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Once upon a time, not that long ago, within my lifetime in fact, being gay was targeted for public abuse the way that transgender people are being targeting now

Once upon a time, not that long ago, within my lifetime in fact, being gay was targeted for public abuse the way that transgender people are being targeting now. That has declined as people came to understand that being gay, lesbian, bi is part of how a person is made. Under public pressure, a gay person can act straight or at least act not gay. But it doesn't change who they are, doesn't help anyone around them, and makes them miserable. There is no point to it. Thankfully popular opinion and the law have adjusted to that reality. Being transgender is the same way. A transgender person is not someone who dresses a certain way, takes hormones, or gets surgery. A transgender person is someone who is absolutely miserable when they are not permitted to express the gender they feel. It is part of who they are deep inside, how they feel every day of their life. Like gay people, they can hide it to avoid abuse. Like gay people, it's not fair to force them to do so. And it doesn't help anyone around them either.

coderc 2y ago
It seems to me that prigs, as defined in pg's article, are just jumping on the transgender issue because it's an easy way for them to enforce rules. From my understanding, having read both articles, PG might say that the prigs have chosen to ride the lgbt movement. The problem is not with the lgbt movement itself. Unfortunately, this gives the movement a bad reputation. Some prigs aren't lgbt people at all, but they speak on behalf of them, as they also speak on behalf of other groups that they aren't a part of. Some prigs might actually be a part of the minority they speak for, but I would hazard a guess, based on no data, and say that these are the minority of all prigs. I think PG's problem is with the prigs, not the lgbt movement itself. Can these be separated?
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  Self-congratulatory, self-righteous prigs are all over the place within human society. When people complain about them, the substantive content of their complaint is the context in which they issue it. For example pg is complaining about the prigs who nag everyone about transgender acceptance, but not the prigs who nag everyone to reject and abuse transgender people. Matters of speech, manners, and decorum are convenient ways to launder the advocacy of a certain set of values. All you have to do is accuse your enemies of violation when they advocate, and stay silent when your allies apply the same tactics. In order to consistently navigate politics, one needs to start with one's own values. That's why I posted my comment above. The core issue for me is whether transgender people can show up in their preferred gender. Not whether other people are annoying jerks when they talk about that question. There are plenty of annoying jerks on both sides of any value question, if one has the open eyes to see them.
  - zilmer 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - snowwrestler 2y ago
      Well, I think "priggish" better describes how a person advocates for a belief, not the belief itself. I do think the issue is more complex than just women's rights, in part because a lot of women are fine with trans women being around them, and in part because biological females can express a variety of genders, including male.
      - zilmer 2y ago
        Women who say they find it acceptable for males to impose themselves on female spaces don't speak for all women and cannot consent to this intrusion for all women.
  - itsoktocry 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - LastTrain 2y ago
      Have you considered that using the term woke as a pejorative is priggish behavior? Because amongst my conservative friends it is used at least once every social setting.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > Self-congratulatory, self-righteous prigs are all over the place within human society. They try to be. A given social movement will be judged on how well it deals with them - whether it embraces/encourages them (or, worse, makes them its leaders), or discourages them. Bullies, grifters, and sexual predators are everywhere, but "this organisation protects/doesn't do enough against its bullies/grifters/sexual predators" is a legitimate criticism (in cases where it's accurate); it's the same with prigs. > The core issue for me is whether transgender people can show up in their preferred gender. Break down what that means. Are you talking about whether these people act in a particular way? Or whether they demand that other people treat them in a particular way? Those are very different asks.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  The prigs are doing a motte-and-bailey thing, where if you're against them, then they will claim that you're against trans people or gays or minorities or whoever.
- nathansherburn 2y ago
  I think this is spot on. The confusion for me comes from the fact that, as far as I can tell, I've never met a prig in real life. And yet they seem to be the biggest political issue of our time. Is it because I live in Australia and it's more of a US thing? Or is it because I'm not online as much maybe? I find it really confusing.
  - djur 2y ago
    What Graham means by "prig" is, say, an HR person who informs you that you need to use your coworker's preferred pronouns.
    - maximilianburke 2y ago
      If you're calling a coworker something that they are uncomfortable with enough to get HR involved, HR may be the prigs but you're being an asshole.
      - prarro 2y ago
        Yes on a pragmatic basis, if the coworker is male and gets upset at being referred to by "he", but it goes against your own personal beliefs to refer to him as "she", it's best just to refer to him by name and practise wording your sentences to be pronounless. And, where possible and not disadvantageous, to avoid situations where he's involved in your own work. With this approach, he's less likely to make a complaint to HR about you (though he might notice the careful lack of "she", but that's much more difficult to make a substantiated complaint about), and you still get to stick to your own beliefs. It's still somewhat vexing to have to do this, but at least it prevents you from getting in the crosshairs of HR.
        djur 2y ago
        Or you could just call people what they want to be called when it does not inconvenience you in the slightest.
- foldr 2y ago
  >I think PG's problem is with the prigs, not the lgbt movement itself. Can these be separated? You're essentially asking if the LGBT movement can be separated from the exact kind of activism that's enabled the advances in LGBT rights that we've seen since the 1960s. In a word, no, they can't be separated. The 'priggishness' of one or two decades ago is the moral truism of the present. Here, for example, is a spoof flyer in the British satirical magazine Private Eye published in 1969: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb0434f6c-ba68-4fca-a861-53aa6f393f52_838x1575.jpeg https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_... It's funny. But what's even funnier is many of the items in the list of obviously ridiculous demands (demands that surely signal that Political Correctness Has Gone Mad, etc. etc.) have turned out to be completely reasonable and, in time, uncontroversial.
  - chriscappuccio 2y ago
    Of course it can be separated. There is no inherent reason the two must be molded together. Zero.
    - mbarria 2y ago
      History is a pretty good argument that they can't be separated.
    - foldr 2y ago
      As always with history, you can imagine how things might have happened differently. For example, you can imagine gay marriage having been legalized without people ever having put social pressure on others not to use homophobic language. The two things are certainly not inherently linked. But then, very few things are inherently linked in history and politics. It's not much of an argument against a certain form of activism to point out that its results could in principle have been obtained by other means.
- ajbt200128 2y ago
  Read his essay again, past the first two paragraphs. Look at the social movements he describes as priggish, woke, politically correct etc. > There was at this time a great backlash against sexual harassment; the mid 1980s were the point when the definition of sexual harassment was expanded from explicit sexual advances to creating a "hostile environment." > In the first phase of political correctness there were really only three things people got accused of: sexism, racism, and homophobia Going by the examples pg gives, anyone willing to support women, or LGBT, is a prig. Don't let his abstract theory cloud the rest of the essay. He says it in black and white, his problem is with minorities standing up for themselves.
  - coderc 2y ago
    I don't think that's a fair reading of it. Consider, for example, expanding the definition of sexual harassment to also include creating a "hostile environment". I think that pg's point is that this expansion to include a "hostile environment" makes it fall under the "eye of the beholder", which makes it a lot more vague and arbitrary. Something being vague and arbitrary is the perfect playground for a prig, because they can essentially invent new rules and enforce them. For one example: Microagressions. What are they? They could be anything, really. "Supporting women" and "enforcing arbitrary rules" are not necessarily the same thing. One can claim that they're doing the former when they're really just doing the latter. If you were to make up a new rule and say that men need to bow to every woman within a 10ft radius in order to show respect, is that really "supporting women"? Is that what women want? This is an intentionally ridiculous hypothetical (in certain cultures), but I think it demonstrates the issue that an arbitrary rule is not necessarily "support". Remember Donglegate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 Did this joke create a hostile environment? Did the shaming of these people make anything better, or did it make things worse? Was this an example of "supporting women", or was this just an example of punishing people for not following arbitrary rules? >He says it in black and white, his problem is with minorities standing up for themselves. Someone who acts priggishly may not be a part of the minority that they are 'standing up' for.
    - ajbt200128 2y ago
- djur 2y ago
  In his article, Graham said the following: "Consumers have emphatically rejected brands that ventured too far into wokeness. The Bud Light brand may have been permanently damaged by it." Bud Light sent promotional cans to a trans influencer. The content of the promo was completely anodyne, a joke about March Madness. For this, a boycott was led by social conservatives. Aren't the people who led this boycott "prigs"? Why is Graham referring to them in a neutral-to-laudatory way if he's so opposed to priggishness? What "wokeness" does he think Bud Light was punished for?
- nathan_compton 2y ago
  Prigs really aren't that big of a deal. Like literally who cares what they are up to?
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    One starts caring quickly when they are between you and employment. Also, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    They lost the Dems the election. “She’s for them” was by far trumps most successful ad according to polling
    - nathan_compton 2y ago
      Maybe the people who voted for Trump genuinely don't like trans people and the prigs have nothing to do with it. I mean its really fucked up to vote for someone who will dehumanize and villainize a population NOT because you dislike that population but just because SOME OTHER people are speaking about it vehemently. Is this what you are suggesting happened?
      - HDThoreaun 2y ago
        Yes that is what I’m suggesting. Don’t ask don’t tell type policy would be acceptable to many voters where current dem policy is not. Fucked up but the voters were heard
patanegra 2y ago
I think being gay and having gender identity disorder are two things that are somewhat related culturally, but not that much as a condition. Being gay has no negative consequences and when homosexuals are left to live how they want, they are happy and overall have no problems. Also, this identity doesn't change much during their lives. In comparison with that, people who are delusional, are not feeling any better when they recognize their delusion. And it might actually be dangerous to affirm them in their delusion. People with GID are somewhere on a spectrum between homosexuals and delusional people. Even the most affirming countries are clearly not enough. They still have a very high suicide rate. Plenty of them detransition, especially kids. There is statistically significant prevalence of mental disorders. 58% of people with GID have at least one psychiatric diagnosis (source https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6830528/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6830528/). Personally, I think that society is accepting gays for a good reason and not affirming people with GID for a good reason, too. It's not bigotry, it's a recognition of reality.
- mbarria 2y ago
  The highest risk of suicide for trans people is how the surrounding people treat them. Additionally, regret of transitions is lower than for most surgeries. There is no real reason that allowing trans people to live their lives as they please causes any harm to them, it's only moral panic. https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/ https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equali... and https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/%20what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-acceptancerejection-of-lgbt-youth-2%20/ https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equali...
  - patanegra 2y ago
    [dead]
inglor_cz 2y ago
I agree with you about a transgender person who is 23, but not about anyone who is claiming to be transgender at 13. That is way too young to be sure of such things, and peer pressures/influences exist. The current backlash is mostly caused by the hardcore activists pressuring for "the alternatives are either gender-affirming care or SUICIDE! SUICIDE! even for 13 y.o.'s" This attitude is so hysterical that it cannot stand for long.
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  There is a social movement that seeks the suppression of all transgender expression, including by fully informed adults. They led with “save the kids” for the emotional impact, as many other well-organized social movements have in the past. It works because concerns about kids are real. But it’s important to see and understand the greater goals of the movement, and how it affects everyone. The essay at the top of this HN thread was written by an adult, expressing their adult concerns.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    It is somewhat quaint, but the truth is often in the middle and compromises work the best. Which is something that doesn't really resonate with the social network era, which rewards wild posturing and extreme views with attention and clicks.
    - snowwrestler 2y ago
      I agree, and I hope you stand up for your sense of the middle. Because there is something going on that is way larger than kids. Look at how quickly this adult essay got flagged off the HN homepage. Look at what the president said in his inaugural address today.
      - inglor_cz 2y ago
        I do try to do so. Can we actually vouch for the entire essay to come back? I know that people can vouch for flagged comments, but I am not sure about entire submissions.
aprilthird2021 2y ago
> But it doesn't change who they are This is the part that we all don't really actually converse about. It's not an easy point to prove (genetically, after sequencing the entire human genome, there is not actually any proof that gay is something one "is" intrinsically), but it's also so personal and getting it wrong has such heavy consequences that most avoid the topic.
- djur 2y ago
  Graham says he thinks wokeness is a religion, which I think is silly, but ironically religion in the workplace is an effective model here. I don't have to believe in someone's religion to understand that I shouldn't challenge their beliefs in the workplace, nor should I whine that so-and-so took time off for their holiday, and so on. I've regularly seen people make "[holiday greeting] for those who celebrate" remarks in work chats for Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu holidays, and it would be pretty inappropriate to jump in and say (as an atheist myself) "by the way, your god doesn't exist". Similarly, I don't need to have any particular belief about the nature of gender to respond to my coworkers asking me to use "she" or "he" or "they" to refer to them. It's not my business. Even trans people don't have a single monolithic set of opinions about what it means to be trans, what gender is, etc. The bar for not offending most people is extremely low.
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    Your analogy is a good one. We can respect people's religious beliefs and understand that challenging them isn't appropriate in a work environment. But this isn't about a work environment. There are many issues where LGBTQ identities and desires overlap with concerns society has about them. Religion is the same way. American society has chosen to give religions more leeway than most societies do. We are currently choosing that for LGBTQ rights, but it's often predicated on the idea that sexuality and gender identity are innate and immutable. Science doesn't actually back this up, and so the pendulum for us as a society to decide where the boundary between personal rights and societal wants / needs lie is up for debate, except we tend to avoid the topic. That's what I meant.
energy123 2y ago
The author sums it up well: "It’s mean, and unkind. It’s malicious."
zestyping 2y ago
> A transgender person is someone who is absolutely miserable when they are not permitted to express the gender they feel. Is that true of everyone who identifies as trans, though? I get the impression there is a subset of trans folks for whom this is the case, and many others (perhaps a majority) who simply prefer to use different pronouns than the ones they started with. I would love to have data that establishes whether that impression is correct or incorrect. There appears to be a puzzling conflation between folks who enjoy or prefer alternative gender expressions and folks whose survival depends on it, and it would be a great relief to know what's really going on.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
abc_lisper 2y ago
Yeah, I don't think people understand what transgender person is. They understand being born like that, but not why someone chooses to change their gender. It simply is not in anyone's experience nor there is any analogous thing to bridge understanding. It is NOT like being GAY, because I know and read about gay animals, and say ok, this is not specific to humans. There isn't anything like that for TGs, because animals obviously don't dress. They just are. I also understood one thing. Most people were paying lip service to TGs. This includes people like Mark and PG. And we like, good employees, are just following what HR says without rocking the boat. I now doubt head of HR knows or understands what this is about. Also, there are not many people who are TG. Should society adjust itself for everyone on the margin is a question one should ask themselves? Does it adjust for everyone who has kidney disease, or other ailments? I know western countries do a good job of addressing handicapped people in several ways, but the last 1% is very hard and expensive to reach. And I feel we are paying the price. Is TG issue big enough to put Climate Change activism at risk, which it is now? I am not against TG, I am against not prioritizing what's more important.
alanh 2y ago
This is self-evidently incorrect, for a multitude of reasons. Reason 1: Gay men do not wait to 'realize' they are gay until their 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. "Trans" do. Reason 2: Autogynephilia exists. Reason 3: Orientation threatens (essentially) no one. But transgenderism directly attacks the sex-based rights that women have long fought for, undermining their rights to sex-segregated spaces (see Tickle vs Giggle or that crazy LA Spa case). Reason 4: While homosexuality is trivial to define (same-sex attraction), transgenderism is not. Gender was defined as "performing" one's sex, per feminism. But if one "performs" the other sex, they are merely non-gender-conforming, not the other sex! This is why "what is a woman" has become such an infamous question, because trans activists cannot answer it in a way that actually makes sense to anyone. I could go on. Downvote if you must, but we are post-peak-trans and reality is re-asserting itself; I am glad of it. Without wishing ill towards those caught up in the madness, I say: No. I shall not use pronouns that require me to lie about how I perceive the world, and I deny that the assertion of my right to speak truth is an act of hatred.
- Tainnor 2y ago
  > Gay men do not wait to 'realize' they are gay until their 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. That is patently false, there are many such cases.
  - alanh 2y ago
    I really doubt that. Coming out isn’t the same as “realizing.”

coderc 2y ago

It seems to me that prigs, as defined in pg's article, are just jumping on the transgender issue because it's an easy way for them to enforce rules. From my understanding, having read both articles, PG might say that the prigs have chosen to ride the lgbt movement. The problem is not with the lgbt movement itself. Unfortunately, this gives the movement a bad reputation. Some prigs aren't lgbt people at all, but they speak on behalf of them, as they also speak on behalf of other groups that they aren't a part of. Some prigs might actually be a part of the minority they speak for, but I would hazard a guess, based on no data, and say that these are the minority of all prigs. I think PG's problem is with the prigs, not the lgbt movement itself. Can these be separated?

snowwrestler 2y ago
Self-congratulatory, self-righteous prigs are all over the place within human society. When people complain about them, the substantive content of their complaint is the context in which they issue it. For example pg is complaining about the prigs who nag everyone about transgender acceptance, but not the prigs who nag everyone to reject and abuse transgender people. Matters of speech, manners, and decorum are convenient ways to launder the advocacy of a certain set of values. All you have to do is accuse your enemies of violation when they advocate, and stay silent when your allies apply the same tactics. In order to consistently navigate politics, one needs to start with one's own values. That's why I posted my comment above. The core issue for me is whether transgender people can show up in their preferred gender. Not whether other people are annoying jerks when they talk about that question. There are plenty of annoying jerks on both sides of any value question, if one has the open eyes to see them.
- zilmer 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - snowwrestler 2y ago
    Well, I think "priggish" better describes how a person advocates for a belief, not the belief itself. I do think the issue is more complex than just women's rights, in part because a lot of women are fine with trans women being around them, and in part because biological females can express a variety of genders, including male.
    - zilmer 2y ago
      Women who say they find it acceptable for males to impose themselves on female spaces don't speak for all women and cannot consent to this intrusion for all women.
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - LastTrain 2y ago
    Have you considered that using the term woke as a pejorative is priggish behavior? Because amongst my conservative friends it is used at least once every social setting.
- lmm 2y ago
  > Self-congratulatory, self-righteous prigs are all over the place within human society. They try to be. A given social movement will be judged on how well it deals with them - whether it embraces/encourages them (or, worse, makes them its leaders), or discourages them. Bullies, grifters, and sexual predators are everywhere, but "this organisation protects/doesn't do enough against its bullies/grifters/sexual predators" is a legitimate criticism (in cases where it's accurate); it's the same with prigs. > The core issue for me is whether transgender people can show up in their preferred gender. Break down what that means. Are you talking about whether these people act in a particular way? Or whether they demand that other people treat them in a particular way? Those are very different asks.
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
The prigs are doing a motte-and-bailey thing, where if you're against them, then they will claim that you're against trans people or gays or minorities or whoever.
nathansherburn 2y ago
I think this is spot on. The confusion for me comes from the fact that, as far as I can tell, I've never met a prig in real life. And yet they seem to be the biggest political issue of our time. Is it because I live in Australia and it's more of a US thing? Or is it because I'm not online as much maybe? I find it really confusing.
- djur 2y ago
  What Graham means by "prig" is, say, an HR person who informs you that you need to use your coworker's preferred pronouns.
  - maximilianburke 2y ago
    If you're calling a coworker something that they are uncomfortable with enough to get HR involved, HR may be the prigs but you're being an asshole.
    - prarro 2y ago
      Yes on a pragmatic basis, if the coworker is male and gets upset at being referred to by "he", but it goes against your own personal beliefs to refer to him as "she", it's best just to refer to him by name and practise wording your sentences to be pronounless. And, where possible and not disadvantageous, to avoid situations where he's involved in your own work. With this approach, he's less likely to make a complaint to HR about you (though he might notice the careful lack of "she", but that's much more difficult to make a substantiated complaint about), and you still get to stick to your own beliefs. It's still somewhat vexing to have to do this, but at least it prevents you from getting in the crosshairs of HR.
      - djur 2y ago
        Or you could just call people what they want to be called when it does not inconvenience you in the slightest.
foldr 2y ago
>I think PG's problem is with the prigs, not the lgbt movement itself. Can these be separated? You're essentially asking if the LGBT movement can be separated from the exact kind of activism that's enabled the advances in LGBT rights that we've seen since the 1960s. In a word, no, they can't be separated. The 'priggishness' of one or two decades ago is the moral truism of the present. Here, for example, is a spoof flyer in the British satirical magazine Private Eye published in 1969: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb0434f6c-ba68-4fca-a861-53aa6f393f52_838x1575.jpeg https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_... It's funny. But what's even funnier is many of the items in the list of obviously ridiculous demands (demands that surely signal that Political Correctness Has Gone Mad, etc. etc.) have turned out to be completely reasonable and, in time, uncontroversial.
- chriscappuccio 2y ago
  Of course it can be separated. There is no inherent reason the two must be molded together. Zero.
  - mbarria 2y ago
    History is a pretty good argument that they can't be separated.
  - foldr 2y ago
    As always with history, you can imagine how things might have happened differently. For example, you can imagine gay marriage having been legalized without people ever having put social pressure on others not to use homophobic language. The two things are certainly not inherently linked. But then, very few things are inherently linked in history and politics. It's not much of an argument against a certain form of activism to point out that its results could in principle have been obtained by other means.
ajbt200128 2y ago
Read his essay again, past the first two paragraphs. Look at the social movements he describes as priggish, woke, politically correct etc. > There was at this time a great backlash against sexual harassment; the mid 1980s were the point when the definition of sexual harassment was expanded from explicit sexual advances to creating a "hostile environment." > In the first phase of political correctness there were really only three things people got accused of: sexism, racism, and homophobia Going by the examples pg gives, anyone willing to support women, or LGBT, is a prig. Don't let his abstract theory cloud the rest of the essay. He says it in black and white, his problem is with minorities standing up for themselves.
- coderc 2y ago
  I don't think that's a fair reading of it. Consider, for example, expanding the definition of sexual harassment to also include creating a "hostile environment". I think that pg's point is that this expansion to include a "hostile environment" makes it fall under the "eye of the beholder", which makes it a lot more vague and arbitrary. Something being vague and arbitrary is the perfect playground for a prig, because they can essentially invent new rules and enforce them. For one example: Microagressions. What are they? They could be anything, really. "Supporting women" and "enforcing arbitrary rules" are not necessarily the same thing. One can claim that they're doing the former when they're really just doing the latter. If you were to make up a new rule and say that men need to bow to every woman within a 10ft radius in order to show respect, is that really "supporting women"? Is that what women want? This is an intentionally ridiculous hypothetical (in certain cultures), but I think it demonstrates the issue that an arbitrary rule is not necessarily "support". Remember Donglegate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 Did this joke create a hostile environment? Did the shaming of these people make anything better, or did it make things worse? Was this an example of "supporting women", or was this just an example of punishing people for not following arbitrary rules? >He says it in black and white, his problem is with minorities standing up for themselves. Someone who acts priggishly may not be a part of the minority that they are 'standing up' for.
  - ajbt200128 2y ago
djur 2y ago
In his article, Graham said the following: "Consumers have emphatically rejected brands that ventured too far into wokeness. The Bud Light brand may have been permanently damaged by it." Bud Light sent promotional cans to a trans influencer. The content of the promo was completely anodyne, a joke about March Madness. For this, a boycott was led by social conservatives. Aren't the people who led this boycott "prigs"? Why is Graham referring to them in a neutral-to-laudatory way if he's so opposed to priggishness? What "wokeness" does he think Bud Light was punished for?
nathan_compton 2y ago
Prigs really aren't that big of a deal. Like literally who cares what they are up to?
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  One starts caring quickly when they are between you and employment. Also, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  They lost the Dems the election. “She’s for them” was by far trumps most successful ad according to polling
  - nathan_compton 2y ago
    Maybe the people who voted for Trump genuinely don't like trans people and the prigs have nothing to do with it. I mean its really fucked up to vote for someone who will dehumanize and villainize a population NOT because you dislike that population but just because SOME OTHER people are speaking about it vehemently. Is this what you are suggesting happened?
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      Yes that is what I’m suggesting. Don’t ask don’t tell type policy would be acceptable to many voters where current dem policy is not. Fucked up but the voters were heard

patanegra 2y ago

I think being gay and having gender identity disorder are two things that are somewhat related culturally, but not that much as a condition. Being gay has no negative consequences and when homosexuals are left to live how they want, they are happy and overall have no problems. Also, this identity doesn't change much during their lives. In comparison with that, people who are delusional, are not feeling any better when they recognize their delusion. And it might actually be dangerous to affirm them in their delusion. People with GID are somewhere on a spectrum between homosexuals and delusional people. Even the most affirming countries are clearly not enough. They still have a very high suicide rate. Plenty of them detransition, especially kids. There is statistically significant prevalence of mental disorders. 58% of people with GID have at least one psychiatric diagnosis (source https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6830528/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6830528/). Personally, I think that society is accepting gays for a good reason and not affirming people with GID for a good reason, too. It's not bigotry, it's a recognition of reality.

mbarria 2y ago
The highest risk of suicide for trans people is how the surrounding people treat them. Additionally, regret of transitions is lower than for most surgeries. There is no real reason that allowing trans people to live their lives as they please causes any harm to them, it's only moral panic. https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/ https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equali... and https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/%20what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-acceptancerejection-of-lgbt-youth-2%20/ https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equali...
- patanegra 2y ago
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inglor_cz 2y ago

I agree with you about a transgender person who is 23, but not about anyone who is claiming to be transgender at 13. That is way too young to be sure of such things, and peer pressures/influences exist. The current backlash is mostly caused by the hardcore activists pressuring for "the alternatives are either gender-affirming care or SUICIDE! SUICIDE! even for 13 y.o.'s" This attitude is so hysterical that it cannot stand for long.

snowwrestler 2y ago
There is a social movement that seeks the suppression of all transgender expression, including by fully informed adults. They led with “save the kids” for the emotional impact, as many other well-organized social movements have in the past. It works because concerns about kids are real. But it’s important to see and understand the greater goals of the movement, and how it affects everyone. The essay at the top of this HN thread was written by an adult, expressing their adult concerns.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  It is somewhat quaint, but the truth is often in the middle and compromises work the best. Which is something that doesn't really resonate with the social network era, which rewards wild posturing and extreme views with attention and clicks.
  - snowwrestler 2y ago
    I agree, and I hope you stand up for your sense of the middle. Because there is something going on that is way larger than kids. Look at how quickly this adult essay got flagged off the HN homepage. Look at what the president said in his inaugural address today.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      I do try to do so. Can we actually vouch for the entire essay to come back? I know that people can vouch for flagged comments, but I am not sure about entire submissions.

aprilthird2021 2y ago

> But it doesn't change who they are This is the part that we all don't really actually converse about. It's not an easy point to prove (genetically, after sequencing the entire human genome, there is not actually any proof that gay is something one "is" intrinsically), but it's also so personal and getting it wrong has such heavy consequences that most avoid the topic.

djur 2y ago
Graham says he thinks wokeness is a religion, which I think is silly, but ironically religion in the workplace is an effective model here. I don't have to believe in someone's religion to understand that I shouldn't challenge their beliefs in the workplace, nor should I whine that so-and-so took time off for their holiday, and so on. I've regularly seen people make "[holiday greeting] for those who celebrate" remarks in work chats for Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu holidays, and it would be pretty inappropriate to jump in and say (as an atheist myself) "by the way, your god doesn't exist". Similarly, I don't need to have any particular belief about the nature of gender to respond to my coworkers asking me to use "she" or "he" or "they" to refer to them. It's not my business. Even trans people don't have a single monolithic set of opinions about what it means to be trans, what gender is, etc. The bar for not offending most people is extremely low.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Your analogy is a good one. We can respect people's religious beliefs and understand that challenging them isn't appropriate in a work environment. But this isn't about a work environment. There are many issues where LGBTQ identities and desires overlap with concerns society has about them. Religion is the same way. American society has chosen to give religions more leeway than most societies do. We are currently choosing that for LGBTQ rights, but it's often predicated on the idea that sexuality and gender identity are innate and immutable. Science doesn't actually back this up, and so the pendulum for us as a society to decide where the boundary between personal rights and societal wants / needs lie is up for debate, except we tend to avoid the topic. That's what I meant.

energy123 2y ago

The author sums it up well: "It’s mean, and unkind. It’s malicious."

zestyping 2y ago

> A transgender person is someone who is absolutely miserable when they are not permitted to express the gender they feel. Is that true of everyone who identifies as trans, though? I get the impression there is a subset of trans folks for whom this is the case, and many others (perhaps a majority) who simply prefer to use different pronouns than the ones they started with. I would love to have data that establishes whether that impression is correct or incorrect. There appears to be a puzzling conflation between folks who enjoy or prefer alternative gender expressions and folks whose survival depends on it, and it would be a great relief to know what's really going on.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

abc_lisper 2y ago

Yeah, I don't think people understand what transgender person is. They understand being born like that, but not why someone chooses to change their gender. It simply is not in anyone's experience nor there is any analogous thing to bridge understanding. It is NOT like being GAY, because I know and read about gay animals, and say ok, this is not specific to humans. There isn't anything like that for TGs, because animals obviously don't dress. They just are. I also understood one thing. Most people were paying lip service to TGs. This includes people like Mark and PG. And we like, good employees, are just following what HR says without rocking the boat. I now doubt head of HR knows or understands what this is about. Also, there are not many people who are TG. Should society adjust itself for everyone on the margin is a question one should ask themselves? Does it adjust for everyone who has kidney disease, or other ailments? I know western countries do a good job of addressing handicapped people in several ways, but the last 1% is very hard and expensive to reach. And I feel we are paying the price. Is TG issue big enough to put Climate Change activism at risk, which it is now? I am not against TG, I am against not prioritizing what's more important.

alanh 2y ago

This is self-evidently incorrect, for a multitude of reasons. Reason 1: Gay men do not wait to 'realize' they are gay until their 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. "Trans" do. Reason 2: Autogynephilia exists. Reason 3: Orientation threatens (essentially) no one. But transgenderism directly attacks the sex-based rights that women have long fought for, undermining their rights to sex-segregated spaces (see Tickle vs Giggle or that crazy LA Spa case). Reason 4: While homosexuality is trivial to define (same-sex attraction), transgenderism is not. Gender was defined as "performing" one's sex, per feminism. But if one "performs" the other sex, they are merely non-gender-conforming, not the other sex! This is why "what is a woman" has become such an infamous question, because trans activists cannot answer it in a way that actually makes sense to anyone. I could go on. Downvote if you must, but we are post-peak-trans and reality is re-asserting itself; I am glad of it. Without wishing ill towards those caught up in the madness, I say: No. I shall not use pronouns that require me to lie about how I perceive the world, and I deny that the assertion of my right to speak truth is an act of hatred.

Tainnor 2y ago
> Gay men do not wait to 'realize' they are gay until their 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. That is patently false, there are many such cases.
- alanh 2y ago
  I really doubt that. Coming out isn’t the same as “realizing.”