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Notes -
Good points.
“Intellectually bankrupt,” though? I’m not even trying to argue a bottom-up theory. There are obviously a small subset of people with much more investment in gender politics, and I expect new language hits then first. The question is how it propagates from them to the general public.
I’m inclined to view it as trickle-down. The language of authority figures gets adopted because followers defer to their experts. Could be due to trust or ingroup signaling. Appealing to authority is effective! People want to win their internet arguments with “well, the WPATH standards say…”
This is in contrast to the more aggressive model implied by the OP. I think it’s very tempting to assert that outgroup leaders are building a party line by force. I also think that’s unusual, given the number of more pedestrian reasons for followers to buy in.
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