Hacker News Reader

Comment by stjohnswarts | Hacker News Reader

Hold up, what do you mean with "gender and queer issues" ? I don't consider those as "issues" but as "nature". Obviously (most) societies have estranged LGBQT people for centuries, so they had to go underground for most of that time. Obviously more people are coming out now that it's not nearly as dangerous for them.

View on HN

I totally agree that living in the past was horrible for many people and i'm extremely lucky to be living right now - where i'm personally sceptical is when heavy medication or surgery is the answer, especially for youngsters - that to me is a sign of something very wrong with society if required to be broadened too much in scope.

Personally i see the heavy use of SSRI's and Ritalin etc. for kids through the same lens where societal or psychological changes should be the focus, or a culprit found instead of patching up.

The answer can't be that in the future out of a class room one half will require some dependency from a medico industrial complex, that's dystopian to me.

> The answer can't be that in the future out of a class room one half will require some dependency from a medico industrial complex, that's dystopian to me.

The difference to "back then" is that the amount of work required both in school and in later work life was far less than today. Only those with actual academic ambitions went to school for longer than eight years, the rest entered the trades and worked on a farm.

The answer will have to be a radical reform of our societies - away from turbo-capitalism that is only focused on hyper-growth and excellence, to a society that actually respects the needs of all of its citizens and nature itself. Not everyone needs to have an academic degree just for a bullshit data-entry job ffs.

I buy that as society becomes more accepting, the prevalence of non-heterosexual and trans people should be expected to increase, but this is a huge confounding variable in figuring out what the natural prevalence of these traits in society is. A Gallup poll this year [0] broke it down by generational cohort, and I was surprised at the increase in LGBT identification from Millennials (10.5%) to Gen Z (20.8%), and I am part of Gen Z. I don’t know what explains an increase of that size, simply because while society in general has become more accepting, my feeling is that it hasn’t become that much more accepting between Millennials and Gen Z. But maybe it has and I’m just underestimating it.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick...

The really interesting thing will be to survey those same people in 10 years to see if the numbers go down.

Your teenage years are naturally a time to "figure out who you are". The widespread acceptance and promotion of LGBT adds an extra variable that teenagers need to "figure out" for themselves.

Because we’ve succeeded at instilling a negative self identity (if you’re white you’re racist etc) in kids while offering a positive self identity you can choose (non-binary, pan-sexual etc) and correct yourself. To be a good person you need to be oppressed. This is the way.

Break it down by race and you see totally different results. Why? You wouldn’t expect that.

This is an ugly caricature and reeks of ignorance and faux victimhood.

If ignorance, then enlighten

And yours is ad hominem. Parent comment is far from unlikely.

>negative identity…if you’re white you’re racist

>to be a good person you need to be oppressed

So you’re cool with these absurd assertions about society’s direction?

Have you read “White Fragility” or “How to be an Anti-racist”? It’s literally in the texts of which these are mainstream publications and interpretations of critical race theory concepts originated from Derrick Bell, bell hooks, and of course Kimberle Crenshaw - who of course created “intersectionality” which is exactly oppression Olympics.

I’m being a bit reductionist, yes. But the overarching point is obvious. It’s what the church and cults have done forever: explain why you are a sinner and then offer ways to not be. But worse because in this postmodern take on cult dynamics it’s about group identity. By virtue of being born with arbitrary DNA you are classified as good or bad and kids don’t want to feel bad so “here’s a way to be good”.

It’s the grooming of jr. revolutionaries.

I don’t really feel like engaging with you.

Extremely weak. Do better.

Please leave me alone.

I sometimes call Gen Z the troll generation. I feel like they never knew life without Internet and so they naturally choose the most inflammatory answer as default. I heard a survey of Gen Zers that something like half reported themselves as gender non binary. I think it’s more protest than anything

Because it is trendy.

My armchair theory after reading this a while back as well was gen Z, better than any other group, understands that gender/sex/etc. is a spectrum. So if you ask them “are you heterosexual?” it’s no surprise that more are comfortable saying - and have the requisite knowledge to say - something along the lines of, “well I wouldn’t say I’m straight because while I am man with a woman I could see myself with a man.”

I don’t have a source for this of course. I’m operating under the assumption that gen z has more internalized the idea of gender/sex/sexuality as a spectrum.

Framing it as "gender and queer issues" is disturbingly reminiscent of the time when the DSM listed homosexuality as a mental illness.[1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_DSM

I'd generally understand "gender and queer issues" to mean problems with how society treats people who don't fit into norms.

I'm not sure how plastics contribute to people becoming more accepting/norms changing over time

Exactly, if they were getting at maybe hormone levels changing because of microplastics pollution then they should have stated that rather than bringing up sexuality and gender.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com