Endorsing everything puzzlegal just said.
Thirding it, with an addition: any actual problems with high school sports and trans athletes can be solved by removing the high stakes for children’s sports. These high stakes are already really really harmful, so by removing them, we solve a real problem and a phantom problem.
While I have no disagreement with the sentiment, and possible solution proposed by @puzzlegal and endorsed by others, I wonder if it’s even vaguely possible. Oh, I mean, you could easily enough (not very, but not impossible) de-incentivize school sports, college education exceptions that have long since become farces, and cap the ludicrous sums that certain schools spend on sports instead of, you know, education, but I doubt we’d end the idol nature of athletes. We’ve had it in society since at least the Greeks.
But even in saying that, all the stuff I said in the paragraph above is still a worthy effort. And not being able to eliminate it, doesn’t mean that reducing it isn’t a good enough idea on it’s own.
TL;DR - Fourth!
This is why the comparison to the debate around voter ID is
appropriate. People who think Biden stole the election in 2020 also think they have “legitimate concerns.” Those who disagree with them do not find these concerns legitimate, and feel that they too easily dismiss sounder arguments that counter their views.
This doesn’t really turn around the argument at all. It depends completely on all parties agreeing that allowing trans girls to compete with cis girls is”special treatment.” Which all parties clearly do not.
It is also about protecting people’s right to vote, and not saddling that right with needless burdens due to “concerns” that may or may not be “legitimate.”
My first post was an attempt to answer the question in the OP, not necessarily an attempt to defend the “polarization” they complained about (though I admit my more specific views about the polarizing topics in question is pretty clear even if I didn’t spell them out). As far as the specific issues name-checked the most in lamentations about “polarization,” OP and other moderates imagine a world where all of their concerns are legitimate, while sometimes failing to really understand arguments that disprove that legitimacy, and in the process, wittingly or unwittingly, doing damage to the liberation of marginalized or at-risk groups.
Like, I’m staunchly pro-abortion rights, but I can still wrap my head around why pro-lifers believe they are actually fighting a life-or-death battle for the lives of innocent children. You wouldn’t catch me asking “why is the debate around abortion so polarizing?”
For example advocating for the protection of gender-affirming care, or for social transition for trans youth.
Keeping trans girls out of girls’ sports is consistently tied to restricting other areas of human rights, not only in public discussion but also in legislation and electoral politics. Moderates, in my experience, have very strong opinions about it, while showing very little interest in the first two areas I mentioned.
I’m mostly a Centrist “both sides do it” type.
A new apolitical thread about possible grifting in a movie theater was started. (Not sure how to link to it).
It isn’t very long but in my opinion quickly devolved into a debate about whether movie theaters sell tickets inside the building or outside. But it made me think of this thread.
I, as a centrist, immediately thought well obviously some theaters sell tickets outside and some sell tickets inside. And found the whole thing silly and not relevant to the OP.
In the context of this thread, why are people polarized about the issue of whether theaters sell tickets inside or outside? It’s a silly apolitical issue. Not a factual debate. like do you like pork chops? Pork chops taste is a matter of opinion, people can honestly disagree whether pork chops taste good.
But it is factual that some theaters sell tickets outside and some sell them inside.
I don’t think that one is polarization exactly. It’s an example of something I see all the time, where people think that what they are accustomed to is universal. It’s not that they think it should be one way or the other . The first example I can think of is birth certificates- there are always people who insist that all US birth certificates are issued by a county because that’s how it’s done where they live.
I disagree with your conclusion although make a valid point.
People that might argue about something silly about whether or not movie theaters sell tickets inside or outside are probably influenced by what what movie they go to and have gone to their whole lives. They don’t understand that their movie theater is not how all movie theaters are operated.
It’s a trivial issue. Nothing to worry about.
People who argue that Obama isn’t the legitimate President because his birth certificate doesn’t look like their birth certificate, well…
But in my opinion the thought process is the same.
I hope this isn’t too big of a hijack, but I am morbidly curious as to what the centrist position is for Obama’s birth certificate.
What was the reasonable “both-sides-are-to-blame” centrist position there? Was only half of the document fake?
And now there is poll in the movie theater grift thread about whether you buy tickets inside or outside.
Why the fuck are people debating this? What part of “both ticket purchasing locations, inside and out, exist and are perfectly valid.
A silly subject I know. I think it is valid for this thread.
Welcome to the SDMB, home of extensive discussions and debates about minutiae.
My centrist position would be that much like people who argue movie theaters only sell tickets inside or out, people are morons who say things like, well his birth certificate doesn’t match mine so he must be Nigerian. Just like people who dismiss the theater grift OP because you aren’t allowed in the lobby until you buy a ticket.
Wasn’t referring to the Obama BC thing. I was referring to people from say Texas insisting that a birth certificate from NYC must be an unofficial certificate ( like the cutesy ones with footprints that hospitals used to give ) because a city can’t issue a birth certificate, only a county can and therefore some motor vehicle clerk was correct not to accept a birth certificate issued by NYC from a driver license applicant. Those people are too stuck in their own world to understand that some places don’t have counties , and in other places there are cities that are not part of the county that surrounds them and there are others where the city and the county have merged. And NYC , which is as far as I know unique in having one city made up of five counties. And because of their ignorance of other places they insist that everything is done everywhere as it is where they live, whether that is paying at the movie theatre or which level of government issues birth certificates.
I don’t think they are. One person said they’d never been in a theater that sold tickets inside; and came to a conclusion about the OP’s story based on that information. A number of other people came in to the thread to say that in their experience theaters do sell tickets inside; some others said it depends on where you are, or that they know some that sell them inside and others that sell them outside, or that in their area they’re sold outside.
I don’t think that was polarization – after the first person, I didn’t see anybody saying ‘nobody in the world does it the other way!’ I saw people pointing out that it varies. I, at least, learned that in some areas the tickets are sold outside; which I hadn’t known before. But I didn’t think it was an argument, but an exchange of information.
Why do you assume that because there’s a poll people disagree with “both ticket purchasing locations, inside and out, exist and are perfectly valid"?
Somebody must have been curious about which is more common. Which is no weirder, and no more trivial, then a lot of things people make polls about.
This is a pretty good example of the centrist mindset. The Obama birth certificate thing was very clearly an attempt to delegitimize the country’s first Black president because they thought they’d found a legal loophole that would invalidate his election. They wanted him to be removed as President.
But in the centrist mind, it’s all about “his birth certificate legitimately looked different and people got confused.”
Here again in the trans people in sports… an enormous part of the people pushing “it’s unfair to integrate trans people in sports” are, coincidentally enough, the same people who want trans people to go away entirely. In the centrist mind these people have “legitimate concerns” about the integrity of school competition, and those concerns need to be adjudicated, whether they’re in good faith or not.
What are centrists really trying to do here? I think some legitimately are oblivious to the underlying cultural fault lines, and think they’re the only ones who see the “easy” way to solve it. However I believe that others are simply pretending not to see that, and in fact they’re adopting a “facts-and-logic” strategy to reinforce underlying bigotries that they most definitely share, but prefer not to express.
I don’t how you get I’m an anti Obama birther. I am equating idiots who think theater only sell tickets outside/inside with the idiots who reject Obamas legitimate birth certificate. Somebody else brought up birth certificates.
Now I’m some kind of evil centrist. Kinda speaks to the topic of the thread.
If anyone thinks I am an anti birther, please highlight what I said/implied to make you think that.
I don’t know where you get the idea that centrists thought the Obama birth certificate nonsense was anything else but nonsense.
A lot of the time centrists aren’t necessarily people who are lukewarm about issues, it’s people who can either see both sides and think compromise is the best option, or they’re people whose views aren’t necessarily moderate, but whose views fall all over the spectrum, and basically average out somewhere in the middle. They don’t buy into the ideological package deal of being a MAGA wacko or a Progressive looney-tune, but may agree with positions of both.
I fall in both categories. For example, if you take abortion, I understand both sides. And I don’t see any way that either side can prevail- on one side it’s the murder of innocent unborn children, and on the other, it’s a grave matter of someone’s personal autonomy and right to do what they choose with their bodies. So compromise is where it has to be- something nobody likes, but that gives both sides a voice and a say. As far as the other type goes, I’m fairly hawkish and am fundamentally little-c conservative with respect to social programs and government spending. I’m not convinced that the government is or should be the agent for social change, and I’m not convinced that the government has all these obligations to people that people on the left claim either. But then again, I’m for staunchly LGBTQ rights in almost all cases (I still have some reservations about trans women in women’s sports), I believe in equity vs. equality with respect to race, and I’m pretty tolerant when it comes to illegal immigration. But I think “undocumented” is the worst sort of PC crap. Nobody should starve in the US, but people should be responsible for the consequences of their dumb decisions and it’s not the government’s problem to mitigate or cushion those consequences.
In short, I average out in the middle somewhere. That’s the fallacy as far as people on the extremes who see centrists as being neither fish nor fowl, and as lukewarm. They’re not, they just aren’t extremists
Reread what HMS wrote. He did not remotely suggest you were an anti Obama birther. The “centrist” position he described entailed believing that the people who are wrong about Obamas’ birth certificate are confused, not malicious.
One of the things that happens is that people, in an argument, assume the least charitable (and often unsupportable) version of what their opponents say. It makes it very difficult to have a productive conversation.
I’m not sure about the idea of a ‘centrist mindset’. To me, the word ‘centrist’ is a description of the aggregate of a person’s political positions. For instance, if a person is right wing on some issues but left wing on others, it doesn’t make much sense to call them a lefty or a righty. Centrist is the word that best fits. In my experience, the definition of centrist as “one who intuitively adopts the middle ground on principle, regardless of the issue” doesn’t fit many people. If it is a distinct mindset, I don’t think it’s a very popular one.
Where did I say that? Imply that? Did I poorly word anything ? If so please let me know.
I compared anti birthers to people who think theaters only sell tickets inside or outside the lobby.
Now I’m accused of hating or at least complicit in hating the LGTBQ community as Centrist.
WTF?
If anybody doesn’t know why things are so polarized. Just read the last few posts.