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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Given that I recently copped a permanent sub ban and a weeklong site-wide admin ban for daring to make a three-sentence tepid defense of JK against activists (not trans people with any specificity) - charged with transphobia and 'promoting hate' - I think my disdain for this word has been freshly renewed, and replanted a few feet deeper towards core of my being.

This single paragraph makes a point that I, as someone who was as left-wing as they come in the older days, wish I could thrust in the face of every single social justice commissar I argued and spoke with before changing societal pressures meant that even this mild objection was forced into the same category as thoughtless anti-semitism and racial chauvinism.

Being banned for your (self-reported, so who knows) anodyne defence of a position held by a broad swathe of society has not made you more likely to support trans people. You have not seen the "error" of your ways and decided to go give a trans person money - your attitudes were strengthened and your beliefs hardened. This is exactly what a lot of thoughtful people said would happen and other people are saying is happening right now - but societal discourse has been so polluted that even bringing this point up is seen as a wholehearted defence of Hitler, the kind of thoughtcrime that will get you removed from polite society.