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Anonymous Coward's avatar

I really get the letter writer’s viewpoint. Yet I am more and more alarmed by the fact that so many gender critical voices I have followed for years have now become believers that the Covid vaccine is what causes harm, not Covid, and similar conspiracy theories that have now become so mainstream even “liberals” barely oppose them. I’m truly politically homeless. It seems like you can’t have one opinion without signing on to a bunch of other opinions anymore. I’m afraid to say one thing to my conservative friends and another thing to my liberal friends. And people really do reject each other over “saying the wrong thing”. And they gossip about so and so having such and such an opinion CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, etc.

So I’m in my 40’s and have concluded I need to hang out more with my 70-something parents and their friends, who actually seem to accept their friends despite not all of them thinking the same about everything, and they also discuss stuff rather than high fiving each other for being on the right side of history.

My 18 year old “woke” daughter actually expressed horror that I was supportive of Israel. I have friends who would be equally horrified if I expressed sadness over the civilian deaths in Gaza. It’s a crazy time.

I support Lisa not because I agree with every single thing she says but because I agree with her, erm, “broadly” on the gender critical issue. I do also agree with many of the post-liberal letter writer’s points about a slippery slope of “tolerance” that makes it very difficult to clearly condemn harmful sexual fetishes and paraphilias. I am sooooo not “sex positive” anymore. But I respect Lisa’s, and anyone else’s, right to have a different opinion. And you know what? I want to HEAR THE ARGUMENT. I don’t want to hear “THAT’S JUST WRONG, PERIOD”. I want to know why, even if it seems blatantly obvious to the opinion holder.

Lisa is willing to make the arguments for her beliefs and also to change them as she gets new evidence. THIS is why I support her and why I support both broadly liberal and broadly conservative people doing the same. They are increasingly rare.

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Nina Paley's avatar

The letter writer is correct in that no paraphilias are "harmless," or good.

We can't eliminate harm, or evil, from humanity. There is no social mechanism to effectively treat all paraphilias, or mental illnesses, or even physical illnesses. Humans gonna human, and a lot of human-ing is bad.

How are we going to live with our imperfect, or worse, brothers and sisters? We draw a line somewhere. Reality dictates we must be practical. How much of the population do we want to criminalize? To institutionalize or jail? Or merely disenfranchise? What overall good comes from more or less?

Some tolerate too much, others not enough.

I have drawn my own lines in the Gender Wars: Sex is real.

But also: People are weird.

These are the tenets of the TERF-Tranny Alliance, and I'm sticking to 'em. https://www.heterodorx.com/terftrannyalliance/

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