Back in the 00s, the anti-LGBT culture war targeted primarily gay people, and it primarily used religious arguments. The Bible condemns homosexuality, marriage is a sacred institution, it’s a violation of Christians’ rights to make their churches marry gay people, &c.

Clearly, it didn’t work. During the 10s, when gay marriage was legalized, conservatives were dealt a pretty decisive blow on their anti-gay agenda, and so they shifted from targeting the LGB to targeting the T (they always targeted trans people, of course, but they really ramped it up during the 10s). With this change in focus came a shift in rhetoric. The right-wing certainly does argue for oppressing trans people on religious grounds, but you’re a lot more likely to hear them use scientific-sounding justifications. They’ll talk about chromosomes, about anatomy, about how “biologically there are only two genders,” about “people trying to put their feelings above objective reality.” They’ll throw around words like “rational” and “reason.” This of course ignores all kinds of actual science, such as the degree to which gender is culturally constructed, the existence of intersex people, how gender affirming care is the only dysphoria treatment shown to be effective, and a thousand other things. It’s anti-scientific to its core, but it can fool a casual observer into thinking it’s scientific if it’s telling them what they want to hear. It’s a bigotry for a materialist age, palatable to bazinga brains and nu-atheist Redditors, and maybe it’s just anecdotal, but it seems to me to have more traction among a younger, hipper crowd than the religious arguments ever did.

I can’t help but wonder if this pivot was concocted in some right-wing think tank somewhere.

  • forgotmylastusername@lemmy.mlEnglish
    17·
    11 days ago

    It probably fits under an umbrella of pseudo science the right has been doing. That is a very astute observation though. I too have noticed how they moved on to primarily focus their attacks from gay to trans people but hadn’t thought more in depth. Possibly another factor is that religion has been falling out of favor with younger people. That messaging resonated very strongly with older generations. To reach the kids these days you have to sound scientific.

    For a while it was looking like the whole idea that younger generations were going veer unequivocally into progressiveness was looking like a sure thing. The right wing parties were considered by the younger generations to be antiquated political ideologies of their grandparents generations. No young person wanted to be associated with conservatism. At least not outside of their own echo chambers. In the later half of the 2010s the right was was able pivot and suddenly become fashionable with the kids these days. I would attribute that to primarily to their shift from religion to phony rationalism.