no substantiated evidence to back that up.

I should've put these in the OP. Mostly US-centric, granted, but some of these arguments have been an unwelcome import.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/opinion/america-is-being-consumed-by-a-moral-panic-over-trans-people.html (archived in the usual places)

https://lithub.com/moral-panics-never-go-out-of-style-on-the-corrosive-effects-of-the-culture-wars/

https://www.damemagazine.com/2023/01/12/the-moral-panic-trans-backlash/

https://publicseminar.org/essays/anti-trans-bills-are-driving-a-new-moral-panic/

I always wonder what they really are saying - are they suggesting it's only ok to worry about immoral or amoral things? THat morality of any kind is a farce?

What is crazy to me is that of course these people never actually think that way, they are often extremely authoritarian about moral issues, far more than I am in many cases. They are just in denial about it, it seems.