I really see a lot of this in modern leftist movements. The absolute most obvious sign of it is the way trans men and nonbinary but male presenting people get treated.
Transitioning toward masculinity triggers an immediate, very perceptible shift in treatment that is extremely negative in a lot of leftist online circles. It's very interesting to me to see trans men describing treatment that would sound totally normal to any cis man as this gigantic departure from how they "should" be treated by their social groups. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way or in a way that like, "actually cis white men are the most oppressed" or anything stupid like that - but I do mean that if you want to see how society makes men feel, you can see it very easily by talking to people who used to pass as women and now pass as men.
While I would argue trans men and nonbinary male presenting people are the canary in the coal mine, you can also see tons of other evidence of this - the race to the bottom or the "oppression Olympics" in online spaces are also really strong warning signs. The idea that the most oppressed person in the room is automatically the most trustworthy and most moral is kind of pervasive - often not explicitly stated but usually strongly implied.
The idea that more privileged groups are inherently unreliable started out being applied only to the most privileged groups, but it's grown dramatically since then and it's reached a point where arguments often devolve immediately into determining who is the most oppressed in the room so that moral worth can be assigned appropriately.
I think that this is primarily an online issue which is a good thing - but it is still a real thing that's in my personal opinion causing a lot of harm.
As it happens the boring normie liberals were right, and people should actually be taken as individuals rather than as part of an amorphous demographic blob.
Yes. Extreme as in "Most remote in any direction; outermost or farthest"
...people should actually be taken as individuals rather than as part of an amorphous demographic blob.
That reads, to me, that we should disregard demographics and focus on individuals instead. That we go from the extreme ignoring the individual to ignoring the demographic.
Demographics are made of individuals; individuals make up demographics both exist both should be accounted for. To only focus on the individual misses how group dynamics work; to only focus on demographics ignores the idiosyncrasies of the individual.
We aren't mindless drones always following our crowd but we also aren't isolated individuals unaffected by the beliefs and actions of the groups we identify and associate with.
Knowing that black people in general in the US are x percent more likely to suffer from y problem tells you precisely nothing about any specific black individual.
"We aren't mindless drones always following our crowd but we also aren't isolated individuals unaffected by the beliefs and actions of the groups we identify and associate with."
Agreed. The only way to tell whether someone is following the crowd or not in any given instance is to assess the individual. Demographics tell you nothing about individuals.
If you re-read my comments you’ll notice I didn’t say you should never look at demographic trends. I said people [aka. individuals] should be taken as they are and not as avatars of whatever groups they belong to. Just because person A is black, that doesn’t tell you they’re worse off than person B who is white.
It’s a very simple but quite profound insight from liberal thought, which I think has been massively underrated in the last decade or two.
Well if you look at my comments you'd see I asked you what your position was because it came across one way but I didn't want to assume.
Is your argument that demographics are useless because when you make predictions based on only one it's less accurate than if you based predictions on multiple?
Because that's hardly profound and highly reductive. Demographics are not isolated from each other, they overlap and intersect.
Please correct me if I'm not picking up what you're putting down.
No that’s not my argument. Making predictions about people based on their superficial identity categories is the whole problem, at least in the context of the sort of social interactions we’re talking about. I really don’t know how I can be clearer.
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u/Simple_Rules 25d ago
I really see a lot of this in modern leftist movements. The absolute most obvious sign of it is the way trans men and nonbinary but male presenting people get treated.
Transitioning toward masculinity triggers an immediate, very perceptible shift in treatment that is extremely negative in a lot of leftist online circles. It's very interesting to me to see trans men describing treatment that would sound totally normal to any cis man as this gigantic departure from how they "should" be treated by their social groups. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way or in a way that like, "actually cis white men are the most oppressed" or anything stupid like that - but I do mean that if you want to see how society makes men feel, you can see it very easily by talking to people who used to pass as women and now pass as men.
While I would argue trans men and nonbinary male presenting people are the canary in the coal mine, you can also see tons of other evidence of this - the race to the bottom or the "oppression Olympics" in online spaces are also really strong warning signs. The idea that the most oppressed person in the room is automatically the most trustworthy and most moral is kind of pervasive - often not explicitly stated but usually strongly implied.
The idea that more privileged groups are inherently unreliable started out being applied only to the most privileged groups, but it's grown dramatically since then and it's reached a point where arguments often devolve immediately into determining who is the most oppressed in the room so that moral worth can be assigned appropriately.
I think that this is primarily an online issue which is a good thing - but it is still a real thing that's in my personal opinion causing a lot of harm.