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There’s an argument to be made that progressive gender stuff - the cluster of political/cultural issues including gay marriage, trans stuff, and abortion - are rapidly becoming the lynchpin. As the religiously conservative parts of the country becoming increasingly retrenched about these issues, it seems the progressive parts are doubling down on embracing the most extreme versions of them as a way to crystallize their differences.
In the most recent episode of Alex Kaschuta’s Subversive podcast, her guest made the interesting argument that part of what is driving the massive and rapid proliferation of people identifying as trans/nonbinary/GNC is simply that people in progressive spheres are adopting these identities as a way to formally mark themselves as distinct from the chuds and firmly loyal to one side of the simmering cultural conflict. “MAGAts won’t shut up about how gross trans people are, how they want to infiltrate women’s and children’s spaces to rape them, etc.? Well, if the chuds hate trans people, the trans must be doing something right! Count me in!”
Similarly, women who thirty years ago would have seen abortion as a deeply tragic last resort (“safe, legal, and rare”) now seem to be flirting with embracing it as a positive good. And not just as a thing we should encourage the underclass to do - the stance of early abortion advocates like Sanger - but as a thing that even affluent high-status people should be able to do freely and without any consequences or even social censure. (No big deal at all!) All as a defensive reactionary instinct triggered by conservative overreach and aggression on the issue.
Maybe there's some of that, but I have the impression of a lot of it being driven by progressivism having nothing to offer young women other than scaremongering about 'you're gonna get raped'. Like the tradcon offer of 'you can be a housewife and have lots of kids' is at least an offer and not just a discussion about how much being a woman sucks.
Like duh, if I was a woman being told there's nothing special or different about being a woman except that it makes you a victim, I wouldn't want to be one anymore.
Sure, but you’re a man with presumably a male-brained orientation as to how you perceive yourself and your relation with the world.
By their revealed preferences when it comes to rape fantasies, true crime, hybristophilia, dark triad men and whatnot, a substantial proportion (perhaps the majority) of women rather enjoy envisioning themselves as victims, or at least potential victims.
A woman wanting to be raped by a particular man, or subset of men, does not mean she wants to be raped by whoever has the opportunity to do so. Like fifty shades of gray was pretty clear the guy was hot and rich.
“Women don’t actually want to be raped by literally every man ever” is not in the slightest incompatible with “many women genuinely quite like perceiving themselves as victims or potential victims, enjoy the social power assuming that mantle gives them over others, and will often happily recontextualise their prior experiences as victimhood in order to capitalise on social sympathy”. Given how we relate to the sexes and the amount of empathy afforded to each, the return-on-investment of damselling is probably higher for women than men.
Victimhood politics only exist because portraying oneself as a victim lacking agency can be a very useful power to wield over others. It gives one the sledgehammer of social power and moral superiority, and is sufficiently covert and by-proxy so as to allow one a huge amount of plausible deniability. Voicing one’s (real or imagined) victimhood can certainly also foster internal feelings of being Stunning And Brave.
In other words, I don’t think people actually have this aversion to victimhood. It’s a status that lots of people, and I suspect particularly women, actively seek out, at least in terms of how they are perceived. It’s probably a less healthy self-concept than viewing oneself as effectual and capable, but it is adaptive, it can be utterly intoxicating to wield, and it is often the case that telling someone that they are not in fact uniquely victimised or at risk of such invokes outrage, not relief. Non-binary identification is just another facet of these kinds of status games.
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I think I've seen this in teenage boys in white progressive households. At some point, they realize that they are becoming a straight white cis dude, and getting older by the minute. And if they've been mouthing comments putting down "stale pale male" people for years, they need to change something fast.
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