Fundamentally, we’ve got over 300 million people with damn near that many mindsets. Or possibly more.
Yes, there’s considerable overlap; enough so that in some circumstances it may make sense to talk of a progressive or a MAGA mindset. But this insistence on trying to force everything and everybody into two neatly separate boxes is a significant part of the problem. Yes, if you can only see Mythink and Notmythink you’ll polarize everything!
This is, of course, unlaundered MAGA propaganda of “they’re trying to exterminate our way of thinking.”
If you look at all the respectable journalist pieces from 2016 on, countless thousands of barrels of ink are spilled on how we need to understand MAGA, how we need to go into diners and hear out their concerns, what if it’s all about economic anxiety, how can we persuade the persuadable. Meanwhile, go to a MAGA rally where you’ll hear people openly talking about how everyone to the left of Mitt Romney is a communist who needs to be put in jail.
And how do they justify it? With the lie of “that’s what the left is doing to us, we’re just responding.” So by your repeating it here, you’re helping them legitimize the worst instincts of people who have never once offered to meet the other side anywhere close to the middle. This is the exact consequence of this flavor of BS.
There’s some amusing irony in a mindset that categorizes people into:
"There are two kinds of people in the world:
those who put everybody into one of two categories, and those who don’t."
IMO OP’s premise is flawed. The right takes non-issues like “CRT” and trans women in sports and uses them to whip up moral panic broad enough to capture the attention of poorly-informed “moderates” who otherwise might not caucus with conservatives.
Then these “moderates” can use lazy characterizations of left-wing “extremism” to claim that the left has become too extreme for them, while ignoring all the ways they could comfortably engage with left-leaning social causes.
For example, in my experience very few of the “moderates” panicking over trans women in women’s sports are vocally advocating for trans liberation in less-controversial areas.
The rise of the internet has meant that more people than ever are aware of social inequities, and left-wing activism and political opinions have become more popular as a result. The right has little use for activism, since their concern is maintaining those social inequities.
So instead they deploy these sexy non-issues to draw as many otherwise left-leaning “moderates” as they can close enough their side to affect electoral outcomes in favor of conservative candidates.
There is no crisis in women’s sports, and there is no crisis around CRT. The right invented these issues and “moderates” like the OP are eating them up, and then wondering why others on the left are so upset with them.
That plus the fact that the American right is advocating for fascism and we are all in danger of “moderates” carrying us to that tipping point. In that sense things are so polarized because the stakes are way higher than they once were, and the “moderates” aren’t the ones who will suffer most under a fascist regime, so there’s little patience for their whining about how mean everyone is being to them.
It should come as no shock that after establishing a strawman category, you fail to find anyone that inhabits it.
Another possibility is that moderates are not “panicking” over women’s sports, but still have legitimate concerns, and at the same time support trans rights in other areas but not to the point of street protests.
Could you specify what you mean by less controversial areas?
“Right to actually exist” should be one, in theory…
Could you explain what you mean by ‘exist’ in this context?
I liken these concerns to Voter ID. People say that we need Voter ID because they are concerned about people voting illegally. We should enact laws, change our voting processes, knowingly put vote roadblocks in front of marginalized citizens, in order to allay these concerns.
But if you ask “How many illegal votes are cast now?” they’ll tell you “I have no idea.” Is it 1 per election? Is it 1,000,000? “Don’t know, don’t care, don’t need to know, don’t need to ask. I am concerned and that is all that matters.”
When alleviating your concerns hurts other people, you need to do more. The moderates who are concerned about women’s sports aren’t doing more. They just support protecting “real women” from transwomen and go back to never thinking at all about women’s sports. They aren’t at all concerned about the harm done to transwomen.
They’re somewhat different. Voter ID stuff isn’t about human rights; it’s about how to conduct a fair election. The numbers matter when conducting fair elections. But for human rights, people may support things just out of principle.
The argument can be turned around, in any case. If transwomen in sports is a negligible issue, it’s because there are hardly any transwomen in the first place (compared to the population). So why should they get special treatment (being able to play among players not matching their sex)?
I don’t agree with this line of argument, and nor do I expect most to, because some issues are more about the principle of the matter than raw numbers.
This isn’t limited to the right, either. The book I mentioned above cites a poll from 2019 asking people how many unarmed Black men were killed that year. Contrary to the usual narrative, people were more disconnected from reality the further left you went. The actual number was 31. But 22% of “very liberal” people thought it was “about 10,000” or “over 10,000”. This is a disconnect of 300 times. Over half thought it was “about 1000” (or more), making them wrong by ~30x. In comparison, about 80% of conservatives chose “about 10” or “about 100” (either of which were good answers).
Does that mean people are wrong to protest anti-Black police violence? Of course not. Though people should be more realistic about the actual scope of the problem. This might help reduce polarization, because the opposition (in this case, the conservatives that had a more realistic view of police violence) has less reason to think their opposition is delusional. I think this is where your example of Voter ID fits in better: you (correctly) view them as delusional because clearly their understanding of the scope of the problem is completely wrong. If they acknowledged that the scope is too small to matter, but believed it was important anyway for fairness reasons, there would be room for discourse.
Going back to the issue of transwomen in sports, there is also the issue of how sports function specifically. Thinking about it more, I wonder if there is a kind of left-right mindset difference here. Sports could be viewed as being about the participation, such that the more inclusive they are the better. Or they could be viewed as a pure selection mechanism designed to filter out all but the best of the best. If the latter is more important, then including transwomen will have a disproportionate impact. But if participation is what matters most, then that doesn’t matter. These viewpoints don’t strictly map to a left-right axis but I could believe there’s a correlation.
I think that’s a really important point - it seems like both sides don’t fully realize that there are different types of sports and teams and leagues. Olympic skeet shooting doesn’t have to be treated the same as high school basketball which doesn’t have to be treated the same as recreational league basketball.
That’s what it should be about, but when it’s used to disenfranchise a certain demographic in order to sway elections then it does become about rights.
I disagree with the label special treatment, however I’ll put that aside, it’s not critical.
I think people should be allowed to live their lives how they want unless it hurts someone.
Kids who identify as girls should get to play girls sports. If someone doesn’t like it, it’s on them to demonstrate the actual, non-theoretical, real world pain and suffering that is generated by transgirls playing girls sports. Note, this is not “we all know boys are better than girls at XYZ” it’s actual data from actual competitions, where transgirls are unfairly impacting the results.
At that point, we can have a discussion to weigh the alternatives, to see who gets impacted by our available actions.
Of course. But we have to define what harm means, and that’s not something that people are in full agreement over. Is someone harmed because someone else had an advantage over them, allowing them to run faster, etc.? Probably most would agree that natural variation in performance (say, height for basketball players) doesn’t represent a harm. On the other hand, if the other player is using performance-enhancing drugs, that is a harm.
But somewhere in the middle there are disagreements. Is testosterone a performance-enhancing drug? Well… it’s complicated. The questions here are things on which reasonable people can differ.
There are more fundamental issues at stake, too. When we talk about “women’s sports”… are we referring to sex or gender? All of this was established before people (in the West at least) thought there was any distinction. But it matters a lot whether we’re actually talking female sports or women’s sports. One can’t just assume it’s the latter because the name didn’t change when society started recognizing the distinction. Who owes who the burden of proof?
At any rate, this is getting a bit too into the weeds and isn’t particularly relevant to my point, which is that the moderates can reject extremism in all its forms, whether it comes in pro- or anti- form. And especially when it potentially intersects with the rights of others. Failing to “vocally advocat[e] for trans liberation” is evidence in favor of a moderate viewpoint, not against it.
I agree that sports segregated by gender are a good idea. It is best for all concerned, to get the most value to society and its individuals out of sport.
There are certainly men who cannot compete with the top male athletes, who would outcompete the top female athletes. One could argue that it’s unfair to prevent them from doing so, being as they are better and stronger than the female athletes. But an adult doesn’t get to compete with children even though they could also dominate those competitions. Male vs. female competitions, especially post puberty where strength is involved, are so mismatched as to be no competition at all. The point of competition is for it to be relevant.
Consequently, I do think that trans women’s participation in women’s sports should not be unrestricted. My understanding is that it currently is restricted if the trans woman is not taking transitioning drugs. I think this is acceptable. Otherwise, one could make the argument that “no harm is being done” if men are allowed to compete on women’s teams. So I disagree that trans women should be allowed to compete on womens’ sports teams without restrictions.
And that discussion need only refer to the sports question, for example. A good amount of polarization comes from thoughts along the lines of “trans girls in sports are an issue, so we must also deny them medical care, preferred pronouns, and bathroom choice.” No, just because one thing is complicated and needs consideration doesn’t mean that everything else needs to be complicated or left unresolved until the other questions are settled.
That’s certainly part of the strategy, but the reverse is true as well. Obviously Democrats have an interest in loosening restrictions since they’re likely to benefit from it. If anyone took a principled approach that went against their interests, it might be more believable, but those people don’t seem to exist.
And we’ve all drawn the line somewhere. I doubt many people support voting with no checks whatsoever. But the current setup makes it more difficult for the homeless to vote. Not impossible–but the difficulty makes them relatively more disenfranchised. Any kind of verification will increase disenfranchisement, and yet we need some checks.
Arguably, the US is too biased toward the lack of verification. ID requirements have mainstream support, and are commonplace even in countries we think of as far to the left in the US. From that perspective, it’s Democrats that are unfairly benefiting from too-loose checks (I don’t agree with this, but it’s not a totally unreasonable view).
Some historians, like Michael Tomasky in his book If We Can Keep It, are of the opinion that the kind of polarization we are experiencing is the norm.
The theory is that the period of bipartisanship from roughly 1945-1980 was the exception in the country’s history and that most of us who grew up in those times only came to accept it as normal because it was all we knew.
He attributes the era to factors arising from the Great Depression and World War II and the polarized normal to our weird, archaic and unrepresentative elections (hooray).
I disagree. Sports serve kits of different functions, socially. Elementary school sports are about learning skills and socialization. Corporate sports are about team building and entertainment for the participants. Professional sports are about being the best and entertainment for spectators.
I don’t really think elementary school sports should be segregated by gender. I think they are currently gender-segregated in part to protect boys from being “beaten by a girl” and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. (Most second grade classes have an athletic girl who will beat most of the boys.) I think segregating corporate sports by gender is actively bad, and i note that most corporate softball teams, bowling teams, etc. are unisex. As for professional sports, i think each sport should make its own rules about participation. If the “hot blond mud wrestling league” only accepts attractive busty blond women because that’s what drives revenue, I’m okay letting them do that.
But i think global statements about “who should be eligible for women’s sports” are misguided. And tend to lead to polarization, because different people are envisioning different sports, and different purposes, and then they disagree and clash. I think if you bring the decision down to the team or league level, you will find more agreement as to goals and purposes, and you will have more concrete data as to who will be affected how, and as a result, less bitterness and polarization.