Ross Douthat realizes that he’s caught in a culture war trap. He says as much.
This uniquely American climate also raises uncomfortable questions for the few conservatives, like myself, who enjoy a substantial liberal readership. You will notice that I have written this essay in a studiously cautious style, on the theory that as I am in fact a known social conservative, my too-vigorous prosecution of the skeptics’ case would serve only to reinforce the current progressive orthodoxy — enabling the response that, see, to doubt the wisdom of puberty blockers or the authenticity of teenage self-identification is the province of Catholics, religious conservatives, the out-group.
The problem is that anyone who questions the orthodoxy is immediately cast as the enemy, to be dismissed as a hater or something-phobic, and at best ignored, at worst, canceled. Which means that we can’t have a discussion about anything because a discussion means there will be views that differ, and that can’t be. And yet, Douthat makes a point that is valuable on the particular issue at hand, transgender related, and critical on the broader issue of the culture war.
According to Gallup, the share of younger Americans who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has risen precipitously in the last decade. Almost twenty-one percent of Generation Z — meaning, for the purposes of the survey, young adults born between 1997 and 2003 — identifies as L.G.B.T., as against about 10 percent of the millennial generation, just over 4 percent of my own Generation X and less than 3 percent of baby boomers. Comparing the Generation Z to the baby boom generation, the percentage of people identifying as transgender, in particular, has risen twentyfold.
What does this mean? Douthat breaks it down into three camps.
This is great news. Sexual fluidity, transgender and nonbinary experience are clearly intrinsic to the human experience, our society used to suppress them with punitive heteronormativity and only now are we getting a true picture of the real diversity of sexual attractions and gender identities.
We shouldn’t read too much into it. This trend is probably mostly just young people being young people, exploring and experimenting and differentiating themselves from their elders. Most of the Generation Zers identifying as L.G.B.T. are calling themselves bisexual and will probably end up in straight relationships, if they aren’t in them already. Some of the young adults describing themselves as transgender or nonbinary may drift back to cisgender identities as they grow older.
This trend is bad news. What we’re seeing today isn’t just a continuation of the gay rights revolution; it’s a form of social contagion which our educational and medical institutions are encouraging and accelerating. These kids aren’t setting themselves free from the patriarchy; they’re under the influence of online communities of imitation and academic fashions laundered into psychiatry and education — one part Tumblr and TikTok mimesis, one part Judith Butler.
But laying out the three broad options, which of course will have personal variations within them so if you don’t see your precise view in there, don’t take it personally, is only the first part of the question. The second part is where the majority of people fit within these confines, which brings us to the big question, why can’t we express our view out loud so that others realize they’re not alone?
The effects of this debate-ending impulse on liberal discourse is the third complexity lurking behind my initial categorization. Within liberaldom right now you literally cannot know, outside of private conversation, whether someone is fully in the first camp, more inclined to the second camp or even drawn toward the third. There is a gap between what people are willing to say in public and what they really think that’s unprecedented on any controversial issue I have seen.
Not too long ago, UVA student Emma Camp had an op-ed in the New York Times saying something very similar, that students self-censor rather than express a view outside the progressive orthodoxy for fear of what their classmates and professors will say, think or do. She was viciously attacked by some of the biggest progressive voices at the Times for challenging their piety.
And here’s social conservative Douthat raising the same thing, which proves that it’s nothing more than a conservative talking point since progressives, who control the orthodoxy, don’t whine about it so it can’t be real.
This — call it discretion, if you want — is partly voluntary, based on a desire to be a good ally, to show maximal kindness, and not give any aid and comfort to conservatives, Republicans, Ron DeSantis.
But it’s also enforced: A version of the Rowling vortex quickly surrounds anyone who argues skeptically about the rise in transgender identification or suggests that hormonal and surgical treatments are being overused, whether that person is a journalist, an author, an academic researcher, even a gender-dysphoria clinician.
Granted, this rationale is focused on Douthat’s specific transgender topic, but his reference to “maximal kindness” is a pervasive demand and expectation in the culture war. To not comply with what others characterize as kindness is to make on feel guilt at being unkind. Most of us want to be kind, and the argument that it takes little effort to use someone’s preferred pronouns or acquiesce to their gender identity has merit.
Indeed, when an English prof argued that academics should not thank their students for sharing, there was a strong reaction that it was just a matter of being polite, of kindness, rather than enabling the narcissism that students expect and demand from their teachers.
Is it kind to exercise “discretion” and not say anything that challenges the orthodoxy such that the zealots believe they are the majority, even though they’re not. Or more importantly, that instead of working together openly and honestly to find sustainable fixes for real problems, our “kindness” prevents our finding viable solutions? Is it kinder to say nothing or to say something, even if it means they will call us impolite, dicks or lacking in emotional intelligence?
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