(Previously, previously.)
Woooooow
On my twenty-second day out of prison, I went to the genderqueer support/discussion group again, but this time with my metaphorical evolutionary-psychology goggles firmly in place.
And just, woooooow
These not-particularly-feminine females and probably-autogynephilc males think that they have something substantive in common (being "genderqueer"), and are paranoid at the world of hostile cis people just itching to discriminate against and misgender them
And their struggle makes sense to them, but I'm just sitting there thinking wooooow
It's all just social-exchange and coalitional instincts. There are no principles. There have never been any principles. The horror is not, "This is a cult." The horror is that everything is a cult.
I mean... in my universe... when people have life-ruining problems; and they do what they need to do to stay alive; and those who don't have the same problems look down on them for what they had to do; and they band together against the original problem and against people who keep them down... that's generally considered virtuous.
Consider also: if you sat in the discussion group for the blind, listening to them talk about discrimination and stupidity in sighted society, you would conclude that blindness doesn't exist and Braille is a cult ritual.
Yes! Yes, you would! That is, unless of course you had some other means of experimentally confirming that "blindness" is a natural category ... and if "blindness" wasn't a natural category, and was actually several different things with completely different etiologies (people who lost their physical eye vs. people with some kind of defect in their visual cortex), then it might be a useful social technology to split it into different subtypes with different support groups!