The Myth of the Bigoted Republican
Why does the media and the intelligentsia equate disagreement with prejudice?
I had an exchange today with an old friend. He’s also a combat veteran but unlike most of the people I know in that cohort, he is distinctly progressive. We were talking about the wave of legislation addressing public debates about educational materials, sex and gender transition therapies and surgeries for minors, and trans kids in athletic competition. Each of these issues is tangential to the public furor about social definitions of sex and gender that I believe is downstream of the most radical and ambitious project of the Left since Mao’s Cultural Revolution in 1960’s China (which turned out great - don’t worry). The project is the erosion of historical notions of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality, and their deep connection to physical and psychological traits in people. The replacement model for this familiar system is rarely described by its advocates, which is something that should make everyone deeply suspicious. It’s a kind of romantic essentialism, in which each person has a deep and powerful ‘gender identity’ (much like a soul) which is not necessarily related to or described by their physical characteristics or social roles or personality traits. It’s ephemeral and immutable (unless one is gender-fluid, I suppose) but so reliable that it is discernible even in children, simply by asking them, and is the proper basis for decisions about lifestyle, name, pronouns, and medical care.
I don’t think this project will succeed and I don’t think it actually can. I think the Left has over-extended itself by trying to subvert what is arguably the most basic, important, and universal feature for humans: their sex. The nature of the modern left is toward purity and absolutism to rid society of what they call oppression. It’s not a great strategy for reform. Nevertheless, they will create a lot of confusion and spread many bad ideas along the way. For incremental reformers or pragmatic operators this would be a flaw but for the real progressives it’s a feature. The status quo is inherently problematic and oppressive. The fact that it’s also the most technologically advanced, opportunity-laden, and materially prosperous state that humanity has ever achieved is beside the point for them. Subverting the power dynamic will ALWAYS be a net positive and if that weakened hierarchy should collapse and create its usual collateral damage of masses of physically weak and socially vulnerable people (in which groups we can safely place children, the poor, women, and many gay and trans people, ironically) that is no matter if it lubricates the ultimate processes of decolonization and queer liberation. Eventually we’ll arrive at utopia, apparently, and focusing on all those intermediate stages is just quibbling. Conversations about the concrete inner-workings of their blessed vision and its likely challenges are about as popular on the left as fundraising for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.
Cultural Marxism (and one of its specialized offshoots, Queer Theory) is currently a mostly negative ideology. Listen to decolonizers or anti-racists or trans activists and you will get a very strong sense of what they’re against but less of what they’re for. They oppose many of the familiar features of our society and they regard institutions as they exist now with a kind of reflexive disdain but they haven’t built any institutions in their place (although they’ve captured a few) and their plans for investment or development or epistemological growth are basically nonexistent. We’re currently in a strange place. It is analogous to very few other situations in history – perhaps the Khmer Rouge revolution in Cambodia is one – in which the intellectual program feeding and structuring many of these ideas has resisted labels or analysis or constructive association in favor of playing the roles of critic and activist. The stated goals of the activists are measurable and proximate but we can be sure that if all of those goals were fulfilled tomorrow an entirely new and more radical slate of goals would spring up and the same rhetoric (of inclusion and marginalization and violence and empowerment, and the moral urgency of literally preserving human life) would be used to advance them.
The issue of trans and the social definition of gender is given its hysterical tone by a concern for children and human life. Trans activists promote an idea (never precisely explained) that society is rife with violence against trans people for being trans (which doesn’t seem to be true at all) and that our civilization is so unpleasant for trans people (especially minors) that its conditions have led to a catastrophically high suicide rate. The trans suicide rate is certainly very high but a few questions could be asked: Is there any evidence that changes to language or social ideas about sex/gender address this? Is there any SOLID evidence that sex or gender-focused surgeries and hormone treatments address the rate of suicidality in young people? Why has the suicide rate climbed as society has become more accepting (and MUCH more focused) on the idea of trans? If so many young people are really trans and a dismissive or harsh attitude towards their identity is a self-applied death sentence for some significant number of them why have past decades seen so few teen suicides of ANY kind? A better and more difficult question is: what is their vision of a supportive society and how does that vision accord with the constraints of reality? Would their utopia contain national governments and private property and marriage and churches and police and technological growth and the free exchange of ideas? If not, what are their proposed alternatives? The apocalyptic tone infesting these conversations comes from an emotional belief that the correct attitudes are necessary for the survival of children and ‘marginalized’ people, and the incorrect ones are equivalent to their murder. That’s not an exaggeration. I suspect that even if the Left gained everything it’s immediately focused on gaining the tone would not change and the situation would not improve and the disorder would spread. ‘Society as oppression’ is an idea that is both fundamentally true and untrue and it’s too broad and fuzzy in its description to really be testable or defined. As long as we have an activist class of the kind that now afflicts us we will have to resign ourselves to having these conversations in the shadow of absurd moral absolutes, while the actual well-being of people (trans and non-trans) remains a peripheral abstraction. The question can be reduced to its essence: if we could have our society as it now exists (with men and women and trans people and jobs and marriages and representative government) WITHOUT the trans suicides and youth gender dysphoria would you be content? I suspect that in many cases the answer is ‘no’.
I’ve written about this strange and ongoing debate elsewhere and I should finish a piece about the Nashville school shooting and the tenor of our discussion about this issue sometime next week. Here I want to focus on one particular feature of our conversation which has become absolutely predictable: the characterization of the opposing side in the most unflattering light, as bigots.
Read any mainstream media (MSM) article and I will bet you a substantial amount of money that the recent cluster of state bills addressing gender-related treatments for minors and trans athletes and school curriculums will be described as ‘anti-LGBTQ’. When I spoke to my friend he was incredulous that the Republican party was so nakedly stoking the fires of transphobia for political gain.
This is a narrative that is nearly universal on the Left and it’s simply false. Don’t mistake my attitude: there is certainly bigotry among Republicans. There’s bigotry among any large group of people, since bigotry is an intersection of emotional reactivity and group generalizations that are somewhat necessary for our social interaction in a world of limited information. I will go further, though, and admit that transphobes and homophobes and racists are probably over-represented in the Republican Party of today. This is something we should be willing to confront and discuss but it’s completely irrelevant to the policy debates tangential to gender ideology.
If you can convince yourself that your opponents are morally deficient and that this deficiency lies at the ROOT of their opposition you can dismiss all of their claims and ideas prior to investigation. On many issues (most?) that is the operating strategy of the Left.
CLAIM: Republicans are often pro-life because they dislike women (sexism/patriarchy)
REALITY: Pro-life people usually seem to be motivated by a religiously based idea of when a growing, embryonic human becomes a person in some essential way, and therefore deserving of legal protection. The other policy debates are basically irrelevant to such believers, and this is why the two sides find themselves endlessly yelling past one another. The idea that women should have control over their own medical decision or the assertion (with which I agree) that abortion can be a useful and healthy public policy allowance simply don’t connect with the claim that an embryo has fundamental human worth granted by its potential or by God.
The false nature of the claim is exposed as soon as one understand that some 35% of American women are pro-life. It’s emotionally satisfying and strategically useful to portray this fight as being waged by men upon women but that’s a cynical fiction.
CLAIM: Republicans are concerned by the large numbers of unconstrained illegal immigration across our Southern border because they are racists… if not ideologically than at least in their attitudes and secret fears. Older, white, prosperous Republican men are the bogeyman of the modern progressive and the implication is that such men are unfashionable or downright hostile to the diverse and unfamiliar.
REALITY: Like all stereotypes this one is flawed but, unlike many, this one is mostly based on an ideologically tribal division of society and the emotional gratification that comes from dismissing the ‘out’ group. It’s therefore especially unreliable. Older white Republican men have lived in this diverse society for a long time and have generally been decent and pro-social. While they reflected the failings of earlier ages as they lived through them so did every other group. For every xenophobic Republican there are probably 4 who have started businesses or mixed families or carried on deep friendships with immigrants. American has always been a relatively welcoming place for immigrants and there are few societies that could have absorbed as many as we have without serious social conflict arising, I think. The policy debates about immigration today seem to generally center around legitimate areas of social science inquiry: What are the economic costs and benefits of different amounts and kinds of immigration? What is a workable immigration rate to promote assimilation (which immigrants also usually desire and which is healthy for the receiving nation)? What are the health and security and law enforcement implications of this kind of mass migration? Rather than answering these questions (or even acknowledging them) the Left retreats into its citadel of moral certitude, guarded by a deep moat of disdain.
As with abortion, the actual composition of the supporters/opponents of these ideas muddies the water of narrative so completely that it’s never really discussed on the Left. Some of the most vociferous critics of our border policy are large numbers of first generation Hispanics, who became some of the fastest growing reservoirs of support for President Trump and have turned traditionally Blue Brownsville and El Paso into Republican-trending areas. Surely THESE recent arrivals aren’t motivated by xenophobia?
CLAIM: Republicans are ‘using’ the ‘anti-LGBTQ’ legislation to ‘whip up’ transphobia for some disreputable short-term political gain.
REALITY: There are a range of opinions on these issues (and many bills and specific areas of policy focus at play) so I will concentrate on the legislation to restrict or ban gender-related surgeries and hormone treatments for minors. I have listened to many hours of discussion and debate on these issues and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a truly transphobic statement. Most every speaker is careful to state that they support full legal equality and personal freedom for trans people. There is a lot of contention about the idea of gender identity and its public policy applications and there are many who believe that any positions except for theirs is, almost by definition, transphobia but that’s a worthless claim. As someone who takes the Republican side on this issue (I am not a Republican) I will tell you what I believe: I think there is a serious and concerning increase in the number of minors being treated for gender dysphoria and the fact that the cohort has shifted suddenly from a generally male demographic to being teenage girls in 3 out of 4 cases (many of whom have autism spectrum disorder or diagnosed anxiety disorders) makes me think that there are probably other factors at work here. I don’t think the data which supports the idea that sex changes address trans suicide is solid. The highest rates of suicidality are about 5-15 years AFTER transitional surgery. The side effects of the drugs in question here can be severe and life-altering and aren’t the kinds of consequences which can meaningfully be consented to by children. The idea that gender dysphoria (which naturally resolves in 80-90% of cases according to the literature) is best treated by affirmation and the idea that affirmation means puberty blockers… and then often sex hormones… and then often surgery seems like a drastic supposition that can’t guide treatment modalities until we at least have high fidelity data regarding the phenomenon we’re seeing RIGHT NOW.
As with my prior two examples, many gay and trans people share my concerns. The Human Rights Campaign recently released an infographic of the 15 most homophobic and transphobic Twtitter posters. 2 were openly gay journalists. One was a trans YouTube celebrity. One was a gay advocacy organization that operates in this area. Clearly their definition of ‘ -phobic’ is contested, to say the least.
My last example is particularly discouraging because there is a veritable media blackout on a view which is currently a majority position in the US. If you read only the MSM you would come away with a vague but solid sense that about half of the country is being galvanized by some hostility towards gay and trans people and that hostility was finding vent in these bills. Why a flurry of bills after decades of silence in this area? Why do most of these bills only pertain to minors and don’t address adults of any sexuality or gender identity in any way? Why is there a stark nonexistence of transphobic rhetoric or anger towards gay or trans people among politicians and media figures? One could argue that such messages are unfashionable but that only proves my point: if millions of people were motivated by transphobia there would be dank avenues of the media ecosystem and some fringes within the Republican party frank in their hostility. The Republicans haven’t proven themselves to be possessed of an excess of discretion or moderation on other topics. Why this one?
We need to be able to discuss issues in a cordial and productive way or we will lose our democracy and there’s no way that can happen without a positive major contribution from the media. There’s also no way for either side to make any progress without convincing large numbers of people who now disagree with them that their position will create the greatest increase in human flourishing. Labelling each of those potential converts ‘bigot’ doesn’t seem like a useful preliminary step in that campaign
Clearly some changes need to be made. Perhaps when our utopia is finally achieved…
"There’s bigotry among any large group of people, since bigotry is an intersection of emotional reactivity and group generalizations that are somewhat necessary for our social interaction in a world of limited information."
I appreciate that you called this out because it's an unrealistic thing to expect the absence of.
It struck me the other day that the Left is now calling normie conservatives and even centrists “alt right”. They’re demonizing the opposition and cutting off all possibility for good faith dialogue. It can’t end well.