Vaccines/Pandemic q for qt and gc

submitted by ausernamee from self.GCdebatesQT

Considering how complex some of these ideas about both gender and sexism are, how mainstream (and at what level of depth) do you hope for you ideas to become to the general public? Taking into consideration that, whether it's education and intellect hampering understanding of vaccines and viruses, or, on the other side people either not understanding or opting out of the social contract, that even with millions dead, we still have people who seemed really resistant to really really really basic information that they had full access to repeated on blast.

How, if the seemingly full efforts of government can't convince people to comply with safety precautions during a pandemic, could you get your idea across to so many people when it is complex and they are not smart and they are resistant? Is the strategy to convince/expose/impose the full idea via achieving more control of the conversation or is the idea to water it down to a level that is comprehensible but more memeable and require less of a power structure to implement?

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[–]grixitperson 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Sex is not complex. There are two sexes and they have well understood functions. Gender is as complex as anyone would like to make it.

[–]Penultimate_Penance 12 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

The vast majority of the world is aware of sex and the fact that humans come in two varieties male & female, so my view of the world needs no effort to spread, because people have eyes. It's like gravity, you don't need to know about Newton or Einstein's theories to know it's real.

Only a fraction of the world's population have the luxury belief in a 'gender identity'. Many people who bleat "Transwomen are women" and "Transmen are men" are just playing along. They can see. They know that transwomen is a man and that transmen is a woman. It's just easier to play along then deal with the left's version of the McCarthy inquisition.

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

luxury belief

This really needs to be in the general lexicon. Great term -- extremely useful.

[–][deleted] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Is the strategy to convince/expose/impose the full idea via achieving more control of the conversation or is the idea to water it down to a level that is comprehensible but more memeable and require less of a power structure to implement?

Some of both, with qualifications.

There will always be people who give no fucks about the social contract and self-responsibility (which is one of the reasons we have the rule of law).

Controlling the conversation isn't conversing, and imposing the idea isn't possible or particularly ethical (cancelling and doxxing being prime examples). GC asserts the full idea in its complexity -- those who care to engage it in full are welcome. Those who want to simplify key points via memes are also welcome. Those who wish to counter it should do so on its merits, which rarely if ever happens.

GC also asserts that there are public goods and public evils to an extent that Queer Theory is historically unwilling to engage -- this is the place where the idea meets policy. It's another matter, and another level of activism altogether.

[–]ausernamee[S] 8 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Here are some of my further thoughts on the topic.

We have rules as a society that DO have reasons and make sense on the macro level and if you undesrstand the reasons, but can be misunderstood or abused on the mircro level. Two examples that i think make a lot of sense, are the dictate to respect your elders, and the dictate for men not to hit women. But, to a little boy surrounded by grown women and little girls who doesn't fully understand that this is training him not to use his extra strength he will have once he's a man, that sounds simply like a demand that girls get special treatment for no reason, which may seem especially unfair if his big sis is pushing him around. Likewise, respecting your elders is simply a caution that you don't have all the wisdom of older people and warning you (perhaps in vain) to maybe not be a terror around the house when puberty hits. Those elders are going to be dead some day and you don't want to lash out in anger at someone you love and then regret it. But a general demand to respect your elders, similar to respecting women, just seems really silly to the kid with an abusive parent, or even with just an aging out of touch parent. So now, a simple warning to young people that maturity has yet to come seems like it's part of a system of giving older people all the advantages. When your co-worker with seniority is getting paid more than you simply for being older, and your whole life you've been hyped up on respecting elders when it's been nothing but counter productive, it seems like the whole idea of respecting elders is bullshit.

Not much coherent to say, these are just some thoughts i had. to me it seems like despite best intentions, simply promulgating ideas might not have the impact that is being sought after.

And then, onto the power aspect of dictating ideas, beyond simple conversation or social memes. This may be completely irrelevant because literacy and communications have changed, and also i'm not that educated in anthropology and could probably make some more observations if i compared this with the modern situation with islam and collecting more facts on people who practice islam. But, from my pov more familiar with western history, the church is a well known example of intuitional power combined with ideology. When we look at church theology and then look at the lives of the lay person, it seems like fully understanding and agree with christian doctrine on the part of the lay person wasn't a necessary part of christian domination. people who had all the power, and many of whom legitimately believed souls were at stake, were cloistered away having debates among highly educated fellow theologians. with all of the power and all of the conviction, their ideas STILL did not disseminate beyond basic mantras of controlling behavior that were rebelled against.

As i said, I don't really have anywhere to go with this and maybe communications advances makes these observations irrelevant anyway. I assume that even the most ignorant christian farmer from hundreds of years ago would probably be a better theologian than the devout modern christian simply because christiany was the meme machine of the day, but i feel like a lot of it would still be on the level of "don't hit women, it's bad" as opposed to "here is a full analysis of how men use their strength to subjugate women and why you shouldn't"

I think if i understood more about how modern Muslims engage with their faith and how much of their behavior is custom and ritual vs how much is engagement with the religion itself could give me more things to think about, but i'm fairly ignorant about that culture. for example, how much of veiling is about law, how much of it is about culture and customs, how much of it is a symbolic expression of faith (and what drives that faith. The word itself or the word as disseminated via the cultural memes), or an expression of "this is what god wants" in the sense that god legit came and told you to do that shit, or an expression of "this is what god wants" because you have done all the research on god and combed though the information like a scholar and reasonably determined that's what god wants.

At a certain point, some people show up to church simply to pay lip service to god and their religion and their culture.

We can have a whole culture that tells us trans women are women while no one at any point believes there has been a material change and the majority of people want to keep sports sex segregated while the majority of those who are being inclusive are doing so out of a desire to include, not out of principles of women belong in women spaces.

At the same time we can have a whole culture that parrots back to use the exact mantras that women need economic opportunity , women need empowerment from the patriarchy, women need sexual autonomy and satisfaction, and then conclude with "sex work is empowering work and you can prove your masculinity by how many orgasms you forced out of your girlfriend"

In general (not sepecifically on this community) i feel like sometimes trans and gc people tend to talk past one another when they are actually in agreement simply to argue, and then, on the flipside, claim to agree when it's really more of an attempt of value-shifting. It's hard to imagine that on a larger scale mainstream scale, where the conversation consists of random people shouting into the wind rather than an attempt at respectful dialogue between individuals, that there would be any difference in how the message you are trying to popularize is engaged with.

So, in conclusion, sorry about the lack of conclusion and thank you for entertaining my musings.

I also feel like the time delay between people thinking of the new ideas and people hearing and responding to old ideas amplifies the perception of resistance and hostility to new ideas. After you've spent months going back and forth with other people arguing and refining the ideas, it gives you the perception that people known about the conversation when they are ignorant and are having a whole different conversation. As an example, if i, as a black person, am surrounded by black people and liberal white people and we all are fully aware about hair touching microagressions, assuming everyone knows about the microagression takes the microagression from micro to flat out aggression. Now, not only is the white person asking to touch my hair treating me like an exotic animal, but she's doing that shit after we have clearly deamnded she not do that and fully expalined why it's insulting. But not everyone has been following the microagression converation. Some people are still confused about what a microagression even is, let alone are on board with avoiding commiting them or having an awareness of what actions would be considered to be microagressions. Especailly with hostitility toward trans ideas, like, this nonbinary thing, i feel like a lot of what's seen as hate is gueinine people who can't keep up with the conversation because their only exposure to the conversation so far is memes, not debate.

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We have rules as a society that DO have reasons and make sense on the macro level and if you undesrstand the reasons, but can be misunderstood or abused on the mircro level. Two examples that i think make a lot of sense, are the dictate to respect your elders, and the dictate for men not to hit women. But, to a little boy surrounded by grown women and little girls who doesn't fully understand that this is training him not to use his extra strength he will have once he's a man, that sounds simply like a demand that girls get special treatment for no reason, which may seem especially unfair if his big sis is pushing him around.

I think you are mixing up the rules you're referring to, and as a result are misrepresenting them. As you yourself say, the dictate is for men not to hit women. Which in the next breath you pretend applies to little boys - which it does not. Everyone knows little boys are not men, and as a result everyone knows that rules set for specifically for men do not apply to little boys. Moreover, I dunno where you grew up, but in the US it's common for boys to be taught that they have a right to defend themselves when older kids pick on them and hit them. In fact, lots of little boys are encouraged and given instruction on how to fight back, verbally and with their fists.

At the same time, however, it's true that across the board, most little kids of both sexes are taught from a fairly early age that punching, slapping, biting, pinching, kicking, etc other people is not acceptable, no matter the others' sex, age or size. But this is not a hard and fast rule that always applies in all cases to both sexes. Some boys are taught that if another kid slugs them, they should slug back. Girls rarely are taught this, though.

Growing up, most kids get a lot of mixed messages. But that's not a reason to mix up all the different messages kids get as if they were one and the same.

Childhood is confusing for all kids. You mention only the confusion of a little boy who mistakenly thinks that because his older sister is in the habit of "pushing him around," the dictate "don't hit" is directed exclusively at male children, never at female children, which is not the case - and, worse, that this means "girls get special treatment for no reason." But the fact is, girls get hit and pushed around by their older sisters and their older brothers too - and often by their younger brothers as well. Moreover, lots of kids of both sexes grow up in homes and environments where they see grown men beat the daylights out of women on a regular basis - and where many of those grown men beat the boys & girls in their households too.

Also, its' long been widely recognized in Western culture that one of the reasons so much lip service is given to the idea that men shouldn't hit women is coz so many men do precisely that, and on a routine basis. As in the case of what Ike Turner used to do to Tina. Common male behavior that this guy protested nearly 50 years ago: https://youtu.be/ZfZyxu5UMCU

Likewise, respecting your elders is simply a caution that you don't have all the wisdom of older people and warning you (perhaps in vain) to maybe not be a terror around the house when puberty hits. Those elders are going to be dead some day and you don't want to lash out in anger at someone you love and then regret it. But a general demand to respect your elders, similar to respecting women, just seems really silly to the kid with an abusive parent, or even with just an aging out of touch parent. So now, a simple warning to young people that maturity has yet to come seems like it's part of a system of giving older people all the advantages. When your co-worker with seniority is getting paid more than you simply for being older, and your whole life you've been hyped up on respecting elders when it's been nothing but counter productive, it seems like the whole idea of respecting elders is bullshit.

When it comes to being respectful of one's elders, I think you are confusing a lot of different dictates & situations, and misunderstanding most of them too. The purposes of the longstanding & biblically-enshrined dictate "honor thy father and thy mother" is not to remind young people that "elders are going to be dead some day and you don't want to lash out in anger at someone you love and then regret it" as you say. That, in fact, is a puerile interpretation that reflects a sensibility at once adolescent and solipsistic. The fact is, a lot of the elders the dictate instructs us to honor are already long dead! The dictate doesn't just apply to one's own living relatives; it applies to all one's ancestors that have come before.

Your complaint that "your co-worker with seniority is getting paid more than you simply for being older" shows a fundamental misunderstanding as well. The reason workers with seniority get paid more isn't coz of their age, it's coz of their seniority, which means they've held the job longer and/or have risen to a higher position - and thus have more experience and value to the employer - than other people who haven't been in the job as long and/or haven't climbed or been appointed to as high a position.

You yourself came very close to getting this when you called the co-worker whose higher pay you seem to take as a personal affront your "co-worker with seniority" LOL. BTW, the fact that an employee with seniority gets paid more than employees who lack the same seniority is not a comment on, or a putdown of, the employees with less seniority. It has nothing to do with him/her/you at all. It's a matter of workplace policy, standard business practice and perhaps union rules and even government law in some places. When employers give workers with high seniority better pay than those without such seniority, their intent isn't to grind the gears of more recent hires, employees of younger age, or those in lower level positions.

Also, it's perfectly possible for people to have more seniority and get paid more than others in their workplace even when they are younger than some or all of their colleagues. In lots of workplaces, the most senior positions are occupied by men who are in charge of - and get paid a lot more than - employees of both sexes who are far older than they. Lots of men get catapulted to positions with high seniority and pay at a fairly early age. Most women who've been in the workplace for a couple of decades can cite many, many examples where they worked with, or under, males who were much younger and less experienced than they, but who nevertheless got/get paid much more and had/have much higher positions. Go to any workplace this very day, and you'll very likely find many young, youngish and middle-aged men in managerial positions who are the supervisors/bosses of a number of women much older than they. Often the women have been at that workplace for much longer than the much-better-paid males they now work under too. Meaning the older women have seniority in terms of longevity, but not in terms of position/job title or pay.

As for your comments about "the church," again you're mixing up way too many different elements and making grand generalizations on that basis which don't necessarily hold up. What church do you mean? Since its early days, there's been big splits - aka major schisms - in Christianity, which resulted in the Catholic Church based in Rome and the Eastern or Greek Orthodox Church based in Byzantium/Constantinople, which in turn led to many other Christian churches such as the Russian Orthodox Church... Then in Western Europe in the 16th century, there was the Protestant Reformation that led to the proliferation of a plethora of churches and faiths in the West that all are categorized under the umbrella of Christianity, and which are divided by as many differences as they are bound by similarities. These religions can't all be lumped together and spoken of as "the church." What Roman Catholics believe is very different to what Mormons believe, and both in turn are different to what Quakers believe. Members of the Episcopal and Anglican churches including the Church of England have little in common with followers of American fundamentalist, conservative Christian faiths and televangelists.

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

I hear you, and I follow the sense of what you're saying . . .

I also feel like the time delay between people thinking of the new ideas and people hearing and responding to old ideas amplifies the perception of resistance and hostility to new ideas.

I've seen this, or something very much like it, in play. Especially on social media. (Could we even say because of social media?)

Everyone develops their own engagement strategies -- mine started with trying to meet those higher-level arguments you mention, and has evolved into hammering away at first principles . . . all the way down to questions like "can we trust empiricism in biology?" and (today) "what are the differences between the written text and the body of judicial opinion on the U.S. Civil Rights Act?"

I initially waded into all this QT-GC stuff years ago assuming (never assume) that we were talking about some version of the macro of ethics (equality and dignity) only to discover that we had to take it right down to the micro of biology (male and female animals are dimorphic genetically-determined entities). I was unprepared.

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

Considering how complex some of these ideas about both gender and sexism are, how mainstream (and at what level of depth) do you hope for you ideas to become to the general public?

Which ideas specifically are you referring to? What makes them so complex to you?

And what do you mean by "memeable"? In your view, is making ideas "memeable" something to be aimed for?

How, if the seemingly full efforts of government can't convince people to comply with safety precautions during a pandemic

Are you suggesting all governments are always entirely trustworthy when it comes to COVID19 - and all other matters? And that viewing the actions of government officials, politicians, mainstream media and other authorities like WHO, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, the CCP and Facebook & Twitter re the pandemic with a degree of skepticism is inherently unreasonable?

Also, my impression is that most people around the world have demonstrated a definite willingness to "comply with safety precautions during a pandemic."

whether it's education and intellect hampering understanding of vaccines and viruses...we still have people who seemed really resistant to really really really basic information that they had full access to repeated on blast.

I don't think it's fair to say that people who have questions about COVID-19 and concerns about the vaccines developed for it so far all do so coz of lack of education and intellect or due to a stubborn disposition that causes them/us to be "resistant" to all the messaging that's been put on blast. Maybe some people are, as you say, "really resistant to really really really basic information" coz they are "not smart." But some might be plenty smart and still not agree that what you believe to be "really really really basic information" is as clear and incontrovertible as you think. Really.

Most people who are leery about the COVID-19 vaccines have gotten many other kinds of vaccines in their/our lives, and have had their/our kids vaccinated against a whole host of pathogens as well. The fact that some people are skeptical of Big Pharma and autocracy doesn't necessarily mean they/we are "not smart" about viruses.

All of the COVID-19 vaccines have been rushed through development and to market, without going through the kinds of testing and approval processes that other vaccines (and drugs) have undergone. All the COVID vaccines have been released to the public under emergency rules, not the standard and customary protocols that drug safety agencies like the USA's FDA have used in the past. Moreover, some of the COVID-19 vaccines are mRNA vaccines - which are an entirely new kind of human vaccine.

But back to issues of gender and sex: Your OP seems to be suggesting that QT and those who reject QT are advancing ideas that are on par with one another in terms of how understandable and acceptable they are to the general public. If I have misconstrued what you meant, I apologize, but your OP isn't clear.

More to the point, if that is indeed what you're trying to say, I disagree. Most people recognize that sex is real, that it matters, and it's binary. This is not a hard concept for the average person to grasp. Even the ones "not smart."

Most people who've given the matter any thought also realize that sexism and sexist sex stereotypes exist. Some people reject sexism and sexist sex stereotypes. Some people embrace them, and believe they are natural.

But only QT alleges that the sexism and sexist sex stereotypes can be eliminated by pretending and insisting that sex doesn't exist and/or that it's not fixed and therefore people can change sex at will. Moreover, only QT says that the way to improve human society and liberate people is by imposing more - and more rigid and regressive - sex stereotypes on the population, and by inventing new ways for misogynistic, authoritarian males to dominate, terrorize, silence and demonize females - and by giving modern-day males special permission and novel excuses to do so. I don't see how more sexism, more sex stereotyping, more pigeonholing, more male supremacy, more male sexual license, more oppression of women and so on is to most people's benefit.

Most adults also can see that it's damaging & cruel to teach children that they can be "born in the wrong body" and that people can change the material reality of their sex with their minds and some medical interventions and/or costume changes. Moreover, most people on earth know at a gut level that the entire idea that people are "born in the wrong body" and can change the material reality of sex through wishful thinking, drugs, surgery and/or dress is preposterous. In fact, I'd wager that a majority of the world's population would consider these "luxury beliefs" that only could be thought up and held by persons fortunate enough to enjoy good physical health & enough good fortune not to be intimately acquainted with the sorts of physical suffering that a large portion of the human race has suffered over time, and many are enduring this very moment.