one of liberals' and even leftists' biggest mistakes in the discursive space is the denial of transgenderism as an ideology

transgenderism is a real thing and to deny it is to undermine the project of trans rights and queer futurity

denying it does provide inroads to guerilla activism though so we take those

@ikeWren hmmm. what *is* transgenderism as an ideology to you? I feel like i agree but im not sure because my notion is that there are disparate political consciousness of sex-gender classes that are real but it's a lot more gestational. like transfeminine positivity and the radicalisms associated but it's messy in its interactions with politics of desire and liberalising faux-radicalism. i guess the very idea of the "radlib queer" presents a tension that proves the existence of *something* whether or not the result is good

@winterklaus i'll have to think harder about this . to me at least immediately transgenderism as an ideology is in its simplest form the ideal that trans rights are human rights , that on no grounds should transition be barred to any individual , and that transition is good . being transgender is good . this is a distinct ideological direction to me . and then this foundational transgenderist ideology expands outwards into more radical variants : transfeminine positivity , gender acceleration , trans supremacy , etc . i think this is what conservatives refer to when they refer to transgenderism and i think they have correctly diagnosed an extant form of ideology . but it also is still in its infancy

@winterklaus maybe my perspective is a little simplistic . you seem a little better read about this than me lol

@ikeWren @winterklaus while this is true, conservatives are not good identifying ideologies to begin with. ideology for them is deeply tied to state security paranoia. its an onramp for them to implicate 'terrorism' in whatever group they dont align with. conservatives see themselves as the prime agents of state control and violence, almost without identity and wielding the state as a primal force of control. they dont believe anything they think is ideological in function. sometimes they will make an appeal to trying to be a good christian but they would be offended fundamentally if you told them that that was an appeal to ideology to.

my point being conservatives arent 'smart' about this. they are just paranoids that overtuned their paranoia.

@ikeWren im actually quite badly read on primary material in general tbh.

@ikeWren "trans rights are human rights" though for me is an assimilationist credo. like the rights framework can be pragmatically useful in certain contexts it has proven itself to be weak.

@ikeWren @winterklaus you have to keep in mind you and me see the distinct subgroupings of trans ideology. there are not just radical variants but even the idea of this subject excites dialogue on the splinter points which we can align ourselves around. the fact there is a 'liberal starting point' of trans ideology being about trans rights and trans positivity and then ramping points into various variants dont even occur to these people. they think its all one in the same in part because they are scapegoating at scale. ideology only matters to the extent there is a sizable outgroup they have to control saying it. for them who cares what the minority of the minority are saying those people should be locked up forever anyway. the incuriosity there is nessecary for the scapegoating to have the rolling ball effect nessecary.

@winterklaus @ikeWren the majority of trans people are assimilationists.

@winterklaus mmm true i agree . like i said this is a very sketchy concept i haven't fully thought through

@Erato_Heti @winterklaus this is all true! but also the fact there is a liberal starting point of trans ideology and trans positivity and whatnot is a fact that exists and i think denying its existence is generally counterproductive

@ikeWren @winterklaus I think its more people trying to hijack and do a propaganda cutscene skip with whoever they are talking to. A speedrun tactic to get people out of the prospect that taking the foundational hegemonic notion as reified because its 'stood the test of time'. Its also a way of not insulting the audience because having to 'constantly assume' that your reader is thinking like the median voter and must be 'challenged' through obvious logic out of it is an insult to them. Like tutorial handholding them out of a bad belief system.

@ikeWren @winterklaus On the level of induvidual discussions it comes off kind of impatient and rude but at scale it becomes a matter of trying to run a process of rhetoric that maximizes the number of people out liberal logic as possible. If you've played the game before you dont want to sit through the rights propaganda fallout slideshow cutscene and quiz every time but it forgets that you are playing the game with a friend and it would be polite to ask them if you want to do this or not for the flavour and atmosphere first since 'the outcomes dont matter anyway and you get to pick'.

@Erato_Heti @winterklaus i'm not really following your argument here, sorry. this is the function of "transgenderism" as a talking point? or the denial thereof?

@ikeWren @winterklaus The irony of this allegory is that you wouldnt mulch through random people into playing your favourite game at your home. The process of rhetoric is faster and more lightweight than a videogame but people are just kind of desperate to feel heard and share what they feel as quickly as possible. I'm aware I'm kind of schizo-derailing the conversation at this point but this notion of trying to play speedster for your values is why traumabonding has become such an ominous and common practice today. People think 'not wasting others time' is a high value, and they want kinship so they will literally try to hurry through their thoughts and interests as quickly as possible. bake them down into quick constituent parts. dating apps fill with a lather of the top 5 shows they like and there 3 favourite hobbies. conversations about where your from spiral into being about the brutalities of their migration life for the next hour. compliments on the hat turn into a research field point of what company the hat is from, looking up the brand on the phone, pulling up the website, giving digital reciepts upon reciepts upon reciepts. everyone plays accountant for each other in a cognetic fixation for true connection. ins and outs and ins and outs. a tactility of the digital skin being grabbed at frantically. and so on and so forth

@ikeWren @winterklaus the function of rights theory. the function of human rights theory comes from a 200 year history of liberal dialogue and even marxist inclusions on the 'role of the human'. a lot of people that have a disgust towards the trans rights as human rights thing actually take issue with the concept of 'human rights' (both in the speciest and/or anti-marxist) way. however, a lot of people who have this warriness have already normalized themselves to not having to walk through why its inane.

@Erato_Heti @ikeWren holy shit ur cooking

@Erato_Heti @winterklaus ohhhhh okay i see. ok im back on board

@winterklaus let's read foucault together

@ikeWren i used to be a lot more about foucault and butler. this convo has me retracing some of why it still feels useful ig

@ikeWren @winterklaus i should just lock in and tell you that I think its a completely healthy defense mechanism to deny transgenderism as an ideology because its more just that it has an 'ideological function' than being in itself an ideology. scapegoating by design is about trying to isolate a group as a deliberately aberrant set of actors. we aren't. most transgender people are just following a liberal coda they already believed well before coming out and that coda includes the right to bodily autonomy and stuff like that.

@Erato_Heti @winterklaus my opinion on the ideological status of transgenderism is that a system's purpose is what it does, if something has ideological function it is ideology . denying it is a fine defense mechanism in a liberal assimilationist framework but as a rule i think we should be more radical and less assimilationist , promoting assimilationism has continually undermined radical change and locks us into straight time (see jose muñoz' cruising utopia, 2009)

@ikeWren @winterklaus like to put some parity on why I think its fair here. taking another example abortion. there is a specific route you could take where you believe in the importance of abortion for 'non liberal reasons' but good luck making that sound not like eugenics in pratice right. 'I think people shouldn't have kids until they are ready' is eugenics-coded.

'I think having to force people to have birth is a form of violence and im concerned with lowering the amount of violence in the world' is maybe the best way it could be verbalized off the top of my head. but regardless theres a reason why we dont call it 'womenism' when people want an abortion. the self protection of appealing to basic personal body autonomy as a *general shared value* in a globalized society sort of 'fits' especially for people who didnt geek out on Judith Jarvis essays in high school.

@Erato_Heti @winterklaus well . when people want an abortion . people call it feminism . so