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

It's not dismissive to say 'its not bots' when you lay out a long argument to explain why you think it's not boys and why you think the argument that it's bots is wrong.

That it's proving a counter argument with reasoning.

If it was dismissive there wouldn't be consideration of the point with counter arguments with reasoning.

'Dismissive' implies a lack of thinking by those who do not agree with you.

I grow tired of this whole thing about 'you are being manipulated' or 'you aren't considering' when I've spent many years looking at the subject and having to have good reasoning skills only to be actual be dismissed with four word mantras. I've also spent considerable time thinking about the effect of russian bots on democracy on a wider scale and there are two elements to this.

The first is where this does occur it is down in areas where democratic parties have failed to properly engage with a concerned public on that issue and have been (irony alert) dismissive of these concerns. This has opened up certain security issues because of a failure by western politicians to do their fucking job properly.

The second is that the involvement of bots has also been over blow to a huge degree. These issues only gain traction because they are things that people care about. And in calling people bots or influenced by bots what you do is repeat the mistake of point one and amplify it and then still fail to address the entire core issue because it gives this weird justification to be dismissive of the concern fueling the entire thing.

My point being: start listening to why people are upset. The public rarely gets upset for no reason. There will always be a core issue at the heart of this which needs dealing with and has some kind of genuine fair grievance. Explanations and solutions of the core issue may differ from how people voice these concerns but the foundation of these concerns are very much legitimate.

Why? Because if they didnt have some sort of foundation they wouldn't gain the traction they have and we wouldn't have any court cases or entire independent reviews of areas of child healthcare here to show for it, now would we?

Yes. They need someone with a public platform and credibility to break the topic and allow the conversation to start, and then they need to listen.

But honestly, do not underestimate just how deeply this - the best term I can find is religious identity - goes. The US progressives/social leftists have taken this up as a cause that is utterly emblematic of who they are as people. The howls of betrayal that JKR faced when people who assumed she'd think the same as they do on this assume will be nothing compared to what the Dems will face.

That is the problem. I can immediately think of Kara Dansky as the grass roots spokeswoman, but I can't think of a single person in the top echelon of the Democrats who has even given a hint that they understand. But finding such a person is essential, and I think it ought to be a woman - a self-confessed feminist, ideally.

From what I can gather from what Anthony Scaramucci has said on the Rest is Politics US there are already murmurings of dissent within the Democratic Party. Whether this will manifest itself into a conversation remains to be seen.

to my mind the best solution is there needs to be a new Party in the US that makes the current Democrats redundant. A Social Democratic party that takes them back to their grass-roots. Their working-class roots.

And of course, they really really really need to stop taking their core voters for granted. 12 million women didn't vote? and we are not yet hearing the Democrat party issue forth it's death screams. Quite bizarre, really.

This is a really good point.

Why?

Because Labour are putting up taxes (yes this includes taxes on businesses) as part of all this - to 'save the NHS'.

Yet when people deal with the NHS they are seeing and hearing the huge effort - and expense - thats being put into prioritising 'woo speak' and 'woo training', rather than tackling waiting lists and poor standards of care.

So they feel that they aren't getting value for money, for all the extra costs they are inoccuring and they feel the focus on whats important is wrong. They are struggling with a high cost of living and this is what their money is being spent on by government.

Look at where Trump has just posted Musk. His DOGE department (which isn't a department). Its this sentiment and feeling.

So fixing the economy, has to also look, feel and appear like its both working economically in practical terms AND is getting good value for money in the process.

The priority is the economy, but this is also accompanied in parallel with a conscious of the idea of 'value for money'.

I regularly socialise in two particular areas. Both are affluent. One I would describe as more 'woke' than the other. The less woke one is much more concerned about 'value for money' as part of its social thinking and conscious. The more woke one is much more about how you present to the world and social justice as a priority. Its a really interesting very small nuance and one thats difficult to spot but is very much there.

Even the term that gets used here a fair amount - 'Luxury Beliefs' shows this sentiment and how interwoven the issues is with the perception of the economy and cultural values.

Labour ignore this dynamic at their peril.

The US and the idea of social democracy.

There in lies your problem. Being unaware of the mere existance of Europe and how socialism in Europe has existed for decades without everyone turning into raving commies, means that the US maintains this real fear of the very word socialism or socialist ideas.

Its part of the reason the Democrats have stayed away from these type of idea to begin with - because they are scared to death of losing their more affluent middle class base. Thats why they turned to cultural capital in the first place as something of a fudge to maintain the coalition of the civil rights and the middle class.

There does seem to be murmurings. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the coming term.

well, yes they can't call it a social democratic party, but that's more of what it needs to be.

I'm well aware that they think of Obama as practically a communist

It needs to be pitched as a 'New Deal'.

But the New Deal was only possible after a massive economic crash and a period of utter destitution for a huge number of people.

Trump may yet spark that with some of his proposals relating to tariffs.

The reforming of answers to answer each specific 'derailment' is something I find useful. Not just reading other's posts, who I read with interest because there is usually something new there that is thought provoking. Even it if it just a reminder in a timely manner and I already have read similar posts from them previously.

I find it useful because I re-evaluate my stance when I rewrite posts. Often, I will even go and recheck things to refresh my memory and seek new updated information.

The posts by that poster are probably not classic derails, agreed. However, and we have seen this very recently on other threads, they perhaps have a tendency to make opinion statements that I think some of us read as being stated as fact. And then some of us think, ok, let's see this laid out so we can work out whether it will shape our understanding. So, we ask for clarity, again thinking it is a statement that is supported by much stronger information than it is. Then it all just cycles around and around and it may resemble a 'derail' when it could be argued to be relevant.

Your 'no shit Sherlock' statement was one I said to myself in my brief waking period this morning. I was slower to pick up the particular pattern (it is not just one poster, this is not in any way a 'troll hunting' post) this time because I was distracted by work so much.

Of course, it is actually a worthy discussion to have about media manipulation. Not from the direction of absolving the DP of their weak strategies in this issue as was posited. But from the direction of their seeming failure to have even recognised it is an issue because of the reasons we are discussing on this thread and whether there is any credibility to whether the DP dismissed the issues because they believed it has been a 'culture war' created by bots and other theories. And other reasonable discussion points.

I was expecting some great insight with some evidence of real depth of thinking coming from understanding the media manipulation issue and from having a depth of understanding on how this issue has become this important issue that no one risks discussing in some political parties. And we have got some great insights now. Other posters have articulated the issues very well because they have taken the time to write paragraphs that pull it all together (even if those paragraphs are not in one post).

Of course, it is not new information to many of us who have had the discussions before, but it is useful because it has been shaped for this specific purpose.

And it is useful for the new readers to see the answers from various angles but that tend to align as always.

Now, that would be interesting. Surely one must be willing to come forward. We could but hope.

The big beast Democrat it ought to be, but won't be, is Kamala Harris herself.
Or Michelle Obama.
I won't hold my breath!

Yes to be clear I was making a general point about FWR, as I stated in my post. Although thinking about it, when someone keeps making the same point over and over again without constructively engaging with counterarguments then we begin to edge closer to derailment, especially if they add a lot of patronising horseshit like the cherry on top. 'Oh you wimmin just don't get it, do you? You don't understannnnd things like x / y /z' etc.

Yes. The fuckwittery becomes clear quite quickly.

That’s a fascinating article. I particularly liked her point that:

“A great deal of the worldview to which the Democratic Party is now beholden is built on a foundation that is functionally only language-deep….It is the prerogative of some college-educated Democrats to go through life with their language and thought bounded by these suppositions. But for most Americans, reality does not conform to language. In fact, it’s the other way around.”

This aptly describes the postmodernist attitudes (and the failure to accept material reality) at the heart of a lot of Leftwing politics today.

The conversation has started:

www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/11/14/kamala-harris-silence-trans-issues-election-democrats/

archive.ph/iXdDn

@FlirtsWithRhinos I would like to say as a relatively new 'lurker' to this board how valuable and useful these detailed threads are to me. Although I have long had GC views I have had very few opportunities to explore or debate them. My working life meant I really had to keep much of it under wraps, so I have benefited hugely from reading the issues and the arguments played out. There is no where quite like this, and I stumbled over it almost by accident when googling info on the ERCC debacle a few months ago. So thank you from me and I hope to become more engaged in the debate as my knowledge and confidence in this area grows.

FlirtsWithRhinos I'd like to second that as a longtime FWR stalwart - when I first saw this discussed on MN I'd been battling with it myself, wondering if I was the only person feeling like it didn't add up and wanting to be able to talk about it. Seeing it discussed is so helpful. That's one reason I do often reply to TRA arguments however pre-programmed-seeming they may be.

Re the conversation for the Democrats, I don't really believe there's no senior Democrat who has serious doubts about it all and I think it's likely there are some who have arrived at a GC position, even if maybe they started off parroting TWAW. The Democrat promoting of clearly dodgy gender activists, affirmation model and ruination of women's sports was pushing it far enough for some rational people to have surely gone "Hang on a minute...". I think Hillary is one, though not in the corridors of Democrat power as such.

I think we've referred to it on here as performance politics and views rather than real world politics before.

Don’t get too excited about the Dems coming to their senses any time soon. Although I see AOC removed her pronouns from her bio today! Most are 100pc true believers, and would rather the whole party implode rather than reverse position on the issue.

Seth Moulton is one of two Dem congressmen who broke with the party orthodoxy last week, to say boys shouldn’t be in girls’ sport (after shamefully voting against girls at every possible opportunity). And he’s pretty much been excommunicated

As for the complete eradication of women’s sex-based rights being called a ‘single policy’? No words.

I feel like the TRA message has shifted. Originally it was “most marginalised” and “be kind”.

Now, it’s “such a tiny number” combined with “have you ever known/talked to a trans person”? The latter is combined with the presumption that no one would actually notice or care about men in women’s spaces if these concerns hadn’t been “amplified” by bots or the right-wing or both.

It’s just so laughably wrong, and it won’t work

I know from first hand experience that it's easy to be misunderstood in these conversations. So I'll take this at face value:

Women are at the heart of this movement, and once the trollfarms and bots abandon the cause - and some already have now Trump is elected - it will be only women left.

Maybe yes,. But I also think there will be lots of men standing up for safety and fairness as well, but I do see your point.

Relying on alorithmic results isn’t always the best - the algorithm will spin you further and further down into a quite narrow, tailored band of results. I’m sure you know this, though.

Agreed. It's one of the reasons I have stopped looking through X to provide me with up to date info and that I prefer the delay of finding it surfacing here on MN. I'm sure I'll go back on X again at some point and do my bit to "fight on the front line".

However, things are changing. It's not just the algorithm. People really are talking differently about this IRL. The Overton window has shifted. Bots and algorithms have a role, yes. But when common sense eventually begins to surface, they won't stand a chance at pushing it back in the box.

People eventually realised that the sun didn't revolve around the earth (no matter what the Christians said at Galileo's trial), that the earth was a globe (no matter the scepticism during Columbus' days of exploring) and that witches were actually just women (and some men) that people wanted moved out of the way.

I have no doubt that many people will always believe that everyone has a gender identity, just as many people believe that god/Allah exists. However, it will become increasingly clear that medical interventions to uphold this belief need proper evidence to justify why they should be done.... and that people are being harmed because there isn't any. And it will become increasingly clear too that biological males' belief that they are women shouldn't give them access to women's sports and spaces.