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Critical Gender Theory and Trends in Gender Identity

21 Thursday Apr 2022

Posted by Nuetzel in Gender, Wokeness

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Babylon aber, Bisexuality, Bryan Caplan, C. Bradley Thompson, Celibacy, Cisgender, Closeting, Critical Gender Theory, Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory, Disney, Emilie Kao, Feminism, Gallup, GayBCs, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Gender Support Plans, Gender Unicorn, Gender-Affirming Therapy, Generation Z, Grooming, Heritability, Larpers, Laurence S. Mayer, LGBTQ, Libs of TikTok, Marxism, Millenials, Misgender, My Princess Boy, Paul R. McHugh, Paul W. Hruz, Precocious Puberty, Puberty Blockers, Recruitment, Religiosity, Sexual Liberation, Sexual Preference, Social Justice, Socialization, Transgenderism, Transition, Transition Closet, Victimhood

The growing influence of critical gender theory (CGT) in schools is unacceptable to many parents, especially at early grade levels. In fact, it’s been coming from certain areas of pediatric medicine for some time. Like critical race theory, CGT is another branch of critical theory, which was developed by a set of European social thinkers in the 1930s. CT is fundamentally a Marxist construct, and it lies at the heart of nearly all appeals to “social justice”. C. Bradley Thompson offers this concise perspective on critical theory:

“The principal aim of Critical Theory was and is, first, to deconstruct the forms of domination and hierarchy (i.e., the power relations) found in traditional or bourgeois societies, and, second, to reconstruct society toward what it calls ‘real’ or ‘true’ democracy, which is a neologism for socialism. Critical theory seeks to liberate any and all ‘victim’ groups based on their inferior and subjugated social status in capitalist societies (e.g., non-whites, women, and LGBTQ+ persons, etc.).”

LGBTQ+ Numbers

It’s fair to ask whether exposure to CGT in schools has any influence on the sexual orientation and preferences of students as they mature. That can be true only to the extent that these preferences reflect socialization, rather than other environmental factors or heredity. Apparently, most LGBTQ+ individuals are disposed to claim that their sexual preference is genetic. However, the claim that sexual preference is heritable to the exclusion of social influences is dubious. And there are other non-genetic, environmental influences that play a strong role as well.

Bryan Caplan discusses some fascinating generational differences in sexual orientation / identification revealed by a recent Gallup survey. Here, I reproduce the table shown in Caplan’s post. The sum of these categories (not shown) is taken as the LGBTQ+ share of each generation.

Taken at face value, those are extremely large increases over five generations… or even over two generations from millennials to GenZs, the gay proportion being the only category in which millennials and GenZs are reasonably close in 2022.

Another important wrinkle is that the share of older generations identifying as LGBTQ+ has been stable since the last survey conducted by Gallup in 2017, as shown by the Gallup chart below:

Millennials have increased by more than a third, and the LGBTQ+ share among Gen Zs has roughly doubled to 20.8%. Gen Zs surveyed in 2017 ranged from roughly 18 – 20 years of age, but that range was roughly 18 – 24 years of age in the latest survey. Therefore, the 2022 survey might capture a greater share of GenZs having “matured” into acceptance of specific sexual identities. Nevertheless, the levels and changes in these two generations are striking.

Causal Quandary

Caplan wonders how these increases would be possible if sexual orientation was predominantly heritable, especially given that these groups are unlikely to produce offspring at the same rate as the general population. The shrinking genotype / expanding phenotype paradox leads him to conclude that heightened LGBTQ+ socialization is generally responsible for the dramatic increases.

A number of Caplan’s commenters questioned his conclusions for one or several of these categories. At the risk of missing some of the nuance in the comments, I’ll attempt to summarize a few common threads: First, as Caplan himself notes, closeting is much less common than in the past. Therefore, increases in the reported shares of these categories might be illusory. Less closeting has brought little change in the responses of the older generations, however, and perhaps that’s because they tend to associate primarily within their own age cohorts.

Second, there could be environmental influences that have led to a smaller share of cis-gender males and females, as well as more “mis-genders” at birth. For example, anything that changes the flow of testosterone to a fetus in the womb might change a child’s sexual orientation, but whether some force has induced systematic changes in those flows over time, and across the population, is another matter.

Finally, the bulk of those claiming status as LGBTQ+ among millennials and Gen Zs are bisexual. For those who are otherwise heterosexual, identification as bisexual might be fairly “costless”. That suggests a possibility that the bisexual share may be influenced by status-seeking among GenZs, especially females. One joke goes “How can you tell if a girl is bi-sexual? … Don’t worry, she’ll tell you!” Thus, some commenters viewed the large increase in reported bisexuality as inflated by status seeking among what amounts to a kind of “larper” set. There might be so much emphasis on being open-minded about sexual experimentation among younger cohorts that minor incidents from childhood or adolescence are subsequently exaggerated into claims of bisexuality.

Socialization

Obviously the reduction in closeting leads to greater social exposure of non-traditional sexual preferences, including exposure to the nation’s youth. That’s a powerful social change, and it creates an atmosphere increasingly conducive to further socialization of these preferences, if not recruitment. Like many trends, this one feeds on itself: this 2021 study found a positive association between men “coming out” as gay and state legalization of same-sex marriage, the presence of gay communities, and positive attitudes toward gays. Moreover, there are definite signs of social contagion, as demonstrated by this clique of teenagers who, one and all, suddenly decided they were trans!

What forces led to the cascade in LGBTQ+ identification among more recent age cohorts? As a group, the full LGBTQ+ coalition has greater visibility, political power in asserting “victimhood”, and potential for socializing the general population to alternative lifestyles. However, there might not be any single trigger spanning LGBTQ+ identities that can explain the trend’s genesis. Perhaps the trends were set in motion by the sexual liberation of the 1960s and 70s which, as a libertarian, is not otherwise something I find objectionable.

The rise of radical feminism might have provided a basis for some females to reject males as a source of sexual gratification (and companionship), or as an exclusive source thereof, at any rate. There’s a likelihood that this contributed to the rise in lesbianism as well as female bisexuality. Feminism also served as a pretext for identity politics, which relies on claims of victimhood and is therefore fertile ground for critical theorists.

Critical theory first gained significant ground in the U.S. at universities along dimensions of race, but gender and sexual preference weren’t far behind. This “social justice” perspective filtered its way into departments of education, where academic standards are exceptionally forgiving. This, in turn, led to more fertile ground for critical theory in elementary and high school education.

CGT promotes the idea that gender is a social construct. If an individual feels that he or she is not well-suited to their biological sex, then CGT holds that they should identify as members of the opposite sex and pursue any medical paths to transition as might be available. This view has increasingly been applied to younger individuals.

Medical Experts

Paul W. Hruz, Laurence S. Mayer, and Paul R. McHugh (HMM) discuss the 1980s development of certain pharmaceuticals prescribed today to many children suffering from gender dysphoria. One might suspect that these drugs helped to set some of these trends in motion, together with so-called “gender-affirming” therapies that are now widely practiced. The latter involve therapists who accept and support the gender identity with which a patient feels most comfortable. Needless to say, this approach is likely to encourage a gender dysphoric youth to continue their exploration of a change in gender.

Synthetic hormonal “puberty blockers” became available in the early 1990s as a treatment for early puberty (so-called “precocious puberty”). At about the same time, the treatment was tested to stop production of sex hormones in adult males identifying as females. In the 1990s, the treatment was first used to suppress puberty in children with gender dysphoria, but the effects are supposedly reversible. Advancing to a full “transition” protocol involves the subsequent use of cross-sex ­hormones ­and ultimately surgical­ reassignment. Today, puberty suppression techniques are widely used on children with gender dysphoria because it is viewed as a safe choice that might “buy time” while other forms of maturation proceed. Here are HMM on this point:

“The­ use­ of­ puberty­ suppression­ and ­cross-sex hormones ­for­ minors­ is­ a­ radical­ step­ that­ presumes ­a­ great­ deal ­of­ knowledge­ and­ competence­ on­ the­ part ­of­ the­ children­ assenting to­ these­ procedures,­ on­ the­ part ­of­ the­ parents­ or­ guardians­ being­ asked­ to­ give­ legal­ consent­ to­ them,­ and­ on­ the­ part­ of­ the­ scientists­ and­ physicians­ who­ are­ developing­ and­ administering­ them.­ We­ frequently­ hear­ from­ neuroscientists­ that­ the ­adolescent­ brain­ is­ too­ immature­ to­ make­ reliably­ rational­ decisions,­ but­ we­ are­ supposed­ to­ expect­ emotionally­ troubled­ adolescents­ to­ make­ decisions­ about­ their­ gender­ identities ­and­ about­ serious­ medical ­treatments ­at­ the­ age ­of­ 12­ or­ younger.­ And­ we­ are­ supposed ­to­ expect­ parents­ and­ physicIans ­to­ evaluate ­the risks­ and­ benefits ­of­ puberty ­suppression,­ despite­ the­ state­ of­ ignorance ­in­ the­ scientific ­community­ about­ the­ nature­ of­ gender­ identity.”

HMM also discuss the strong influence that activists have had on the medical establishment. This is summarized nicely by Emilie Kao:

“… the largest LGBT lobbying organization, the Human Rights Campaign and World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) influenced medical organizations like the Endocrine Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics to embrace gender affirmation over the last two decades. Jason Pierceson, author of Sexual Minorities and Politics, explains that ‘political activism and consciousness raising has also changed the way in which the medical community views transgender persons.’ He describes how this activism led the American Psychiatric Association to “abandon the mental illness paradigm of transgenderism” by changing the description in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) to treat only the stress associated with gender dysphoria as a mental disorder. No breakthroughs in science or medicine led to the change, which was accomplished just by political activism.”

HMM do not claim that puberty blockers and gender-affirming therapy are at the root of increasing transgenderism. However, they express strong reservations about widespread use of puberty blockers among gender dysphoric adolescents.

We know that gender dysphoric youths have high rates of anxiety, depression, and even suicide. Unfortunately, transition doesn’t seem to alleviate those problems as a general rule. Furthermore, it’s important to remember that unhappy adolescents are nothing new. It can be an unhappy time for many kids who are full of self-doubt. Most of them get over it, however, and many with dysphoria get over it as well. One has to ask: does helping dysphoric children along the path to transition so early have any real gains in the aggregate?

Educational Experts

What role have the schools played in the gender confusion? The answer is just as horrifying as the role of the therapists and medical doctors encouraging and overseeing the early encouragement of transitions discussed above.

“As early as 2007, for instance, California’s education code stated that gender pertains not to anything biological but to ‘a person’s gender-related appearance and behavior.’[3] Gender is, in other words, a choice and has no relation to biology. This means that children have a smorgasbord of gender identities to choose from.”

So this is not new and could well have played a role in the Gallup survey results, especially for GenZs. Read at the last link about such things as “Gender Support Plans” in the schools, teacher training in dealing with gender issues, a “children’s garden” where five-year olds can learn the difference between biological sex and “gender”, a kindergarten book called My Princess Boy, the GayBCs for ages 4 – 8, the provision of a “transition closet” in which kids change their clothing once they arrive at school, school nurses who provide puberty blockers to kids they evaluate as dysphoric, pronoun lessons, of course, and many other examples. Also see this article for further information about CGT in schools, including the “Gender Unicorn” first introduced in 2016 and now used nationwide, starting as early as pre-K and kindergarten. And for a running catalog of the outrageous lessons taking place in our schools, check out Libs of Tik Tok.

Other Causal Forces

There are other vaguely plausible explanations for the trend toward more common identification as LGBTQ+ among millennials and GenZs. The internet and especially social media come to mind. Small and large social contagions are frequent on these platforms. Pre-social media, members of certain sub-cultures, and dare I say outcasts, had more difficulty finding, communicating and sharing information with one another. Today there is much less friction in that regard. Social media is also a hotbed of misery for many individuals, afflicted all too often with feelings of inadequacy or a feeling that they are outcasts. Among unhappy youths, the suggestion to try something different, to join a new “tribe”, may be very tempting. The internet serves as a guide.

A phenomenon that might be related to trends in gender identity is an increase in celibacy and decline of “partner sex”, especially among younger individuals and men. While so-called partner sex includes gay sex, the trend in sexual identity is not about any decline in sexual activity per se, but about representations of sexual identity. The uptrend in celibacy is consistent with the hypothesis that some cisgenders, frustrated by a lack of sexual partners (as distinct from the small, mostly male and angry “incel” community), might seek out a broader array of prospects. However, I know of no actual evidence to suggest such a connection.

The entertainment world is certainly no newcomer to controversies surrounding sexual identity. Gayness has long been celebrated in the theatre community, to a fault. I love theatre, but the near ubiquity of the theme in recent years has grown tiresome. There have always been gay stars of the screen, television, and musical entertainment, though it was often closeted in the past. Gay and gender identity themes have become much more common in film, but it was only recently that Disney began to emphasize gender issues explicitly with the children’s audience in mind. Some adults and even adolescents must grapple with gender dysphoria as they always have, with varying degrees of success and failure. However, to subject an audience of young children to themes that are beyond their ability to comprehend, and for whom the early exposure is completely unnecessary, is not acceptable.

Finally, the decline of religiosity might play a role in the trend toward LGBT+ identities. For one thing, church-goers have one more place to meet potential mates. More importantly, traditional religion has nearly always frowned on homosexuality, at least officially, and the LGBT+ coalition is largely areligious. Therefore, it seems likely that the negative trend in religiosity might be related to the positive trend in the LGBTQ+ population.

Conclusion

There is no question that identification as any of various forms of LGBTQ+ has increased dramatically among millennials and GenZs, with the largest increase in the bisexual category. Bryan Caplan hypothesizes that the trend is one of socialization, if not recruitment. It seems likely that this is the case, though much of the LGBTQ+ community’s internal, personal recruitment is probably of the passive variety. In addition, it seems likely that some of the gap relative to older generations is due to a reduction in closeting as well as “costless” status-seeking among individuals who wish to be perceived as enlightened or woke.

It’s also evident that the portion of the medical establishment concerned with issues of gender identity, as well as schools and certain entertainment institutions, have adopted the extreme views espoused by critical gender theory. They are actively encouraging children to learn about and explore various gender identities. This may encourage gender dysphoria, and when children show signs of dysphoria they are encouraged to move to the next stage, which involves affirmative therapy and puberty blockers, A bit later, teenagers might move on to other hormonal treatments and later-still, sex-change surgery. Our major medical, educational, and entertainment institutions appear to be real sources of non-passive recruitment, and indeed, the grooming of children for lives as LGBTQ+ adults.

Credit for the image at the top of this post goes to the Babylon Bee.

The Curious Case of Unnecessary Pronoun Lists

21 Tuesday Dec 2021

Posted by Nuetzel in Gender, Identity Politics, Political Correctness, Uncategorized

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Binary Genders, Biological Sex, Default Pronouns, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Fluidity, Gender Neutrality, Gendered Pronouns, Genderqueer, Identity Politics, LGBTQ, LinkedIn, Non-Binary, Plural Pronouns, Preferred Pronouns, Transgender

A subset of my LinkedIn connections list “preferred pronouns” after their names, but I don’t think I’ve ever had any misapprehensions about their “gender identities”. Not one of them. Their “gendentities” are obvious based on the names and/or photos they’ve chosen to use on social media. In fact, the “default” pronoun designations in the English language work pretty well that way. So, apart from the fact that LinkedIn invites its users to list pronouns, why do these people bother? Would they introduce themselves that way in person? “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Jane Smith, she / her.” Maybe on a name tag. Otherwise, unlikely.

Let’s face it: precious few of us have any doubt about our own biological sex. Do you have a penis and no vagina? Or vice versa? That settles it! But if you wish you didn’t have a penis, or wish you did, or you’re not sure… then you have a gender quandary and a pronoun problem. Still, those who decide to “take” one gender via transition will have chosen their pronouns. They typically make an effort to “present” that way as well.

There’s a tiny minority of individuals whose biological sex is ambiguous, and there are others who simply consider themselves “non-binary” or “genderqueer”. They represent three to four people out of every 1,000, if a recent survey can be believed (and surveys like this can be terribly flawed). These people are actually included in the broad definition of transgender. But again, for biological or other reasons, they identify as neither male nor female. It would be natural for these individuals to prefer gender-neutral pronouns (for example, possibilities are they / them and zi / hir, rather than he / him or she / her). That’s understandable, but: 1) using the plural “they” as a singular pronoun can lead to awkward grammar, inviting the use of the plural verb form as a fix*; and 2) remembering different pronouns for different people is a complexity to which most of us are quite unaccustomed. This is a practical issue, and social encounters with non-binaries are fairly unusual for most of us.

If tolerating the use of “he” or “she” just won’t do for this tiny minority, even as a courtesy to the “unschooled”, then it must be very important to make one’s non-binary status clear to everyone. That suggests a different problem, and one of a psychological nature. The insistence on strict adherence to alternative pronouns reflects a narcissism common to most manifestations of identity politics. And no, there is no reliable research showing that use of non-gendered pronouns reduces non-binary suicides, as one advocacy group has claimed.

I speak as one who has been called by the wrong gendered pronoun! I’m a male and I’m confident I present that way. However, I’ve worked with many Chinese over the course of my career, and gendered pronouns aren’t used in Chinese. The distinctions between “he” and “she”, or “his” and “hers”, can be as foreign to them as the pronouns “zi” and “hir” are to me. I’ve heard myself referenced by Chinese colleagues as “she”. Did it offend me? Not at all, because I knew the speaker was not fluent in the English language.

It should be easy to tolerate members of a minority who get it wrong because we empathize with their language challenge. We don’t demand their absolute conformity, but they understand their minority status and might prefer to avoid the potential embarrassment of getting it wrong. Contrary-wise, if I’m in the minority, say at a gathering of Chinese, shall I press the issue by demanding that every member of the majority distinguish between me and my wife using the correct English pronouns? I think not. But non-binary activists are so offended by gendered pronouns, which have been in common use among English speakers for centuries, that they demand the majority change the language to accommodate them. That is unreasonable. It’s okay to let others know what you prefer, but you shouldn’t feel slighted by every miscue or be a complete prig about it!

Now, if you happen to be a plain-old binary individual, what’s your excuse for listing preferred pronouns on social media? It seems completely unnecessary, so why bother? Here are a few possibilities:

  • You have transitioned to your gender and list pronouns as a courtesy to anyone who knew you before your transition.
  • You are an HR functionary having a career imperative to signal your evenhandedness.
  • You are a plaintiffs attorney chasing genderqueer discrimination business.
  • You simply like the Chinese practice and want to adopt gender-neutral pronouns. Good luck at your high school reunion!

My guess is that pecuniary and career motives are less important to most pronoun-listers than simple political correctness. Either way, it’s a virtue signal. Of course, you might have non-binary friends or relatives and wish to demonstrate to the world your unerring respect for their preferences. That’s admirable loyalty, but it’s an unnecessary compulsion.

Pronoun lists seem designed to announce support for all things LGBTQ+. I also suspect that some believe it more firmly establishes their socially progressive bona fides, that the pronoun-lister is beyond reproach no matter the nasty capitalists for whom they might toil. Therefore, announcing one’s preference for default pronouns seems both unnecessary and pretentious.

I am fairly tolerant of the notion that gender identity can transcend biology in some individuals. However, that is a controversial metaphysical assertion that many do not accept. Certainly, a decision to reject one’s biological sex should not be made hastily. In particular, these decisions should not be encouraged in children except for cases in which biological sex is ambiguous and where medical procedures might be appropriate. Yet LGBTQ+ doctrine teaches that questioning one’s gender identity should be normalized, even among impressionable children. That is highly objectionable and even abusive. Persuading straights to engage in pronoun pretensions of the kind described above is part of the LGBTQ+ crusade to normalize gender dysphoria.

Beyond all that, changing the structure of the English language to accommodate LGBTQ+ advocates requires a change in language curriculum for young children. One might object on purely grammatical grounds, but it would also raise questions as to why dual sets of pronouns are necessary. To whom do these pronouns apply? That broaches the sensitive topic of gender fluidity that many parents and taxpayers do not wish to be taught as standard curriculum in elementary or even secondary schools. I’m inclined to agree with them.

My general attitude is “whatever floats your boat, but leave me out of it”. I submit that the use of non-gendered pronouns is not “owed” to anyone. It would be easier for the rarefied non-binaries to accept the same fluidity with respect pronouns that they profess with respect to their own gender identities.

* I have occasionally used plural pronouns (they, them, and their) with plural verb forms in reference to “one”, “someone”, or “you”), who might be either male or female. In those cases, the sentence is meant to apply to both genders, but I admit it’s sloppy writing.

Scorning the Language of the Left

12 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by Nuetzel in Censorship, Leftism, Political Correctness

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Abortion, Boy George, Brett Kavanaugh, Brexit, Check Your Privilege, Cisgender, Climate Change, Donald Trump, Gender, Harper's, Hate Speech, Identitarian, Israel, Lefty Lingo, LGBTQ, Lionel Shriver, Microaggession, Patriarchy, Phobic, Privilege, Progressive Speech, Pronouns, Queer, Safe Space, STFU, Sustainability

It’s hard not to ridicule some the language adopted by our lefty friends, and it can be fun! But it’s not just them. We hear it now from employers, schools, and otherwise sensible people too eager to signal their modernity and virtue. Lionel Shriver dissects some of this “Lefty Lingo” in an entertaining piece in Harper’s. It’s funny, but it aroused my contempt for the smugness of the “wokescenti” (a term Shriver attributes too Meghan Daum) and my pity for those “normals” simply desperate to project progressive sophistication.

Here are a few of Shriver’s observations:

“Privilege”: makes you incapable of understanding that which you criticize.

“Whereas a privilege can be acquired through merit—e.g., students with good grades got to go bowling with our teacher in sixth grade—privilege, sans the article, is implicitly unearned and undeserved. The designation neatly dispossesses those so stigmatized of any credit for their achievements while discounting as immaterial those hurdles an individual with a perceived leg up might still have had to overcome (an alcoholic parent, a stutter, even poverty). For privilege is a static state into which you are born, stained by original sin. Just as you can’t earn yourself into privilege, you can’t earn yourself out of it, either. … . it’s intriguing that the P-bomb is most frequently dropped by folks of European heritage, either to convey a posturing humility (“I acknowledge my privilege”) or to demonize the Bad White People, the better to distinguish themselves as the Good White People.

Meanwhile, it isn’t clear what an admission of privilege calls you to do, aside from cower. That tired injunction ‘Check your privilege’ translates simply to ‘S.T.F.U.’—and it’s telling that ‘Shut the fuck up’ is now a sufficiently commonplace imperative to have lodged in text-speak.”

“Cisgender”: “Cis-” is a linguistic shell game whereby the typical case is labelled cis-typical.

“Denoting, say, a woman born a woman who thinks she’s a woman, this freighted neologism deliberately peculiarizes being born a sex and placidly accepting your fate, and even suggests that there’s something a bit passive and conformist about complying with the arbitrary caprices of your mother’s doctor. Moreover, unless a discussion specifically regards transgenderism, in which case we might need to distinguish the rest of the population (‘non-trans’ would do nicely), we don’t really need this word, except as a banner for how gendercool we are. It’s no more necessary than words for ‘a dog that is not a cat,’ a ‘lamppost that is not a fire hydrant,’ or ‘a table that is actually a table.’ Presumably, in order to mark entities that are what they appear to be, we could append ‘cis’ to anything and everything. ‘Cisblue’ would mean blue and not yellow. ‘Cisboring’ would mean genuinely dull, and not secretly entertaining after all.”

“Microaggression“: Anything you say that bothers them, even a little.

“… a perverse concoction, implying that the offense in question is so minuscule as to be invisible to the naked eye, yet also that it’s terribly important. The word cultivates hypersensitivity.”

“_____-phobic”: the typical use of this suffix in identity politics stands “phobia” on its head. To be fair, however, it started with a presumption that people hate that which they fear. Maybe also that they fear and hate that which they don’t care for, but we’ll just focus on fear and hate. For example, there is the notion that men have deep fears about their own sexuality. Thus, the prototypical gay-basher in film is often compensating for his own repressed homosexual longings, you see. And now, the idea is that we always fear “otherness” and probably hate it too. Both assertions are tenuous. At least those narratives are rooted in “fear”, but it’s not quite the same phenomenon as hate, and yet “phobic” seems to have been redefined as odium:

“The ubiquitous ‘transphobic,’ ‘Islamophobic,’ and ‘homophobic’ are also eccentric, in that the reprobates so branded are not really being accused of fearfulness but hatred.”

“LGBTQ“: Lumping all these “types” together can be misleading, as they do not always speak in unison on public policy. But if we must, how about “Let’s Go Back To ‘Queer'”, as Shriver suggests. The LGBs I know don’t seem to mind it as a descriptor, but maybe that’s only when they say it. Not sure about the trannies. There is a great Libertarian economist who is transsexual ( Dierdre McCloskey), and somehow “queer” doesn’t seem quite right for her. Perhaps she’s just a great woman.

“The alphabet soup of ‘LGBTQ’ continues to add letters: LGBTQIAGNC, LGBTQQIP2SAA, or even LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA. A three-year-old bashing the keyboard would produce a more functional shorthand, and we already have a simpler locution: queer.”

“Problematic”, “Troubling” and “Inappropriate”: I’m sure some of what I’ve said above is all three. I must confess I’ve used these terms myself, and they are perfectly good words. It’s just funny when the Left uses them in the following ways.

“Rare instances of left-wing understatement, ‘problematic’ and ‘troubling’ are coyly nonspecific red flags for political transgression that obviate spelling out exactly what sin has been committed (thereby eliding the argument). Similarly, the all-purpose adjectival workhorse ‘inappropriate’ presumes a shared set of social norms that in the throes of the culture wars we conspicuously lack. This euphemistic tsk-tsk projects the prim censure of a mother alarmed that her daughter’s low-cut blouse is too revealing for church. ‘Inappropriate’ is laced with disgust, while once again skipping the argument. By conceit, the appalling nature of the misbehavior at issue is glaringly obvious to everyone, so what’s wrong with it goes without saying.”

Here are a few others among my favorites:

“Patriarchy“: This serves the same function as “privilege” but is directed more specifically at the privilege enjoyed by males. Usually white, heterosexual males. It seeks to preemptively discredit any argument a male might make, and often it is used to discredit Western political and economic thought generally. That’s because so much of it was the product of the patriarchy, don’t you know! And remember, it means that males are simply incapable of understanding the plight of females … and children, let alone queers! Apparently fathers are bad, especially if they’re still straight. Mothers are good, unless they stand with the patriarchy.

“Hate Speech“: This expression contributes nothing to our understanding of speech that is not protected by the Constitution. If anything its use is intended to deny certain kinds of protected speech. Sure, originally it was targeted at such aberrations as racist or anti-gay rhetoric, assuming that always meant “hate”, but even those are protected as long as they stop short of “fighting words”. There are many kinds of opinions that now seem to qualify as “hate speech” in the eyes of the Identitarian Left, even when not truly “hateful”, such as church teachings in disapproval of homosexuality. There is also a tendency to characterize certain policy positions as “hate speech”, such as limits on immigration and opposition to “living wage” laws. Hypersensitivity, once more.

“Sustainability“: What a virtue signal! It’s now a big game to characterize whatever you do as promoting “sustainability”. But let’s get one thing straight: an activity is sustainable only if its benefits exceed its resource costs. That is the outcome sought by voluntary participants in markets, or they do not trade. Benefits and costs “estimated” by government bureaucrats without the benefit of market prices are not reliable guides to sustainability. Nor is Lefty politics a reliable guide to sustainability. Subsidies for favored activities actually undermine that goal.

There are many other Lefty catch phrases and preferred ways of speaking. We didn’t even get to “safe space”, “social justice”, and the pronoun controversy. Shriver closes with some general thoughts on the lefty lingo. I’ll close by quoting one of those points:

“The whole lexicon is of a piece. Its usage advertises that one has bought into a set menu of opinions—about race, gender, climate change, abortion, tax policy, #MeToo, Trump, Brexit, Brett Kavanaugh, probably Israel, and a great deal else. Reflexive resort to this argot therefore implies not that you think the same way as others of your political disposition but that you don’t think. You have ordered the prix fixe; you’re not in the kitchen cooking dinner for yourself.”

 

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Blogs I Follow

  • Ominous The Spirit
  • Passive Income Kickstart
  • OnlyFinance.net
  • TLC Cholesterol
  • Nintil
  • kendunning.net
  • DCWhispers.com
  • Hoong-Wai in the UK
  • Marginal REVOLUTION
  • Stlouis
  • Watts Up With That?
  • Aussie Nationalist Blog
  • American Elephants
  • The View from Alexandria
  • The Gymnasium
  • A Force for Good
  • Notes On Liberty
  • troymo
  • SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers
  • Miss Lou Acquiring Lore
  • Your Well Wisher Program
  • Objectivism In Depth
  • RobotEnomics
  • Orderstatistic
  • Paradigm Library

Blog at WordPress.com.

Ominous The Spirit

Ominous The Spirit is an artist that makes music, paints, and creates photography. He donates 100% of profits to charity.

Passive Income Kickstart

OnlyFinance.net

TLC Cholesterol

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The Future is Ours to Create

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

Stlouis

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

Defending Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

The Gymnasium

A place for reason, politics, economics, and faith steeped in the classical liberal tradition

A Force for Good

How economics, morality, and markets combine

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

troymo

SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers

Escaping the everyday life with photographs from my travels

Miss Lou Acquiring Lore

Gallery of Life...

Your Well Wisher Program

Attempt to solve commonly known problems…

Objectivism In Depth

Exploring Ayn Rand's revolutionary philosophy.

RobotEnomics

(A)n (I)ntelligent Future

Orderstatistic

Economics, chess and anything else on my mind.

Paradigm Library

OODA Looping

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