6 ms·

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 und

by 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.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    Are megachurches not still a thing? Traditional religion has had quite the assortment of bullies, grifters, and sexual predators.
    - lmm 2y ago
      Perfect example of what I'm talking about. People criticise traditional religions for that kind of thing (and criticise specific sects as handling it particularly badly, rather than just throwing up their hands and saying every community has bad actors) and they are right to do so.
      - mindslight 2y ago
        Except many of the most vocal criticizers of progressive prigs come from reactionary prigs and their enablers, and many of the most vocal criticizers of the reactionary prigs come from progressive prigs and their enablers. There isn't really a lot of reflective self criticism - the whole dynamic looks more like a prig battle, with criticizing the current popular fashion myopically just used to attract otherwise disinterested people to the cause of enabling the next trend. Maybe I've just gotten older and less worried about social consequences, but as priggishness goes the currently-passing fashion felt pretty tame. In the mainstream culture - thirty years ago it was "godlessness". Twenty years ago it was "support our troops". Ten years ago it was "gender". And today it's "woke". Within specific subcultures, "gender" will continue to be one, as "woke" has been for quite some time. When someone starts talking (or even preaching!) with any of these unquestionable assumptions, you just keep your mouth shut, and hold your real thoughts for your real friends with whom you can imperfectly express nuanced views in an environment of good faith rather than getting jumped on for social points.
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

by coderc 2y ago

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.
- mindslight 2y ago
  Are megachurches not still a thing? Traditional religion has had quite the assortment of bullies, grifters, and sexual predators.
  - lmm 2y ago
    Perfect example of what I'm talking about. People criticise traditional religions for that kind of thing (and criticise specific sects as handling it particularly badly, rather than just throwing up their hands and saying every community has bad actors) and they are right to do so.
    - mindslight 2y ago
      Except many of the most vocal criticizers of progressive prigs come from reactionary prigs and their enablers, and many of the most vocal criticizers of the reactionary prigs come from progressive prigs and their enablers. There isn't really a lot of reflective self criticism - the whole dynamic looks more like a prig battle, with criticizing the current popular fashion myopically just used to attract otherwise disinterested people to the cause of enabling the next trend. Maybe I've just gotten older and less worried about social consequences, but as priggishness goes the currently-passing fashion felt pretty tame. In the mainstream culture - thirty years ago it was "godlessness". Twenty years ago it was "support our troops". Ten years ago it was "gender". And today it's "woke". Within specific subcultures, "gender" will continue to be one, as "woke" has been for quite some time. When someone starts talking (or even preaching!) with any of these unquestionable assumptions, you just keep your mouth shut, and hold your real thoughts for your real friends with whom you can imperfectly express nuanced views in an environment of good faith rather than getting jumped on for social points.

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