The Democrats Need an Honest Conversation on Gender Identity

[Ingenieur]

An interesting article in The Atlantic today, and a sign the tide might be turning in the USA.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/democrats-dishonest-gender-conversation-2024-election/680604/

Most voters think that biological sex is real, and that it matters in law and policy. Instructing them to believe otherwise, and not to ask any questions, is a doomed strategy. By shedding their most extreme positions, the Democrats will be better placed to defend transgender Americans who want to live their lives in peace.

Baby steps

I'm gonna be honest with you here.

If you look at someone like Lia Thomas, who happens to be on Putin's payroll but you don't know this, and your response is not, "of course you shouldn't be competing in women's swimming events, FFS!" but, "we'll pass legislation to stop people from objecting to you competing in women's swimming events" you deserve to lose the election whether you realise you were being manipulated or not.

Yes I imagine you and others will find that is your trajectory ahead.

When the righteousness has evaporated and you are left just trying to claim the obvious lunacy wasn't as bad as everyone is saying, it is going to get hard to justify fast.

'Networked ocean' I thought it was a 'constellation'. Well a lot of sewage eventually ends up entirely out to sea.

This is 100% true. I am in a similar field an very aware.

Nevertheless, the Democrats could easily have defanged Trump's strategy and did not. Why would they not?

If you are suggesting (and frankly I feel like I'm doing your work here to turn your vague ominous pronouncements into a coherent arguments) that the Democrats did not do this because the hidden machinations of bad actors have driven them into an untenable position from which they cannot back down I would not disagree.

However that undermines the suggestion that this is not a "real" issue but a culture war boogey that should not have influenced voting, because regardless of how it became the Democrats' position, once it was the Democrats position it became a real threat - not just that, an actualised attack - on the social, political and legal existence of women's rights, opportunities and protections, indeed on the social, political and legal existence of women themselves as a coherent and meaningful demographic group.

So again, why did the Democrats not defang this line of attack if it was not in fact a significant differentiator for them?

(Oh BTW I consider myself generally "woke" well before that was a soundbite label. I align with many of those causes. I just don't believe, in a society where everyday sexism is encoded into almost everything, body sex is insignificant in which challenges we as individuals face and in which opportunities we get, and I do not accept the attempt to delegitimise sex based perspectives, political voices and protections).

I saw a tweet ages ago that put it thusly-
‘If someone is accusing you of stoking the ‘culture war’, they’re probably hiding the poker behind their back, waiting to hit you with it.’

Do they though? Source?

I'm going to return the favour 🙄

And the trained Left goons say "Nazi!" "Bigot".

How did the 'bad actors' know how they were going to respond? And how the electorate would respond to that!

I mean it's fascinating that you think like this but back in the real world the Democrats STILL need an honest conversation on gender identity.

People don't want it whoever has worked their evil to use it to destroy women's rights.

This. The end.

Not true! 'Woke' just so happens to be a very handy short form for those post modernistic theories( originating from the acdemy) that have come to radicalise the cultral and social realm and trample over women's rights and protections.

Those three theories are : Intersectionalism.....which has now just morphed into victim and oppressor hierarchies; Queer Theory...from where Gender Identity theory emerges; and Critical Race Theory....with its 'white privilege'; Defund the Police and 'Diversity Equity and Inclusion' policies.

Even if most people are not aware precisely from where these movements have emerged, they can certainly recognise them in practice and effect.

The Progressive Left are also goons - but goons that shout " Bigot" and "Fascist" at people, and who have now also adopted a totally brain dead anti Israel position as one of their latest rallying cries. I saw a clip a couple of weeks ago of a woman in New York tearing down the Greek Flags that decorated a Greek Deli - shouting " Baby killers" and " Genocide" at the occupants of the shop. She couldn't even tell the difference between a Greeek and an Israeli flag.

"tearing down the Greek Flags that decorated a Greek Deli - shouting " Baby killers" and " Genocide" at the occupants of the shop. She couldn't even tell the difference between a Greeek and an Israeli flag."

Even nuttier is that she still posted it on line! I can't believe how stupid this world is.

And your answer is not an answer, it's just handwaving at a vague shape behind a curtain.
😂
Brilliant. I've been trying to think how to phrase it, but this is perfect!

Whether they believed it or not, they acted and legislated as if they did - examples are title IX, Dylan Mulvany at the White House etc.

So from the perspective of women it doesn't matter what they really believed, or if they came to believe it on their own or were helped into it by bad actors. What matters is their actions.

It is not Russian or Chinese bots that have imprisoned these men in women's jails......and it was Kamala Harris that attempted to make it easier for these men to access " Gender Affirming Care". The American public are not totally unaware of this stuff.

This.

Whether the Democrats were manipulated into it or not, they've bloody gone and done it. It's done. It's real.

And because it's real, it's not bloody insignificant.

Men are competing in women's sports.

They are being put in women's prisons.

Toilets fucking everywhere, are becoming mixed sex. London is stiff with the fuckers.

Lesbian only bars have virtually disappeared.

The bloody La Leche League allow cross dressing fetishists into the women only breastfeeding support groups, ffs.

You can only think these things are insignificant if you truly don't give a flying fuck about women.

The entire fucking ideology might have been started by Russia/China in order to sew division. I have no doubt it's a priority for all sorts of people.

But the Democrats and the Labour Party, for reasons best known only to themselves, embraced it with both fucking hands.

They are either sexist twats for believing in the ideology, or stupid, sexist, twats, for allowing themselves to be manipulated into it.

Either way, we're living under it.

And the other thing is, what does it say about the Republicans and the Conservative party that they haven't been stupid enough to get manipulated into it?

It's looking like another reason to vote for them!

What Datun said.

EyeofOrion

I don't think anyone doubts that people could be manipulated into certain beliefs or behaviour. Weapons of mass destruction? Covid masks?

All sorts.

But THIS?

Pretending that sex doesn't matter, transvestites are the most oppressed people on the planet, and there is something wrong with gender non conforming children.

If people are really ready to buy into all this, then they should not be running a country.

Pretending that sex doesn't matter, transvestites are the most oppressed people on the planet, and there is something wrong with gender non conforming children.

If people are really ready to buy into all this, then they should not be running a country.

But it is something that the Republicans have latched onto. I don't think the man who 'grabs women by the pussy' gives a damn about women or children's rights.

It doesn't matter if they've 'latched onto it'. They're the ones saying they are going to stop it.

It's become a game of: who's sane wins.

It's going to be fascinating to see if/ how long it takes the left to extricate themselves from the insanity.

I don't think either the Republicans or the Democrats give a shit about women's rights.

But the Democrats pretend to give a shit about women's rights whilst throwing us under a bus on gender issues and failing to actually do anything to secure abortion rights for America women, whereas the Republicans don't really pretend to care about women, they will just do whatever they think is popular with voters. Which is bad news for women's reproductive rights if they think their core voters are anti abortion, but good news for gender critical feminists on the gender identity front if the Republicans think their voters are against it.

Wow… just popped back on to see the last few pages of posts and feel like Alice down the rabbit hole. 🤯

Think I’ll go have have a cuppa and find some banal and benign daytime tv to reset my brain.

Surely we're now past the point that its unfair to hold the Democrats to account for losing the election (at least partly because they'd adopted genderism) because Trump is awful?

Letting the Democrats off the hook won't do them, or the rest of us, any favours.

The culture wars began BEFORE Trump.

They started BEFORE Brexit.

They are part of the reason why both occurred. It's just that one side wasn't paying attention enough to even see the problem.

The problem was a crack in society which had ALREADY resulted in there almost being two Americas and two UKs.

It's largely about wider socio-economic issues. The widening gap in the last ten years, and then magnified by COVID has only got bigger.

So when Harris, as VP, gave Dylan Mulvaney a "My Speshull Certificate For Doing Girly-Girl Play-Acting for 100 Days", it was a cackling Putin who forced her to sign it? Or was it Putin's evil fluffy white cat who made ordinary people go "what the actual fuck"?

By the way, I have a Nokia moron-phone and a 20 year old CRT telly. Perhaps the Chinese bots are doing a culture war on me via the letters page of Horse & Hound magazine?

😂 No, you’re too much trouble to be worth the bother.

The card Harris sent to Mulvaney after a year:

https://x.com/BelissaCohen/status/1815658300522004643