Why are so many "woke skeptic" types also skeptical about trans issues?

[Mechavada]

Mods: I wasn't sure if this should be in Individual Politics or here.  If it needs to be moved go ahead.

What I mean by "woke skeptic" are a lot of these types who tend to blame a myriad of issues on so-called "wokeness".  Now to be clear here, I am not going to pull one of those "what is wokeness" talking points up here.  In politics, and this is something I wish a lot of folks would understand, one doesn't need to even give something a definition for it to have an effect.  For example, in an earlier era these things were referred to as "political correctness" which in the American context at least was originally used by leftists in what appeared to be satirical ways.  Later generations of conservatives would use "political correctness" as a boogeyman term. . . . . . .and later generations of liberals would accept the boogeyman definition and then explain "there's nothing wrong here".  So in regards to "wokeness" I try to stay away from throwing the term around as I view it as simply another manifestation of the earlier "politically correct" trends in society.  On "political correctness" (as it came to be understood by both sides) I would argue that the argument that it's merely "enforced politeness" is extremely naive and invoked by dishonest political actors who don't want to fully defend whatever point they are making logically.  Obviously you shouldn't call people racial and ethnic slurs, you shouldn't use derogatory language against women, you shouldn't gay bash. . . . . . but I tend to view those things as mere politeness, mere "being a decent person", than I do any proof that "political correctness" has had a positive influence on society.

What's my point?  My point is I'm one who is hardly an advocate of "wokeism", there's few things I dislike more than some prude who has a conniption fit over someone accidentally using the wrong terms or taking offense to someone having a hairstyle that (supposedly) belongs to another culture, but for the life of me I can't understand at all why a lot of other folks who take issue with these things also are highly skeptical about trans issues?  Like I'm not going to make assumptions about you guys, I feel like I'm one of you half the time, but I honestly don't get it?  I mean I'd bet money a lot of you guys are actually okay with transfolks passing as their desired sex, I'm sure some of you even respect their pronouns in person, but I don't get like the agreement with conservatives that gender has to match sex and that anything else is a perversion of nature/science?  

I mean after all isn't the nature of science, biology, whatever, that in man's pursuit of knowledge of how the world works the world is constantly and ever changing?  Where is it written that biological truths that were truths in 1992 have to still be true today?  Was there a point we had reached as a society where it was impossible for science to progress beyond where it had gotten?  And if so where/when was that point?  Was there a decision made in a faculty lounge somewhere that here is the truth of the issue and none shall progress further?

You see where I'm going with this?  Idk it feels like a lot of the trans skepticism engage in the same behavior that "woke" types often get accused of.  ie, drawing a line in the sand on an issue and declaring that any view past that line is worthy of intense scolding.  And I hear claims that a lot of pro-trans types do this but (maybe this is because I don't have a Twitter account) most of the pro-trans arguments I've heard from folks in my own life have been far from "how dare you cis scum" and just pointing out (with facts and statistics) the problems facing the transgender community.  It seems if anything the side I see pulling the "get with the program" kind of attitude are the ones who insist on gender being set at birth.  So yeah on a level it seems weird to me that folks who generally take issue with political true scotsmanship, ideological purity, "litmus testing", etc. take such a hard line on the gender issue and act like this is like asking "is the sky blue?"

I'm sure there's probably some of you who disagree with this take and will probably post a dozen tweets of some pro-trans activist engaging in even worse behavior than the ones I've described.  Again, I'll just iterate that my impression is largely from dealing with folks on Facebook and on forums like this.  I never got onto the Twitter wagon, I don't have Instagram, there's a lot of social media platforms that I don't use.  I'm just saying from where I stand on things it looks like the folks taking issue with the core argument of transgenderism, that someone can be born in the wrong body, engage in the same kind of absolutism that they often accuse "the woke" of engaging in.

That is all.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

You brought up a number of points, and I'll try to be as objective as possible. I lean conservative on these things (pretty sure the political matrix would show me on the conservative side if it was adjusted for today's issues), but I think I'm ambivalent enough about this new age culture war stuff to give a fair take.

Firstly, this is just an aspect of conservatism. The ironic thing about conservatism is that it's actually a very fluid and constantly evolving ideology. As William F. Buckley said, "a conservative is a fellow standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'". Whenever there is a major social change, there is a reaction from more conservative-oriented people who are skeptical of the changes being brought about.

There's even a neurological basis to this. Jonathan Haidt's work on psychology as it relates to politics lays it out pretty well. The characteristics that make a liberal and a conservative in 21st century America are characteristics that have been passed down since caveman times. In a hunter-gatherer tribe, you needed people who were open-minded, agreeable, and always looking for new ideas to improve the tribe - you also needed people who were more resistant to change, wary of ideas that may threaten the tribe, and ready to go to war against rival tribes. Without the first, you'll stagnate and collapse, and without the second, you'll die off. Those same mentalities evolve into liberalism and conservatism, except the world has gotten so advanced that instead of fighting for survival every day, we're fighting over much more nebulous things.

So that's essentially how our monkey brains perceive the world, some of us emphasize improving the tribe and its values, others emphasize protecting it and its values. And like the counterculture movement of the 1960s, a lot of the things being advocated by the left today - whether it's defunding the police, teaching critical race theory, or normalizing gender transition - these are things that go against the values that your average middle-aged, middle-class American was raised to believe in, and therefore there is a conservative backlash. This was always going to happen.

I think it's unfortunate that trans people have been caught in the crosshairs. I really do not understand how they feel the way they feel, but I do believe them when they say that they feel they were born with the wrong sex, and I want to be supportive. But there are a whole host of related issues where I find myself skeptical. I don't believe, for example, that it makes sense to integrate sports based on identified gender rather than biological sex, because the whole point is to account for the difference in physical capacity between biological males and females.

More broadly, and this is getting beyond just trans people, I'm skeptical of and resistant to the general movement of blurring the lines of male and female or masculinity and femininity, because my lived experience is that the biological impulses of the male and female sexes has a HUGE effect on how we interact with people, what we value, etc. I had an ex-girlfriend who was quite liberal and a passionate feminist, who admitted multiple times that she feels bad about how she feels much more happy playing the more traditional feminine role of being the more "supportive" partner instead of being career-focused. She was raised in a very liberal part of a very liberal country, and in a family where the mother was the primary breadwinner. So was this a case of society telling her that she should be a subservient woman? Or was it a case of woke ideology (which was far more dominant in the context where we met - a major university in a major city) telling her that she should aspire to not be traditionally feminine, even though that's what she preferred?

Point is, in trying to resist the constraints of society, the ideology adopted by progressives is creating more questions than answers. "Wokeness" has not caused societal collapse, and I don't think it ever will, as much as conservatives may fear-monger about it. But in challenging the societal notions and values that work for the vast, vast, vast majority of people, it was always going to have a backlash. Progressives see this as a way of improving society, and conservatives see this as a threat to society - improving vs protecting society is the basic divide between left and right and it will always exist - so there's a moral dimension. The left sees resistance to or skepticism of wokeism as thinly-veiled bigotry, and therefore not worth considering. Hell, if you recall how Dave Chapelle was dragged through the mud for making trans jokes (Chapelle's been making crude and offensive jokes all his career, and it only became an issue after he started telling trans jokes), you don't even need to be skeptical or critical, simply making jokes can make you a persona non grata. The right sees wokeism as an existential threat, and therefore is inclined to oppose anything related to it, and right-wing politicians are finding an easy target to boost votes. Your average Republican voter who has never met a trans person but is skeptical of "woke" ideology in general, eats up this rhetoric. Trans people, regrettably, end up as the most convenient pawns in this culture war.

[Ferguson97]

"Why do vegetarians not like pork?"