What you're describing is basically how it works in the real world, for the most part. People have far more important things to do, and are profoundly uninteres

What you're describing is basically how it works in the real world, for the most part. People have far more important things to do, and are profoundly uninterested in making an issue out of other individuals' personal identities. But: Does anyone else feel like the recent focus on gender identity/pronouns/trans is being totally driven by the extreme 5% on both sides (left and right)? I don't really feel this way, to be honest. I think this is a cliché culture war issue that is driven primarily by one "side", and that's the conservative one. I don't doubt for a second that there are terrible people who'll describe themselves as "progressive" trying to insert themselves into this discussion – these people are indeed the dumb extremes. But they're also not the group driving the conversation or enacting the laws, and ascribing a kind of "both sides" responsibility is not correct in my view. The thing is, I remember personally experiencing exactly the same shit as a gay man growing up in the 90s, and it's alarmingly familiar. This was a result of the UK moving to repeal "Section 28" – a law similar in intent to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" legislation. I remember exactly the same tactics being used – the talking heads and the campaigns and the billboards and the newspaper articles talking about the danger of predatory gay men who were pushing a "pervert's agenda", hoping to worm their way into schools so they could find children to abuse. Scare stories about paedophiles waiting in the wings, getting ready to groom children into homosexuality – and the same tactic of spotlighting extremist views at the fringes of that movement and claiming them as mainstream. It was a shitty tactic then and it's shitty now. The thing that angers me most is to see so many people fall for exactly the same playbook this time around.