Lurking underneath

I try not to get too immersed in the right wing sphere but just keep an eye on their latest obsessions. It's easy to fall down a rabbit hole and become indignant because there is just so much uninformed opinion out there.

Jordan Peterson is often my go to example of someone who bases their right to opine on all subjects because he established a following. Attacking trans people has now become a bread and butter staple on his Daily Wire videos and he has gained credibility by having established credentials as a clinical psychologist (a license he is about to lose through his own intransigence).

I remind myself that societies always go through growing pains when faced with cultural change and sex and gender is the last important sacrosanct arena. However it isn't the general masses making all the noise as they are just trying to make ends meet. It is instead those with a bully pulpit like Peterson, Ben Shapiro or pure idiots like Piers Morgan.

Are things a bit confused out there right now? Yes but I see that as the price of removing the lid and letting people out of their hermetically sealed containers. Within a population you will find all kinds of people some of whom are more than happy to be held up as martyrs or role models.

That the right wing cherry picks the worst excesses as a showcase for what ails society is nothing new. It is the oldest trick in the book and yet there are plenty of normal and well adjusted transgender people out there who are living lives in the open which 30 years ago would have been unimaginable. Are there also some who are confused? most assuredly as it's a big planet.

I try to remember that positive outcome every time I watch a YouTube video which feasts on the outlandish. I also take note that many supposed gender critical feminists (hello Kathleen Stock) at their core are feeding on a visceral transphobia rather than on measured rationality; this no matter how even tempered and rational they appear to be on the surface.

Fear of change and fear of the other are always the staples lurking quietly underneath.