I certainly hope Noah is right about the general direction of the change. I'm a vanilla liberal who agrees that woke perspectives have been a valuable new lens of American social thought, but I think the rhetoric and tactics of the movement have been net self-destructive for at least the past half-decade.
The prairie fire metaphor is attractive and fits one type of overview, but, to use a hydraulic overlay, there are many different eddies swirling in places as distinct as Florida and Portland, and I'm not confident any current trend will not be reconfigured by some specific outbreak of woke/anti-woke headlines that breaks a new channel for extremist polarization for both elements.
I think one thing that may be having a significant woke-calming effect is the realization by progressives that extremism on the Right is successfully lighting more and more of its own ground on fire, and that it's more like a forest with plenty to burn. Given the distribution of arms in this country accelerationist tactics will not benefit the woke (or anyone but the extreme Right). That realization may engage increasing segments of the woke Left in aligning with the liberal (old- and new-style) center (or I'm wishfully dreaming).
The Hamline affair may have a positive effect because its extreme challenge to consensus values (free speech / academic freedom) comes at a time when woke extremism is beginning to recede. It may serve as an object counter-lesson, whereas five or six years ago it might have been a rallying point for the woke movement.
I don't know if this generalizes, but it was certainly true for me -- about 3 years ago I explicitly started describing myself as aligned with the center left instead of as "progressive," "far left," or even "socialist," as I once had. I still view those more extreme parties as important allies, but I don't consider myself among them anymore.
I think we need to have open discussions about how to properly address gender dysphoria with children, but when we can't even get the opposition to it seems to only be capable of making such bad faith and ridiculous characterizations of it, I get the feeling we won't be having any fruitful discussions anytime soon. Shame.
There is no reliable diagnostic for the persistence of gender dysphoria (into adulthood) in children. There are not even any proposals for such a diagnostic. No one has ANY IDEA how to tell whether or not a gender dysphoric child will desist.
Given that absolute fact, giving those children sterilizing and de-sexing drugs, and/or surgically mutilating their bodies, is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY, full stop!
And since only Republicans will even attempt to stop this terrible and horrific crime, I am now, at age 67, and after a lifetime of liberal activism and voting straight Democrat, working hard to elect as many Republicans as possible to as many offices as possible.
You would use the power of the state to keep parents and children deciding to decide what life saving psychological treatment their children should get. It’s not your business, butt out.
We're not talking PSYCHOLOGICAL treatment, we're talking powerful de-sexing (orgasm is likely permanently impossible after taking puberty blockers, per Marci Bowers: https://twitter.com/DonovanCleckley/status/1521625518394773505) and sterilizing drugs and surgery.
And yes, the government absolutely should ban such "treatment", just as it bans all sorts of other "treatments" that have not been proven to be safe and effective.
Or do you want the FDA to fold up, and stop requiring controlled trials for drugs? Just have a market free for all?
You would prefer that teens kill themselves? I get it.
I would not allow my non-binary and depressed teen daughter to take irreversible drugs either, but I don’t think I know better than parents what is best for their children.
You and your hate filled ilk will go away soon enough after you have lost yet another cultural battle.
Gen Z isn’t playing your bullshit gender games anymore. You won’t win them back with threats and hate.
I'm very glad that you had the sense to resist the push from Big Trans and keep your daughter safe from irreversible harm. But plenty of parents have sadly been gaslit by the endless lies: https://pitt.substack.com
As for Gen Z, many Gen Z women are unhappy about gender ideology and having men invade their formerly safe spaces and events, but they are often too afraid to speak up, because they know that they will be denounced by the activist minority as TERFS and transphobes, just as you are denouncing me.
The backlash is building, but I don't know if it will be powerful enough to stop the crime against humanity of child mutilation and sterilization, since so many powerful forces (and their minions) are pushing it.
Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, infamously tweeted about the experiences of his own stepson and said straight out that since he was mentally disturbed, Adams preferred that he died by his own hand lest the other option was that he would have to be killed.
Libsoftiktok has taken to encouraging their followers to send in bomb threats to children’s hospitals. When they got doxxed, future presidential candidate Governor DeSantos offered the governor’s mansion as a refuge, which they apparently have taken.
The right thinks they have a wedge issue, like gay marriage was for them in the 80s. It’s going to get a lot crazier before it gets better.
After gaining a large Twitter following in the spring as she baselessly accused LGBTQ teachers of being pedophiles and “groomers,” Raichik began criticizing children’s health facilities earlier this summer, targeting a hospital in Omaha in June and another in Pittsburgh in August. The attacks resulted in a flood of online harassment and phoned-in threats at both hospitals. Next came threats against children’s hospitals in Boston and Washington, D.C., after Raichik posted tweets targeting them.
>The media claims that Libs of TikTok is to blame for the alleged bomb threat at Boston Children’s Hospital, but that’s not true. In fact, the conservatives the media smears as being evil are the only ones making a concerted effort to find whoever made the threat, even going so far as to offer cash rewards for information that leads to an arrest. Incredibly, the media refuses to report this.
>On August 31, Seth Dillon, the CEO of the Babylon Bee, offered a $20,000 cash reward to anyone who comes forward with information leading to the arrest of the person who allegedly called in a bomb threat to Boston Children’s Hospital. Olympic Media CEO Ryan Coyne offered $20,000 to match and double Seth’s reward, and Human Events Senior Editor Jack Posobiec put up an additional $10,000, bringing the total reward to $50,000.
> The Washington Post, Axios, Forbes, NBC, and the Boston Herald all wrote articles blaming me and other “ring-wing” outlets for the bomb threat. So, I reached out to each reporter and informed them about the cash reward. My hope was that they would help us get the word out by updating their stories—or by writing new ones—that amplified the fact that there’s now a massive reward out for information about the anonymous caller.
>None of them—not a single one—updated their articles with that information.
There's a concept called stochastic terrorism that's been gaining currency in recent years.
Initially, it was observed in Al Qaeda and Daesh to recruit Muslims throughout the world into terrorism, or adventurous warfare in the case of the latter. This form of terrorism has been weaponized and mainstreamed in America by rightwing personalities, notably by Gamergaters in 2014, Donald Trump, Fox News and the even more extreme right media like OANN, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, et al.
Scientific American explains the psychology of stochastic terrorism on its transmitters and its audience.
I think one of the lasting negative changes is likely to be the increased bureaucratisation of universities, maybe other institutions as well but that's where it'll be felt most keenly. Sure Admin and HR departments are 'woke' at the moment but ultimately their interests lie with their relative power in their institutions, which has massively increased as administrative oversight came to be seen as the natural way of enforcing morality within institutions, and they're not gonna give that up just because wokeness is passé. America's resilient (and cutthroat) enough that this won't stifle innovation, but it may move away from the universities in some way. Maybe Bell Labs is poised for a return.
In many ways this makes universities resemble the risk-averse large corporations that won't let anything but the most anodyne statements out, and HR is hyper-focused on preventing liability. I actually have a pet take on wokeness as an extension of 90s/2000s corporate culture and norms with a leftist veneer that's too long for this comment, maybe I should just start my own Substack...
Jerry Pournelle, the science fiction writer who turned hard right in his later years, had a useful formulation of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy. Loosely translated, it means that the bureaucratic elements within an organization inevitably come to dominate the organization and realign its purpose to self-preservation.
Pournelle obviously means government, but this is true of private organizations for-profit or non-profit as well. Think about a startup that has an idea that corrects a market deficiency, creates a beneficial innovation, or solves a social problem. If it becomes successful, the organization will grow and realign toward hitting benchmarks (for a public business, maintaining stock prices or market share; for a nonprofit or a university, fundraising campaigns and naming buildings after donors) and lose its sense of mission.
I see a similar pattern, and I don't know if someone else made this observation and named it, within the academies. I dub it the Iron Law of Criticalism, formulated along Pournelle's law.
When a field of study internalizes criticism, so much research will go into producing more criticism and responses to it, that the field either turns reactionary or loses influence to a rival discipline that's not yet split by division.
Thanks for providing an antidote to the usual jeremiads I'm seeing around this topic. No one enjoys all the well-argued essays suggesting that everything is going to sh¹t and that we're all doomed, more than me. But I can't help noticing that most things are essentially looking quite stable and that most people seem generally OK in their lives.
It's amusing that US polling seems to reflect this. 'Yes, society is off to hell in a hand cart, but I'm personally quite happy'.
You might be right, or wrong, in the end. But it's a good piece to read now.
Maybe I'm reading too much into what's going on with RDS and Florida, but you're post sort of crystalized a theory I had that the trajectory of gay rights and trans rights may be following that of the Civil Rights movement for Black Americans...namely that we might at the "Boston busing protest" portion of the story (I think the 20 year journey of gay marriage is a huge part of your story by the way...and not just with transgender rights).
Namely, I think it seems exceedingly unlikely to go back to a place where two men or two women can't get married if they wish. Or a place where we are denying benefits to gay or lesbian spouses. In other words, the legal barriers that used make gay and lesbian Americans literal second class citizens are likely permanently gone. In the same way that by 1974, full blown and not all thinly disguised literacy tests, separate water fountains, "separate but equal" schools and bans on interracial marriage were unlikely to come back*. But I think in the current climate, I suspect there are still a large number of people out there who one the hand don't think we should ban gay marriage anymore, but would still be quite uncomfortable with a gay couple living next door. Furthermore, I suspect the number of Americans who still think gay or lesbian couples lead some sort of "deviant" lifestyle is much higher than the number of Americans who still want gay marriage banned. And I really think we underestimate how much the school fights in FL have a lot of echoes with the Boston busing clashes (thankfully so far without nearly as much violence). I mean, we have Christina Pushaw out there calling gay people "groomers"...and suffering no consequences for this. And as a reminder, she's not a nobody; she's the communication director for the person who has a very decent chance of being the GOP nominee for President in 2024. I honestly wouldn't be shocked if there is a general "oh i'm not anti-gay, I just don't want it shoved in face" style backlash brewing.
*aware and alarmed by the various ways that various red state legislatures have tried to target black voting; including shutting down polling places and tightening voter fraud laws clearly intended to try to frighten black voters (go see who get's prosecuted for this). Having said that, I'm on pretty firm ground saying this is absolutely miles away from the type of Jim Crow voting restrictions that existed pre 1965.
As one commenter alluded to (albeit using inflammatory conservative framing), I do wonder where you see the progression of trans issues and trans rights within the trajectory of a probable retreat of wokeness. Conservatives have shifted focus in the anti-trans crusade in the past 3ish years from bathrooms, to sports, now to associating the whole idea of transness with “grooming” and other darkly demonizing rhetoric. Ironically, it seems like trans issues have been getting more attention in the 2020s from conservatives than college activist types gave them in the late 2010s.
How do you believe that the tension between increasing trans acceptance broadly and a more strident anti-trans backlash will resolve itself in the short to medium term? It seems that the most enduring solidification of gay rights/acceptance in the US came when its temperature as a hot-button social issue of the day leveled off. I wonder if the same will happen for trans rights once the conservative anti-woke backlash subsides.
That's a good question. I don't really know. It could become its own thing like gay rights and abortion, and I think this is probably the most likely. But I'm not sure yet, and it does seem like a wild card.
The number of children having gender reassignment surgery is vanishing small. I think Vandy commented that when Tessessee banned it they'd performed 0 surgeries. Even breast reduction is quite rare. Genital surgery for children with ambiguous genitalia is common, however it's being delayed because we know that those patients are especially prone to develop gender dysphoria.
Furthermore, there is NO DIAGNOSTIC for deciding which kids will desist and which will persist (into adulthood) in gender dysphoria. Absolutely no one knows how to tell, or even has a proposal for how to tell (never mind one that has been vetted by controlled studies).
Given these condiitons, it is flatly unethical to operate on ANY kid.
And since the amount of money involved is huge, only government action will stop it.
I've managed children with precocious puberty placed on puberty blockers. They don't develop anorgasmia. The rollout of blockers in this population rolled out similary to Trans kids. No RCT's, initially with case reports.
If they had precocious puberty, they were by definition not blocked before puberty, which is the population that, according to Dr. Bowers, will become anorgasmic.
Gays were and still are literally being killed and arrested for their identity. Also, homophobia and transphobia remains entrenched among communities of color.
Adults are also using children as human shields to project their own fears and prejudices onto a rapidly changing society they don't understand.
Moral panics follow a recognizable template. The trans panic mimics the gay rights panic of the baby boomers and Gen X, and that follows racial, immigrant and religious panics of past and present. Dynamics are the same. A majority ingroup identifies a minority outgroup with little power. It identifies the outgroup as a monolithic community that has oppositional and deviant traits (drug use, music/art/fashion, sexual behavior and a missionary bent to recruit converts) that it treats as a rival out to challenge and eventually dominate them. The majority invokes the lowest common denominator identity (religion, race, class/caste) to maintain a sense of group solidarity, to muffle dissent around fault lines within the ingroup, as well as to harden institutions and norms for the outgroups' claims to wealth, power, status, truth, etc.
One reason the temperature dropped around gay rights is familiarity. Sometimes people just need time to get used to things. You're less likely to be scared by what a thing might be when you feel you know what it is. When this posture reaches the middle of the culture it provides a kind of bulwark against reactionary flailing either in earnest or for cynical political purposes. The right loses leverage and interest when the subject matter gets boring, which is why you see them focusing on the status of children with respect to the controversial concern, which is both supercharged emotionally and also newish territory as a cultural question. I think they're fighting a losing battle and their only way of winning would be to gain political power which is immune to the popular feeling about things.
The LGBT community has a certain amount of political power and is unlikely to retreat from the chance to duke it out with Conservatives. See Sen.. Scott Wiener’s recent willingness to mix it up with the transphobes (or perhaps it is more fair to call them anti-trans activists?).
Conservative Gen X parents are understandably upset at Gen Z’s rejection of the gender norms that they grew up with. But the push for gender change and orientation question is coming from themselves; it’s a generational thing. The more extreme conservative elements have decided that it can’t be their own rebellious teens, it must be some malevolent outside force. Kids have always found a way to kiss off their parents. I am kind of in awe how good a job they are doing of it.
Good piece but don't you think it is a little telling that the phase of wokeness Taking On The Establishment lasted, like, 2 years before it became a wholly owned subsidiary of the establishment. As you say it absolutely does burn brightest now in large corporate HR departments and prestigious university administrations. A cynic might think that was always the point, and its only natural home. I am surprised you think there is some underlying organic appeal. To me it feels entirely artificial and contrived, something that could only be nurtured and survive inside our deepest late-stage bureaucracies.
It does burn brightly among employees, too. It's organic -- in other words not a top-down strategy credit and also not punished by management.
There is a sense of earnest effort to make workplaces diverse, equitable and inclusive. Fortunately, it's not of the scolding variety promoted by Robin DiAngelo, who most in the blue tribe and young people especially find to be cringe.
Also, as a self-identifying Cynic, I don't see this activism as a way for activists to insinuate themselves into powerful positions. Rather, it provides a tool for for people already within the control centers of organizations (HR, deans, etc.) to maintain control and organizational stability. This filters down to workers and managers, who use these rules to score points against people they don't like.
I did see encouraging comments on yesterday's "Gwen Stefani is appropriating Japanese culture" click bait yesterday but I always remember a Zach Goldberg (I think) chart of a ratcheting effect of these fads. It ebbs and flows but wokeness is always increasing, in total.
I thought these 2 comments via a reddit post best sum the isse the GOP is facing (not sure why it's not an issue for the Dems)
This is another of example of Republicans getting what they think they want, but learning it's bad for them until it's too late.
I'm talking Citizens United.
The GOP was THRILLED when they could use shell Super PACs to funnel in money at absurd levels, but that changed a very important dynamic in party leadership.
Before with more limited funding options, the RNC and leadership had leverage over members and could use funding to persuade them to make concessions.
Now they can find some wealthy donors, be contrarian say controversial stuff on social media to own the libs and raise more freaking money than the party can offer.
-and-
Let's add redistricting in 2010 to the list of things the GOP thought they wanted and fucked themselves with.
We wouldn't be in this position without that either. They were elated to have all the safe seats and guaranteed majorities, but in turn created a system where the only real electoral race is in the partisan party primary where only the most extreme candidates could win.
The moderates were all voted out, they opened the door wide open to the crazies like Boebert, Gaetz, and MTG, and now are experiencing a inter-party civil war where the term RINO is as hated as Democrat.
This has been entirely of their own making, and our political system will not be able to function until that is addressed as well.
From my perspective, the Right uses the culture wars to hide its true agenda. When viewing the overall direction of the Supreme Court and the expressed views of governors such as Mr. Abbott and Mr. DeSantis, I see a concerted move towards a totalitarian state and theocracy.
The Right has succeeded in making a medical decision a matter of political control. The undoing of Roe v Wade is just the beginning of their attempts to enforce their views on a population that doesn't agree with them. Passing laws that interfere with a parent's right to seek medical advice for their children is another example of the Right trying to mandate state control over people's lives.
The Right believes in smaller government regarding programs that help people - such as Medicare and Social Security- but larger government regarding your bedroom or how parents care for their children. Another symptom of their real aim is banning books they disapprove of. The average person not enrolled in law school has not heard of CRT. But the Right made it an issue where none ever existed. Restrictions on who can vote and the gerrymandering of election districts are being done to further their goals. These actions fit in perfectly with their resistance to any actions the EPA takes to protect our population from various types of pollution. They have long fought against efforts to move towards greener forms of energy - as if global warming and climate change didn't exist.
The cry about increasing crime is another way to marginalize people of color who are disproportionately prosecuted and incarcerated. But any meaningful efforts at limiting access to guns are permanently blocked in the name of protecting 2nd amendment rights.
This does not exonerate the Left from its efforts to continue to bow to the interests of its major donors. The way they blocked Bernie Sanders in his attempt to run for president was a gift to big pharma and an example of entrenched interests controlling the Democratic Party. Why doesn't the left stand up and scream that the immigration problem is not the fault of DJT or Mr. Biden - it is the fault of political instability in many South American countries and the many years of inaction by Congress?
The inability of our political system to address the many real problems facing our country will lead to more social unrest and possibly create weaknesses that our external enemies may profit from.
Cancel culture issuing from the temples of liberalism like the New York Times and ivy league academia does show how the fascists, though they hate that description, have taken over.
"The initiative was undertaken by well-intentioned staff... but... the approach taken missed the mark... At no point did the website represent university policy."
Stanford acknowledged that the program missed the mark. The website was taken down and the program is being reevaluated. Stanford remains committed to academic freedom and freedom of expression along with inclusion.
The list was developed internally within an IT unit at Stanford for its own staff to use in unit websites and coding, and was only a draft for comment, prepared by a subgroup. It was never intended to be university policy and had not even reached a point where it could be considered for unit policy. If you think about it, the over-the-topness of the list makes sense as the work of super-smart nerds pushing a cultural ideal to a logical extreme--and perhaps it'll turn out to be a nice way to display to progressives how comical they sometimes look to political normies.
The reason the president had to "disavow" the list was because media reports misrepresented it as proposed or adopted policy for the university. University presidents regularly have to disclaim institutional endorsement of some statement made by faculty or staff that news media pick up and associate with the institution's position.
BTW, I found the list really interesting to go through--some items make good sense, but others read like self-parody. One really counter-intuitive item is "Karen," a term of the Left that is on the list because it "is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors." Instead of saying, "Karen," use a phrase that avoids ridiculing and demeaning: "demanding or entitled White woman." With material like this, I think even I could do stand-up.
It wasn't a parody, Bobson. The subgroup was a project group co-sponsored by a council composed of various unit chief information officers (CIO-Council) and an affinity group called People of Color in Technology. The list that has made it to the public eye was a draft that the project group circulated for comment and additions.
As for personalities, my characterization is a personal interpretation. I know only that these were members of the university IT community.
Sounds like typical double speak. Put out the trial balloon -- then disclaim it when it sinks like lead. Exactly like what happened with the "your gas oven is going" trial balloon. After it sank through the floor, it became "Oh, we just meant better ventilation". I do not believe a word from any of these people.
It's more accurate to say that Reconstruction was trying to *implement* the changes of the Civil War and the 14th Amendment rather than trying to roll them back, but the effort petered out by the 1876 election.
I also thought this was strange. It seems to cast reconstruction as a parallels to the 80s or anti-Woke pushback. The 14th Amendment was passed during Reconstruction. I'll give him benefit of the doubt that it's just awkward phrasing, but that's a pretty huge misunderstanding if not.
Hey folks! For some reason I selected "comments off" when I published this, but now comments are back on!
I certainly hope Noah is right about the general direction of the change. I'm a vanilla liberal who agrees that woke perspectives have been a valuable new lens of American social thought, but I think the rhetoric and tactics of the movement have been net self-destructive for at least the past half-decade.
The prairie fire metaphor is attractive and fits one type of overview, but, to use a hydraulic overlay, there are many different eddies swirling in places as distinct as Florida and Portland, and I'm not confident any current trend will not be reconfigured by some specific outbreak of woke/anti-woke headlines that breaks a new channel for extremist polarization for both elements.
I think one thing that may be having a significant woke-calming effect is the realization by progressives that extremism on the Right is successfully lighting more and more of its own ground on fire, and that it's more like a forest with plenty to burn. Given the distribution of arms in this country accelerationist tactics will not benefit the woke (or anyone but the extreme Right). That realization may engage increasing segments of the woke Left in aligning with the liberal (old- and new-style) center (or I'm wishfully dreaming).
The Hamline affair may have a positive effect because its extreme challenge to consensus values (free speech / academic freedom) comes at a time when woke extremism is beginning to recede. It may serve as an object counter-lesson, whereas five or six years ago it might have been a rallying point for the woke movement.
Robert, wokes will align with the center left when they achieve wisdom or turn 26, whichever comes first.
I don't know if this generalizes, but it was certainly true for me -- about 3 years ago I explicitly started describing myself as aligned with the center left instead of as "progressive," "far left," or even "socialist," as I once had. I still view those more extreme parties as important allies, but I don't consider myself among them anymore.
Better late than never... Tried (a lot), failed, to understand what a wakness is. Am much older than Noah. That, sans doute is the problem ...?
I think the standard definition of "wakness" is "a typographical error," I Billn.
Now that it's revealed, i'll get the word out!
Well I certainly hope that an aspect of wokeness that will not endure is the crime against humanity of mutilatiing and sterilizing children.
I think we need to have open discussions about how to properly address gender dysphoria with children, but when we can't even get the opposition to it seems to only be capable of making such bad faith and ridiculous characterizations of it, I get the feeling we won't be having any fruitful discussions anytime soon. Shame.
There is no reliable diagnostic for the persistence of gender dysphoria (into adulthood) in children. There are not even any proposals for such a diagnostic. No one has ANY IDEA how to tell whether or not a gender dysphoric child will desist.
Given that absolute fact, giving those children sterilizing and de-sexing drugs, and/or surgically mutilating their bodies, is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY, full stop!
And since only Republicans will even attempt to stop this terrible and horrific crime, I am now, at age 67, and after a lifetime of liberal activism and voting straight Democrat, working hard to elect as many Republicans as possible to as many offices as possible.
You would use the power of the state to keep parents and children deciding to decide what life saving psychological treatment their children should get. It’s not your business, butt out.
We're not talking PSYCHOLOGICAL treatment, we're talking powerful de-sexing (orgasm is likely permanently impossible after taking puberty blockers, per Marci Bowers: https://twitter.com/DonovanCleckley/status/1521625518394773505) and sterilizing drugs and surgery.
And yes, the government absolutely should ban such "treatment", just as it bans all sorts of other "treatments" that have not been proven to be safe and effective.
Or do you want the FDA to fold up, and stop requiring controlled trials for drugs? Just have a market free for all?
You would prefer that teens kill themselves? I get it.
I would not allow my non-binary and depressed teen daughter to take irreversible drugs either, but I don’t think I know better than parents what is best for their children.
You and your hate filled ilk will go away soon enough after you have lost yet another cultural battle.
Gen Z isn’t playing your bullshit gender games anymore. You won’t win them back with threats and hate.
The alleged higher suicide risk (if drugs and surgery are withheld) is not true: https://segm.org/Dutch-studies-critically-flawed https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2150346
I'm very glad that you had the sense to resist the push from Big Trans and keep your daughter safe from irreversible harm. But plenty of parents have sadly been gaslit by the endless lies: https://pitt.substack.com
As for Gen Z, many Gen Z women are unhappy about gender ideology and having men invade their formerly safe spaces and events, but they are often too afraid to speak up, because they know that they will be denounced by the activist minority as TERFS and transphobes, just as you are denouncing me.
The backlash is building, but I don't know if it will be powerful enough to stop the crime against humanity of child mutilation and sterilization, since so many powerful forces (and their minions) are pushing it.
Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, infamously tweeted about the experiences of his own stepson and said straight out that since he was mentally disturbed, Adams preferred that he died by his own hand lest the other option was that he would have to be killed.
Think about how many Twitter followers he has.
Libsoftiktok has taken to encouraging their followers to send in bomb threats to children’s hospitals. When they got doxxed, future presidential candidate Governor DeSantos offered the governor’s mansion as a refuge, which they apparently have taken.
The right thinks they have a wedge issue, like gay marriage was for them in the 80s. It’s going to get a lot crazier before it gets better.
"Libsoftiktok has talen to encouraging their followers to send in bomb threats to children’s hospitals."
This is an absolute lie.
Noah, do you permit blatant libelous lies in your comments?
After gaining a large Twitter following in the spring as she baselessly accused LGBTQ teachers of being pedophiles and “groomers,” Raichik began criticizing children’s health facilities earlier this summer, targeting a hospital in Omaha in June and another in Pittsburgh in August. The attacks resulted in a flood of online harassment and phoned-in threats at both hospitals. Next came threats against children’s hospitals in Boston and Washington, D.C., after Raichik posted tweets targeting them.
You claimed that she encouraged people to call in bomb threats.
Given that she is not in jail, I highly doubt she did that.
She did not.
https://www.libsoftiktok.com/p/the-media-doesnt-actually-care-about
>The media claims that Libs of TikTok is to blame for the alleged bomb threat at Boston Children’s Hospital, but that’s not true. In fact, the conservatives the media smears as being evil are the only ones making a concerted effort to find whoever made the threat, even going so far as to offer cash rewards for information that leads to an arrest. Incredibly, the media refuses to report this.
>On August 31, Seth Dillon, the CEO of the Babylon Bee, offered a $20,000 cash reward to anyone who comes forward with information leading to the arrest of the person who allegedly called in a bomb threat to Boston Children’s Hospital. Olympic Media CEO Ryan Coyne offered $20,000 to match and double Seth’s reward, and Human Events Senior Editor Jack Posobiec put up an additional $10,000, bringing the total reward to $50,000.
> The Washington Post, Axios, Forbes, NBC, and the Boston Herald all wrote articles blaming me and other “ring-wing” outlets for the bomb threat. So, I reached out to each reporter and informed them about the cash reward. My hope was that they would help us get the word out by updating their stories—or by writing new ones—that amplified the fact that there’s now a massive reward out for information about the anonymous caller.
>None of them—not a single one—updated their articles with that information.
There's a concept called stochastic terrorism that's been gaining currency in recent years.
Initially, it was observed in Al Qaeda and Daesh to recruit Muslims throughout the world into terrorism, or adventurous warfare in the case of the latter. This form of terrorism has been weaponized and mainstreamed in America by rightwing personalities, notably by Gamergaters in 2014, Donald Trump, Fox News and the even more extreme right media like OANN, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, et al.
Scientific American explains the psychology of stochastic terrorism on its transmitters and its audience.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-stochastic-terrorism-uses-disgust-to-incite-violence/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/02/lgbtq-threats-hospitals-libs-of-tiktok/
See my reply to Belisaurius.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/davidmack/boston-childrens-bomb-threat-arrest
Hey Noah, the crack pots are back!
I think one of the lasting negative changes is likely to be the increased bureaucratisation of universities, maybe other institutions as well but that's where it'll be felt most keenly. Sure Admin and HR departments are 'woke' at the moment but ultimately their interests lie with their relative power in their institutions, which has massively increased as administrative oversight came to be seen as the natural way of enforcing morality within institutions, and they're not gonna give that up just because wokeness is passé. America's resilient (and cutthroat) enough that this won't stifle innovation, but it may move away from the universities in some way. Maybe Bell Labs is poised for a return.
In many ways this makes universities resemble the risk-averse large corporations that won't let anything but the most anodyne statements out, and HR is hyper-focused on preventing liability. I actually have a pet take on wokeness as an extension of 90s/2000s corporate culture and norms with a leftist veneer that's too long for this comment, maybe I should just start my own Substack...
Jerry Pournelle, the science fiction writer who turned hard right in his later years, had a useful formulation of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy. Loosely translated, it means that the bureaucratic elements within an organization inevitably come to dominate the organization and realign its purpose to self-preservation.
Pournelle obviously means government, but this is true of private organizations for-profit or non-profit as well. Think about a startup that has an idea that corrects a market deficiency, creates a beneficial innovation, or solves a social problem. If it becomes successful, the organization will grow and realign toward hitting benchmarks (for a public business, maintaining stock prices or market share; for a nonprofit or a university, fundraising campaigns and naming buildings after donors) and lose its sense of mission.
I see a similar pattern, and I don't know if someone else made this observation and named it, within the academies. I dub it the Iron Law of Criticalism, formulated along Pournelle's law.
When a field of study internalizes criticism, so much research will go into producing more criticism and responses to it, that the field either turns reactionary or loses influence to a rival discipline that's not yet split by division.
Thanks for providing an antidote to the usual jeremiads I'm seeing around this topic. No one enjoys all the well-argued essays suggesting that everything is going to sh¹t and that we're all doomed, more than me. But I can't help noticing that most things are essentially looking quite stable and that most people seem generally OK in their lives.
It's amusing that US polling seems to reflect this. 'Yes, society is off to hell in a hand cart, but I'm personally quite happy'.
You might be right, or wrong, in the end. But it's a good piece to read now.
Maybe I'm reading too much into what's going on with RDS and Florida, but you're post sort of crystalized a theory I had that the trajectory of gay rights and trans rights may be following that of the Civil Rights movement for Black Americans...namely that we might at the "Boston busing protest" portion of the story (I think the 20 year journey of gay marriage is a huge part of your story by the way...and not just with transgender rights).
Namely, I think it seems exceedingly unlikely to go back to a place where two men or two women can't get married if they wish. Or a place where we are denying benefits to gay or lesbian spouses. In other words, the legal barriers that used make gay and lesbian Americans literal second class citizens are likely permanently gone. In the same way that by 1974, full blown and not all thinly disguised literacy tests, separate water fountains, "separate but equal" schools and bans on interracial marriage were unlikely to come back*. But I think in the current climate, I suspect there are still a large number of people out there who one the hand don't think we should ban gay marriage anymore, but would still be quite uncomfortable with a gay couple living next door. Furthermore, I suspect the number of Americans who still think gay or lesbian couples lead some sort of "deviant" lifestyle is much higher than the number of Americans who still want gay marriage banned. And I really think we underestimate how much the school fights in FL have a lot of echoes with the Boston busing clashes (thankfully so far without nearly as much violence). I mean, we have Christina Pushaw out there calling gay people "groomers"...and suffering no consequences for this. And as a reminder, she's not a nobody; she's the communication director for the person who has a very decent chance of being the GOP nominee for President in 2024. I honestly wouldn't be shocked if there is a general "oh i'm not anti-gay, I just don't want it shoved in face" style backlash brewing.
*aware and alarmed by the various ways that various red state legislatures have tried to target black voting; including shutting down polling places and tightening voter fraud laws clearly intended to try to frighten black voters (go see who get's prosecuted for this). Having said that, I'm on pretty firm ground saying this is absolutely miles away from the type of Jim Crow voting restrictions that existed pre 1965.
You're missing a verb here: "But as in the 1970s, campus activism seems to have gradually."
Thanks, fixed!
As one commenter alluded to (albeit using inflammatory conservative framing), I do wonder where you see the progression of trans issues and trans rights within the trajectory of a probable retreat of wokeness. Conservatives have shifted focus in the anti-trans crusade in the past 3ish years from bathrooms, to sports, now to associating the whole idea of transness with “grooming” and other darkly demonizing rhetoric. Ironically, it seems like trans issues have been getting more attention in the 2020s from conservatives than college activist types gave them in the late 2010s.
How do you believe that the tension between increasing trans acceptance broadly and a more strident anti-trans backlash will resolve itself in the short to medium term? It seems that the most enduring solidification of gay rights/acceptance in the US came when its temperature as a hot-button social issue of the day leveled off. I wonder if the same will happen for trans rights once the conservative anti-woke backlash subsides.
That's a good question. I don't really know. It could become its own thing like gay rights and abortion, and I think this is probably the most likely. But I'm not sure yet, and it does seem like a wild card.
Gay rights was totally different, because nobody was mutilating children on wild unsupported unscientific unvetted pretexts.
There's plenty of space here for a respectful conversation, please be civil.
I do not respect child mutilators like the "yeet the teets" surgeon in Miami: https://www.tiktok.com/@gendersurgeon
Do you?
The number of children having gender reassignment surgery is vanishing small. I think Vandy commented that when Tessessee banned it they'd performed 0 surgeries. Even breast reduction is quite rare. Genital surgery for children with ambiguous genitalia is common, however it's being delayed because we know that those patients are especially prone to develop gender dysphoria.
The number put on puberty blockers is not "vanishingly small" (and NO amount of child mutilation on unscientific grounds is in any way OK, period).
Per "trans" surgeon Marci Bowers, any child per on puberty blockers before age 11 is extremely unlikely to ever experience orgasm: https://twitter.com/DonovanCleckley/status/1521625518394773505
98% of children put on puberty blockers go on to take "trans" sex hormones.
The "yeet the teets" surgeon, who advertises her "services" to teens on Tik-Tok, performs several radical double masestomies every week: https://twitter.com/hormonehangover/status/1360596992427249667
At least one was on a 13-year-old:
https://4w.pub/tiktok-gender-doctor-per-breast-removal-on-13-year-old-girl/
Furthermore, there is NO DIAGNOSTIC for deciding which kids will desist and which will persist (into adulthood) in gender dysphoria. Absolutely no one knows how to tell, or even has a proposal for how to tell (never mind one that has been vetted by controlled studies).
Given these condiitons, it is flatly unethical to operate on ANY kid.
And since the amount of money involved is huge, only government action will stop it.
I've managed children with precocious puberty placed on puberty blockers. They don't develop anorgasmia. The rollout of blockers in this population rolled out similary to Trans kids. No RCT's, initially with case reports.
If they had precocious puberty, they were by definition not blocked before puberty, which is the population that, according to Dr. Bowers, will become anorgasmic.
Gays were and still are literally being killed and arrested for their identity. Also, homophobia and transphobia remains entrenched among communities of color.
Adults are also using children as human shields to project their own fears and prejudices onto a rapidly changing society they don't understand.
Moral panics follow a recognizable template. The trans panic mimics the gay rights panic of the baby boomers and Gen X, and that follows racial, immigrant and religious panics of past and present. Dynamics are the same. A majority ingroup identifies a minority outgroup with little power. It identifies the outgroup as a monolithic community that has oppositional and deviant traits (drug use, music/art/fashion, sexual behavior and a missionary bent to recruit converts) that it treats as a rival out to challenge and eventually dominate them. The majority invokes the lowest common denominator identity (religion, race, class/caste) to maintain a sense of group solidarity, to muffle dissent around fault lines within the ingroup, as well as to harden institutions and norms for the outgroups' claims to wealth, power, status, truth, etc.
One reason the temperature dropped around gay rights is familiarity. Sometimes people just need time to get used to things. You're less likely to be scared by what a thing might be when you feel you know what it is. When this posture reaches the middle of the culture it provides a kind of bulwark against reactionary flailing either in earnest or for cynical political purposes. The right loses leverage and interest when the subject matter gets boring, which is why you see them focusing on the status of children with respect to the controversial concern, which is both supercharged emotionally and also newish territory as a cultural question. I think they're fighting a losing battle and their only way of winning would be to gain political power which is immune to the popular feeling about things.
The LGBT community has a certain amount of political power and is unlikely to retreat from the chance to duke it out with Conservatives. See Sen.. Scott Wiener’s recent willingness to mix it up with the transphobes (or perhaps it is more fair to call them anti-trans activists?).
Conservative Gen X parents are understandably upset at Gen Z’s rejection of the gender norms that they grew up with. But the push for gender change and orientation question is coming from themselves; it’s a generational thing. The more extreme conservative elements have decided that it can’t be their own rebellious teens, it must be some malevolent outside force. Kids have always found a way to kiss off their parents. I am kind of in awe how good a job they are doing of it.
My pithy observation on why wokeness peaked: The activists turned 26 and have to get their own health insurance now.
Good piece but don't you think it is a little telling that the phase of wokeness Taking On The Establishment lasted, like, 2 years before it became a wholly owned subsidiary of the establishment. As you say it absolutely does burn brightest now in large corporate HR departments and prestigious university administrations. A cynic might think that was always the point, and its only natural home. I am surprised you think there is some underlying organic appeal. To me it feels entirely artificial and contrived, something that could only be nurtured and survive inside our deepest late-stage bureaucracies.
It does burn brightly among employees, too. It's organic -- in other words not a top-down strategy credit and also not punished by management.
There is a sense of earnest effort to make workplaces diverse, equitable and inclusive. Fortunately, it's not of the scolding variety promoted by Robin DiAngelo, who most in the blue tribe and young people especially find to be cringe.
Also, as a self-identifying Cynic, I don't see this activism as a way for activists to insinuate themselves into powerful positions. Rather, it provides a tool for for people already within the control centers of organizations (HR, deans, etc.) to maintain control and organizational stability. This filters down to workers and managers, who use these rules to score points against people they don't like.
I did see encouraging comments on yesterday's "Gwen Stefani is appropriating Japanese culture" click bait yesterday but I always remember a Zach Goldberg (I think) chart of a ratcheting effect of these fads. It ebbs and flows but wokeness is always increasing, in total.
https://twitter.com/zachg932/status/1247368592791949313
I thought these 2 comments via a reddit post best sum the isse the GOP is facing (not sure why it's not an issue for the Dems)
This is another of example of Republicans getting what they think they want, but learning it's bad for them until it's too late.
I'm talking Citizens United.
The GOP was THRILLED when they could use shell Super PACs to funnel in money at absurd levels, but that changed a very important dynamic in party leadership.
Before with more limited funding options, the RNC and leadership had leverage over members and could use funding to persuade them to make concessions.
Now they can find some wealthy donors, be contrarian say controversial stuff on social media to own the libs and raise more freaking money than the party can offer.
-and-
Let's add redistricting in 2010 to the list of things the GOP thought they wanted and fucked themselves with.
We wouldn't be in this position without that either. They were elated to have all the safe seats and guaranteed majorities, but in turn created a system where the only real electoral race is in the partisan party primary where only the most extreme candidates could win.
The moderates were all voted out, they opened the door wide open to the crazies like Boebert, Gaetz, and MTG, and now are experiencing a inter-party civil war where the term RINO is as hated as Democrat.
This has been entirely of their own making, and our political system will not be able to function until that is addressed as well.
From my perspective, the Right uses the culture wars to hide its true agenda. When viewing the overall direction of the Supreme Court and the expressed views of governors such as Mr. Abbott and Mr. DeSantis, I see a concerted move towards a totalitarian state and theocracy.
The Right has succeeded in making a medical decision a matter of political control. The undoing of Roe v Wade is just the beginning of their attempts to enforce their views on a population that doesn't agree with them. Passing laws that interfere with a parent's right to seek medical advice for their children is another example of the Right trying to mandate state control over people's lives.
The Right believes in smaller government regarding programs that help people - such as Medicare and Social Security- but larger government regarding your bedroom or how parents care for their children. Another symptom of their real aim is banning books they disapprove of. The average person not enrolled in law school has not heard of CRT. But the Right made it an issue where none ever existed. Restrictions on who can vote and the gerrymandering of election districts are being done to further their goals. These actions fit in perfectly with their resistance to any actions the EPA takes to protect our population from various types of pollution. They have long fought against efforts to move towards greener forms of energy - as if global warming and climate change didn't exist.
The cry about increasing crime is another way to marginalize people of color who are disproportionately prosecuted and incarcerated. But any meaningful efforts at limiting access to guns are permanently blocked in the name of protecting 2nd amendment rights.
This does not exonerate the Left from its efforts to continue to bow to the interests of its major donors. The way they blocked Bernie Sanders in his attempt to run for president was a gift to big pharma and an example of entrenched interests controlling the Democratic Party. Why doesn't the left stand up and scream that the immigration problem is not the fault of DJT or Mr. Biden - it is the fault of political instability in many South American countries and the many years of inaction by Congress?
The inability of our political system to address the many real problems facing our country will lead to more social unrest and possibly create weaknesses that our external enemies may profit from.
Cancel culture issuing from the temples of liberalism like the New York Times and ivy league academia does show how the fascists, though they hate that description, have taken over.
Noah, the list of allegedly offensive words from a Stanford University IT website did not represent University policy. See https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/01/04/it-website-in-the-news/?mkt_tok=ODg0LUZTQi0zMDcAAAGJQjjXw0rbOZT9XwT8gixViC7YXfWks6Ii6KsXw0q7tZoCHybNTxnPpCCj3c37i8s0r6__myngTGPxl8XQqPUdpdGqW0zvNnUTSCvJ2Qexrhg.
"The initiative was undertaken by well-intentioned staff... but... the approach taken missed the mark... At no point did the website represent university policy."
But it was retracted, no?
Stanford acknowledged that the program missed the mark. The website was taken down and the program is being reevaluated. Stanford remains committed to academic freedom and freedom of expression along with inclusion.
AND the president of the university had to write something disavowing the list...that was really something!
Stanford will learn to keep it more on the down low: "Other colleges’ initiatives have fared better—perhaps because they are less transparent in their practices." https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/11/amid-backlash-stanford-removes-harmful-language-list
The list was developed internally within an IT unit at Stanford for its own staff to use in unit websites and coding, and was only a draft for comment, prepared by a subgroup. It was never intended to be university policy and had not even reached a point where it could be considered for unit policy. If you think about it, the over-the-topness of the list makes sense as the work of super-smart nerds pushing a cultural ideal to a logical extreme--and perhaps it'll turn out to be a nice way to display to progressives how comical they sometimes look to political normies.
The reason the president had to "disavow" the list was because media reports misrepresented it as proposed or adopted policy for the university. University presidents regularly have to disclaim institutional endorsement of some statement made by faculty or staff that news media pick up and associate with the institution's position.
BTW, I found the list really interesting to go through--some items make good sense, but others read like self-parody. One really counter-intuitive item is "Karen," a term of the Left that is on the list because it "is used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors." Instead of saying, "Karen," use a phrase that avoids ridiculing and demeaning: "demanding or entitled White woman." With material like this, I think even I could do stand-up.
Consider the possibility that the whole thing might have been a parody to begin with.
Who is in the subgroup and how do we know from their personalities whether their effort was sincere or an SNL-like farce?
It wasn't a parody, Bobson. The subgroup was a project group co-sponsored by a council composed of various unit chief information officers (CIO-Council) and an affinity group called People of Color in Technology. The list that has made it to the public eye was a draft that the project group circulated for comment and additions.
As for personalities, my characterization is a personal interpretation. I know only that these were members of the university IT community.
Sounds like typical double speak. Put out the trial balloon -- then disclaim it when it sinks like lead. Exactly like what happened with the "your gas oven is going" trial balloon. After it sank through the floor, it became "Oh, we just meant better ventilation". I do not believe a word from any of these people.
It's more accurate to say that Reconstruction was trying to *implement* the changes of the Civil War and the 14th Amendment rather than trying to roll them back, but the effort petered out by the 1876 election.
I think Noah said Reconstruction when he meant Redemption (ie the restoration of white supremacy in the South).
I also thought this was strange. It seems to cast reconstruction as a parallels to the 80s or anti-Woke pushback. The 14th Amendment was passed during Reconstruction. I'll give him benefit of the doubt that it's just awkward phrasing, but that's a pretty huge misunderstanding if not.