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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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I think these examples match a pattern of bad behavior that a lot of modern society has become vulnerable to.

The pattern is imitating the trappings of a victim or an oppressed person and constantly trying to pull on that identity for sympathy and special privilege.

It's a form of parasitic social domination. The people willing to do this are almost universally sociopaths of some sort. The few trans people I knew were not like this. They were shy and a bit embarrassed about their transition, and they mostly wanted people to not make a big deal about it.

I've known other people that have taken on other forms of victimhood for the purpose of social domination. Sometimes real victims, sometimes imagined or exaggerated. I find it important to identify these people and oppose them through all possible social channels. Unlike good parasites they will absolutely kill their hosts.

Hopefully I am not putting words in your mouth:

So what you're saying is that identities need an immune system?

More that communities need an immune system. An identity that doesn't rely on a community is mostly safe from being exploited by sociopaths.

Not sure about that one.

There are definitely single identities that have been targeted by sociopath copycats. Admittedly, typically prominent identities, as otherwise there isn't much upside.

What matters here is more how much sway / visibility / power / soft power / whatever you wish to call it the identity has, not really the size of said identity.

A community is really just a shared (partial) identity - and the flipside of that is that an identity is really not all that different from a community that currently has one member.