Why does resistance to TRA overreach only come from other extremists?

submitted by ReconNinja from self.TumblrInAction

This ought to ruffle some feathers. Perhaps a slightly exaggerated title, but the point stands. We've witnessed awful behavior coming out of the further letters of the alphabet people for years now. For better or for worse, ever since Tumblr stopped being a relevant platform, it's what TIA has largely focused on. Behavior like:

  • Imposing a naked emperor situation on society

  • Narcissism, fetishistic behavior, and reality denial

  • Infiltrating the leadership of others' communities and either wresting control for themselves or destroying it if the former fails

  • Grooming minors

  • Publicly fantasizing about punishing political enemies with rape

  • Gaslighting about their own behavior and rhetoric (ex. "that's not happening" or "nobody is saying that" when those occurrences and words are not fringe in their community at all)

The ability to condemn these actions should not be politically hyperpartisan. Yet, unless there's thousands of silently reasonable people out there, it is. In one TRA-opposed camp you have TERFs, who take the usual extraordinary intellectual dishonesty of feminists (who wrote the playbook TRAs now use to subvert online communities, and who TIA was originally created to criticize) and stir in a midsized spoonful of psychopathy. No thanks. On the other side of TRA opposition you have conservative Christian nationalists. As an atheist who likes the scientific and civil rights advances of the past 300 years and wants to continue living in a democratic republic, an even more emphatic no thanks to you too. You pretty much don't hear TRA opposition coming from anyone else.

It seems the path of truly independent thought is a lonely one.

Edit: To address all the mentions of centrism, I will note that I'm not a centrist by any stretch of the imagination. Centrists annoy me by basically turning false equivalency into an entire political ideology. By American standards, I am firmly progressive on most issues. I'm in favor of greatly expanding or creating anew various federal programs such as single payer universal healthcare, tuition-free public higher education, and some form of universal basic income. I'm in favor of more stringent regulation and taxation of big business and finance. I'm in favor of labor unionization and activism to improve pay and working conditions. I'm in favor of drastic action to address the multifaceted threat of manmade climate change. I'm opposed to the trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives lost on ultimately fruitless military adventurism. I'm in favor of numerous broad reforms and restructuring of policing to address brutality and racial profiling. I'm in favor of abortion rights and am opposed to the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade. I would also be opposed to the rumored upcoming overturn of Obergefell v. Hodges. Need I continue?

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[–]alladd 20 insightful - 1 fun20 insightful - 0 fun21 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

it's 100% about not wanting to be publically shamed. there is without a doubt a silent majority of reasonable people compelled to go along with this shit because they don't think it will affect them. liberalism is the politics of plenty. the second any of them has a personal conflict that endangers their comfort level they're gonna become a NIMBY TERF overnight.

the only time people come out and give their honest opinions are either 1. on the internet, surprise surprise look what anonymity does to honesty or 2. when they're a member of an already outre group but have support within that group so they feel empowered to say something

[–]Vulptexghost fox girl ^w^ 16 insightful - 2 fun16 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

For most people the cause isn't worth the condemnation. I think even most liberals think it's silly deep down.

[–]clownworlddropout 17 insightful - 2 fun17 insightful - 1 fun18 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

This right here. The TRAs are social terrorists and nobody wants to put a target on their back by speaking against them.

[–]cars 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And they call us the terrorists . . .

[–]LyingSpirit472 12 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Because all of society's gone to the extremes.

There is no middle path for anyone. You're either on the right, where you're a MAGAt, or you're on the left and a Wokester. No in between...and worse, the people closer to the center are fully aware it's a two-party system, a vote for a party closer to their opinion is a vote for the party that isn't close to your opinion, and all you can do is hold your nose, vote for the person who's view on abortion matches yours, and go home and have a good cry that you actually voted for that piece of shit.

[–]meisthebigdumbTransracial BlackX Rockgender Bispecies 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

It's a massive paradigm shift. Society has been pushed to accept this bullshit, and this is why you only see radical feminists and paleoconservatives trying to push back. Every single institution and mainstream ideology (liberals/"conservatives" that conserve nothing) tolerate this bullshit, and most people don't realise tolerating transgenderism would lead to transgender activists.

[–]LyingSpirit472 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Well, if it is, it's more that the extremists on both sides are also the most spoiled, most entitled, most terminally online...and the centrists know that the extremists are the ones who will ruin you because you didn't give them their way even once, and 99% of it is stuff that most people don't give enough of a damn about so they're willing to give them their way just to shut them up for a second.

(The whole problem is that when you give spoiled, entitled, terminally online babies an inch, they'll take a mile and now they're getting to areas where it SHOULD be the line.)

[–]Adventurous_Ad6212 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

imwithher!

[–]LtGreenCo 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

These days we've got mainstream media, social media, and communities like r/enlightenedcentrist pushing the false dichotomy that you can only choose one extreme or the other and moderates don't exist - that all self-proclaimed moderates are really just extremists in disguise. This is having 2 effects: either moderates, for fear of being ridiculed/cancelled/dogpiled, just keep their head down and mouths shut, or they do pick a side and go down the path of lunacy. In both cases, the world is losing its most reasonable voices and the fringe lunatics are becoming ever more prevalent and relevant.

Things won't get any better until moderates start fighting back and take back the national discourse.

[–]lunarstrain 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

moderates don't exist - that all self-proclaimed moderates are really just extremists in disguise.

It's frustrating how someone like me who has no violent wishes towards any individual group besides sexual abusers can be described as an extremist for merely disagreeing on trans issues or modern race issues. I mean, ten years ago I would have been seen as pretty damn reasonable.

[–]Enemycupcake 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think most people still find it reasonable to disagree with the agenda they're pushing with those issues, it's gotten too extreme. They just censor the hell out of everything online and threaten people's lively hoods in real life to try to prevent people from being able to actually voice that opinion

[–]Objecting_Sphere 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

OP, I share your concern. I think there are several reasons: 1. As many others have said, most normal people are afraid of being shamed. People who are aware of TRA overreach are also aware of the way they use manipulative language and coordination to generate social censure campaigns, including mobilizing people who aren't political enough to be aware of their tricks. 2. Their censorship does work. If you go over to Reddit and get to a trans-ralated post early enough, you'll see plenty of highly upvoted, non-extremist people expressing concern. But in short order those concerned people are modded away or downvoted until hidden by the TRA brigades. Understand that instinctive morality operates as a kind of herd behavior. Many people will have trouble believing that behavior is wrong if they see it going uncriticized, so the TRAs are able to normalize their behavior by censoring criticism. 3. Huge swathes of the population are actually fully indoctrinated to believe that all activism is good activism, and that suffering the TRA overreach is a form of charity. I once had an apparently-normal acquaintance break down, nearly to tears, when I explained that I don't feel guilty for my "white privilege." He explained that his white guilt has been a part of his identity ever since it was explained to him, and he can't bear the idea that I don't feel it too. These people who are indoctrinated but act normal are actually extremists. They're just not activist extremists.

And yes, as you alluded to the other side is also getting more extreme. Partly because they're being pressured in many ways, but also because the extremists on the right are taking advantage of the situation. I live in California so the leftists are the only ones I have to confront, but it seems the right has gone all-in on MAGA and Christian conservatism, which has just as much overreach if you get too close. Independent thought truly is a lonely way to live. Remember that it's not possible to control the seething masses with logic. Everyone is told to hate someone, and most of them will obey. Hold yourself above hatred and try to survive.

[–]Adventurous_Ad6212 4 insightful - 10 fun4 insightful - 9 fun5 insightful - 10 fun -  (1 child)

Wow.. okay well let me tell you something buckarino. No one is saying you have to fuck my lady cock but by refusing to do so you need to be aware that you are contributing to the murder of vulnerable individuals.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Ok cool sounds good.

Actually what happens in real life is the person laughs at the rediculousness of the statement then ignores the obvious crazy person. They'll not he able to go after that person because they know the war games mantra, the winning move in a suicidal game of stupidity is not to play.

[–]OuroborosTheory 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

ironically it's how the radfems were positioned like 2012--they'd closed the mixed and men's shelters, fought expansion of the legal definition of rape, insisted that due process was inherently bad (Duke, Mattress Girl), men's centers with 1% the women's center's budget shut down, policies benefiting women over men faulted to the patriarchy, fire alarms pulled, etc.; they even got unfabulous gay men removed from the "persecuted classes" on Tumblr (they "pass," they're double patriarchy, they don't tolerate stereotypical BPD/NPD/HPD behaviors, etc.)

so, back then the only opposition was from MRAs and Crowder and Yiannopopoulis or whatever

all that could stop them was colliding with another "woke" group, some third rail: then, one day, the lines shifted under everyone's feet and the people ruling the roost were now coming under the strongest attack; then everyone realized everyone else was just playing along to not get punished and they were out on their asses overnight

ditto Robin diAngelo--mandatory lectures or else you're fired, then March 2020 they didn't need White Lady Feminism any more; I think dysphoria was dropped as a requirement when they turned on Kaitlyn Jenner for saying she used to be a man named Bruce with a penis and still has Y chromosomes and big ol' bones

presumably they'll go after the term "trans" itself, and everything vanishes in a puff of logic sometime around December 2023 (and the TERFs take over, restarting the nightmare cycle) because, you see, if you keep prefacing "woman" with "trans," you're implying they're somehow DIFFERENT from women, that they used to BE something else, that there's something about their BIOLOGY you want to say, right? they've already come after they/them (since people use that to avoid she/her, like with Chris-Chan)

but replacing one batch of narcs with a different batch of narcs just leaves you still with a batch of narcs

[–]Vulptexghost fox girl ^w^ 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

No, they want to be "trans" and different than everyone else and a special snowflake, but you're also not allowed to talk about how they're different. You can't win.

[–]OuroborosTheory 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

your last sentence is basically the whole deal: it doesn't matter if every bit of what they're saying contradicts what they said yesterday, the point is to make YOU the bad guy--it's a crude wrong-footing tactic you'd see in high school debate

also "bad" derives from a possibly-nonbinary Norse term and "guy" is often used for males/often used regardless of gender, so you need to Do Better!!!

remember, it costs nothing to Be Nice!

[–]wylanderuk 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Well feminists and other wokesters took the new atheist movement and fucking shredded it what 8 or 9 years ago?

Take a number of loud people that are into minority based id politics and lets face it you would be hard pressed to find a smaller minority than trans people mix that with a toxic level of empathy.

Then take the massive increase in female to male trans identifying females mix all with the "you be anything you want and you can have it all" bullshit that feminists have been pushing, add a dash of social contagion stir LGBT activists (the activist part being much more important bit) basically getting marriage equality and needing something else to be activists about.

Then you have one sided rule enforcement on social media because of screaming frothing activists get into positions of virtual power and they can whip up crowds of like minded retards or just frankly bots.

Its why before TIA was banned from reddit in pretty much every fucking thread some TERF fuckhead would post about how "no woman would do what this trans person does or think what they do" I was pretty much "bitch please, there are plenty of examples of women doing and thinking the exact same".

But yes I think there are a lot of silently reasonable people out there that just want to be left the fuck alone.

Personally, I would rather watch shit burn down that side with a rad fem of any stripe and lets not forget the entire "no bio differences between the sexes came from them in the first place.

[–]OuroborosTheory 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

but they ALSO say the sexes are so different as to almost be two different species

of course their logic is also basically "things that harm women over men are patriarchy (misogyny), things that help women over men are also patriarchy (patronizing them as lessers), things that harm men are patriarchy (toxic masculinity)": they make all these statements in isolation so they might SOUND plausible, but combine them and it's just the usual 3rd-grade "what's yours is mine and what's mine is also mine"

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Go figure with the rad-fems they've long been driven by either deep seated hatred for men or deep seated hatred of themselves for being women I think. It's no surprise to me it's come to a head with half of them deciding look I'm a man now and they go up to join the patriarchy leaving the other half sorely pissed with their replacements.

[–]cephyrious 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There's several centrist intellectuals who clearly don't buy this stuff and who are not either Christian conservative or "TERF", and I think this will only grow.

[–]jet199 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I think most average people can't even believe the trans nonsense is real.

They think mean people must be just exaggerating.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Because it's an issue that only people who are, avoiding the word extreme, shall we say, deeply interested in the issue care about. Be that in favor or against, naturally this includes extremists.

Feminist and other hardline socially progressive type groups will attract all the weirdo outcasts and other people with unusual ideas including extremists due to tolerance of them and slowly those with intolerant ideologies will gain a foothold and there will be an internal split if you will between the rabidly passionate yet intolerant minority that demands everyone go there way while the majority increasingly gets alienated as it moves past the fringes due to the purity spiral.

The right naturally will be concerned with what the opposition is doing and will naturally see what the most extreme left is doing as the greater threat than the more reasonable moderate left who are willing to compromise on most issues. Naturally the far right has similar purity spirals and extreme ideas which in their own point of view are progressive in the direction they wish to progress in and the underlying social dynamics are very similar. So the fringes on both sides become aware to this fringe issue ad they are the only ones who care. Slowly these grow to more mainstream acceptance but initially only the most extreme right wing voices will get much coverage which tends to turn normal people off since they'll assume they hate trans people because of the bible or something like that and the more tolerant stance of "let people live their lives how they want" is more palatable (and I'd agree adult trans people should be free to make their own choices on this issue) but they've yet to get into the weeds of potential medical profit driven malpractice, the social contagion concerns, the potential of pedophiles to be using this as a shield to get to kids, the potential connections to mental illness as a co-morbidity, etc. As this issue progresses further into normality more people will become aware of these issues. I think we're already there but it depends on what circles you are in.

I think it's also fair to point out that a lot of average people are really stupid. America especially is known to have pretty piss poor public education. So many people may lack the sufficient scientific knowledge to counter the generally spiritualist trappings of gender theory.

[–]IMissPorn 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's not actually true. It's just that there are very few non-extremist platforms where you can hear people talk about it. The big ones have all been taken over or shut down. Only in obscure corners of the internet like this can you hear people speak out against it.

[–]YJaewedwqewq 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

This sub is on SaidIt now. The original plebbit sub had plenty of homos, literal communists/Marxists, and other "the slippery slope starts right after my specific brand of far-left insanity" types, but SaidIt is host to exiled right-wing communities who were here first and therefore provide lots of the userbase.

This is not to mention that most people have been programmed to accept wokism. Most people in society are naturally followers, so when people (including the government in many Euro countries) threatens violence and other highly disruptive consequences for standing against or even talking about this kind of revolting bullshit, they clam up and convince themselves it's okay.

Also, atheism, "muh civil rights" and fence-sitting democratic republics are what got us into this mess in the first place, so a vast majority of people like you agreeing with woke cockroaches should no surprise.

[–]QueenBread 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Paraphrasing the words of Aldous Huxley: 20% of people are strong extremists with firm beliefs. 20% are going to follow whatever is trendy with worrying ease. The remaining 60% are people who will not take a strong stance.

When an extremist group gains traction, they can easily make the sheeps into their blind followers, but the other 60% of people may or may not follow depending on the situation. The 20% of sheeps are the so called "useful idiots", and in this case they are poor victims of TRAs ideology who mutilate their bodies. The 20% of extremists are those who yell so loudly about trans rights blablablah - but who will absolutely not mutilate themselves.

The silence you see from people is the 60% who just won't take a stand one way or another. They will agree with whatever the public will say they should agree with..... until it goes against them. And they key here is "until it goes against them". The more the TRAs ideology spreads, the more that 60% will notice that it does indeed go against them as well.

[–]SaidOverRed 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Independent? No man is separate from God.

[–]Caessium 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

As you already mentioned, radfems understand the mechanism of identity politics well because they helped to create it and used it for years to their benefit. They don't like it anymore because it's being successfully used against them. Nevertheless, because of that, they are miles ahead of the mainstream when it comes to this topic.