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Jason's avatar

I love this Desistor Manifesto series. It’s authoritative, accurate and no-holds-barred in its approach to calling out all the perverse incentives that influence this bizarre cult. The author has obviously gone through some rough stuff, but is doing the world a huge favor with these wonderful essays!

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Smartest American's avatar

The philosophical basis of transgenderism is not Marxist ... and "cultural Marxism" is a hoax, a conspiracy theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory). Regarding this part of the article I am reminded of the meme: "Everything I don't like is communism". It is a shortcut way to instill 'us against them' simplicity to this topic and many other controversial topics.

The philosophical heart of transgenderism and the political 'woke' agenda is Applied Postmodernism. It is unarguably true that transgenderism has found its most fertile ground among the looney left and has infiltrated amongst leaders of the Democratic Party in the U.S., but this is because of appeal of postmodernist 'Theory', not socialism. Postmodernism is not Marxist, either. Marxism purports to be scientific; postmodernism is the antithesis of scientific. Marxism is about class struggle; postmodernism, 'queer theory', CRT, et al. are about identity privilege. Marxism is about work and labor; transgenderism is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the white bourgeoisie.

Understanding postmodernism is important because you have to know your enemy in order to defeat them. Labelling transgenderism as Marxism may be easy, but it is a shot that is going to miss the mark and is thus going to be ineffective and ultimately not persuasive to those we need to persuade.

The whole of the original article is, of course, absolutely on target and the points should be reiterated wherever possible. But the key to reversing this transgender and 'woke' social contagion is to be persuasive to the vast majority of good intentioned folks who are not really paying attention to this issue but believe that they are being compassionate and libertarian towards those who claim to be transgender.

I recommend two very important books.

'The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls' by Kara Dansky

'Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody' by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay

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