I will say this in the comment's section. When I came out as trans, I had a convert's zeal, probably related to my Christian background. I was the kind of person who would trash someone online for an opinion, and in all honesty, I'm still that way. I can remember in my early twenties reading authors like Julia Serano, or Jennifer Finney Boylan and bumping up against this idea that trans women might not literally be female, because gender is fluid, and feeling threatened and insecure, and deciding I liked the certainty of "trans women are women" and turning this into the trappings of my online ideology, basically my excuse to yell and be rude to people who disagreed with me. The feelings of being threatened and insecure of course didn't go away, no matter how ingrained in online politics I became, or how righteous I thought my activism was. Aging from my twenties to my thirties, and getting more educated, I now see the original point those trans authors made about avoiding literal definitions. Most people really do have to learn the hard way.
LOL at him citing Grace Lavery. I'm surprised that Lavery didn't get laughed off of the internet for claiming that the UC Berkeley English department was a "transphobic hellhole".
Singal is being very generous towards Jentleson's narrow minded attitudes
In my micro field of common sense criminal justice I also have found that people who denounced what the mainstream considers moderate positions to be so "over the top" as to deserve cancellation.
The only thing that continued me to allow speaking, and occasionally being heard was that I was an elected District Attorney for a quarter century, so until I retired in 2019 my voice was relatively safe from complete cancellation.
I understand your frustration Jesse, and it's gotta be especially personal for you considering how many canards and calumnies were sent your way by the angry dogmatists on the Left.
But with that said, very few public figures ever come out and admit they were wrong about something. Or private figures either. Hell I spent years complaining the US spent too much of its budget on the military and now I feel we need to deter a rising China and Russia and that requires a strong military. I'm not posting on Facebook "Oh by the way, I was wrong back in 2014 when I said we had more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined and should cut our spending"
Slow down. You don’t make your living advancing, advocating for, or writing about political issues. You’re just a dog on the internet. There are still standards that apply to you but “coherent and consistent positions” isn’t one of them.
Though that logic goes both ways. Because I DON'T make my living this way, it's less important for me to maintain credibility, right? I think some pundits fear, not unreasonably, that they will lose some of their credibility if they retract or publicly reverse their positions. Doesn't make it right, but I do understand it.
Oh and I am not a dog on the internet. I'm a *faun* on the internet.
"I think some pundits fear, not unreasonably, that they will lose some of their credibility if they retract or publicly reverse their positions."
I think so too. I wish they'd understand that such things increase their credibility, and not the other way around. Though I suppose intellectual accountability inhibits their ability to take a scolding or smarmy tone, which seem to be the only modes some of them employ.
I wish that were true but I don’t think so. Ethan Strauss calls it the DADD strategy - don’t apologize, double down. “The public” never accepts apologies, in practice apologizing or correcting just get your name dragged even more through the mud. The smart strategy is, unfortunately, to never publicly apologize or retract.
I think it might have been John McWhorter I heard say awhile back that when the woke bubble bursts people are not going to say they were wrong, they will just pretend they had nothing to do with it or never believed it. We are watching that unfold in real time.
In terms of Klein, about a month or so after the blow-up of trans issues in NYTimes, which included the accosting of one of its reporters by trans activists, he had a trans advocate on his NYTimes podcast.
I expected at least some discussion on that event. There is 0, yes 0, mention about it.
Big like on this one. I don't think it's petty to call people out on stuff like this. A basic degree of accountability has to exist in the public sphere for it to function constructively. And everyone has the right to address boundary violations.
Jentleson's critical analysis was interesting, very focused on Democratic Party members winning elections and taking power. But I kept wondering, other than tactical considerations related to controversial issues - what does he think the Democratic Party should stand for? What are our principles and core commitments? I don't think it can just be a list of policy positions - right to choose, no cuts to social security?, no backtracking on ACA. As George HW B put it - the vision thing?
It used to be poverty, labor, and liberty. Neither of the latter two things appear to be central to the party anymore, and the poverty part seems almost entirely concerned with urban poverty through a racial lens.
Over the past decade it seems like safetyism, guilt, and conformity are the values.
There is a "victim of its own success" aspect to this. Gay rights was a very compelling issue for Ds, now mostly achieved. There was low hanging fruit in the fairness and equity realm.
Grace Lavery is a name that I am all too familiar with. She is a (black) legend for her advocacy of burning books that she doesn’t like. Don’t believe me? Check out what she posted on X. Of course, it gets worse. She advocated stealing books she doesn’t like and then burning them.
Jentleson is just a weathervane and a dumb one at that. By the time, the NYT allowed a debate about trans issues, peak transmania was already over. Jentleson should have known that. The fact that even the NYT allowed some (very limited) debate about trans issues, should have told Jentleson something. Of course, that is not true.
Peak transmania won't be over until judges in America can no longer force attorneys practicing in their court rooms (for example, in cases opposing male participation in womens'-only athletic events) to refer to one of the parties by their imagined sex and not their biological sex.
I meant "peak transmania". Transmania is still with us, sad to say. Note that hysterical response to Seth Moulton's (D) very tame remarks. Note also, the histrionics provoked by Shermichael Singleton calling boys, boys.
Hopefully - we'll see better weather ahead now that the weather vanes are pointing in the right direction. But it will be hard for the Democrats and MSM to restore trust if they can't muster the intellectual courage to examine how they got sucked into the crazy politics of the last 10 years.
I can't get very excited by Jentleson's piece because...well, frankly, because I am old. I am old enough to have seen decades of one or the other political party declared to be on life support unless they do this or that, and then to come lurching back in 2/4/6 years. In 1994, it was Democrats who were dying; in 2006, that became Republicans; in 2016 it was Democrats again, blah blah. The tide comes in, the tide goes out.
That's not to say that political parties can't and don't realign. Candidates try different messages, different personae, some work, some do not. However, it is tempting to assume that the political winds blowing at the moment will blow forevermore. In politics, weather is a tricky thing, and the same breeze that pushes you into harbor today can become a gale that sinks you tomorrow.
"I know that Washington, D.C. is chock-full of people who act like snakes and that this sort of behavior is not unusual down there" OK fair enough but I am irritated that even though most of Jesse's open-letter-signing enemies live right there with him in Brooklyn he still had to take the shot at DC.
I will say this in the comment's section. When I came out as trans, I had a convert's zeal, probably related to my Christian background. I was the kind of person who would trash someone online for an opinion, and in all honesty, I'm still that way. I can remember in my early twenties reading authors like Julia Serano, or Jennifer Finney Boylan and bumping up against this idea that trans women might not literally be female, because gender is fluid, and feeling threatened and insecure, and deciding I liked the certainty of "trans women are women" and turning this into the trappings of my online ideology, basically my excuse to yell and be rude to people who disagreed with me. The feelings of being threatened and insecure of course didn't go away, no matter how ingrained in online politics I became, or how righteous I thought my activism was. Aging from my twenties to my thirties, and getting more educated, I now see the original point those trans authors made about avoiding literal definitions. Most people really do have to learn the hard way.
LOL at him citing Grace Lavery. I'm surprised that Lavery didn't get laughed off of the internet for claiming that the UC Berkeley English department was a "transphobic hellhole".
https://x.com/graceelavery/status/1780072233328607294
Singal is being very generous towards Jentleson's narrow minded attitudes
In my micro field of common sense criminal justice I also have found that people who denounced what the mainstream considers moderate positions to be so "over the top" as to deserve cancellation.
The only thing that continued me to allow speaking, and occasionally being heard was that I was an elected District Attorney for a quarter century, so until I retired in 2019 my voice was relatively safe from complete cancellation.
I understand your frustration Jesse, and it's gotta be especially personal for you considering how many canards and calumnies were sent your way by the angry dogmatists on the Left.
But with that said, very few public figures ever come out and admit they were wrong about something. Or private figures either. Hell I spent years complaining the US spent too much of its budget on the military and now I feel we need to deter a rising China and Russia and that requires a strong military. I'm not posting on Facebook "Oh by the way, I was wrong back in 2014 when I said we had more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined and should cut our spending"
Slow down. You don’t make your living advancing, advocating for, or writing about political issues. You’re just a dog on the internet. There are still standards that apply to you but “coherent and consistent positions” isn’t one of them.
Though that logic goes both ways. Because I DON'T make my living this way, it's less important for me to maintain credibility, right? I think some pundits fear, not unreasonably, that they will lose some of their credibility if they retract or publicly reverse their positions. Doesn't make it right, but I do understand it.
Oh and I am not a dog on the internet. I'm a *faun* on the internet.
"I think some pundits fear, not unreasonably, that they will lose some of their credibility if they retract or publicly reverse their positions."
I think so too. I wish they'd understand that such things increase their credibility, and not the other way around. Though I suppose intellectual accountability inhibits their ability to take a scolding or smarmy tone, which seem to be the only modes some of them employ.
I wish that were true but I don’t think so. Ethan Strauss calls it the DADD strategy - don’t apologize, double down. “The public” never accepts apologies, in practice apologizing or correcting just get your name dragged even more through the mud. The smart strategy is, unfortunately, to never publicly apologize or retract.
Check it out. This guy self-IDs as a fawn.
I think it might have been John McWhorter I heard say awhile back that when the woke bubble bursts people are not going to say they were wrong, they will just pretend they had nothing to do with it or never believed it. We are watching that unfold in real time.
Guys like him and Ezra Klein are just grasping for life preservers on a sinking ship. Their statements aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
Ezra Klein? Don’t know about that.
-->Did you see Klein's interview of Chase Strangio...?<--wrong!
--oh no--wrong--my mistake!! Kara Swisher!!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-chase-strangio.html (sorry!!!)
Where can I read it? I have an open mind.
I couldn't find it, though I can find Emily St. James interviewing him on the Ezra Klein show (https://smashnotes.com/p/the-ezra-klein-show/e/the-war-on-trans-people).
ETA: No transcript though.
In terms of Klein, about a month or so after the blow-up of trans issues in NYTimes, which included the accosting of one of its reporters by trans activists, he had a trans advocate on his NYTimes podcast.
I expected at least some discussion on that event. There is 0, yes 0, mention about it.
Big like on this one. I don't think it's petty to call people out on stuff like this. A basic degree of accountability has to exist in the public sphere for it to function constructively. And everyone has the right to address boundary violations.
Jentleson's critical analysis was interesting, very focused on Democratic Party members winning elections and taking power. But I kept wondering, other than tactical considerations related to controversial issues - what does he think the Democratic Party should stand for? What are our principles and core commitments? I don't think it can just be a list of policy positions - right to choose, no cuts to social security?, no backtracking on ACA. As George HW B put it - the vision thing?
It used to be poverty, labor, and liberty. Neither of the latter two things appear to be central to the party anymore, and the poverty part seems almost entirely concerned with urban poverty through a racial lens.
Over the past decade it seems like safetyism, guilt, and conformity are the values.
There is a "victim of its own success" aspect to this. Gay rights was a very compelling issue for Ds, now mostly achieved. There was low hanging fruit in the fairness and equity realm.
"Not being Republicans" is the only value.
Good column. Trans Rights activists are only rivaled by the Palestinian for mind-bogglingly counterproductive PR.
Grace Lavery is a name that I am all too familiar with. She is a (black) legend for her advocacy of burning books that she doesn’t like. Don’t believe me? Check out what she posted on X. Of course, it gets worse. She advocated stealing books she doesn’t like and then burning them.
Jentleson is just a weathervane and a dumb one at that. By the time, the NYT allowed a debate about trans issues, peak transmania was already over. Jentleson should have known that. The fact that even the NYT allowed some (very limited) debate about trans issues, should have told Jentleson something. Of course, that is not true.
Peak transmania won't be over until judges in America can no longer force attorneys practicing in their court rooms (for example, in cases opposing male participation in womens'-only athletic events) to refer to one of the parties by their imagined sex and not their biological sex.
“Transmania” lol
I meant "peak transmania". Transmania is still with us, sad to say. Note that hysterical response to Seth Moulton's (D) very tame remarks. Note also, the histrionics provoked by Shermichael Singleton calling boys, boys.
Hopefully - we'll see better weather ahead now that the weather vanes are pointing in the right direction. But it will be hard for the Democrats and MSM to restore trust if they can't muster the intellectual courage to examine how they got sucked into the crazy politics of the last 10 years.
I can't get very excited by Jentleson's piece because...well, frankly, because I am old. I am old enough to have seen decades of one or the other political party declared to be on life support unless they do this or that, and then to come lurching back in 2/4/6 years. In 1994, it was Democrats who were dying; in 2006, that became Republicans; in 2016 it was Democrats again, blah blah. The tide comes in, the tide goes out.
That's not to say that political parties can't and don't realign. Candidates try different messages, different personae, some work, some do not. However, it is tempting to assume that the political winds blowing at the moment will blow forevermore. In politics, weather is a tricky thing, and the same breeze that pushes you into harbor today can become a gale that sinks you tomorrow.
"I know that Washington, D.C. is chock-full of people who act like snakes and that this sort of behavior is not unusual down there" OK fair enough but I am irritated that even though most of Jesse's open-letter-signing enemies live right there with him in Brooklyn he still had to take the shot at DC.
Fake capitals are made to be hated. Everyone hates Canberra, everyone hates Brasilia, and everyone hates Washington!
Damn, I favorably reposted that op-ed. Jesse, how do you deal with being maybe the most inexplicably hated man in America?
I love this column. Its subject bears great similarities to the phenomenon known as “premature anti-fascism” a century ago.