A pitiless crackdown on on illegal immigration. A hardline approach to law and order. A purge of “gender ideology” and “wokeness” from the nation’s schools. Erosions of academic freedom, judicial independence and the free press. An alliance with Christian nationalism. An assault on democratic institutions.
The “electoral autocracy” that is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has been long revered by Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement. Now admiration is turning into emulation. In the early weeks of Trump’s second term as US president, analysts say, there are alarming signs that the Orbánisation of America has begun.
So there’s this funny thing about colour. I’m not talking about race here. Actual colours. Wherein certain languages always seem to have the same colours when they only have a certain number of base words for colours. When the language has words for only two colours, these usually correspond to light and dark. Black and white.
I’m still not talking about race.
And when there’s three, the third is always red.
Then if there’s another it’s yellow or green.
Then if there’s five, they’re generally the other one from above and then blue.
Then you get an old and heavily moulded language like English with hundreds of colour names.
But there are languages which only discern only two colours.
Has the penny dropped yet?
Decrying gender ideology is like saying that there’s only light and dark. “What’s all this ‘red’ business? And don’t get me started on green.”
Now I’m certainly not going to tell people whose languages lack words for primary colours that they’re backward, because they have other ways of describing those things, or can learn names from other languages.
But if someone from one of those cultures was to insist that there’s only two and can’t accept that other languages break things up into separate categories, that’s denying a fact, and that’s a problem.
And if they get violent and start painting things black and white because “that’s all there is”, that’s an even bigger problem.
Do you understand yet?
“But black can’t change to white and white can’t change to black!!1!”
Not all things are the same colour all the way through. What’s on the outside is not necessarily representative of what’s going on on the inside. This here red apple, sorry, dark apple, is light on the inside.
And now it’s illegal to peel an apple.
This example is great, because it shows where there is sanity, and order. In each of your examples - things lined up naturally, without explanation across language, borders, sex, color, etc. Red, Green, etc all mapped perfectly across all of those instances, without people having to learn something new for each individual person. You say Blue = Azul, that’s a ruleset that spans the WHOLE language instantly. You learn it once, and you know it. Hell, you also just learned it in Portugese…
Gender identity is none of that. Every person with their own gender identity has their own special rules for their version of the subject. Each set of rules is unique to that individual, and they expect everyone around them to know those rules that are internal to them. (Primarily because Gender Identity circles are these huge echo-chambers which refuse to interact with anyone who doesn’t 200% agree with them) – Now imagine each and every person you met had a different word for Blue. Now imagine that you can’t keep all of that straight in your head and you just call the color “Blue” in your own tongue. And the person on the other side of the conversation gets IRRATIONALLY angry at you. THAT is Gender Identity.
That’s not going to fly. You don’t get to dictate the behaviors and actions of those around you. If someone meets you and they immediately need a 10 minute education on how they need to alter their OWN identity in order to keep you from flying off the handle, then you’re not sane.
If gender identity followed a set of rules (it doesn’t) then it would be much easier to grasp and understand for the world. But it’s not - it’s a mental illness. Or…maybe it looks like a mental illness because we don’t have the words to describe what people are trying to convey, but it has no similarities at all to the thing you describe.
Until the subject of Gender identities can unify into a simple to grasp thing that can have logic applied to it, people aren’t going to accept it.
I had a perfect conversation with a community of trans individuals about this. If a man has kids, and then considers himself a woman – what does he want to be called in relation to those kids? A father? A mother?
Turns out, nobody in the community could agree on what they wanted to be referred to in the past-tense. They all had their own unique flavor of what they would have preferred. So nobody, rational or otherwise, would ever be able to discern the proper way to approach the subject in the presence of theoretical individual. (It was a thought experiment that the community I was speaking with participated in thoughtfully and respectfully, and some people actually respected and attempted to understand the other side of things, which was incredibly refreshing. It hasn’t happened since - which is sad - but I quite enjoyed that community)
THAT’S the craziness. That’s the problem with Gender Identity. Unless it has an easily understood set of rules, people will not adopt it. We want to convey information, and move on. We don’t want to first learn how you would PREFER we convey the information - we need a set of rules that we can quickly and broadly apply, so that we aren’t throwing a wrench into the gears of our brains.
That goes doubly true with as many autistic and adhd people also cross over here. Especially for people with autism and other mental issues (myself included) - that juggling of special rules represents a real struggle.
But it doesn’t map perfectly. That’s the point of the comment you replied to. In my native language, “blue” isn’t one word. If you say “blue” and I need to translate that, I need to ask whether you mean lighter or darker shade of blue, because those are straight up two different words. And it’s perfectly natural to me because I grew up speaking that language. But I also understand that not all languages have that distinction and sometimes it needs to be explicitly clarified.
Yep. Fuck your pronouns. I’ll make a logical assumption, correct myself if asked to. Not going to fucking seek your preference. Fuck they.
I’m ALREADY on your side! FFS give it a fucking rest already. There are plenty of others hurting without the constant wailing, “What about ME!”
[removed by mod with zero explanation because fuck you]
I’m so done. These motherfuckers, arguing about bullshit when their very lives are on the line. STFU already. Been blocking all the non-stop trans posts and comms. It’s overwhelming.
tl;dr: I’m with you, but you aren’t with me. Fight among yourselves. I’ll help if I can.